1999-08-25 Charter Commission Minutes (2)

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minutes 8-25-99Page 35 of 60 MARTIN: Second question, a little bit off of what I just said, but you made mention about four year vs. two year. Lost my train of thought, confused myself. I’ll get back to you. HERKES: What about when you talked about six/three. What about six two year terms and three people in four years? KONISHI: Yes, that’s what I was suggesting. MARTIN: It’s come back to me. Term limit. Would you still have the term limit that has been imposed by the Charter change, I believe, four years ago. KONISHI: Yes, I’d do that. MARTIN: Thank you. SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman. RAY: John. SANTANGELO: When you were just talking about the four year term, Keola Childs submitted - Keola really can write, and that was his major concern, was the lack of experience, the lack of knowledge that a two year term turning people over, you don’t have the ability to serve the people in a more professional fashion. Is that kind of what you were alluding to? KONISHI: Yes, and like I had mentioned in an earlier response, I think two year terms are appropriate if you have a bicameral situation but when you have a unicameral situation, I think, not that we don’t have good people, the burden that we place on them is just really staggering. SANTANGELO: It’s no reflection on the people at all. KONISHI: That’s correct. SANTANGELO: It’s the reflection on being able to understand and work with the system. Did you have a chance to read Keola’s things? Do you know about that? KONISHI: No. SANTANGELO: Okay, thank you. KONISHI: The next thing I wanted to recommend was the deletion of the Mandatory Program Review. The present provision is rather vague on program review and therefore, anytime you have vagueness in the law, there’s room for abuse. And right now, the Council’s rules, I guess Rule 24, states that the "budget review, departmental program review and the adoption process shall be interpreted as meeting the mandate" and yet we have people seeking to impeach, I guess, Councilmen and Mayor because the language of Section 3-16 is rather vague. So since the Council does approve the budget each year, of every department, every program, it’s just again my suggestion, as a private citizen, that you eliminate this because it doesn’t really do that much for us. The next item I wanted to bring up was right now there are two procedures for removing elected officials. You have recall and impeachment. To sum it up, I think one is probably enough. You have recall which does not require any kind of cause file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 8-25-99.html7/1/2011