testify very good we do have three individuals lined up so far in the chamber to testify and let me just say for individuals who will be fine in the chamber please sign up at the desk located in the eighth floor lobby just outside the chamber door if you will be testifying from one of the remote testimony locations specified on the medium agenda please sign up with district office staff at that location testimony is limited to three minutes had two and a half minutes the light at the testifier stand will turn yellow and at three minutes the light will blink read if you are talking at the three minute time limit i will ask you to kindly stop and when you begin your testimony please state your name and the name of any organization you are representing we know we have established a connection our first person signed up test to testify this morning is rosemary robbins and she will be followed by mark hyde down yesterday went through the binder for that it was always the people in the seventh floor of this building were wonderful about getting my documents that were going to be able to help me to read this and become better informed so  that goes into the notification for today's meeting and i would like to just let you know people have come up to me and the last couple of weeks and just said how and then they give what they understand to be the reality now pretty farfetched from what the reality is so i keep telling them how wonderful you are if you if they come down and they can read this stuff that you'll give them a desk you'll give them the papers  so i'm hoping that today is going to be an opportunity for people to become more at peace about this one of the things that concerned me was that folks were talking about it's an either or and they seem to feel that this is a done deal that we're going to wipe out a mayor i hadn't read that myself in these materials and just really being unsettled and i think that's probably due to the idea of change some people are maybe not so comfortable with changes others but if we don't take a good look at the past to relive it whatever the it is whether or not it's government whether or not it's whatever it's going to good look at where we've been and where we're at and where we're chili going another thing that i think folks need to be comfort about is that this is not this instead of this there are a number of models that our folks are going to be looking at as to how to better our county government and a keep saying in this document whether or not whether or not so it's not a done deal i'm not too sure what the it is but people aren't necessarily comfortable with it so there is in the binder a whole section on ethics anybody is welcome to come and read this there is a gentleman named dave morrow who had come in and talked with us right here best practices were recommended in two thousand and eleven and twenty twelve as far as taking a look at our county  charter and as far as looking at the maui island play and so please people be at peace listen take a good listen to what's there you understand who the folks are that are on the committee  today and if ms robbins talks to one of her friends on the market or something and the seem to be a little confused as to what's happening can they pick up the phone in call one of us if they know what they can may where they've learned they either are or where they're getting their information from because it seems like the articles that appeared in the paper and certainly the way this committee was established by the council it was very clear that there is no either or it's an opportunity to look at the entire situation the entire all the options i agree with you and i'm on that same say and i'm thinking oh dear god i don't know the answers to those so i'm recommending that they call the people who do for whatever is holding them in another frame about look it's not what  published it's been good thank you very much are there any further questions on are you on now good afternoon chair committee members name is mark hyde a living i've been thinking about this issue for quite a while and i have some recommendations for you to consider chipping implemented i believe would transform county government operations into a more efficient and more effective transparent and accountable government for the people the first step would be to separate the m current combined chief executive and chief administrative officer roles into two positions and take the operational roles that are currently under the mare's jurisdiction and place that under a manager then retain the executive role in an elected mayor number two take the existing managing directors role and enlarge it county manager and have the directors report directly to the manager number three gauge the manager and director terms of office from the mayoral election cycle this will deepen the politicize their roles and will bring professionalism and stability to their work number four create standard professional job descriptions and define minimum criteria for hiring both the manager and each director and finally to find a concrete manager and director selection process that results in the very best candidates being hired based upon job needs now when maui county adopted the current form of government fifty years ago our population was thirty eight thousand and hawaii statehood was less than ten years old and now the county has over one hundred sixty thousand residents and a defacto population of two hundred thousand people when you take into account the visitors the county is the largest employer in the in the county with two thousand seven hundred employees and a budget next year of over seven hundred million my time is up and i have said enough thank you cheerio much more you  guys have a few more comments made in quick our local government is responsible for many critical services in the future will not be simpler as the world globalize is digitizes climate changes and our population continues to grow as predicted by the general plan so our obligations here are becoming going to become much more complex and difficult as the future arrives so as things have changed over the past fifty years and they're bound to change even at a more rapid plate pace in the future our county government has not changed it has changed mildly was some tweaks here and there but i think making the simple charter changes that i've outlined will position position the county to serve the people's interests now and in the future quite well thank you thank you mr hart i understand you submitted public testimony i mean written test on same thing   both for the managing director or the department head say you know what performance standards review and that sort of thing where that be a part of your suggestion o absolutely i think that could be built into if not the charter which probably has not worked along into policies and procedures as to how those things are accomplished i would say at a minimum  charter should require the manager to come before the council annually if not quarterly and give a thorough report public report to the people about his or her goals and objectives and showing where the manager is in either accomplishing or not accomplishing those things and that would be you know one way of carry that evaluation and then retain those who are doing well and counsel those who aren't or terminate those who cannot be salvaged just as it goes on in the outside world my second question  you know and i hope we are able to discuss this further at a later date would help out those hybrid departments there are several that are somewhat unique or oddball  have and i believe that you can only swallow so much at once and while i think those bear examination i think if you examine those at the same time you're trying to make some of their critical and necessary changes now that that would auger against change old together but i do think in the future charter commissions should examine that and ask whether it's appropriate that these institutions police fire and liquor basically operate in an independent universe and that's why i think a challenge for another day that would be unwise to tackle at this point but when i was in business i was a lawyer for seventeen years in private practice and then one of my clients invited me to become the c e o of their company and so for eleven years i ran an organization with a budget five hundred million dollars in revenue and it was quite a complex and highly regulated nonprofit enterprise and in that role i took training from the american management association and the american corporate directors association and went through all kinds of interesting activities and i learned about quality management techniques and if i may one of the things that i don't see currently is a comprehensive management plan for maui county now county manages to a budget but managing to a budget and that's a very important activity because one activity but a management competency management plan where you have goals and objectives you have review you have accountability and then you  have re implementation of corrective actions on an ongoing basis all transparent it's transformative for an organization and that's the power that i could see that this committee could release our next testifier is now woods to be followed by michael  changes or updates we issued our final report in late two thousand and ten posted it online at west now a charter dot org and send it to the charter commission formed in two thousand and eleven our proposal number two was to change the structure of maui county government to that of a council manager and ceremonial mayor as a non voting chairman of the county council the formation of your committee is the long delayed result of the recommendation by that charter commission quote that a task force be established to thoroughly review the structure of maui county government research other models of county government and prepare a report and not quote the first charter commission in eighty four that established the current governance also considered changing to a council manager mayor as did the third charter commission in one thousand nine hundred ninety five when the change was supported by mayor elmer who stated quote the adoption of the city manager form of government would ensure high quality talent for the chief executive position within the county as well as removing the position from undue political influence on in history as the only mayor of maui county to support this change this concept has been a topic of discussion for more than fifty years now and let me give you a perspective of what fifty years ago  much has changed in these fifty years and it's always been the people of maui county who have continued to push for better government and who are still waiting for those they have elected to provide it to them that time is now per the current county charter the goal for government services is to be transparent effective efficient and responsive to the needs of the residents i would encourage the members of this committee to schedule additional evening meetings out of the various communities in the weeks that you are not meeting in this chamber to provide as many residents as possible the opportunity to share with you their frustrations with the current governance structure each and every year more of our best and brightest are forced into the realization that to achieve their dreams for the future they must leave you for better opportunities elsewhere the current and future children of mowing deserve to grow up knowing that maui county can and will provide them with the future that will fulfill their dreams right here on maui because a more efficient and responsive governance structure will create better jobs and affordable homes for the future to this time to carefully consider what the future of maui county can and should be and i hope the legacy of this committee will be that you are the ones to take the first step to give maui county residents the best future possible thank you very much correct me if i'm wrong but the group also recommend changing to a district form the council has to get given that given the current form of our county council do you think i'm just saying that i think a county manager form of governance would be a much more responsive situation because they don't have your county manager and the directors of the department won't be cycling every time there's an election there deal be a consistent you you get hired based on your qualifications and as long as you perform to the goals and specifications of your job and that's done by evaluation know you continue if you can't meet those goals and show no inclination to do better you're moving on and we're going so that's going to the county council though that's going to make that determination whether they're moving on or not now or no or the county manager is moving on which is some kind of the council that would be did deciding the county manager state but primarily it would be the county manager manager would be the one who would be assuming a good portion of the current mayor's job description and you speak into the money i'm sorry you see i'm not as an administrator particular no no but i what i do what i am attached to was the knowledge that the majority of maui county voters and residents are adamant about being able to elect their mayor and as long as they can do that it's shall we say some kind of a hybrid situation as to exactly how the powers are designated between the county manager and the mayor thank you anyone ok thank you very much should be asking of should i be asking the testifiers for their testimony is that a hassle for you guys or it's not a hassle and you can ask but they can also say no so if we want to take notes and listen at the same time so if we wanted a copy and they didn't want to give it to us you guys could recreate it or something what we can do is it will be we have thirty days to produce the meeting minutes  on the final person to sign up for testimony in the chamber is michael good morning share with me and all members happy holidays as i was saying this is going to be turning out to be a very interesting process and i wish you guys luck because i'm a layperson so i'm kind of tough to educate so i expect to be educated to what this process is going to be what these choices as i was listening i heard one little thought about district elections by district in that district applying only that would take away governance of the whole and i'll just use the phrase that would be idiotic i don't think i even should consider that a power cent mayor over the years has brought you problems there's just too much deviation one of the goals you should work for is the mayor should probably be the chair with a couple of c and example would be  having to consider hire their own lawyer because it hasn't even in my mind the present court council's work for the mayor and there's a clear conflict of interest putting the mayor there would eliminate that city had the cooperation corporation counsel working for you guys as a whole which would be a reasonably good thing oh by the way my name is michael coach and i represent concerned american veterans a nother problem i could see if we didn't have a relationship that was so different from the mayor and the county council as an example i'd be getting a lot better help on solving the problem up at the veterans cemetery where there's some idiotic decisions made that i'm finding particularly frustrating what i would really like to see and i this is probably going to make some of the people here feel better than i would like to but i would like to see a strong business person as manager that person would report to the what would become council members if you want to include the mayor the lack of real business sense running the office of the county has the county a whole and more lawsuits than it should be involved in because it seems to me clearly the two sides are working together if you look around the room here you'll find only a few people one of the main reasons that it's happening is i happen to be seventy one years old i'm got my pension my money from the government so i can afford to be here but the vast majority of the working people of this community that these decisions are going to be made by can not be here for my way of looking at it because these meetings are held when the general public they do go disposed to be serving can't be here this whole thing is that irrelevant because the people you're attempting to serve and educate can be here to do so i think they should be left to basically stand alone almost because those are certain qualifications you have to have a business now as far as public works and some of the rest of you want to hire people with good manage managing skills people with people with good understanding of what the accounting needs and how it needs to proceed i mean we can go through examples but there's not really time and by the way  although i do appreciate the business people on the council i appreciate more working the lay people on the council because they're the ones of the county truly has to serve as a whole wonderful website but especially if you're at history attic like i am but it has all of the minutes and all of the activities that each of the charter commissions and the thread that i see branding through every one of those commissions is the amanti that the public didn't attend didn't pay attention so it's great cardless if when the meetings were held and i notice they were held around the county and also in the evenings people just didn't didn't show up so it is it is a thread that has run through each practice but in this case we're talking about the actual change of governance and i have not read that and i agree that having people here is one of the main issues i'm disabled being that there's many outside meetings as possible that gives there are going to be some people particularly if the people are educated to the to what's really at risk here the change on what it's going to cost is the guy save us money is not going to save his money is going to be a good way to go forward to tell you the truth i have no real idea but that's what you guys are here to decide where they're going to put this resolution on the ballot and on now i would like to have the time to go through all the things you were just talking about that i had enough trouble just going through the proceedings this file was at the court also the day just about the veteran cemetery issue and i'm not going to cut any further but i do understand your problem but even if there's a few people you're going to have more than you have here now and if it's publicized right and people are educated what's at stake really at stake you're going to have more people attend i would hope and then if they don't attend they deserve what they get when you make your presentation today i'd be glad to receive a text on that i would look up the stuff but i'd rather just got kind of a list and kind of decide what's happening it's like here ok thank you and i guarantee you this body will be messing with the way we  excuse me chair there is no one further signed up to testify in the chamber i would like to rotate around like a this is there anyone wishing to testify we still don't have there are no objections on our clothes public testimony today we have four items on our agenda and i just want to go over all over each of them as you recall sunshine law limits our discussion to only agenda items so i've decided to pose resolution fifteen dash one fifty five on every agenda so that we can ensure that as a body we can have open dialogue on this pretty much at any time  so we are in receipt of this special committees in receipt of correspondence dated december seventeenth two thousand and fifteen from the chair of the special committee transmitting resolution fifteen the irish one five five intitled establishing the special committee county governance the resolution established a special committee pursuant to the resolution the special committee may consider a whether establishing a council manager form of government would improve management an operation of a county  be placed on the television screen this is our mission and if we ever need to revisit it we can if there is no objections i'd like to move to the next item on the agenda or discussion going resolution was that the committee would have a special professional facilitator and we do we do have one and from what i understand an excellent one let me try and respond to  i had a separate meeting a few last week with her just i don't i don't know or i don't know or work so i wanted to know what she's able to do and stuff like that so we had a discussion i think going forward will be using her i'm thinking it might be the tiegs if we go that way we only have x amount of hours and i thought it's kind of unnecessary to use or in these meetings i think it would be in in our smaller meetings when we need a little bit more focus or i've also asked her to possibly look at giving us parameters in which so that we can make sure we comparing apples to apples and help us to find similar type  next meeting or the meeting after would it be possible to have her given a little bit of time and address and maybe between now and then she might make some county recommended that a task force be established to thoroughly review the structure of county of mali government to research other models of county governments and prepare a report and they said that the council would benefit from our guidance of the similar task force or committee in the nature of a blue ribbon body composed of i don't know it got a steam community leaders from but that's where we are apparently on the question of whether or not the council should initiate a or amendment to establish a county manager of government and if so come up with do come up with one of the way i read this they're telling us to do the work they're not asking us to go out there and get a whole bunch of  testimony and go all over the county that's their job at some of the county councils job so we're supposed to look at it somewhat independently as community members and come up with something or nothing  it's our choice and i kind of like to move i mean there's anybody disagree with that or you have thoughts on the good john and yeah i i feel that part of what were being asked to do is to educate the community through these meetings and it would be able to do a much better job of it if we did take it out to the that unless unless we make what's the process is about and what the options are available to community knowledge it becomes almost impossible for us to make  a true recommend station that tracks along with what the community is feeling and i also do feel and it may just be me that part of our purview has to be to listen to the people say and most people as we've heard in several testimony say they cannot physically do that in this room during working hours so if we do believe that that's part of our hard duty and i do so believe then i think we must go out to the different communities in the evening i know that's not convenient and good government is often not convenient but i do believe that's part of part of our responsibility to this is to help understand help people understand what this is about and in doing so gain a deeper understanding ourselves and then to hear what they have to say about it not just what i look to but also in west maui as we've been asked to do today and you know maybe even from the community so we understand what their interests are and i think we need to look at the processes that we have in place and if they're not sufficient we really look at you know there is opportunity for people to give oral testimony to give written testimony so  there i do know there's also a number of individuals around and i guess groups that are out there doing the education part with the community and they're talking to different people so from the education standpoint there are other groups that are we block them from that conversation and in my experiences of getting the word out whether it's true for a nonprofit or whatever reason social media is kind of the way things are going so i mean we can maybe who have discussions on facebook or whatever snapshot whatever you want to use but just block everybody else that happens to be linked with us through social media or also partner with organizations maybe it's good because each of us come from a different district and i know i've had people within my dish ask me to explain to them so if one of us disclosed to each  organization with an idea she can try to explain what we're doing and then get them interested then maybe they'll come here watch and i'll cop who are coming to our meaning in our own district i had someone from waste my tax payers association approach me that they wanted to talk about what's going on so maybe all of us still need to be there to start off with at least maybe we can just reach out to our own communities and start there as a suggesti g before we do any of that could we start with the part that it addresses for us to do the research so we have something concrete to present and that seemed mean that was my understanding and i may be very wrong but my understanding was we are the research team and we're the research community to look at the history the experience and the possibilities so we have something for them to grasp to as well as i stated earlier i think mary our first person it spoke is that there's a lot of confusion and there are so many possibilities that it's our job i think to make it a little tidy and to do the legwork so that everyone else doesn't have to that doesn't necessarily contradict what other members are saying that you do research and provide a recommendation research the various forms of governance in the mayor council county manager system of governance and i saw eventually building a matrix that compared all three with that side bar of the twenty first sions that the mayor can be and then take that out to the public to after we've done our research i suppose in that using the tigs or whatever that we would come together it's reach consensus on what was what should go into that matrix of comparison and then go out to the community that give us an understanding to that gives an opportunity for the community to benefit from our research and there would be it would be awkward i think it's this point early in the gay without of the research for us to talk to anybody until where up to speed ourselves in the topic is on what what the choices are and i don't see this happening in six months i have an opportunity to go cruise around and go to different communities it's going to be very difficult as my experience on the charter commission was we have a lot of this chair i think maybe the difference here is my understanding of research is education i think the a question last we heard from one committee member last week they're analyzing the cost effectiveness of switching government a tab at a government change someone mentioned there is it as separate education committee on the same topic the cost of government can not be separate from that is there a third committee that's also i don't recall the third ok so just us and the cost committee i'm just trying to find out if there's more i chair i think that we are a little premature at looking at the situation right now i think what we're charged with basically is going to like the idea the matrix i think it's a great idea if we can get the information together put  down all of us agree on how it information is presented then i think in a month or two we start talking about how we're going to be for setting and communicating with the creator so i think we're just a little  the resolution i would also feel we would be premature at this point to do it but looking at the entire process i think that stage will come and we should be starting to figure out how to do that i know that for staff that is a very difficult function to try to arrange community meetings in the evening and then this shakes out i also believe that this is a very different process and function than what the charter commissions have done in the past where for the most part they're doing they're looking at a whole list of kind of small mostly wan also gathered quite a bit of excitement and feel that we might be remiss if we don't start to look ahead and plan how to take it out to the communities and communicate it and listen next week or anything else is to chair the restaurant tomorrow had an interesting point and i'm not her facebook savvy so i'm wondering first of all if  would just require that we not any communication that we had on this on facebook would not include it would have to go in your news or whatever and you wou media or whether it's in personal communication with individuals or community groups i know i feel very comfortable talking about the process and making people aware of what the process is where the meetings are and who you know the names of people on the committee and how they can contact staff i don't feel comfortable with expressing a opinion or a value judgment on the actual subject matter until the committee has a chance to do its work so you know i do feel  something we can all be proponents of and help to get give people the tools to know what's going on and what it's basically about without saying oh i'm for that i'm against  around the county we have several associations like a ca and to arrange a get together with casey is not that difficult and they pull in quite a quite a  member of this committee or chair to go and make a presentation there at this particular advocate at a community association meeting might be of benefit and might get people more involved and more interested in the process you chair succumbing to the problem that i would think would occur or could occur going that route do we have legal representation at the meeting is is you know you're going there single handedly and it gets very powerful and then you get hit with a question that you can answer you might get a response like what's the purpose and we'll leave that one right there but another comment i want to make regarding social media we need to give it a rest any we don't need a one o one at this point we are on time restraints and i can't i can't utilize i think i think if we start going on our own we risk possibly saying something that the committee doesn't agree on and i think the committee's going to speak is all so great people so i think if i may it's probably time to use our facilitator at our next meeting and come up with some some method to go forward i do think we are absolutely premature to be going out to the communities at this point and if it's ok with you i'd like to use our facilitator at our next meeting to come up to help us at least to come up with  our one of our charges is to consider think the term council manager is a correct term but it's council slash it manager in other words those are right now it's council mayor you know might be council slash managers slash mayor or something like that but you know it's not the not one one t thank you for the third item special committees in receipt of correspondence dated december seventeenth two thousand feet gene from your chair attaching three models of county and city government organization structure pointed out to her that i thought that her question was different then what the answer that she god from the gentleman from i c m may and i thought it was important to maybe provide an organizational chart that very quickly you all will understand what the difference is in county governments and city governments in terms of their operations so this is they calumnies organizational chart and if you if you can go down a lot of these functions they are standalone but a lot of them if you will if you other things this is pretty straight forward as to what their responsibilities are at this city government so then if you can go back quickly to the council organization i mean the count organizational chart if you could move up in this case the electorate these round circles are their elected officials but that's just incidental so here are all the departments that they have if you can roll that up so there are the responsibilities are significantly more for a county that they are for a city and if you compare the charts th city responsibilities are very similar to what this county's responsibilities are so that there is a substantial difference even though the name of this is a truly a county and in hawaii but just the function of government is more like a city in other places throughout the country that's all i just wanted i'm not familiar with that model you know i think there's more models than we can imagine well but just from the point of view of the comparison every sponsibility s and helpfully that answers your question  majority of the members of those commissions are appointed by the mayor is that correct yes so we're going to be having to look at if we separate the administrative in the operation who will be the ones appointing those members to those commissions well that's way beyond the scope of what i was trying to show here which was just basically their responsibilities are what their responsibilities are and they're greater for county governments and they are for city governments and because the way the state operates here this stage in many states across the country the states have delegated responsibilities here to the counties that in hawaii the state still still operates and this really i mean the police the fire commissioner oversees the bar department the police commissioner oversees them in ours and fire the police chief they're pretty significant powers and they need originally from the mare with the council's approval so we're going to have a council doing that well some places that's exactly what happens is the board of supervisors selects each board member has the right to a position to appoint a committee question i think you know thank you for that presentation marriage so thousand oaks as versus city and county and our county of maui obviously because of the population is you know we can see where we do we look like we have more employees there that organizational chart as versus wells you know in and the city has about two thousand so again it goes to their responsibility and the greater responsibility the counties not here counties operate a hospital a county hospital they operate as social it's called the general welfare system which means people who are not eligible for welfare for the first sixty days they can get general relief from the county so there are all these social services all the the environmental all the controls a lot of different responsibilities and the point is not to compare the point is that i was trying to show here is simply that when you hear the generic term county and the responsibilities of county they're different and that they can the way this county happens to operate is more like the way he cities operate and nothing more no you know no comparison it was just a clarification and you know my experience has been as an elected official as both a city official and as a county official so i have some  so there was one other thing that i swear i think we can agree there's differences and there's going to be unique situations all over the place and we keep talking about this and that i think we all agree there's different situations we need to go forward and figure out what's best for maui county  that i was put on to it's just in quotations now a county charter if you google that you will get the history of every charter commission all the minutes it were keep it can keep further questions thank you very much we have we normally would take a break at this time but you know we had some people want to go do their christmas parties i'm not going to mention any names or if why don't we calling our meeting back to order we are on our item number four i had wanted to for us to just sort of discuss takes a little bit just just to sort of get a feel for it but b eing that we're going to do our next meeting we're going to have our focus our focused facilitator help us out would it be ok if we defer that discussion to the next