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I wouldn' t recommend that any of this happen anytime soon. Because I wouldn' t want to propose or I wouldn' t suggest that you propose jeopardizing anyone' s current position. It should be maybe a longer term thing (inaudible) ,this route. There are obvious advantages in that, not the least of which are political. BETHEA: (Inaudible. ) I 'm really trying to understand, the mayor , with the exception of the managing director , nominates or makes an appointment subject to the approval of the Council. It seems to me that that isn' t. . . the mayor certainly has the first go at it. But as . . .as we have seen, you know, the Council speaks with a different voice and I just. . . I don' t know what you're talking about, how different that is , how it really works for more professionalism if, in any event, you end up with someone nominating someone and you then, for example, you said subject to the approval of the mayor or . . . SMITH: I see. . . I see where you' re going. BETHEA: Yeah . SMITH: The assumption is . . .my assumption is that if you. . . if a professional managing director were hired, and that individual was given the responsibility for professionally recruiting:.and filling those positions , that we would find professionals for . And we 're only talking about the top slots now. That. . . that individual would find professionals to. . .and make recommendations based on that recruiting process . As it is , we don' t follow the standard recruiting process that local governments do across the country. As I mentioned to you, the examples I gave. . . I didn' t bring any today--the examples that I gave, it ' s common for small governments with budgets a fraction of the size of our budget to recruit nationwide to bring in professionally trained people. That doesn' t, however , exclude local people. Far from it. There 's a lot of talent right here on the island that ' s not utilized because the primary prerequisite for administrative appointments--it has seemed to me in the seven years that I ' ve been, observing county governments--it ' s been political service to the mayor and the continuation of that political service, which I think is even more of a problem. Did that help? BETHEA: Well, I don ' t think I agree with it, but you're entitled to your opinion. I look at the County engineer , and I don' t know whether he ' s deemed to be very capable among most people, or a .qualified professional engineer . I don' t know, it doesn ' t . . . I don' t think I agree with the analysis, but isn' t one difference here that in 167