CHC 1979-05-01 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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If you should absolve all the restrictions regarding this , this has been presented to us before, is it possible, or not possible, that if you don ' t have these limitations that say, a labor contract is being negotiated with county employees, somebody could begin, by referendum and initiative to stop that, right? Do you think they should be able to do that? MR. SANTOS: They could. Mr. Trulson, the charter, I believe, presently requires that the petition containing the signatures of 15% of the voters who voted in the last mayoral election are required before an item can be presented to the council on the initiative program. I think it has been proven in the past that obtaining 15%, which ,. I understand now,: is somewhere in the vicinity of 5 ,800 signatures , is no small task. But if there are enough disgruntled citizens or unhappy citizens who are willing to sign a petition to qualify for that then, by all means, I feel that it should be put to the rest of the voters for a decision. MR. TRULSON: In a way, you would find the deletion of that section giving the people more power as to how their government uses the finances? MR. SANTOS: I think that too much concern is placed on this matter being misused. I don ' t believe that the initiative procedure has been used in the ten years that we have been under the charter and I believe the referendum procedure was used only once. I don' t feel , by opening it up to these other avenues will open us up to a whole bag of matters being brought up under these two sections. MR. TRULSON: If it hasn ' t been used and the chances are, it won ' t, why delete it? MR. SANTOS: I think it is always nice to have this club in your hand, the voters hand. That they have the right to initiate any action that a council refuses to take or to change some action that they are unhappy with that the council made. MR. SENSANO: Mr. Santos , in your" rredornmencition here you specifically mention the abolition of the water board commission. Why are you singling out this department and not mention the other commissions also? Like the police commission and the others? MR. SANTOS: No other department in the_ county, to my knowledge, has the autonomy that the department .of=water supply has. I believe that in the department of water supply the water commission has powers, responsibility_and_ duties far exceeding those that govern the police department or the police commission and the liquor commission. Secondly, there are those who feel that because the liquor department and the police department deal with public safety that there should be no question about these being far removed from any politics. While we are in tune with the intent of the basic charter we have now which is that of a strong mayor type of government, we felt it the better part of valor not to tamper with those two departments at this time. -16-