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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 29 of 51
<br />to put it in the Charter?
<br />YUEN: The things that are being proposed, with what’s been put forth as the Administration proposal to
<br />create a Division of Permitting, does not contradict anything in State law, and so, to accomplish it, the
<br />primary changes that would need to be made in the Charter would be to take the subdivision code out of
<br />the Planning Department, and they also have zoning code enforcement. The zoning code administration
<br />is currently in the Planning Department. Their proposal would take the enforcement out of the Planning
<br />Department, putting it in Public Works, and so that would also require a Charter change. As to, like
<br />going through this point by point, and what needs to still be in there, some of it should still be in here,
<br />like the General Plan and some of the other functions. Zoning ordinances themselves, they process
<br />changes in zone through the Planning Commission. There are some functions and some permits that
<br />have to be with the Planning Commission, or with the Planning Department, like SMA permits would
<br />not be effected by their proposal because State law says that the SMA major permits go to the Planning.
<br />Their word is the authority, but in this county, it’s the Planning Commission and the SMA minors go to
<br />the Planning Director, basically.
<br />RAY: Roland.
<br />HIGASHI: The one thing I like about a organized plan is that if it’s done in writing, whoever is Mayor,
<br />it’s a finite process that we go through. If we have loose language and you have a Mayor who is not for
<br />expediting permits, for whatever reasons, or want to incorporate new ordinances or rules, or whatever, I
<br />mean, it may be a problem. Nothing is perfect and there’s a lot of pros and cons both ways but I would
<br />support this restructuring and creating this new division, purely because it’s already defined, until we
<br />can establish a process.
<br />RAY: From a time frame standpoint, if we were to put forth a Charter Amendment to empower the
<br />Administration, so that would be something that would have to be voted on. If it weren’t voted on, I’m
<br />just trying to think of the dynamics of that, that would be a much broader issue, so whether the public
<br />would be more accepting of giving the Mayor broader powers vs. a more limited - change the Charter. It
<br />seems to me there are a lot of people who are suspect of the powers the Mayor’s Office has already, so
<br />it’s just a dynamic to think about. Gary.
<br />YOSHIYAMA: I guess what comes to mind is better watch out what you ask for, you might get it, and I
<br />think that’s what you’re talking about, John. What I didn’t want to do in this document was for us to get
<br />down to the division level in government. What I see is we have a chance here, maybe, to improve some
<br />efficiency within the County and we’ve come across an impediment here. And I think we all can agree
<br />with that. I think everybody who has come forward says, hey, we’ve got some inefficiencies in our
<br />permitting process, and everybody kind of points to this, and so I’m thinking, can we get rid of this.
<br />George may be right. If we can’t house everybody under one roof then it’s all for nothing, but even if we
<br />could, serving two masters is not good either. Having the Planning Director as your boss and somebody
<br />else in the process, having a Chief Engineer. That’s not a good thing. So what I’m trying to focus on is,
<br />is there a way we can move this function under one roof without going too far.
<br />MARTIN: How far is too far?
<br />YOSHIYAMA: We could just move this out to the Public Works and, as far as organizational structure,
<br />processing goes, leave it up to the Mayor.
<br />HIGASHI: I don’t think this is going to be part of the document, though. Right?
<br />file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 9-29-99.html7/1/2011
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