2000-04-01 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 04-01-00Page 6 of 22 departments, but also with the private sector. This was implemented in Maui County, I think in 1994 and it seems to have worked very well, and the net effect hasn’t been any wild or inappropriate increase in salaries of the Department and the Deputy Heads. It’s just a more responsive way to set these salaries in relation to Civil Service salaries within their departments and the public sector, and hopefully, to have these salaries be more reflective of the individual responsibilities and professional requirements of the different departments. In other words, right now, all the Department Heads and Deputies get paid the same thing, and it doesn’t make sense to me why the Head of Public Works, a registered engineer, would be paid the same as every other Department Head. I won’t mention any in particular, but the job qualifications and the responsibilities are substantially greater in some positions than in others. This wouldn’t mandate that the Salary Commission would have to recommend the salaries in that fashion. It would still be up to them, the recommendations they’d make, but hopefully it would influence them in that direction. And the last is creating an advisory Commission, a Cost-of-Government Commission, which would be advisory only, but it would review the County budgets, and how the County functions, and make recommendations to the Administration. The way this is written now is that the Commission would be appointed every other year. Based on some testimony we’ve had, and my thinking, I, kind of, think it makes more sense to do this less frequently. Maybe this Commission would meet every four years, rather than every two years, and, sort of, be in a continuous cycle which would, kind of, be addressing the same old things every other year, and maybe dilute the effort. The idea being if you stand back from it and do it every four years – this is my personal thoughts; we haven’t discussed this on the Commission, so we’re very open to input on this. But I talked to Maui County that has this, and talked to the guy who is the Executive Assistant that services this Commission, and was chatting with him about that last week, and he seemed to think that might be a better way to do it. Do it a little less frequently than every two years, and another suggestion is maybe you do it in the second two years of the Mayor, so Administration has represented that they’re going to do this and do that, and you let them serve for two years, then you appoint this Commission, and then they can have some input and comment on how the Mayor’s done, and hopefully, that would have some positive effect on the next election cycle. An advisory Commission to review how the Mayor, the Administration, has done in regard to the cost-of-government issues. So, that’s the end of my spiel. If you are interested in testifying, you need to sign up and I have a number of people signed up now. So, mainly for the sake of recording – We need to make sure all this is recorded, if you could come up and testify. David Frankel is the first person signed up and Del Pranke following. So if you could state your name, and if you’re representing anybody other than yourself, and just speak into the mike please. PUBLIC TESTIMONY FRANKEL: My name is David Frankel. I am Chapter Chair of the Sierra Club, Hawaii Chapter, but I’m testifying in my own personal capacity. I wanted to let you know, although you’ve received some criticism regarding authority of the Planning Commission, that’s sub-sections (e) and (f) that you’re adding, my analysis as environmental (indiscernible) is that I think these are good and important things that you need to add. They make sense. I think a mistake was made by the last Charter Commission in removing one of these sections. RAY: That’s a real mystery to us. You know, what happened was in the last Charter, language was voted on by the public and nobody seems to know just how it got in there. Our attorney, Chris Yuen, who is a real avid watchdog of these types of issues, the Planning Department, nobody seems to know just how that happened, so actually this language would correct something that was voted on in the last election. FRANKEL: Yes, I do think that is important to correct and I agree that you are going to be criticized because this is quite a complicated issue to explain to folks. But if you move forward on that, I can tell you that I will do my best to clarify the situation to some of the folks who are criticizing you on that. Couple of other minor points I just wanted to bring up. In terms of allowing the Planning Department to transfer some functions to the Public Works Department, in concept it may make sense in some circumstances, but realize, for example, in the Subdivision Code, there are a lot of issues that the Planning Department is supposed to consider before granting subdivision approval. One of them, which has taken 20 years for Hawaii County to implement, and finally was done about two or three years ago, even though they’re required to by State Law two decades ago, is the consideration of trail access when doing subdivisions. If this function is transferred to Public Works, you’re going to be transferring it to a department that has not, historically, shown any expertise or interest in taking care of trail access. Not that the Planning Department has done a particularly good job either. But at least there is the framework within which that can happen because of the qualifications for people that work for the Planning Department. And my concern is if that subdivision function is transferred entirely to the Public Works Department, you may lose the potential to protect trail access. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 04-01-00.htm7/1/2011