1999-07-07 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 2 of 23 which, are looking at the mandatory program review language in the Charter; responsibilities and placement of the Safety Coordinator position, whether to keep that under the Mayor or to possibly move it under the Corporation Counsel or Civil Service; some comments on the responsibilities of the Police Commission; the possible establishment of a Fire Commission; expanding the jurisdiction of the Salary Commission to cover all Department Heads and Deputies; looking at the minimum qualifications for Department Heads and Deputies; the possible creation of a Human Services Department to include elderly services and the Office of Aging; transferring the Wastewater Division from Public Works to the Water Department. One of the more involved submittals is the suggestion to create a Permitting Division which would consolidate all permitting functions under the Public Works Department now jointly dealt with in Planning and Public Works, the idea to create a more efficient one-stop shop for permitting and have the Planning Department concentrate more on planning and Public Works Department more on permitting. Those are just some of the ideas, the major ones, that have been put forth so far and I want to stress that none have been discussed by the Commission so it’s just been a one-way dialogue. They just passed this on to us. Tonight we are in the third of six public hearings that we’re holding around the island to get initial feedback from the general public. These meetings will go through July and also during this time we’re gathering and distributing internally background material for the Commission to study. In August we hope to complete our initial phases of department review, especially including input from Boards and Commissions. Because Boards and Commissions have to agendize and discuss in a different procedure, their input to the Charter Commission, that takes a little bit long in the process so in other words, the Planning Commission has not taken up and dealt with their recommendations yet nor has the Water Commission so we’re waiting for those and then we’ll get them in with the departments and get their input at the same time. Also, we’re inviting speakers to address topics such as nonpartisan elections. I don’t know if you realize we’re the only jurisdiction left in the state, only county which still has partisan elections now. All the rest have gone to nonpartisan so we’re going to ask people probably more from City and County of Honolulu who’ve been nonpartisan for longer than any of the other jurisdictions. We’re going to invite some folks over to speak to us on that issue. Also, neighborhood boards which have a pretty long track record on Oahu. We’re going to have some input there. Another idea that we will be looking at to some degree is the City Manager form of government vs. the Mayor so we’ve distributed quite a bit of written information internally on how those models work but I anticipate we’ll be getting some folks to speak to them. Roughly September or so we’ll begin, and maybe a little bit sooner, a detail section-by-section review of the Charter to come up with proposed amendments. We will be holding a series of meetings around the island again as we discuss and as we go through the Charter so just to give folks a chance to listen and participate as we go around the island so it won’t necessarily site-specific in terms of where we’ve heard more about that. I mean, we’ll try to be sensitive to it and if there are things that we think will be more interesting to a certain community than others, then we’ll try to accommodate that but basically we’ll just go out and hold a series of four or five or six meetings again around the island as we’re marching through. All proposed amendments will be voted on by the public in an election in the year 2000. There has been a certain amount of discussion initially about the possibility of holding a special election and it was really in the nature of sort of a "what if" discussion. What if we feel like we’re coming up with such substantive changes to County government that that might warrant a special election so if we were to look at a special election and if we were also to look at the possibility of having an election in time to actually affect those changes in the year 2000 election. In other words, if we were to have a special election and this is, I don’t think realistic but say we were going to recommend a City Manager form of government. So when would we have to hold that to actually affect that taking place sooner rather than later? Or nonpartisan elections? In other words, if we were to come forth with a suggestion for nonpartisan elections, theoretically we could have a special election in January and then the candidates in the year 2000 election would run as nonpartisan if the voters chose to vote that in. My sense and file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 7-7-99.html7/1/2011