2000-02-09 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 02-09-00Page 7 of 41 win-win situation there. One point - I don’t know if this has been made and I don’t mean to bring this up as some very controversial thing, but a number of Native Hawaiians came before the Council over the years, and talked to us about the jurisdictional issue of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and the section in the Charter regarding the geographical limits. And, it says the entire Island of Hawaii. And it doesn’t say excluding the sovereign lands of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands. I’m not trying to raise a red flag here. It’s just something that I wrote in my Charter. Is this something that we’ve got to look at? I don’t know. RAY: We did. TYLER: Did you? Okay. RAY: It was brought to our attention. TYLER: And I don’t see nonpartisan on here. You’re already going to go forward on that. RAY: Right. TYLER: And nonpartisans are not tied to - It’s a - MARTIN: Stand alone. TYLER: It’s a stand alone Amendment, right? Okay. I congratulate you on that. I’m glad to know that it’s coming forward. I hope that’ll pass. I think people will find that to make government more efficient. And as someone who plans to run for re- election, if it makes the whole financial process simpler and cheaper, I’m all for it. And obviously the typos and things like that are going to be corrected. We don’t have to - YUEN: It does not need a Charter Amendment. Those can be corrected, some of them at least, in the printing process, and they can be corrected the next time it’s printed. TYLER: All right. I don’t mean to have this rear it’s ugly head here but the Mandatory Program Review thing, you’re not going to mess with that, or what? RAY: Nothing’s proposed at this time. TYLER: Okay, well, thank you for leaving it in our lap. Anyhow, I understand the difficulty. I’m happy to answer any questions if anyone has any. I appreciate the opportunity to - RAY: Ms. Herkes. HERKES: I’d like to go back to the Public Safety Commission. Maui has a Public Safety Commission. They only have the Fire Department under it though. I have to qualify that statement every time I make it. But that is something I would like to see, a Public Safety Department with a Commission overseeing, with the Fire Department, the Police Department, Civil Defense, Emergency Services, Animal Control, Building Inspection. We could put a whole bunch of stuff under Safety, ordinances and laws that are passed to protect the safety of our residents. That’s not something the Commission, however, has seen fit to advance so we may leave that to future Charter Commissions. But it would have a Commission. I don’t want you to get the feeling that the Commissions were being abolished, but I think we’ll probably be recommending a Fire Commission and a Police Commission. TYLER: Okay. Well, we already have a Police Commission so it’s simpler to go with one than to changing all the language. And I think one of the most difficult tasks before us all, as voters, number one, and number two, you as Commissioners, is to figure out is that going to be presented to the public, to the electorate, so they can understand this, instead of saying I’m going to leave this thing blank. We don’t want to see a lot of blank votes. I could stand before you here and come up with a hundred different things that need to be changed there, but if people just, kind of, throw this thing in the wastebasket, or say oh, I’m voting no on everything, or I’m going to leave it blank, well, this is not accomplishing anything. So I think it’s far better for file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 02-09-00.html7/1/2011