CHC 1979-02-20 - Laserfiche WebLink

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interpreting this in favor of the administration or of the counsel . It was a case of I am interpreting this as a matter of law for the county and that ' s it! Nobody argued it. So you didn ' t have the problem. And I don ' t think we really foresaw the problems that have evolved. Also, we were dealing with a much more simplified , much smaller and more simplified, form of governmental structure at that time. The first year that Chairman Kimura took office he decided that even though we still did have a county auditor, at that time, if you are going to run the show, by god , you 'd better make the budget. Because the budget is the key to, really, management. So, one of the tasks that he assigned me, as his administrative assistant , was that of making the budget. Interestingly enough, our combined operating and capital improvement budget in 1965 was around 10 million dollars in rough figures. That was operating ,and capital improvement. Take a look at what it is now. So it was a much more simple thing. I might add that in those days one man made the budget and that was; me. Now you have a staff. Mr. Chairman, I don ' t want to rush you. I ' ll be very happy to stay as long as you wish but if there aren ' t any other questions maybe if I could I 'd like to throw out a few things. There is a personal thing I think you ought to consider. I have no ax to grind whatever. I have no real major complaints. I think in looking back everyone realizes that there are certain things that you do in life that you wish you had done otherwise. There are certain things in this charter that I wish now maybe that we had done otherwise on. Yet I don ' t think it is all that bad. I think it is an acceptable document. But in view of the fact that ten years have gone by and that a great deal of social change has taken place in this period of time as well as political change, I think it is well that you review that and this is one reason that I wanted to give you a little bit of the history of why we did the things we did. They are not necessarily the things that you have to be concerned about today because the whole thing is different. What you have got to do, I think , is analyze where you are, what you think is good and what is pertinent under today's conditions. One thing that I think we are all concerned about on the national basis. You see it in the paper every time you pick it up. You hear. it on the news media every time you turn on tv or radio. That is the complexity of government today. The fact that it has become so complex. In the period of ten years the size of our county government has roughly trebled. The size of our budget has gone up far more than that. So we have a very complex type of thing in comparison. You know the old law in bureaucracy. . .bureaucracy feeds on itself. And it expands , makes work. -20-