CHC 1979-05-22 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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four at-large. The four at-large running for four years as a trade-off to a representation of a larger area but elected two in one year so that in any one year we will have three councilmen that each of the people in each district will vote. With three' councilmen , there will be six candidates and the differentiation of candidates is good. MR. CADINHA: That is very interesting. Thank you. • CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Kawasaki . Mr. Gordon Leslie will be next. • MR. LESLIE : Good evening, Mr. Chairman. My name is Gordon Leslie. I 'm the chairman of the Napoopoo Keel. Honaunau Community Association but for the records, I must say that I am representing myself, tonight. My committee has not had a chance to finish our research on the revision of the charter review and as yet we have not called our community association meeting. However, we shall have our provisions on the charter review in by May 29. I would like to give my testimony on the committee ' s feelings , at the present time, based on the extent of our research. I feel that the change in the county council voting system from the at-large to the district has a lot of errors to it. There is a lot of misrepresentation. From past experience, working with the county council--last month to be exact--we were working on several of the amendments to - the revision of the general plan. Our councilman was absent from the committee and I found that we have gained the utmost in support from the remaining eight councilmen. Now, a-lot of us fail to realize that we vote - for all of these councilmen. We don ' t have one representative, I feel , from Kona. . .As it is in the council committee , we have nine. And, by going on the district vote, it takes five votes in the county council to pass whatever issue is raised. Should we have one councilman from this area'.'. ..6r should we have two councilmen from this area. . .we only have that many votes that we can guarantee from the county council . Whereas , on the at-large position that we have now, we have all nine councilmen that we can seek advice and seek help from. What I am saying in laymans ' terms is should we have two councilmen representing the Kona district when we need five to win? It was stated in .: s.we_ral of the West Hawaii newspaper articles in the last couple of weeks that there are some buying, some exchange in votes in the county council . Well , now, I feel that should I present an issue to the county council , I can go to each councilman that I have voted for and ask him that during him campaign he has promised to help me from Kona. But, if we change it in a way that we only have 'two votes, I only have two' men that I can rely on that I can go to, if we are looking at an overall picture. The other seven councilmen can say, hey, you didn ' t vote for me -41-