1999-09-29 Charter Commission Minutes

Home

HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 32 of 51 needed to hear. Thank you. RAY: Steve. BESS: I was just going to say that it seems to me, given what’s been said here, if there were to be a department or a division with that permitting function, if we were not to put it in Public Works and put it in Planning, just for administrative purposes, you wouldn’t have to delete all this other stuff, and it wouldn’t conflict with the Public Works provisions. I know this is totally - what, what are you saying? RAY: I hope Virginia doesn’t read these minutes. BESS: But I’m just saying, just for the sake of simplicity for the voter to understand what’s going on here, we don’t have to make many changes if we were to put everything under Planning. I mean, have a separate division, but you know. RAY: Marni. HERKES: I can’t believe I’m hearing that. Does the Planning Department actively review Capital Improvements and recommend priorities, or is it the Administration, the Mayor, that does that, or is it the Finance Department that does that? I’m having a problem with that. RAY: The Planning Department has assumed some role, and I think it makes sense in terms of trying to establish priorities, especially in some of the last CIP bills that came forward where the Council wanted to make them more project specific, so it was really important that there was some sort of a priority, so in that case, they did try to make some sort of sense out of it and offer that perspective. But, it’s not, sort of, a hard core part of the process function thing. It’s just weighing in as needed. That was my experience. HERKES: Does that need to be in the Charter? Isn’t that something the Mayor would tell the Planning Department to do anyway, or the Council, because the Council instructs the Planning Department also? BALOG: I just got to interject. Can we, just for the sake of discussion, I know we’re looking at Planning, can we just finish this? HERKES: I had to get out of Steve Bess’s there for a minute. BALOG: So we can kind of move on to the next deal. Otherwise, this will be all over the place. Let’s just handle it and move on. Go to the next level. RAY: Okay, how about this? How about we just take a straw vote on who’s - MARTIN: See what you started, Roland, with these straw votes. Take the whole kind. HERKES: Take a vote. Tell us, what are we voting on? RAY: Wait, let’s just take a straw vote. How many people are in favor of the creation of a Division of Permitting? Roland. HIGASHI: Maybe it’s transferring the duties from Planning to Public Works. Is that more the accurate? file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 9-29-99.html7/1/2011