CHC 1979-06-05 - Laserfiche WebLink

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mayor, then who would?, You would have to then appoint somebody for succession purposes. But if this were a private corpora- tion , we wouldn ' t have that kind of a body. The president would have to stand up here and say, look , my time is split ;fifteen ways, I need an administrative aide, how much are you going to pay him? We seem to have three or four there. But rather than just cut the mayor off and say, hey, no help, you are going to scramble. . .rather than make it a charter item, if we can have the mayor just submit to council for his administrative staff, for his budget and who he is going to hire. Once you make a charter provision for the next decade, you are going to have to fund that. MR. YANAGA: Are you thinking along the line of cutting down expenses? MR. CADINHA: Yes, anything that is non-purposeful, why pay for it? That' s a moral question. It's kind of a back- ward question. Is there a real reason? Because I don ' t under- stand. If that guy is going to run some departments and the deputy is going to run other departments, what does the mayor do? Are we really in a strong mayor concept of government? Is the mayor relegated to handing out leis and counting city keys? I don ' t think so. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Harlan, do you feel then that the mayor should have the power if he needs that position he will have the power to appoint that person, rather than have it in black and white that there should be that position? MR. CADINHA: He should budget it. He should bring it to council and say, I need an administrative type person to be budgeting to do this function, rather than the charter saying, hey, you have a department head and he has a deputy and then there_" is another deputy, or office of complaints, whatever it is. The -mayor should have to prove in these things, annually. Because what we put in the charter is going to have to be funded, period. Whether there is a real need or whether the complexion changes, I would think that a mayor that is elected by the people of the county should be able to design his own hierarchy. Maybe a guy doesn ' t want to work through a managing director. Maybe a guy wants to sit down--if you elect a different person--maybe a guy wants to sit down with every department head every morning, and yet we' ve got to pay a managing director and his staff because it is in the charter. This is my question. Different mayors may have different characters. They may have a different style and yet we are legislating, really, through the charter, we are telling the guy how he is going to organize his staff. I wonder whether we should. That is my question, I 'm not saying, take him away. MR. YANAGA: The way I am observing now regarding the managing director, he seems like he is working his butt off. Maybe he is working harder than the mayor, for all you know. MRS. KOBAYASHI : Mr. Chairman. It kind of makes me feel a little bit uneasy that the person we are talking about, we have never talked to as a commission. It seems like we are -12-