1999-07-07 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 5 of 23 the Police Department and I don’t bring that up as a slap at our current administration because that’s been going on from way back (undiscernable) and twenty years and more and I think our County government has put up with that for a long time and I think maybe the main culprit is the public doesn’t seem to stand up and do anything about it. Nevertheless, if there are ways that you folks, through the Charter, can make that function less easily, I think it would be a big benefit to the people of the County. I think that’s enough for me. RAY: Okay. Marni’s got a couple of questions or comments. HERKES: I don’t know if John mentioned that all of this is recorded. We have like 126 pages of minutes from all of these meetings to read so we always have to talk into microphones. It seems kind of unfriendly. Thank you for your comments, especially about hooking concepts together in ballot places. I work in the polls during election day, and this last election day, the Primary and the General, was a nightmare and I don’t know how we can - The County Clerk tells me that that’s how they have to write the ballots. I don’t believe him so we’ll work on some kind of way not to hook concepts together and to have specific things. And also something else you brought up, we’ll try and do some cost benefit ratios using even some external, some social costs and social to any proposals that we suggest so that there’ll be some reason and rationale behind anything that - and the people that testify can help us with this. Like we’d like a Managing Director because it works better, because it’ll be more efficient even if we have to pay him $200,000 a year, it will work better in a county. And that’s one of the questions that I’ve asked everybody, if you had to pay a Managing Director $200,000 a year, could you swallow it? That’s the going rate for Managing Directors. So that’s a tough salary for us to swallow in a budget year where we’re all looking for things but you know, if it ran more efficiently and other things were equal. I’ve lived in this county for over 50 years so I’m always interested in the balance of power question because in that time, the balance of power has swung back and forth with the same Charter, with the same rules but with different people and I’m always interested in how you design that so that it doesn’t swing back and forth. We have the present system of government now because a Council person was too aggressive and too strong so that’s why we have a Mayor. Otherwise, we had a Board of Supervisors and a Chair. We have a Mayor because one Council person got pretty far out there. He lives in your district too. But that’s an interesting question as to how you write language that ensures that when it really depends on the personalities of the people involved. So if you’ve got any suggestions on how you write the language, I’d loved - since I’ve been struggling with that. GRAHAM: I guess you just try to write the language as neutral as you can in that balance of power and then just accept that it will swing one way or the other with the personalities. But if the language itself is oriented one way or the other, then I think you have something to correct. HERKES: And I think you’ll have to recognize that the Council has given up power to the Planning Commission along the way. They give up their power to the Planning - there are decisions that the Planning Commission’s been empowered to make that really should be made by the County Council but in the past years, they’ve had not enough time, they’ve had other issues and so they’ve given up that power to the Planning Commission. I’m not sure you can legislate that. I’m not sure you can write that into - they get to do what they want to do. They are a legislative body. So that’s a recognition of some dynamics that are interesting in there too. GRAHAM: Sure. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 7-7-99.html7/1/2011