1999-10-13 Charter Commission Minutes

Home

minutes 10-13-99Page 17 of 31 PRANKE: I understand that. BALOG: So it possible, just to let you know, to get denied by the Council. PRANKE: It’s also possible for the Mayor to sneak people through without the Council approving them. We seem to have gone behind this particular Chief Executive, fixing up things since his term on the County Council when he would not send people’s names before the full Council and hold them up in his Committee. So we changed the Charter in 1990, supposedly, to fix that. A couple of times, four times as a matter of fact, he has sent names to the Council so that the Boards and Commissions did not have time to meet twice to approve these people before they became approved by the Charter. In essence, when the Council met to vote for these folks, they were already approved, without the approval of the County Council. That’s how things get changed around. No matter how good an idea we might have, things are going to be effected. BALOG: So in other ways. PRANKE: It works both ways. BALOG: Okay, that was my point. PRANKE: If you’d have had him put your name in quickly enough, they wouldn’t have had a chance to disapprove. BALOG: Well, they would have had a chance. PRANKE: They could have said no, but it wouldn’t have mattered because you would have already been approved by the rules of the Charter. I understand. I know the situation. RAY: Thank you. KUROZAWA: John, I have a very short question. In your mind, if the Council actually selects Commission members, when the Council member leaves their term, say in two years, is it your thought that they should change the Commission members every two years also? PRANKE: Well, that’s another thing that I didn’t put in here because, I think, that needs to be dealt with by greater minds than mine. I did put a last sentence here that says "Upon approval of this section, the council shall appoint new members to the commission in a manner which provides for staggered commission terms." Now, we did that before with the Police Commission. My thought is you may want to change the members to two-year term, to three-year term, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think that that’s something that needs to be decided upon, perhaps by this Board, or perhaps by the citizens, putting their input in, but it is possible that it could change the term limits for the Board. To have five- year terms when the Council member only has two-year terms, I don’t know. Did I say, if you put two- year term limits for the Mayor right now, I’m almost sure that the people of this county will approve it? RAY: Marni. HERKES: Mr. Pranke, some of your ideas have real merit and we’ve been struggling a lot in our discussions on the fact that there is a scarcity of people who want to serve on Boards and Commissions. If they were appointed by the Council, do you think that that would bring more people forward to serve on Boards and Commissions? file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 10-13-99.html7/1/2011