|
in relation to Civil Service salaries within their departments and the public sector, and
<br />1111 hopefully, to have these salaries be more reflective of the individual responsibilities and
<br />professional requirements of the different departments. In other words, right now, all
<br />the Department Heads and Deputies get paid the same thing, and it doesn't make
<br />sense to me why the Head of Public Works, a registered engineer, would be paid the
<br />same as every other Department Head. I won't mention any in particular, but the job
<br />qualifications and the responsibilities are substantially greater in some positions than in
<br />others. This wouldn't mandate that the Salary Commission would have to recommend
<br />the salaries in that fashion. It would still be up to them, the recommendations they'd
<br />make, but hopefully it would influence them in that direction.
<br />And the last is creating an advisory Commission, a Cost -of -Government
<br />Commission, which would be advisory only, but it would review the County budgets,
<br />and how the County functions, and make recommendations to the Administration. The
<br />way this is written now is that the Commission would be appointed every other year.
<br />Based on some testimony we've had, and my thinking, I, kind of, think it makes more
<br />sense to do this less frequently. Maybe this Commission would meet every four years,
<br />rather than every two years, and, sort of, be in a continuous cycle which would, kind of,
<br />be addressing the same old things every other year, and maybe dilute the effort. The
<br />idea being if you stand back from it and do it every four years — this is my personal
<br />thoughts; we haven't discussed this on the Commission, so we're very open to input on
<br />this. But I talked to Maui County that has this, and talked to the guy who is the
<br />Executive Assistant that services this Commission, and was chatting with him about
<br />that last week, and he seemed to think that might be a better way to do it. Do it a little
<br />less frequently than every two years, and another suggestion is maybe you do it in the
<br />second two years of the Mayor, so Administration has represented that they're going to
<br />do this and do that, and you let them serve for two years, then you appoint this
<br />Commission, and then they can have some input and comment on how the Mayor's
<br />done, and hopefully, that would have some positive effect on the next election cycle.
<br />An advisory Commission to review how the Mayor, the Administration, has done in
<br />regard to the cost -of -government issues.
<br />So, that's the end of my spiel. If you are interested in testifying, you need to sign up
<br />and I have a number of people signed up now. So, mainly for the sake of recording —
<br />We need to make sure all this is recorded, if you could come up and testify. David
<br />Frankel is the first person signed up and Del Pranke following. So if you could state
<br />your name, and if you're representing anybody other than yourself, and just speak into
<br />the mike please.
<br />PUBLIC TESTIMONY
<br />FRANKEL: My name is David Frankel. I am Chapter Chair of the Sierra Club,
<br />Hawaii Chapter, but I'm testifying in my own personal capacity. 1 wanted to let you
<br />know, although you've received some criticism regarding authority of the Planning
<br />10
<br />
|