2000-07-12 Charter Commission Minutes

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Charter Commission - Transcript of Meeting of July 12, 2000Page 28 of 45 HERKES: Without ‘the art and science’. RAY: Without ‘the art and science’. The way it is now is what we voted on May 31st so Roland seems to remember, or it’s his recollection, that we eliminated the entire end of the sentence. In other words, we cut off the whole ‘possess demonstrable educational and/or professional experience....as required of this office’. So anyway, Roland, do you want to – HIGASHI: As I recall it, we deleted the whole section and ended it at ‘administrative capacity’, and I always thought there was an oversight, and I thought we had discussed it and it was going to be corrected. But before we move into the final form of this document, I approached legal counsel whether it was an oversight or a misunderstanding. So at this point, it seems like it was a misunderstanding. I don’t think anybody referred to the record, or the tape, to exactly what was the motion. There were two issues. One was ‘confirmed by the council’. In dealing with this thing, we said we delete that and ‘confirmed by the council’ wasn’t a problem. HERKES: Confirmed by the county council. HIGASHI: Yes, by the county. But my problem was ‘demonstrable education’. What does that mean? Or ‘professional experience’. Is it professional experience in running a 2600 employee corporation? Or my wife runs a sign shop, and is the owner-manager, does that qualify? I mean, it’s kind of a gray area. RAY: It’s real clear what it means to me. It means to me I’d like to have someone with demonstrable experience in city management as the managing director of the county. I think the person that should be the managing director of the county is somebody that should have direct educational and working experience in the field, somebody that has a strong background in solid waste and public works and finance. I’m just saying that’s what it means to me, but we need to get that straight and Chris has said if we want to change that, then we need to do it now and we need to vote on it tonight. Marni. HERKES: The word ‘professional’ kind of means that they’ll have experience in government for them being a professional in government. That’s what it means to me. IRVINE: It doesn’t say professional. MARTIN: Yes, it does. IRVINE: Where? Oh, there. HERKES: And I’m asking other people what professional – I mean, I’m not a professional anything but Daryl is a professional doctor because he has a profession. So I suppose I’m kind of asking what other people’s understanding of that word is. HIGASHI: My point is that I think we have a lot of people who are capable of doing the managing director’s job who may not be deemed as a professional in operation of city government. I think in the past we’ve had people who have done a capable job, who have business experience, or is an engineer in Meguni Kon or a businessman in Fred Koehnen, or a businessman in Bill Davis. So, I mean, that’s where I’m coming from. I’m looking at not having so much stringent interpretation where many of our local people will not be able to qualify. So, that’s why I thought I deleted the whole section and left it ‘five years experience of administrative capacity’. RAY: Sue. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 07-12-00.html7/1/2011