2000-05-10 Charter Commission Minutes

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Transcript of Meeting of May 10, 2000Page 8 of 62 5-6.2. I’d borrow from old Office of Price Administration and ask if the trip is really necessary. It seems we may be creating a lot of new governmental posts. This, I hate to sound like Ronald Reagan but, is increasing the cost of government and making government bigger. Wasn’t clear to me, if that Commission was necessary. At the bottom of the page, I would suggest a wording from the present, ‘should the Safety Coordinator be abolished’ to the more genteel ‘should the position of Safety Coordinator be abolished’. 6-2.2. Again, do not remove the professional qualifications. Section 2, under Impeachment, I would plead with you to leave it alone. It has not been abused. As I said, if anything, it’s under-utilized. I see no reason to change it and to clutter the ballot with a change when it has not been a problem, unless the politicians are thinking of changing their activities, getting very abusive, and they want to be further insulated from the voters rather than responsible. But what I would like to see, if we’re going to change the numbers, is the requirement of getting an Initiative on the ballot from 20% down to a level of two or three percent. I think that’s more reasonable and feasible. What danger is there to let the people vote on whether they think something is a good idea or not? HERKES: May I ask another question? BLANN: Please. HERKES: On impeachment, do you favor island-wide impeachment for single district members, or do you favor single district voters only impeaching. I mean, I could reach into somebody else’s district and impeach their Councilman. BLANN: Right now, I think that’s exactly what I’d like to see. HERKES: So you favor island-wide for single districts. Okay. BLANN: There was 5-6.3, Board of Appeals and my recommendation there is to make it nine members, again one from each district, consistent with some of the suggestions that have come from this group on some of the other Boards. Department of Research and Development, I’ve already given my ideas on that. The Cost-of-Government Commission, finally. It seems to me that the meetings are too frequent as proposed, that every three to four years would be more appropriate if you had such a Commission. That’s because it takes them one year to study the operation of the government. It would take a second year to put the changes they recommended into effect. By then you’re appointing a new committee to study again. It seems that the changes haven’t really had a chance to work in and see if they’re effective until they’ve had a year in place. RAY: We are amending that to every four years. BLANN: Great. That is everything I wish to say. Thank you. RAY: Walt Kriewald, followed by Councilwoman Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd. KRIEWALD: I don’t want to keep hitting a dead horse here, but there are a couple of things in the file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 05-10-00.html7/1/2011