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• <br />Commissions, creating one single Executive Branch County Departments, Chapter 1, <br />where everything is under the Department of Management and the Managing Director. <br />And we've also expanded the powers, duties and functions of the Managing Director, <br />especially in terms of fiscal management, and in terms of calling out the role of the <br />Managing Director and that whole process. And expanded the role of the Managing <br />Director throughout the Charter, where in some sections it only mentions the Mayor, <br />we've included the Managing Director in the chain of command, and the clear direction <br />is to have the Managing Director more involved in the day-to-day management. That <br />being said, this is still very much a strong Mayor form of government. The Mayor would <br />still hire the Managing Director. One suggested addition that we're putting forward is <br />that the County Council would confirm the position, where they don't now. Right now, <br />that position is not subject to Council confirmation, so it would be in the suggested <br />language. But this is still a strong Mayor form of government. We're just trying to move <br />it, in our mind, to what we think would be a more professional and efficient way to run <br />the County government, but it still is subject to how the Mayor wants it to run, so that's <br />the bottom line. <br />Number 4, a Fire Commission. Basically we followed the model of the City and <br />County of Honolulu, to create a Fire Commission which, like I say, is pretty much based <br />identically on the language in the City and County of Honolulu. It seems to operate <br />there efficiently on a relatively small annual budget. It seems to have had a real <br />positive influence on taking some of the politics of how that department works. And so, <br />that's the recommendation there. <br />Number 5, creating a Department of Environmental Services, or Environmental <br />Management. This suggestion would take two of the six divisions presently under the <br />Public Works Department and break those away into a separate department, which <br />would be called a Department of Environmental Services, or Management. The two <br />divisions are the Waste Management and the Wastewater Divisions. So that would <br />create a new department which would also be mandated to focus on waste diversion <br />and recycling activities. Another activity which would probably fall under their purview <br />would be the non point source pollution programs. The thought there is with the <br />increasing complexity of the regulatory regime, especially in these areas, that it would <br />be good to deal with this in a separate department. Also the size and complexity of the <br />Public Works Department, with the six divisions now, it seems like a positive <br />reorganizational move to split those out. This would make the change mandatory but <br />the Council would have to pass an ordinance, and exactly how this would be <br />restructured would be settled later in terms of the Department Head and whether they'd <br />have a Deputy, or how all this would work. But our thought, if done properly, this would <br />be a more efficient and a more cost efficient way to run government. We don't <br />anticipate any extra cost, in fact, hopefully just the opposite. In addition, we're also <br />suggesting creating a Commission that would be attached to this department. It would <br />be an advisory Commission, but hopefully engage the general public more in these <br />issues and also be an advocate for setting rates for these two departments. This is an <br />5 <br />