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• The chief budget items, just so you are aware, are mainly staff and meeting costs. All <br />the costs of going out to meetings and publicly noticing those meetings. I know it <br />sounds like an awful lot but that's basically about what it takes to get through this <br />process and have that number of meetings, have legal and administrative staff on <br />board. <br />We have also solicited input, initial input from the various County Departments and <br />we have completed an initial round of meetings where we did get input from the various <br />County Departments. We still have several to go, mostly those connected with Boards <br />and Commissions that we want to hear from at the same time, so say for the Planning <br />Commission or the Police Commission, they have yet to agendize and discuss and <br />come up with recommendations for us. And when they do, we'll have them in at the <br />same time as the Departments. Some of the initial suggestions, these aren't all that <br />have come up, to make you aware of, is looking at the language in regard to <br />mandatory program reviews; the responsibilities and placement of the Safety <br />Coordinator, whether that position should stay under the Mayor or whether it should <br />be put underneath Corporation Counsel or Civil Service; the responsibilities of the <br />Police Commission; the establishment of a Fire Commission; expanding the <br />jurisdiction of the Salary Commission to cover all Department Heads and Deputies; <br />looking at minimum qualifications for Department Heads and Deputies; the creation <br />of a separate Human Services Department for elderly services including Office of <br />Aging; transferring the Wastewater Division from Public Works to the Department <br />of Water Supply; the creation of a Permitting Division to consolidate all permitting <br />functions under a Public Works Division of Permitting and now those permits are jointly <br />dealt with in both Planning and Public Works Departments so the thought is for greater <br />efficiency, sort of one-stop shopping to have a single Division of Permitting and then <br />have the Planning Department more focused on planning and the Public Works <br />Department more focused on permitting. Now these are only some of the ideas that <br />have been put forth. None of them have been discussed by the Charter Commission to <br />date. This is just strictly a one-way input so far, just some of the ideas that have been <br />put forth. <br />Tonight we are starting, this is the first of a series of six public meetings that we are <br />holding around the island to get initial feedback from the public. These meetings are <br />scheduled to go through the month of July and we are meeting pretty much the next six <br />weeks on Wednesday evenings at 5 p.m. throughout the island. That schedule is up in <br />the front in the distributed material. During this next six weeks we'll also be gathering <br />and distributing internally, a lot of background material for the Commission to study to <br />get prepared to go through our formal review of the Charter. In August we plan to finish <br />up our initial review from the various County Departments and in late August or as early <br />as September, begin a detail section -by -section review of the Charter. Everything is <br />publicly noticed. We will be holding meetings around the island so we'll take our <br />business out around the island and expose the different parts of the island to the <br />