CHC 1979-05-15 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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Of principal . concern to me I believe is the • representation that the people be able to represent or elect their own representative at the county council ; the notion that someone can . run in thej1.1 district; whether they- win or lose, but the decision could actually _be made by 'a population based outside of the district for which their representation is going to be given. • I would support basically a nine member. council with one representative of each of the nine districts whether • it be by grouping say North and South Kohala and have two persons represented' or whether one• runs from each district. My principal concern, however, is that there be direct representa- ' tion from each district. I Also, I mould like to follow Moon a little bit .on the ideas of efficiency. in government. I have a concern . that the department of public works , in one way or another,, coordinate its capital improvement and maintenance programs on an island wide or whatever basis. I get, personally, very frustrated seeing the standard "pave the road. tjhe ,. .forgot to . put the water line under it" ! that seems to go on pretty . regularly in government and very much so in the county. I , as an independent businessman, sincerely resent what' is , I . guess , basically called the county stroke. . .two guys watch and one guy work or whatever. I do believe there is a lot of room for efficiency in government both in the ways that the job roles are defined and the way that programs throughout -depart- ments are coordinated. . • It seems that there is a lack of a central clearinghouse for programs and one of the ones that comes to ' my mind specifically ,is that- the department of water supply is independent of the •tepartment of public works. I assume that there is 'a reason for that bq__: it funding or whatever, but it seems that the water, the roads , and drainage should be under a single department and able. to be coordinated from a single center. . ' . . As. a few comments about the planning commission . or the planning process itself, the . initial charter required the development' of" a county general' 'plan. which is basically the overall broad policy statement for planning, direction and purpose. .That plan has been done and the County of Hawaii is noted. as one of the best in the .country for Its planning, efforts. But i:t :appears to me that a humber .of 'levels of .planning exist. ' The general plan has developed development plans for districts ,as in the North-South Kohala Development Plan, Honokaa Develop- ment Plan, that kind of thing: Each agency within the county • government develops its own functional plans of studies for . roads';, of studies for water systems and that kind of thing.. . And then there are also design plans for specific diStricts as • we are in the midst of here' in Waimea, a design study, an urban • design study for Waimea. there- seems to be a lot of planning going on in pockets and very little of it is centralized , or at least its information , to a point that it all gets wrapped back together again at some point in the planning department or planning commission one way or another. . -27- ..