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minutes 10-16-99Page 4 of 75
<br />feel like don’t stick yourself into that pot of having to tinker and tinker and tinker every time. I,
<br />personally, have been on the island since December of ‘71 and I feel like the political climate in the
<br />Council, and involvement of the Council members with their communities, is much better since the
<br />change in 1990 than I remember before. Like in North Kohala, where I live, our last two Council
<br />members who’ve been elected under single member district, both John Ray and Leningrad Elarionoff,
<br />we see them in Kohala. Previous to that, when our Council member was elected from a larger district,
<br />we didn’t see them. So I just am encouraging you to please not try to stir this pot one more time. It’s
<br />been stirred a lot, and I feel like it’s in a good situation now, even though, clearly, there’s things you can
<br />criticize about how the Council works.
<br />I don’t have any other issue I want to speak strongly on. I know you all are taking up nonpartisan
<br />elections. I know that’s important but I don’t feel like I have any solid, important information to pass
<br />along in that respect, or any strong views of my own, so I’ll leave that alone for you guys. Thank you.
<br />RAY: John, you have a comment?
<br />SANTANGELO: Well, just a small dialogue. Having been on the Council and served with John, and
<br />been a person that’s always voted for single member districts, and from Ka’u, I kind of understand that.
<br />Of course, Ka’u’s district, or at least the Sixth District, is a hundred miles long. But this is what I
<br />experienced. And in a single member district, we’ve had time to experiment and I think it’s appropriate,
<br />and again I want to voice strong support for single member, but I think it’s appropriate to re-evaluate
<br />and see can things move forward. One of the things that the Chairman warned us about in the beginning,
<br />was perception. And if we look at this six mokus, going to six single member; they’re still single
<br />member, not at-large, but single member, and three at-large. How does that look to the people? I just
<br />want to add a couple of things, of my experience on the Council. What I experienced, among certain
<br />Council members, was almost head hunting, or trophy hunting. That, in that district, there was a
<br />situation in a non-profit in which a large, very expensive vehicle was being lobbied for, in one particular
<br />part of the island that was totally inappropriate. It was to pick up kids from school who’d gotten sick,
<br />and get them home, that didn’t have that ability to do that. You don’t need a 19 or 18 passenger van. A
<br />station wagon would do. And that money was being, kind of, tried to be curried out of another district
<br />that was fairly poor. So I paid attention to some of that. As a Council member from Sixth District, I took
<br />a lot of pride in combining forces with two other Council members in one area to get a soccer field. In
<br />combining monies up in, say, Kona area, to get fax machines or copy machines, or some sorts of
<br />computer equipment to help the police track domestic violence. I went out of my way to work with other
<br />Council members, and John Ray was one of those that was very supportive and helpful in guiding me in
<br />that. I didn’t find that that was the case. Okay? So I was very resistant to this proposal that really hasn’t
<br />had a lot of hearing on this Board yet, and I just ask you, if you could, to look a little more into that
<br />yourself, and possibly open your mind, because your kind of input, a person that feels the way you do,
<br />and I felt that way also. If you would look in it in a closer scrutiny, possibly you could give us a little
<br />more input because it’s important to take a look at things and say, okay, the single member does work
<br />well. Now we get very expensive campaigns, say in Hilo or some place where you have like a real small
<br />block of property that makes up a whole Council member, compared to a 100 mile area that I had to
<br />campaign in. On the other hand, we’re looking at better government, and we would not want to dilute
<br />the representative style of that, but sometimes being a County, and not being able to create political
<br />subdivisions because it’s at the permission of the Legislature right now, we’re not able to create more
<br />home rule, so how can we balance this total territorialism that’s so small in certain areas compared to
<br />how can we, kind of like, level that out. And I’ve been giving this an ear myself, to try to reach a
<br />balance in that. So I just offer that as information, as my insight to it, and be real open to input because I
<br />think the public’s perception is going to be very important to this. Remember, we only recommend. It is
<br />the public that votes on it. But I thank you for your input.
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