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of my campaign commitments when I was running was to improve the way we communicate <br />with our constituents. You can't use the campaign, or the election, to force our elected to do <br />that, it just doesn't make sense. Then the guy just doesn't have any value in communicating <br />with people. To be forced, as a reason, I don't know that it is one I would hold water with. <br />But, transparency is the buzz word now. I have made this public, so I don't mind sharing <br />what my thoughts are as far as transparency in what I'm doing. I have made myself more <br />available in every single district. This is my second time going around in what we call talk <br />story; the second time around in nine months to fourteen different communities. I just had <br />some meetings the other night. When you look at the Mayor's administration, whether you <br />agree to his decisions or not, I have not known another Mayor who has made himself more <br />publicly scrutinized in communities than any other Mayor. He has taken the time to go from <br />community to community and say, hey ask me what you want, I will tell you point blank. I <br />don't see it, but this is the first time that I see the word transparency come bubbling out when <br />we have made more attempts to be transparent. It is so easy to use the word transparency to <br />facilitate our own doomsday attitude. <br />We just went through, and we may still be going through, this Hamakua land sale, and <br />whether the Council should be overseeing the purchase of land. Transparency was the word, <br />and what I heard in public was when people came to testify was, what if, what if, what if, <br />what if, and we better legislate because if any of these things came true we would be screwed <br />up. Yes, every negative thing that you could ever think of, could come true. But, if we were <br />to legislate on every issue because of the what ifs, we would legislate ourselves to death. At <br />what point do we stop? When do we choose on this one we don't? Because every issue has <br />a what if. Again, it's that attitude where we focus on the negatives versus the positives. <br />Before we talk about transparency, let's make sure it needs to be. If we don't do things right, <br />and we mess up, then, I'm all for it. I'm not against transparency, I think it's important, but <br />let's do it, and legislate it when it needs to be, versus just doing it for the word transparency. <br />MS. KAWAUCHI: I have a question. What would be your thoughts of instead of proposing <br />a change from two -year to four -year terms, from two -year to three -year terms? Do you have <br />any thoughts on the difference between three years versus four years? <br />MR. ENRIQUES: Off the top of my head, anything beyond two years is better, whether it's <br />three years. The problem with three years is then you would have a mid -way election. <br />Maybe it would be for just a smaller group, but if it just went into sequence with the Mayoral <br />race, I think from the finance side, that will cut a lot of costs in terms of running elections. <br />What I'm finding out, is putting an election on is big bucks. To put one on in between over <br />here, I don't know - - -It seems more logical to run it in sequence with the four -year terms. <br />The way this is going, it looks like it would fall right onto that four -year term. It just seems <br />logical to stay with that. But, anything better than two years - - -If we can't get four years, I'll <br />take three years. <br />CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any other questions for Mr. Enriques? We have one more <br />speaker. <br />7 <br />