1999-12-04 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 12-04-99Page 3 of 39 fundamentally, we need to answer that. Is this somebody that would be hired by the Council and basically, the Mayor would then be more the Council chair, or would be considerably less - certainly wouldn’t be the CEO of the County. Is that what you envisioned, so that we basically do away with the strong mayor form of government? Is that what you’re suggesting? HERKES: I like the Lexington model that we did first where the top vote getter is the head of the Council and the Mayor, and then the Council manages the government and, with that person, they hire the Managing Director who is a professional. I’d like to comment on John’s township or structure. We did a thing with the League of Women Voters and AAUW. We had four speakers on different kinds of government, and the lady that came from Minnesota, that was on a township board - she had done a lot of research on townships and found that townships are dying. Bigger entities are swallowing them up. That was a shock to us because we were headed down this road and found out there isn’t anybody in front of you. There is an opportunity for every community to have their own neighborhood board, and I’d like to call attention to the Waimea Community Association, as a leader in that particular effort. And you’ll say they can’t vote on things; they have all the power of the voting. Government comes to the Waimea Community Association and says how shall we do this. Help us through this. As my role as the head of the Chamber, government comes to me and said this is what we want to do; how do we do this? We don’t, necessarily, with a 150,000 people, need a structure. It wouldn’t be bad to have. I’m not against it. I’m not against neighborhood boards. But I think the opportunity is there now. We don’t have to have that structure written in. That’s the thing I see coming down the line in the Charter. I’d like to call your attention to the fact that 2 years is probably the length of planning stage that any business goes through these days. Five years is way long range visioning. When you’re talking about ten years, it’ll be a whole different world. We don’t know what our population’s going to be. In the census, I would guess a 150,000. So, when we get up to half a million, then I think we start looking at different government structures, and I pick that number out of the air. But I think, right now, there just aren’t that many people that we need to have a structured community government. The opportunity’s there. Waimea Community Association is the neighborhood board for this area. SANTANGELO: But for a point of information, again, we’re talking about City Manager, because I think we could talk and use exactly what you said to build a case for the opposite. But in this City Manager type thing, you said the top vote getter is either the head of the council - HERKES: I said I liked that. SANTANGELO: So, we have single member districts which are very, very different - HERKES: Or 3-6. SANTANGELO: As Waimea is different from Ka’u, in terms of a neighborhood board, or something. I mean, they’re very, very different single members. So, if you’re talking about a top vote getter, then we have nine single members and the top vote getter would be an individual - RAY: Let me just interject. We alluded to the Lexington model, and the way the Lexington model works is the top at-large vote getter is the Council Chair, and the Mayor is elected separately, and he attended the Council meetings. HERKES: I wasn’t sure about that, but we don’t have to follow it all the way through. RAY: No. HERKES: As long as the top vote getter chairs the Council and he’s the ceremonial Mayor. Who needs a Mayor? HIGASHI: With the strong mayor system, we need the Mayor. RAY: That’s one view. Sue. IRVINE: I just feel that we can work this out without radically changing to a Council Manager form of government, by possibly beefing up the qualifications for our Managing Director. I was very down on Council Manager until this. Riverside, California has a very simple Charter, and they really do seem to be happy with their Council Manager, but I don’t think we’re ready for it here yet. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 12-04-99.html7/1/2011