1999-05-26 Charter Commission Minutes

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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 7 of 42 that there’s probably -, of those 200 programs, number one, that are not necessary, which is what we’re after, not run efficiently, which is another goal that would be a program review, and could be run differently, could be run more efficiently or could even be run by other entities besides the County, which is a touchy subject but one that is not out of the bounds of conversation. And I think where we’re looking for mandatory program review, you’re correct, it may not be something that’s appropriate for the Charter. It may not be something that has to be mandated by the Charter. It should be something that the voters tell the Council that they want done. WURDEMAN: Well, I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m saying that if you’re going to do it -. HERKES: Do it. WURDEMAN: You’re going to have to have some qualified professional people who are experienced in these techniques, and they’re going to have to go out and do an objective evaluation of all these programs and start cranking out these reviews. And we, presently, and to my knowledge, ever have we had that kind of cadre of people who can devote their full time to that kind of thing, program. HERKES: You can’t review something that you don’t have an evaluation system set up for. If you don’t have an outcome system and a measurement system set up, you can’t review it. That’s the problem with the marijuana program. Nobody’s ever set up the outcomes that they wanted to accomplish. So that gives an opportunity for a lot of nit-picking, a lot of criticism, and that is the problem with a lot of programs is that the outcomes have never been identified so there’s no way to measure the success. RAY: Okay. Well, I don’t think we need to go any further with this -. HERKES: Okay. RAY: Discussion today. I think we need to have other folks here and, you know, certainly people from the Legislative Auditor’s office to, you know, explain, you know, give us their viewpoint who, you know, they are presently charged with this and they are presently charged with an evaluation of the marijuana program, as we speak, right, so, you know, we can have them in and get their view point on that. Ms. Irvine. IRVINE: Am I led to believe that Legislative Auditor is the one that’s supposed to be doing these program audits at this time, is that -? WURDEMAN: I believe they’ve been tasked, yes. IRVINE: Okay. HERKES: Well, it’s under their section, legislative section. RAY: Okay. Okay, Mr. Wurdeman. WURDEMAN: Okay, number two is just basically a semantic matter. Number three, Special Council, this may not be totally clear. RAY: This is Article 5-2.5. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 5-26-99.html7/1/2011