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• <br /> • <br /> • ® MINUTES <br /> HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION <br /> Thursday, October 17 , 1963 <br /> Board Room, County Building <br /> • 3: 30 p.m. <br /> Next Meetinr,. ThursdaiP, October 24, 1963 • <br /> -Board Room County Building <br /> 3: 30 p .m. . <br /> Mr. Kengo Nagasako, price-Chairman,, called the meeting to order. <br /> Members Present: Herman Amaral Yasuki Prakaki, Bryan Baldwin, <br />• ..� ___4aw Robert i2'ttj •im.oto, Peter G. Kawahara, Fred Koehnen, <br /> Mary Elizabeth Loweth, Satoru • Sugawara. <br /> .Absent: & Excused: Rudolph Legaspi, ICaoru Noda • <br /> • Guests o Charles James, Hideo Kun.iyoshi, Elroy Osorio <br /> The business por tion of the meeting was deferred until later. <br /> L. Mir. Charles James: Forms of Government <br /> This question of forms of government is a trivial sort of thing— <br /> ,, <br />\ i t' doesn' t maize much difference because an impossible form of <br /> government works out pretty well and where the most Scientific- <br /> ally <br /> cien.ti ic-ally defined form of government may be terrible; e.g. , City. of <br /> Chicago has the weakest of weak mayor form of government--50 <br /> r district, <br /> members of the Board, each of whomis iiGadi1 of his own dist ict, <br /> h'?s own ward. It is obviously impossible to run a big city with <br /> • this kind of government. In recent years the administration <br /> of the city greatly 1..mmDroved., butthis improved in spite ofk 7) the charter, because Daly is thekind of guy( who_takes the <br /> te . <br /> policat process of a big city and ma eS. � L. wor .,for. him, just <br /> � <br /> by his (= personal power. il.ere is a kind of man..cNho can make <br /> . a very anemic city government into a strong city government. • <br /> On the other hand, the city of Cleveland, Ohio at one time had <br /> the council-manager form of government--and it took them about <br /> 10 years to find out this wasn' t for them. The corruption. was <br /> . running wild in the city, there was no coordination of munici?al <br /> activities . If you use these examples and these examples. only <br /> you can say it literally doesn' t make any difference what kind <br /> of form of government you have. It does make a substantial <br /> difference in this respect. Although we don' t have control at <br /> this time over who is going to be in. office five or 10 years from <br /> now or maybe next year, we have an obligation, the responsibility <br /> to try to give whoever is going to be in office the foLui of . <br /> ' government that will make it easy for him to do the j•ob he' s <br /> supposed to doe <br /> • We have to think in terms of what is the easiest way of serving <br /> the public interest. What is public interest and how do we <br /> know it' s being service and how do we know we have the form of <br /> government to make it possible to do this? In local government <br /> as opposed certainly to federal and maybe the state government, <br /> • the public interest in most cases is best served when you have <br /> a direct line from the people who arc the owners back to the <br /> people who are the consumers . The only thing the local govern- <br /> ment does is p:.ovide a mechanism for giving these people what <br /> they want. This is where the citizens , the owners of municipal <br /> corporation, may give themselves through medium of local <br /> government. So in a simple and straightforward way the will of <br />