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Director? Shall we have a Mayor? Those kinds of public discussions will only occur if <br />you people choose to put those proposals on the ballot because only once they go on <br />the ballot will we actually have a public discussion and the costs and benefits can be <br />more thoroughly aired in public. And by limiting yourselves to having the smaller <br />number of issues, maybe, oh let's just choose three or four and put them on the ballot <br />and see how that falls out, is actually, in my view, would do a disservice to the whole <br />process which we wait ten years for. And so I would encourage you anyway, to put - <br />don't be afraid to put a whole lot of issues on the ballot so that we get public discussion <br />because that's what democracy's about. <br />John and Mr. Martin, you brought up the idea of having a two year Council person <br />elect a five year Planning Commissioner or Water Commissioner, okay. I think <br />that's actually a good idea because it will, for somehow and for some reasons, and <br />there are of course, certain exceptions, some Council Members, most Council Members <br />want to get re-elected. Okay, not all of them. But if they get elected to their first two <br />year term and they then appoint some dodo to whatever commission to represent their <br />district, they may hear about it in the next in the two year election cycle and so there's <br />actually some checks and balances there in terms of the effect on the community. That <br />Council Member is then held accountable for his or her appointments. And then I <br />wanted to disagree with Mr. Boyd on exactly now these appointments take place. I <br />would like to see, and this is Section 13-4 right in the Charter which deals with Boards <br />and Commissions. And I haven't actually come down on a favored scenario but the <br />two that make the most sense to me, in order to get this diversity, is to either have the <br />County Council appoint the Commissioners, with the approval of the County Council, so <br />there is an approval body. In other words, if Mr. Elarionoff says well, I want to appoint <br />Dick Boyd to the Water Commission, the other Council Members get to review his <br />qualifications and whatever, and be able to then say yea or nay, much as they do now <br />with the mayoral appointees. So there is a check and balance. So I would favor that <br />very strongly and it's not just, you know I don't go to the Water Commission. That's <br />almost like the fox guarding the hen house. I mean it could be. I don't really mean it is <br />but it could be. So that would be my recommendation. <br />The other one, the other possibility is publicly funded nonpartisan elections. And I <br />stress the publicly funded ones because these Boards and Commissions are not <br />paid, I don't think. Their expenses, I guess, are paid but it's somehow the expenses of <br />holding the elections and I don't mean campaigning, but I mean, and I think maybe that <br />the County needs to experiment with publicly funded elections as a way of maybe <br />having kind of campaign finance reform and to do it for the Boards and Commissions <br />might be real beneficial in terms of our learning curve as to how that might work and it <br />wouldn't be so charged as to have all County government being, or the County Council <br />being - you come right out of the thing, oh, let's do publicly funded elections. Maybe <br />we could try it with the Boards and Commissions and since it's the County's business, <br />the campaigning could be restricted to statements of positions and qualifications which <br />17 <br />