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• TAKAHASHI: What I did was, I assumed that there would be no major restructuring of the Executive organization, so I just looked at the existing Charter language, just to point out some inconsistencies, or some problematic areas. These are just suggestions, so again, I can feel for your assignment, where if you have too many amendments, the people may get frustrated and not approve any of them. RAY: Harry, you've got such a wealth of experience in County govemment, been around a while, when you say too many amendments - my daughter sent me, from California, amendments there, and it's like this whole book that they vote on, and I guess that's one extreme and whatever, but what's too many? I mean the last Charter Commissions have been in the 15 to 20 range of amendments. Is that too much? TAKAHASHI: I'm not aware as to what the other agencies are proposing, so I guess it's a matter of how intense a proposal you're developing, and how intense an educational program you would implement. Because many people are not familiar with government operations and if you just toss things out at them with no educational effort, they are going to be confused at the polls. And again, it depends how the language is developed, whether ifs positive or negative. People can get very confused as to whether a yes vote is no, or a no is a yes. These are things that need to be looked at, whether the public will be confused or whether the language is very clear, and the education effort has been conducted. If that's all done, I think 20 amendments are not unreasonable, but then again, I'm not sure what the other agencies are proposing. RAY: Okay. TAKAHASHI: So 1 just looked at some of the problematic areas that we came upon and just suggest some changes to you. RAY: So do you want to go through those? TAKAHASHI: Well, first the Vacancy in Office: Apparently when the term was changed from four to two, not all of the corrections were done so there's some inconsistency there, but if the idea is to rethink two year terms back to four, then this language is sufficient. Submission of Bills to the Mayor: This past year, we came upon a problem where what the Council did was, they reduced some of our expenditure proposals and took the monies and put it into their budget so when the Mayor decided to express his objections to it, when we looked at the Charter we had a problem. The Charter only recognizes striking out or reducing appropriations. It does not provide for restoring, so if he disagrees with the Council's deletions, how does the Mayor voice his objections to that? There's no way of him objecting to that kind of an action. So in lieu of that, 1 put 26