1999-06-16 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 2 of 11 publicly noticing those meetings. I know it sounds like an awful lot but that’s basically about what it takes to get through this process and have that number of meetings, have legal and administrative staff on board. We have also solicited input, initial input from the various County Departments and we have completed an initial round of meetings where we did get input from the various County Departments. We still have several to go, mostly those connected with Boards and Commissions that we want to hear from at the same time, so say for the Planning Commission or the Police Commission, they have yet to agendize and discuss and come up with recommendations for us. And when they do, we’ll have them in at the same time as the Departments. Some of the initial suggestions, these aren’t all that have come up, to make you aware of, is looking at the language in regard to mandatory program reviews; the responsibilities and placement of the Safety Coordinator, whether that position should stay under the Mayor or whether it should be put underneath Corporation Counsel or Civil Service; the responsibilities of the Police Commission; the establishment of a Fire Commission; expanding the jurisdiction of the Salary Commission to cover all Department Heads and Deputies; looking at minimum qualifications for Department Heads and Deputies; the creation of a separate Human Services Department for elderly services including Office of Aging; transferring the Wastewater Division from Public Works to the Department of Water Supply; the creation of a Permitting Division to consolidate all permitting functions under a Public Works Division of Permitting and now those permits are jointly dealt with in both Planning and Public Works Departments so the thought is for greater efficiency, sort of one-stop shopping to have a single Division of Permitting and then have the Planning Department more focused on planning and the Public Works Department more focused on permitting. Now these are only some of the ideas that have been put forth. None of them have been discussed by the Charter Commission to date. This is just strictly a one-way input so far, just some of the ideas that have been put forth. Tonight we are starting, this is the first of a series of six public meetings that we are holding around the island to get initial feedback from the public. These meetings are scheduled to go through the month of July and we are meeting pretty much the next six weeks on Wednesday evenings at 5 p.m. throughout the island. That schedule is up in the front in the distributed material. During this next six weeks we’ll also be gathering and distributing internally, a lot of background material for the Commission to study to get prepared to go through our formal review of the Charter. In August we plan to finish up our initial review from the various County Departments and in late August or as early as September, begin a detail section-by-section review of the Charter. Everything is publicly noticed. We will be holding meetings around the island so we’ll take our business out around the island and expose the different parts of the island to the Charter review. We don’t have any schedule on that right now. We’ll just see how things move along. When we do come up with agreed upon proposed amendments, we’ll have our legal staff work on the language to move those amendments forward and the proposed amendments will be voted on by the public, at the latest in the fall election of 2000 or if proposed, and we want to put it forward, we could entertain the possibility of a special election prior to that. But in any case, everything will be voted on to the general public. So that’s where we are in the process. Tonight, if you want to testify, please fill in a Registration Form that we have on the desk up there. So far we have four people signed up to testify - five people and we will go through you one by one so please come up to the table and identify yourself. PUBLIC TESTIMONY RAY: The first person to testify, Jesse Dawn. Jesse. Jesse, you can sit if you want. There’s no camera so make yourself comfortable. DAWN: Okay. There was a letter by Mr. Ray in the paper and also a report in the paper mentioning the file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011