CHC 1979-02-20 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Looking back there were several reasons perhaps for the failure of the first charter. It was turned down at the ballot box in no uncertain terms . And I think one reason was the general fear of change, the unknown . Secondly the time schedule that did not permit adequate discussion of all the issues. And , of course, the most practical reason was the very heated opposition of the government unions who were afraid that the charter might take away some jobs and might, in some way, be negative to the interests of the members of those government unions. I remember very vividly that there was quite a bit of opposition from both the HGEA and the UPW. In addition there was a good deal of opposition from the semi-autonomous agencies, primarily the Board of Water Supply. Bill Thompson who is a personal friend of mine, we are, really, on quite good terms opposed that very strongly. He was the chairman of the Board of Water Supply which was an independent agency at that time established by special law. They pride their autonomy a great deal . It was a very difficult thing for them to think that they might become a part of the county government subject in any way to outside control. To control by the county government. So they opposed the charter. As a matter of fact, there was an adver- tising campaign against the first charter. Largely financed by both the semi-autonomous agencies and the government unions and as a result the charter went down the drain. We didn ' t have a prayer. We tried to combat this with informa- tional type sessions. We started with too little too late as far as informing the public was concerned and the charter went down the drain. In 1965 , I 'm not sure whether it was ' 65 or ' 66. The exact time frame sort of eludes me. I started work for the county government as the administrative assistant to Chairman Shun Kimura in 1965 ,shortly ,after he took office and I served as an advisor to the second Charter Commission. At that time it was deemed advisable to have a liaison between the government and the Charter Commission and I served that function appointed by the then county chairman to do this. Ralph ,Kiyoski ;; who at that time was the head of the Peace Corpsover here was the chairman of the second Charter Commission. I was talking to Akira awhile back and I had forgotten whether he was a member of the first or the second Charter Commission , he tells me he was on the second as well as the third. At any rate, the second Charter Commission did have the benefit of some experience to go on. Furthermore, in an attempt to mollify the opposition of the government unions , representatives of each of the government unions were appointed to the Charter Commission and they served on that commission and therefore had excellent input and they knew what was going on. -10-