CHC 1979-08-14 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The 4th Charter Commission is different from the first three Charter Commissions. You have available to you the desires of the Kamaainas of Hawaii expressed by their actions at the polls. Both in terms of what they rejected and what they accepted to help you in the task of passing judgment on the criterion of acceptability. The Shikada Plan is our existent system. To modify or to replace it, you have been presented with three proposals. I feel that the pure district setup and the 7 member plan both have poor acceptability because they fail to still the fears of excessive power of special interests over the county council . These two plans do not provide for effective representation and thereby the control. of the destiny of the district by its people. The two plans do not provide the people of a district with the power of votes over the majority of the councilmen. The proposal, I feel, which best meets this goal of acceptability is the proposal , I understand, which was made by Mr. Schutte. Five district councilmen from equal districts and four at-large councilmen from four equal residential districts. I see no technical difficulties in the implementation of this plan because the districting requirement for the at-large councilmen is for residents only. This plan, I feel , best stills the fears and meets the concerns and , aspirations of the majority of the people of Hawaii. It is an updating and fine tuning of The Shikada Plan. It is a goal oriented plan. A plan that best meets the goal of effective representation of a district by a representation by a majority of the councilmen. It meets the goal of fairness by creating equal districts based on population for both the districts and the at-large councilmen-. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, very much. MR. YAMADA: My name is Donald Yamada and I represent the Hilo Contractors ' Association and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Hawaii. I 'm going to speak on the makeup of the council ' z by districts. These two organizations did present written testimony some few months ago and I would just like to reiterate our positions on this. We testified at that time that we were in favor of the 7 man council . Five by four representative districts and two at-large and today I would like to reiterate that position. Quite frankly, the numbers , whether it' s seven or nine, I don ' t think is material . However, in this day and age of .'increased cost of government, we don ' t think it really makes a difference whether you have nine or seven. In fact, ,we would favor a five man council if we could see that the pObii,c would buy it. But we cannot see the public accepting a five man council . The City of Los Angeles has a 5 man council and they have over 2 million voters. So the numbers are immaterial -20-