1999-07-07 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 4 of 23 attempted a few times and it’s not really something the public wants to go for so I still think that imbalance that came about as a result of that last Charter change needs to be addressed. So I think you all should try to address some issues that would restore power more to the Council vis-a-vis the Mayor and I’m not sure what they might be. You all maybe know a lot better. One thing, you could have the Council Members appoint this Commission next time around. Planning Commission, you know the appointments are obviously a real area of power and influence by the Mayor so there has been discussion before about having the Planning Commission Members be appointed by the Council Member from those districts. I have no sense in my mind whether that’s good or bad but I know it’s been spoken of so I just wanted to bring that up. So I do wish you all would address some issues to bring some more power back to the Council. RAY: In regard to the Council Members, two year Council term members, appointing say the Planning Commissioners, and for what term. I don’t see how that - GRAHAM: You mean it seems inappropriate that a two year term would appoint someone for a larger than a two year term? Well, we certainly have elected people in Washington that are also appointing judges for life and all that kind of stuff so it doesn’t seem like it’s unprecedented to do that. MARTIN: I’d like to thank you for your comments and I appreciate your time coming here this evening. I guess I’m going to ask you a question on what you now asked us to possibly look at, in that the Mayor appoints the people. The Council now approves or disapproves of them. So you’re saying that they should have more power than just approving or disapproving? GRAHAM: Correct. MARTIN: Okay. As I think our chairman has mentioned earlier, there has been some literature and possibly some discussion. I see a letter now here from the general public, in regards to a Managing Director type government. Well, how do you feel about something like that? GRAHAM: I don’t really feel qualified. I haven’t really researched that enough. I know it’s a very important issue. On your first point about approving, whether the Council just approves or whether the Council nominates. Let me take an example like the U.S. Supreme Court. Obviously, you know that the Court nominees get approved by the Senate yet the President wields tremendous power in that. And we’ve seen through different presidents the nature of the Court change because of that, so clearly there’s a big difference between just approving and nominating. RAY: You want to go ahead and finish? GRAHAM: Sure. Let’s see, another just slightly different issue but I remember the last time we went through the General Plan Review. The General Plan Review time, this was Lyman last time around. For those who are concerned about long range planning and development of the County, normally when a change is made requiring a General Plan amendment, there is an environmental impact statement and process that flows off of that that goes on. The only time that gets circumvented is if the Planning Director puts through some changes to the General Plan which effectively could be a spot aid to some particular project that he’d like to see happen for whatever reason and I think that’s sort of a flaw in the system that that can happen and I know that that was an issue the last time around and I don’t have the solution for you but I feel like you should try to come up with some solution so we don’t run into that problem again. Another issue that I feel like the County really suffers with is politicalization of the Fire Department and file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 7-7-99.html7/1/2011