CHC 1979-02-20 - Laserfiche WebLink

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a case for saying that four years is a time when you can come out with a legislative program on the council side and get it implemented. So this was the main reason. Or these two things were the main reasons. One expense and secondly that it gave you a chance to show what you could do where two years we thought was too short a time. MR. ISHIDA: What about staggered terms? Were they considered? MR. KOEHNEN : We considered staggered terms. You can make a good case for staggered terms. To provide some continuity, you know right after it went through. . .well , really notright after it went through, but the last election is a good example of almost a whole new house with no continuity. Maybe, you know, maybe when you think about it, that might be part of the current problem? It may be. You know, people that are in office get intrenched and your power builds up. Rather subtly sometimes but your power does build up and have a good power base from which to operate. So, maybe part of the problem is the fact that we had a whole new council . Because some of those old councilmen were in office when I was working for the government and they were no patsies. MR. SCHUTTE : Mr. Koehnen , on a number of occasions we've had people come from the Police Department, the Liquor Control , Personnel Services, etc. , that have always complained to some degree about the last paragraph that gives the administration the general supervision and control . I notice that in a number of these appointed department heads or the departments here the mayor does have the final, control. Why was that put in? Does that give it the strong_ mayor. approach? MR. KOEHNEN: I think you are talking about Section 13-22 Coordination of Work? MR. SCHUTTE : No, I 'm looking at, for in- stance the Department of Water Supply, Page 19 , Section 8-5 Administrative Supervision. The department of water supply shall come under the general supervision and control of the mayor. And yet you have a Water Commission and a manager. You go to the Liquor Control and you have a Liquor Commission and you have the executive secretary, but you still have that final section that gives the mayor the final say. MR. KOEHNEN: I know what you are getting at. It ' s in every one. And there were some on the commission who wanted to actually put all of these agencies directly under the administration and yet we retained some semi-auto- nomous aspects to many of these agencies. This was a hold over because without it you would have had those agencies fighting as they did on the first charter and you probably couldn ' t have gotten the charter through. Secondly they were very jealous of their prerogative so you might say it was a compromise to give them semi-independent status. -17-