2000-07-12 Charter Commission Minutes

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Charter Commission - Transcript of Meeting of July 12, 2000Page 12 of 45 KUROZAWA: I just have a comment, John. RAY: Okay, let’s go around and just hear input on Marni’s thoughts. KUROZAWA: I think that the one thing to keep in mind is it’s surely easy for us to try to reword things so people will vote yes on everything, but we should make it real clear with them. We shouldn’t try to, sort of, rewrite things in hopes that they’ll vote yes. And taking words out to, hopefully, maybe somewhat deceive people, may not be the best thing. And saying that they should read everything, it may not be the fairest way to do it, I think. HERKES: I’m sorry. I didn’t have any intention of taking words out to deceive anybody. I had only the intention of taking words out to make it a clearer statement, and if we could say ‘should the managing director be given additional responsibilities with increased qualifications, and be confirmed by the council’, I think that’s a clearer, clean-cut statement. MARTIN: Point of clarification, John. No. 7 says that. RAY: No, I think Marni’s referring to the qualifications of the managing director. MARTIN: Yes, it says ‘should the qualifications for the managing director, planning director.... It says that in No. 7. RAY: Okay, I see what you’re saying. Okay, okay. Other comments? I have a comment. I speak in favor of retaining the language as presented here. I got really involved in putting this together and I think the major change is that the managing director is – We’re restructuring the whole Executive Branch in the Charter and the big difference is that the managing director, instead of having just three departments report to him, he’s over all of them. So, to me, the idea’s that you’ve got a managing director, the Chief Operating Officer of the County, he’s in charge of the whole enchilada. I like it spelled out like that. IRVINE: You convinced me. YOSHIYAMA: Okay, so, that one word. What is it, ‘responsibilities’ or ‘authority’? What are you reading? YUEN: The suggestion was, last time, and I thought it was a consensus of the group that ‘authority’ be changed to ‘responsibility’, and either one is a fair – YOSHIYAMA: To responsibility. No, I just wanted to be clear about this. YUEN: I think either one is a fair description of what’s being proposed. I don’t favor one or the other. And just to give a general comment, I think the kind of discussion we’re having is very useful because people will read these things differently. I sat down and wrote out a draft of what I thought would be basically a fair and honest way of presenting this, but I have my own blinders as far as what people read into things sometimes. So I appreciate people discussing this. The only requirement really is that it does present an honest description of the major features of a particular amendment. It doesn’t have to do it in great detail or necessarily describe everything that is in the amendment as long as it describes the main things that are there. RAY: And do look at the Digest; ‘managing director’s authority’ and ‘authority’ used throughout there. Roland. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 07-12-00.html7/1/2011