2000-04-12 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 04-12-00Page 21 of 26 Salary Commission. Some raised eyebrows but I think that’s definitely worth pursuing. IRVINE: I think they thought we were creating a Salary Commission sometimes. I think we need to make it clear that there’s already one there and we’re just giving them a couple of little - RAY: Right. And then the Cost-of-Government Commission. I think the idea that Keola came up with in regard to not meeting every two years makes sense. Meeting every four years in the second term of the Mayor. Although Steve Bess shared some interesting thoughts with me on that, hopefully, we can get him to come to the meeting on the 29th. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it seemed to make sense at the time. IRVINE: I had written down, under that one, that maybe this is the Commission where some mention of audit ought to be because Cost-of-Government - HERKES: I think we just get elected to it and then we’ll put it on there. IRVINE: Elected? It’s not elected at this point. RAY: Yes, it would be up to them if they wanted to take that up. Okay, let me just run through the list I’ve got, so if anybody doesn’t have these. We have a whole packet from Del Pranke. The one thing he did say that, not the only thing he said that made sense, but one thing, Chris, is that in the language that the Mayor ‘appoints’ the Commissioners, and he ‘nominates’ them. Is that something that we need to change? Is that substantive? Because he nominates and then the Council approves. He doesn’t actually appoint. We’ve covered the EMS language and Fire Commission. Do we want to expand the Fire Commission to more than five members? I’ve got a good one. I don’t know if I brought this up before. To mandate meetings on some sort of regular basis, the County Council meetings to take place in West Hawaii, or in Kona. What I came up with, it seemed to make sense to me, was to mandate - in the Charter right now, the Council is mandated to meet the first and second Wednesdays of every month, 12 months a year - to mandate that they meet quarterly, once every three months, in West Hawaii. Can we come up with some sort of language like that? The thought being that if they were mandated to meet on a regular basis in West Hawaii, that would be really positive in terms of people just being able to engage and go to Council meetings on a regular basis. I think that’s something that would be healthy. You can think about it. I talked to the County Council, the Clerk and Services and whatever, and they didn’t seem to think that would be any big deal. That would also avail them with the opportunity to hold partial or full committee meetings in West Hawaii on a regular basis if there’s stuff in Planning, in particular, that’s more West Hawaii related. So, I’m going to try to come up with some sort of suggestion along those lines. I think that would be healthy and it wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive. And if they met there on a regular basis, I think that would be good. HIGASHI: Do they have facilities there that can handle that on an ongoing basis? RAY: Pardon? HIGASHI: Do they have facilities that they have in West Hawaii, County facilities? RAY: They have to rent. No, they don’t. HIGASHI: Okay. HERKES: We might build a County building and they could meet there. HIGASHI: That’s what I was afraid of. RAY: No, but I think, on a quarterly basis, it wouldn’t be any huge expense. Suggestions, and this one seems kind of, because it’s so far in the future - an elected Charter Review Commission. But the other one that I liked is the cycle of reapportionment vs. Charter Commission. In other words, it seems kind of backwards that we’re - file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 04-12-00.htm7/1/2011