CHC 1979-03-20 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

MR. TRULSON: Harlan, your motion would be for the only decision today would be to accept the strong mayor type of government, the present form of government. Is this mainly so that we can go home and study so we aren ' t studying for nothing. We know that we are going to go this way so we can prepare oursel;ves:,now, because we can_'t.;'get; into the position we talked about earlier where we were going to make any other decisions whether it be a commission form or whatever it is before we have the complete input. So you are just on the one thing. MR. CADINHA: Yes , and it is not a final decision. In other words, if somebody has a good argument in the public hearing as to why we should have a "czarist" form of government and it makes sense, I 'm saying we should keep an open-:_mind towards that. But so far, from everything that has been available to me as a commissioner, the decision seems clean. I would like to pursue our present form of government until somebody can show me otherwise. I would like to move that we adopt that philosophy, as a body, and start thinking about this document and reviewing it. MR. ODA: Not making a, . judgment on Commiss- ioner Cadinha' s motion, as I look at it, as counsel for the commission, I think that in my opinion that if this commiss- ion rules or make a decision on that motion--let ' s assume it goes in favor of the motion--that may be considered to be a procedural error and defect in the entire proceedings of this commission for the reason that if you make a preliminary decision,._ ndmatter how preliminary, you are forecasting before any trial is held, so to speak, of what the commission ' s opinion is going to be. It is like the same thing as a judge saying, ttweI-Ilbefore I hear any testimony I will preliminarily rule this way and all testimony will be geared in that direction, never- theless I will hold an open=mind. " I think that this commiss- ion would have to consider itself somewhat a little bit in that light and I think it is fairly dangerous. Procedurally it would be very, very dangerous. MR. CADINHA: Stuart, I appreciate your saying so and I withdraw my crazy motion, again. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: I can see this possibility because of the fact that if you look at our calendar, we have our public hearings from April 17 through the .22nd of May. To make any prior decision as of now could be. . . . MR. SENSANO: Mr. Chairman , I think we ought to be very careful as to how we proceed because up to the time we complete our hearings. . .you see, we don 't know what is going to come up at the hearings. It may be that at those hearings there will be some who will say that we should change the form of the charter and change the form entirely. Or, let' s assume that we will keep the present form and that we are just suggesting changes within the charter, itself, so I think that while we would like to expedite this thing, I don ' t think we can. Because if - 8 -