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minutes 01-15-00Page 13 of 59
<br />KUROZAWA: No, I have it all here. I just need a summary. I have all the correspondence.
<br />IRVINE: In a two-four-two proposal, a Council person will be elected to a first term of two years. In his second bid for
<br />office, he runs for a four-year term, and then go back to two.
<br />MARTIN: What was the reasoning behind that? He wrote down some reasoning behind it.
<br />IRVINE: The four-year term will convey the message that the constituents are satisfied with the first two-year term
<br />performance, thereby granting him a longer term. When the four years are up, the candidate may run for another two-year
<br />term, if elected, still conclude his term of office within the eight maximum as practiced today.
<br />RAY: Roland.
<br />HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, so upon adoption of this Amendment, we could be very specific, as of this date, a person can run for
<br />two-four-two, or whatever, but cannot exceed eight years from that point. Is that something that would be workable?
<br />HERKES: As a member of the Council?
<br />YUEN: That’s another alternative. That’s different than the one that you just discussed.
<br />HIGASHI: Right.
<br />YUEN: All these things can be done. You could go with at-large being four years, and you can serve eight years total, and
<br />then that’s it. That’s an alternative that can be spelled out.
<br />HIGASHI: But it’s specific. If the two-year people chose to run, they would still go under the old term limit. I mean, that
<br />could be specific too, right?
<br />YUEN: Right. As it stands, you need to spell that out, how this applies to people who have been running under the district
<br />system. But, if we go back to the way you talked about it a couple of minutes ago, where you could do your district term
<br />limits and then you’d have a new set of term limits for the at-large, if it were done that way, then somebody in the present
<br />Council who had used up their limits, could then go again for at-large. This is another issue we would be talking about,
<br />whether you would implement this in 2002 or 2004, but whenever -
<br />HIGASHI: But language could be specific upon adoption of the Charter, the person moving from the two-year term to a four-
<br />year term still cannot exceed eight years. I mean, that can be spelled out, too, right?
<br />YUEN: Yes, either way it can be spelled out.
<br />RAY: We could research some other jurisdictions; Lexington, Kentucky, they have different term limits for single member
<br />and at-large, for instance, and see how they do that, but my pretty strong sense is that the public’s spoken very strongly about
<br />term limits, and I’m not in favor of it anyway, so go ahead, put it out there. But if we extend the term limits that way, I just
<br />can’t imagine that would pass. But, there are inconsistencies in there that don’t make sense either. I mean, you serve three
<br />terms and you couldn’t run for an at-large, which is a shame. You serve two years, then you serve one at-large, then you
<br />couldn’t serve another at-large term, because your term limits would limit you to two years, so that doesn’t seem to make
<br />sense either.
<br />IRVINE: Maybe this crew wants to reconsider their at-large position.
<br />HERKES: So, are we moving toward a limit of 16 years, let’s say eight years or 16 years serving on the County Council, no
<br />matter where you’re from or what district you’re from? Are we moving toward some kind of end limit?
<br />RAY: My sens is that the public has very much established an end limit, and I don’t think you’re going to change that.
<br />HERKES: No, that’s fine, but how do we phrase it? How do we put it in here?
<br />file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 01-15-00.html7/1/2011
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