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situation which you have heard before and all this sort of thing. But it is a fact of life today. Government spending has to be limited and the only way _ouu are going to do it is if you do it by law. Good government needs these fixed guidelines that we are talking about within which to operate because no business can stand to just float. Not really knowing how much money it is going to have. This is where we get into problems. But I fully believe that you are going to have to accompany this by mandating in the charter that we use zero base budgeting,- on the county level. I take it that you know what I am talking about when I say zero base budgeting. You start from zero every year rather than saying, okay, you can have 10% over what you had last year. Because the minute you say that, this person , or any person is going to take that 10% and then probably try to get two or three more. It ' s human nature. So you have got to start from zero and go up. We can ' t continue to add 10% or 15% or 20% a,:,year to each department the way we have been doing. There is no way. And unless , again, that you tell people you are going to start from zero and justify every item. in your budget, they are not going to do it. It is much easier to do it the other way around. I would move on to representative_-districts. I think to get continuity that if we went by representative districts and elected half of them every two years, this would split the thing pretty well . You might have to fine tune that but at the moment that would be my suggestion. There are a number of reasons for that you have probably heard already. But, first of all , it would make a councilman closer to his constituents and despite what Councilman Dahlberg has said it has been my opinion that rather than all nine councilmen representing each and everybody, even in Ka'u, this just simply gives you nine people to pass the buck instead of one. It ' s harder to pin down one out of the nine or any one of them than it is if you have someone responsible for and to you. It is just thatI-plain. Maybe more important, the campaign spending has gone to ridiculous lengths because you have to campaign around the entire island even though you say you are a council- man from Ka'u. Does that make much sense? To spend $20 , 000 or $30,000. -Not really. So it would certainly give more people an opportunity to get involved. They wouldn ' t have to go out and try to scare up this big money. The person would be there and more representative. Closer to the people. I think it is an idea. That its time is here. I think in that same area there is something that you are going to have to look closely -at. At present, to the best of my knowledge at least, there is no provision in the County Charter for replacing a councilman who is disabled for some reason or other. I don 't particularly care how this is worked out. It seems to me like that a basic document which this is has to provide for continuity in government and this goes_ - even to the councilmen because you should have a right to - 18 -