1999-08-25 Charter Commission Minutes (2)

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minutes 8-25-99Page 23 of 60 based standard. But you wouldn’t see this Commission being involved in promotions or anything like that? QUEROBIN: No, that would be the job of the Fire Chief and whatever the panels that they have. SANTANGELO: Now there have been some grievances over that. Would that go to the Commission or you see the Commission strictly dealing with the Administration? QUEROBIN: I see the Commission strictly dealing with the Administration, administrative matters. You have provisions for collective bargaining matters so I think that’s a separate issue altogether. SANTANGELO: Thank you, Steve. RAY: Other questions? Okay, thank you. QUEROBIN: Thank you very much. RAY: Thanks Steve. Let’s move to Item VII.B, the Special Election Presentation by the County Elections Division. Al, can you introduce your staff that’s here. KONISHI: Okay, thank you Chairman Ray and Members. Thank you for the invite. For the record again, I’m Al Konishi, the County Clerk. May the record reflect seated to my immediate right is Donald Ikeda, Deputy Clerk. Also here from our office is Ed Kozohara who’s, I guess, the Dean of Election guys around the state. He’s our top civil servant and Pat Nakamoto behind Ed. Actually, they know way more than Donald and I do so let’s set the record straight with that first. RAY: Al, let me make a couple of comments. You know we’ve been, and it’s been widely reported in the press that we’ve been kicking around the idea of a Special Election and something that’s kind of floating over our heads and we’re trying to get as much clarity as possible today, especially in terms of the timing and logistics of considering a Special Election. That was our initial discussion. It was more on a "what if" basis. "What if" we were to be inclined to look at a Special Election, when would we have to do such and such, so I think, at this point in time, since it’s almost September of 1999, what we’re really interested in is the logistics and time frames. If we were to wind up the Charter review and have the Amendments ready to go by such and such a time, how much lead time do you need to schedule an election. And also the Budget, and I know you’ve got some information for that as well, which is another important part of the discussion. But we’re really trying to pin down the time frame considerations as much as possible today to give us a sense of those logistics. KONISHI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just answer your questions head on. Each one I’ll summarize and then we can get to some of the details. First of all, in terms of time, I believe they took ten months in 1979 to prepare for the Special Election and what happened there was the Charter Commission, I believe, decided right in the initial going that they were going to go with a Special Election. That gave the staff ten months to prepare and I kind of use that as the model for what it takes to put one together. Now, I’m told that maybe we can shave some corners here and there but I caution you that in Hawaii, especially with our experience from the last election, cutting corners is not the way to go because the last thing in the world we want to do is have anybody in the public question the integrity and security of the election. So anyway, to answer your question head on, the last time they had a ten month head start, and like you said, maybe we can shave a little bit of that off but I don’t suspect it would be a whole lot more. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 8-25-99.html7/1/2011