1999-07-21 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 3 of 11 OLESEN: Yes. MARTIN: Chapter 4: Section 5-4.2 (d) I think. Page 10. OLESEN: Okay. Now comes several items that I think should be added to the Charter. Added to it from the standpoint of practically how things are functioning in the County government. The first one, which is extremely inefficient the way it’s being done now, is the physical handling of all capital projects. We’re going to be faced, within the next 10 to 15 years, with anywhere from $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 on ADA only. That kind of spending is done usually out of the Parks and Recreation Department. They funnel it then over to the Public Works. The Public Works Department then goes to an outside consultant. The outside consultant then comes back again. It now goes back to the Park and Rec Department. It then goes from there back over to the Public Works to go out to bid. We now have a contractor that is out to bid but we don’t have anybody in-house, in-house, effectively with the skills to then handle it in the field. So what we’re doing is we’re taking - my recommendation is that this be a separate department completely separate, reporting directly to the Mayor. This is not unreasonable and I think that I would recommend that you research the recommendations that were made by Harris in Honolulu. I think he did exactly that. He has established a separate Capital Projects group to administer capital projects so it can be done in a very, very efficient manner. It wouldn’t take more than about four or five people. It has a secondary advantage in the fact that their salaries and function and costs would go where it belongs - against the capital - would not go against administrative costs. This is a big mistake we’re making right now. All this effort that’s being done by the County people actually is going against administrative costs. This legally, and through good financial policy, can go and be tacked right into the cost of a facility. We’ve done it on some of the most recent ones. On the Kona pool which I handled, all my charges effectively went into the CIP and it makes sense. That’s the total cost of a facility. Now, I mention these costs because the way it is currently being handled is (1) it’s not efficient, (2) I think that you can do it with about five people, five to six key people. These would be people that are currently in the administration. They’re either functioning right now in the Public Works Department or they’re functioning in some of the other areas. They would effectively come out of administrative costs for the operating costs of government. A lot of these recommendations I’m making are primarily a shuffling of people internally. It has nothing to do with adding anybody. It’s just trying to get the right skills in the right place. That was that one. HIGASHI: Would a section in Department of Public Works work because ultimately? - OLESEN: It could be a Division of Public Works. Public Works now, I believe, has seven or nine separate divisions operating underneath the Chief Engineer. It would be a logical place to have another division established that just does that. They, in turn, would take the proper input, but they would take the project from start to finish. It wouldn’t be piecemeal from department to department, back and forth. IRVINE: Could I ask a question here? HIGASHI: Yes. IRVINE: You know I appreciate what you had to say about the first two things you said but both of those were revised in 1998 in the Charter and I don’t understand why they weren’t straightened out then. I mean the Planning Department themselves came up with amendments for us to vote on in ‘98 and both of your first two items were left where they are or reworded a bit and put back in the Charter. Does that mean that these are just your own wild ideas and that the? - file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 7-21-99.html7/1/2011