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minutes 03-11-00Page 9 of 17
<br />GRAHAM: What I’m losing is three of the nine members of the Council, as the Mayor, will be voted on island-wide which
<br />means they will court the entrenched powers. As I perceive them, they will court for the money they need and the backing
<br />and influence of the Unions, of big business, of whatever, and they will, along with a couple of other members of the other
<br />districts become a strong majority on the Council, and they will have the jump into the Mayor’s Office more natural than
<br />running island-wide. I perceive that as a big loss for the power of my single member representative.
<br />MARTIN: But again, I understand what you’re saying there too. I guess the counter is you still have six vs. three so to come
<br />in and have -
<br />RAY: Six vs. nine.
<br />MARTIN: Well, I’m using the 6-3.
<br />RAY: Okay.
<br />MARTIN: If in fact it does pass, you have three at-large. They have no power because the six still outweigh them and
<br />outnumber them. And the single members, if they were to ban together, if there were a problem, outnumber them.
<br />GRAHAM: The six members will not ban together because they’re all from different areas of the island, and they all have
<br />different interests and things like that.
<br />MARTIN: So with that said, and that’s where I’m coming from, and coming from Hamakua and having a great representative
<br />on the Council right now in Dominic, and him not being able to pass because nobody else wanted to back him up for certain
<br />things, or the Mayor perhaps didn’t want, he now has an ally because we, as individuals, voted for three other people. So now
<br />we can go visit those three and couple up with our guy, and now we have four. We have a stronger voice in certain situations.
<br />GRAHAM: Okay. I just would say in the old days, we had nine guys we voted for, and we had our own representative from
<br />Kohala-Waimea which was Kalani Schutte, right? So we could go talk to Kalani Schutte and he could go along with the other
<br />eight guys in the island, and all like that. Unfortunately, that didn’t bring the kind of diversity, and representation, and value
<br />that we have out of the current Council, in my view.
<br />HERKES: You guys in Kohala, as I said before when you came, have had some very strong Council people, Ikuo Hisaoka,
<br />Kalani Schutte, who have really done a lot of management -
<br />GRAHAM: Excuse me. What do you mean by that?
<br />HERKES: Who have really done a lot of the management of the Council in the years past and brought a lot of things to your
<br />district, which I assume is why you’re electing Council people, is to get the amenities to your district and to be able to
<br />provide services to your district. Now, in the 6-3 scenario, what I’m looking for, from Kona, is another representative. We
<br />have North Kona and South Kona, and I’m looking for another representative to represent that district. As Mr. Ray has
<br />pointed out, it doesn’t happen in the Senate and I may not get it in the Council, but that’s up to me. That’s something I can
<br />work on is get somebody to run. I’m not a member of the Green Party but I was very pleased to hear, and I can’t validate this,
<br />that they are in favor of this, because they see a possibility to get another representative. So there’s a lot of different ways to
<br />look at this, and I encourage you to try and see where we’re coming from. Where we represent our particular districts, we’re
<br />trying to broaden our representation, and then we’ll fight it out on the Council when we get a broader representation.
<br />GRAHAM: Let me just say I think it would be smart for you to explicitly say, at some point to the public, whatever, what is
<br />really wrong now that you’re trying to fix because you have a straight forward system right now. The straight forward system
<br />we have works like the U.S. Congress. It works like the State Legislature. And you’re taking a straight forward system and
<br />you’re making it quite convoluted, and the convolution that you’re putting shows up all through here, how does the
<br />Reapportionment Commission work, how do the Board members work, how does the term limits work. These convolutions
<br />ripple all through your document and mess things up in the terms of complexity. Maybe they don’t mess it up in how they
<br />work, but in complexity. So, in order for you to bring a convoluted thing through, and present it for the voters and ask the
<br />voters to approve of it, even though people like me can say I don’t like it for this or that reason, I feel like you need to come
<br />through and say it’s worth doing all this convolution. It’s worth us doing this because this is what it’s really going to do for
<br />us. And I don’t hear that coming from you very much, that’s all. And let me pass this on to Fred, too, so he can say what he
<br />wants to say.
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