2000-03-25 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 03-25-00Page 1 of 34 Back To: Home Page | Table of Contents | Charter Main Page HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION Transcript of Public Hearing of March 25, 2000 Kealakehe Intermediate School Cafeteria Kailua-Kona, Hawaii Members: J. Ray, S. Irvine, M. Herkes, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin, Counsel Chris Yuen Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog, S. Bess, R. Higashi, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama And 28 members of the public in attendance. CALL TO ORDER Chairman John Ray called the meeting to order at 9:05 a.m. INTRODUCTION OF CHARTER COMMISSION MEMBERS RAY: I’d like to call the meeting to order. This is the 1999-2000 Charter Commission. We’re here in Kailua-Kona today, holding a Public Hearing. The members present at this time are myself, John Ray, Chairman; Marni Herkes; Sue Irvine; Dr. Daryl Kurozawa; and George Martin. And also our Legal Counsel, Chris Yuen, is here with us today. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS RAY: I’m going to start off by giving you a brief background on the County Charter and, kind of, where we are to date in regard to this process. Basically the Charter review is mandated in the Charter to be reviewed every ten years. Our County Charter was initially adopted in the late 1960's. It’s been previously reviewed twice, so this is the third time, the third Charter Review Commission. There are eleven members, appointed by the Mayor and approved by the County Council, and that all took place in January of last year. We have an appropriated budget of $130,000. The last Charter Review expended $113,000. The major costs are for staff. We have a full time Administrative Assistant who operates out of a home office, our Legal Counsel, meeting costs with public notices, and then printing and advertising costs to put out the final product for the general education and notification leading up to the election. To date we have expended about $50,000 out of the $130,000 and have a remaining of about $80,000. We’ve been meeting since last February. We’ve held, I believe, 29 meetings to date, which included eight public hearings. Presently we’re involved in a set of four public hearings which are discussing 19 proposed amendments. These are all proposed amendments which have, at this point, a pretty strong measure of support by a majority of the Commission members, but not necessarily will all these amendments appear. We’ve already received input in a couple of the public hearings for some additional items which, I feel pretty certain that we’re going to consider, but we wanted to get something out in writing to engage the public sooner rather than later because most people don’t pay any attention until you, sort of, stick something in their face. Like I say, we’ve been meeting for almost 13 months now, 30 meetings, and probably have had 20 or 30 people total come to the meetings and testify, including the public hearings, in that entire period of time. We have received more testimony in writing. But in terms of actual engagement by the public, it’s been pretty disappointing. So, we wanted to go ahead and get these proposals out for discussion. As I said, we’re in the midst of four public hearings right now. We’d like to wrap up our final amendments with the proposed ballot language by June or so, so that that leaves us plenty of time, prior to the election, to get that out to the public so they can understand what the Charter Amendments are all about because they’re fairly complex, the language, to engage and change the Charter, so it requires a fair amount of time to get that out. I also want to point out that other than the Charter Review Commission which, like I said, is mandated to meet every 10 file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 03-25-00.html7/1/2011