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especially in regard to rates. The County has had a real difficult time dealing with rates <br />and incentives for waste management, so we'd like to get the general public and <br />community more involved, via a Commission, into those issues. The County Council <br />has an awful hard time addressing sewer rates and solid waste rates, so we'd like to <br />get the input from a Commission there. So that's what that's recommending. <br />Some of these others will go more quickly. <br />Planning Department functions. There again, this was really generated by an <br />Administrative proposal to create a Division of Permitting. The Administration came to <br />us and asked us to remove all the subdivision roles, activities, out of the Planning <br />Department and move them all under the Public Works Department, and create a <br />Division of Permitting, more along the lines of one-stop shopping and better <br />government efficiency. That was the rationale. We decided not to pursue that in terms <br />of mandating that happen, but what this Charter proposal would do would just take <br />some language out of the Charter that's in the Charter in regard to the Planning <br />Department having to do certain functions, which would preclude making that change <br />later if a future Administration would like to. So, in other words, it doesn't change <br />anything by the Charter Amendment. All it does is eliminate a barrier that's in the <br />Charter to doing. that later if a future Administration and Council would support that kind <br />of reorganization. So, it just removes that barrier. It doesn't create a new division. It <br />just allows that to happen. <br />Number 7, Legislative Research Office. I'd, kind of, class this, and another one, <br />under just, kind of, calling a spade a spade. This is basically just describing what the <br />office always has done, and does today. It's a Legislative Research Office. We have <br />two offices under the County Council. We have a Council Services Office and we have <br />what's called an Auditor's Office. It never has been an auditing office, or have any real <br />auditing functions. It's always been a Legislative Research Office, so to just clean up <br />that confusion, we thought it made more sense to address that in terms of the change. <br />We're also proposing language which would, hopefully, make that office more <br />professional in nature, but the reality is these are all political appointees. You get <br />elections every two years, so everything's subject to change every two years. So, that <br />being the nature of the office, we felt like this addresses the reality of the situation. We <br />did talk a lot about auditing functions and should we create an auditing office, an <br />auditing department, or whatever, but we didn't go with that route and this is really just <br />to address the way the County Council functions today with this office. So, this is what <br />this proposal's about. <br />Number 8, the Holdover of Members of Boards and Commissions. Right now, <br />there's just a 30 day holdover. We are suggesting increasing that to 90 days, just to <br />give more time to get new appointments in place. It's just increasing it from 30 to 90 <br />days. <br />8 <br />