CHC 1979-05-01 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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CHAIRMAN SAKATA: If that will be the case and it is too late then who is going to suffer from all of this? MR. ROBERT YAMADA: The people will suffer. Anytime you elect the wrong people the people will suffer. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: My point is that if we have a system whether we have a strong manager type, we have a strong mayor-council type or we have a board of supervisor type, I think it will all work as long as we get people in there that are going to be responsible to the people and responsible to the government. I don 't think the question , here, is what type of government or what type of setup we are really going to pinpoint our aim at. I think we have to look from the standpoint of what is best for the county and how it is going to work. We have had many people come before us and say that this government , right now, is working. It is good, they say. Some of them say, no, it is not. We really have to look at it from all standpoints and we are very happy that you people bring these things up to us so we can look at it from the standpoint of what is wrong and what is right. When we start deliberations we can really deliberate and say, okay, these are the things that we have to consider. MR. ROBERT YAMADA: Mr. Chairman, what I pointed out to you is that our system today is too costly for the benefits we are getting. I don ' t think I made the statement that our system is wrong. I only suggested that we may consider to alternate. I don ' t want you to put words in my mouth, either. MR. OMONAKA: Mr. Yamada, after being in the county council for such a long time, do you have any feelings about spending limits? MR. ROBERT YAMADA: I think I do and I think that when I was on the council we had a limit of 15%. We were told that we had credit up to 75% but we all agreed that it was proper thatwe'should leave a reserve and we did go to 15% of our total revenue. I have been away from the government for two and a half years and I don ' t know if there are any changes. But I think that a limit--however, when you do put a limit on there are such things as emergencies or some federal grant that comes to our county saying that we want a matched amount from the county and if we are not in the position to 'float= a bond to match the federal grant we would lose it. So we had to keep a reserve. MR. OMONAKA: So with your experience then you are saying that we should not have a limit. MR. ROBERT YAMADA: No, I don ' t say that we should not have a limit. If we have a bunch of councilmen who are very agressive and just go, go, -go and use all our limits then there is nothing we can do. I think we should have certain limits. Sitting before you good people, I don ' t think I can say what is a limit. _ During my time, I thought it was 15% of the total value of our island, our face value. -26-