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• specific single member districts to six, and then three at -Targe, you indicated there
<br />was a lot of non-support and possibly even -disapproval -of that idea. I'm not going to
<br />ask why but you see, our situation for doing it is better accountability and the intent for
<br />this body, from the onset, was to better government, and by making that specific
<br />change, the government would be bettered in that now that you have three, possibly
<br />four, people that you can talk to, because you voted for four people. So anytime that
<br />there's an issue that comes up, instead of speaking to your Council member, who may
<br />be in support of what you have, but the other eight aren't, you now have four people
<br />that you can possibly talk to. You don't lose your single membership because we'll
<br />follow the State House if, in fact, something like that were to come up, or some line like
<br />that, so you'd still have your single member districts but you'd have more people that
<br />you could possibly talk to, and better your chances of getting something across.
<br />ISBELL: Well, that sounds good on paper, but the reality is that I've lived
<br />through both. And the County had at -large, people from Hilo voted for people from
<br />Kona that we didn't vote for, and they got into office and so, consequently, it was a lot
<br />of resentment, and that is one of the reasons we went to single member districts. The
<br />same could happen in the future. As Kona's population grows, we could control who
<br />gets voted on in Hilo, and I don't think you'd like that either.
<br />MARTIN: Well, it's a democracy. You're going to vote for the person you
<br />want as long as you have an opportunity. 1 understand what you're saying, though.
<br />•
<br />ISBELL: I didn't finish yet. The other part is that as a Legislator, 1 also was
<br />in when the Senate was at -large, and the island here, everybody ran for the whole
<br />island. What happened is that we found that it was better to have single member
<br />districts, and of course, the Senate has two of the single member districts each. It was
<br />because people felt disenfranchised. They wanted someone they could say, that's the
<br />person we voted for from this district, and he needs to listen to us. And what it does is
<br />it allows you to really focus in. As a Legislator or an elected Council person, you're
<br />focusing in on your district, but when you get into the County Council, you vote as a
<br />whole. You vote for everything, so I just cannot go along with single member districts,
<br />personally. I couldn't find anybody that really wanted to change the system except for,
<br />maybe, having one person run at -large, and that person would act as Mayor. And that
<br />was the only thing that we came up with. There was no agreement.
<br />•
<br />RAY: Thank you. Marni.
<br />HERKES: Good morning, again. We're using the future as guidelines, not the
<br />past. We're entering a global economy, a global scene where County government is
<br />effected as well as State government and National government, so we're not thinking
<br />about how things necessarily worked in the past as much as we're thinking about what
<br />it's going to be like in the next ten years, because this is what we're writing the Charter
<br />for. In that mind set, we're looking at what other counties are doing, what other things
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