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• bodies, and possibly some duplication of effort, and I'm interested in cost of <br />government and I see that this Manager form of government may reduce costs and <br />while I have enough general information, theoretical information, as to how this system <br />works, I'd just like to see what the practical implications are. If it were put into effect, <br />could we save money? And I'd like that discussion to occur. <br />HERKES: I think Mr. Bess has touched on what I was going to say but I'd like <br />to expand on it more. We've gotten bogged down in semantics here and the word <br />"Mayor" and lost track of what is the goal. Why would we change the Charter? What <br />do we want to do in order to change it? And I think no matter whether we use the word <br />"Mayor", don't use the word "Mayor" and we get sued, we still have a different direction. <br />We're still going in a different direction. We're going in efficiency, we're going in a <br />better form of government. What we've heard over the last few years, is a lot of <br />dissatisfaction with the way the government's working. People don't feel included and I <br />would hope that this would be a way that they could and I think that we need to set up <br />some goals as to what we want to accomplish. <br />RAY: Is that the Charter? Is that the position or is that the person that's <br />in the seat? I think this is the discussion we ought to be having, but if you look at our <br />current Charter and you look at the Managing Director position and you look at the <br />other Counties' Charters and some have a bit more definitive language in terms of job <br />qualifications and whatever, but under the present Charter there's no reason that the <br />Managing Director couldn't operate in a much more independent, professional type <br />position. Not so much independent maybe, but certainly more professional. <br />HERKES: Never has. <br />RAY: I'm certainly interested in what we can do in regard to moving <br />things in a more professional direction. One thing I've been playing around with is <br />some potential language or some things we might do in the present Charter in regard to <br />the Managing Director position and I don't have anything formally to suggest now but <br />that is another tact we might take is to try to move the Managing Director more, in a <br />business terminology, to the Chief Operating Officer of the County, the Mayor <br />functioning still as the CEO, but the Managing Director as your Chief Operating Officer. <br />Whether we could do that effectively, I don't know but that's something that interests <br />me. Mr. Balog. <br />BALOG: Kind of along your same thoughts, in my mind, I don't agree that <br />the voters are so upset with the way the person running the government. It's how the <br />government is run. It's more with how efficient we are. It's not so much that they don't <br />like a Mayor. There's people who don't like people who sit on a Council that we're <br />discussing that may be the people electing Managing what? <br />18 <br />