|
minutes 12-04-99Page 30 of 39
<br />RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 11:45 a.m.
<br />RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 11:57 a.m.
<br />RAY: This is some correspondence from the Legislative Auditor’s Office. I‘ve been working with the Legislative Auditor the
<br />last two or three months, and discussing this. I really don’t want to get into discussing it now. I’d like you to get a chance to
<br />read it, and if we feel comfortable discussing it Wednesday, we can. But basically, it addresses the function of the Legislative
<br />Auditor’s Office; it gets into the program review discussion, and it’s a lot of good insight because they just went through a
<br />pretty strenuous exercise with the marijuana eradication grant, so I think it’s pretty valuable input. But, it’s an area of
<br />particular interest to me, having been in the County Council, and watched how the Legislative Auditor’s Office worked, or
<br />didn’t work, and the professionalism, or lack of, and this is our main brain thrust, to write legislation, and to handle all the
<br />key legislative functions of the County. These are all, as is pointed out, all political appointees, and Legislative Auditor,
<br />itself, is appointed by the Council Chair, which makes it pretty political in nature. So, I think you’ll really enjoy, and
<br />appreciate, a lot of the comments here by the Legislative Auditor, and so I just wanted to defer this to either our next meeting
<br />or when we’re ready to deal with it. But, it’s a lot of good background material. It’s well thought out. And this has been
<br />circulated, just so you know, among some of the Council folks, and I think there’s general consensus that this is a good
<br />direction for us to be headed in.
<br />Next on our list here, Qualification - Department Heads. In terms of where we deal with that in the Charter, there’s some
<br />information from Chris Yuen, in a letter, which I think points out that we do have the flexibility to address, as far as the
<br />positioning of this in the Charter, and that’s in a communication that we should all have. It’s a recent one. Is this to discuss
<br />individually? I know we discussed the Manager of the Water Department. We discussed the Chief Engineer’s position. Is that
<br />the intent that we want to go through and discuss these individually? We also had input from Parks and Rec, from their
<br />Director. Marni.
<br />HERKES: I have a suspicion that that’s going to come after we decide what Department Heads we have. We have
<br />descriptions all over the Charter now. We need to kind of collect those in a specific place, so that we can see what the Charter
<br />says now, and what kind of different, or, maybe, more professional qualifications we might look at. We discussed the
<br />Department of Public Works, the Chief Engineer’s qualification. Is that a necessary one? Those kinds of things. We need to
<br />take, maybe, each department separately.
<br />RAY: So how do you suggest we approach this?
<br />HERKES: I think we take each department separately and different agendas, and, as we go down, look at what qualifications
<br />we need for each one.
<br />RAY: Steve.
<br />BESS: If I recall our previous discussions about this, both with respect to Water and Public Works, there was concern about
<br />whether or not we should require a person to be an engineer, and I’m not just limiting it now here to those two departments,
<br />but I think there’s an overriding concern, and that is that we provide for the best management material possible, and
<br />independent of being an engineer or not, is this person capable of managing a department. So, on the one hand, we want
<br />professional expertise. On the other hand, we don’t want to limit that professional expertise to a professional area. We’d like
<br />to provide for management skills, and so what we might look at is coming up with some kind of language, if we are truly
<br />interested in management skills, whether that be a person with an MBA, or Public Administration degree, or otherwise.
<br />Maybe that’s what we should be focusing on, is management expertise rather than gearing it to a professional in that field.
<br />And then, that would cover everybody regardless of department.
<br />HERKES: I’d like to suggest that the core competencies. I found there are eight of them, however there are six that would be
<br />appropriate, and I can get those to you. I used some of them to hire Sharron. But, I think those are some kinds of guidelines
<br />that a lot of companies use in team building skills, and leadership skills, and communication skills, and those kinds of basic
<br />professional needs.
<br />RAY: So, is that something that you think is appropriate to put in the Charter?
<br />HERKES: Yes. The department heads need to have those skills.
<br />RAY: Okay. Gary, any thoughts on that?
<br />file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 12-04-99.html7/1/2011
<br />
<br />
|