can you please turn over all yourself or anything that you might have i'd like to introduce the members i first of all like to thank all of you for coming on tonight who are appreciate you taking the time and making the effort so i'd like to introduce the members of our committee maj shaper committee vice chair boo my office denise do you have anyone wishing to testify thank you denise could you also send me an e mail if you get testifiers thank you chair the first person here in the room to testify is ton for individuals who will be testifying here please sign up at the desk if you will be testifying from one of the remote testimony locations specified on the meeting agenda please sign up at this office staff at that location testimony is limited to three minutes at two and a half minutes the light at the test fire stand will turn yellow and oh we don't have that i have a stopwatch and i will be monitoring that at three minutes i i was very helpful in helping us put this meeting together this week they waived fees for us and our technical support team is right here and he has just been better government service depends a lot on the competence diligence dedication and integrity of the people who work in government i personally don't entertain an people retain the mayor county council form of government away but the position of managing director was created in managing directors job was simply stated to serv managing director may be removed from office by the mayor only with the concurrence of the county council confirmation by the county council as the legislative body of the county should impress upon the managing director  or her office has a lot more significant in terms of serving the people and advancing the public good than he's or hello you'll get to the mayor or any one individual the second be eligible for appointment of the office of managing director a person must not have been actively openly directly or indirectly or behind the scenes involved in promoting and advancing the election of the pointing mayor or make it more of an independent managers that correct  i'm trying to understand your proposal and what i'm hearing is you're suggesting what i'm hearing you suggesting is that the to make the existing managing director more of an apolitical position thank you very much you've obviously thought about this a lot i like to take you out and i lost my place on your item number two can you tell me what that was again please respon after that was what i'm missing they'll be eligible for appointment of the office of managing director a person must not have been actively openly directly or indirectly or behind the scenes involved in promoting and bunching the election of the appointing mayor or be up to be involved in politics either especially i think you know i really i mean don't like the idea that the end higher department of management becomes the hall of running an election moloko thank you to everybody both committee members of particular for addressing this issue which is very very complex and literally world changing situation i am concerned and thank you to the audience for attending in being involved in caring enough about your community to be very good i'm concerned that many people will address this situation based on whether they like the mayor or don't like the mayor of this particular one who's in office and i would caution that that the action taken by this or whatever happens as a result of this will have no impact whatsoever on the current mayor this is not about liking or disliking the mayor or his actions this is about changing the form of government and i think it's a very critical issue right now this is been set up over several thousand years that we have arrived at this point where we have a legislative branch and executive administrative branch and these two balance each other that's the objective they are not always going to agree they're not going to always disagree hopefully but the point is what what is under consideration here is changing it from this into an oligarch you change it into a situation where power is invested in the county council and specifically in the chairman of the county council and that person in effect becomes imper of maui county you no longer have this you have one person in control if you like that wonderful if you don't you are out of luck there's not much you can do about it i would ask you this committee particularly the intention to charmaine's comments  was not a particular fan of your i mean tomorrow's nor was i an enemy but the point is that this is a lady who was a department head who was on the county council who was mayor and has seen all of it and her suggestions that you tweak the system fine tune it find out where some of the problems are and make it you know osmond's i believe is superior to changing from a you have just one basically one group that is in charge you know to me that that is terrifying that is very very very frightening so i would prefer to stick with basically comes down to the the person who is in charge of the county council is going to have more power and one power and there's not and i'm another thing that i would like to point out when when i need something done within the government i tend to go to the department heads or to the mayor and i get action when i say something to the county council it sits there for new no and that is an important think of the county manager i don't know if you would be allowed to go see the department heads or you if you would even be allowed to see the county  time understanding what your concern is how that differs from what's actually happening and what is happening today is that we do have a balance system we have you know the mayor draws up the budget think that's important is it as efficient as it could be probably not that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to a single system with the county council in charge of everything is going to solve the problem i  really don't think it is i like being able to talk of the department heads to talk to the mayor to be able to put in the newspaper if i have a complaint about the county manager he's not going to listen very well could be so have you ever been in a government that had a county manager you know ok ok well i have and i can tell you that it works very well and it's a input of the department head in submitting it to the confident phreaking it it seems like a similar thing of the checks and balances that you were mentioning i just don't think that there would has a different perspective and i like that balance and whereas if you had a county manager proposing a budget and you know i mean he's giving it to the people that has less authority less ability to make adjustments and changes so i really prefer the way it is right now but i do think the system needs tweaks and change it's change that is genuinely something that is necessary to have a dramatic one day this person is in charge the next day somebody else comes in completely green without knowing what's going on no need to training period in there  that is a very excellent tweak their art some other things that you could do there's no question that you know that some people are able to get things done more than others  chairman and members of the committee we really have two things here one do we change our form of government and how first one of the it's a real brainer it's better to have a professional somebody will it matter jean that huge enterprise running in our county versus the most popular guy on campus which would you want so that's a no brainer now the structure i don't know that's up to you folks and that's the toughie everything's in the details so i wish all the best finding the best guide ronit not the most popular guy around and then figure out haven't had time to do any discussion of what you've heard there just sat there and listen to testimony more so it was a surprise when the committee was asked to vote on the topic the couple of meetings ago when there not been any more than a cursory discussion there even more so that the two questions that you were asked to vote on were not representative of the core issue being addressed by the committee i'd like to offer a simple proposal for governance the present sea elements of the county manager type of structure a council manager or mayor type of structure and would be very straightforward to use as a basis for you to go ahead and discuss what are the pros and cons of the different bullet points you've been provided with this one page outline in your packet and a copy is just been distributed to you again and so i'm not going to sit here and read it other than just say basically we can have an elected mayor the elected mayor would retain many of the responsibilities that he or she have now including you know representing the county being the face of the county retaining a veto so you have a balance there but one of the things that's important i suggested here is vastly better interaction between the council and the mayor one way is just by simply having the mayor attend council meetings one meeting every two weeks you know they should be able to if they have a county manager that really leases them from a lot of those duties that we've heard testimony before consume much of the mayor's time they're going to be able to do that this increases communication it is increases the abilities of negotiate out things ahead of time and to get them done i firmly believe the positions of senior management staff your partner directors deputy directors and a county manager should be long term positions that do not turnover at each mayoress cycle the inconsistency is that happen if you talk to people down in the departments would touch some of the other things in here and retain the veto proposing members of board and commissions as they do now and then would be participating with the council this is one of the choices in the actual well they they could be a tie breaker vote on council but discussion i think  when the testimony that you provided as it comes into my mind that please tell me if i'm incorrect that you're really talking about the responsibility that the mayor would mean i would see that the council if we look at how the structure of balance opposed to work council comes up the policies they get septum they vote on and they put them into effect the mayor carries them out or the manager would oversee to make sure those things are carried out as well or and so i see that with the mayor and the council kind of participating closer together in the development of policy and the oversight of the manager who then is going to make sure the departments carry out those policies you have a much more consistent a fish and professional level of management so i'm i don't understand it your thought is that they may or interacts with the consul on a much structures where the mayor is actually a member of the council and some councils a just the mayor gets elected by the council every couple of years just like a council chair would be so that wouldn't be popular elected to be elected by the council who of course are elected by popular i think what we've heard in talking to people out of community meetings that at you know co on us and rotary meetings things like that is that people want to be able to vote for a mayor and so this gives the mayor lots of things to do lots of responsibility but it sets that really management side under a professional person who's not subject at least not much subject to to the types of pressures from from whether it's cronyism or political money or you know having to work to make sure the boss this topic only relatively recently i know all of you have been meeting for quite a while and i haven't followed all of the details from the beginning it's obviously a very complicated subject in the details are important i haven't had a chance to look at some of the previous you know videotaped testimony and some of the documents that have been submitted  particular i found the testimony that mark presented recently and some of the documents that he submitted in support of his testimony to be very compelling and m focus is really an echo of what the two previous tested by others have emphasized which is that you know obviously the county is facing some very serious long term challenges in terms of housing and water and infrastructure regenerative ag you know there's a very long list and it  seems clear to me that what's required are career professionals to lead the county in addressing these challenges and my understanding of  proposal for a county manager system of government is that that form of government is more likely to promote that kind of situation so i'm here in support of  that idea and i think it would be great if you could get as far as putting a proposal on the ballot for november i think that would help get citizens sort of up to speed on what the responsibility to make that decision and i want to thank you all for taking time out of your lives to serve on this committee this is a unique opportunity to do have to change our form of government and to for ever save the taxpayers a significant amount of money now and counting has a government that looks like the typical of cities big cities all across the united states cities with a population of more than a million dollars more than a million expensive i just counted up the people on your organization charts that are listed as being direct appointees of the of your of our elected officials there is over fifty and most of them as we saw in the paper this morning are very well paid i estimate your spending over five million dollars a year on all those people that may not be much for the city of honolulu or los angeles but i think five million dollars is a lot of money to the people here in maui most governments the size of maui want to lower cost approach and that's where the council manager structure with professional departments head where it was invented that system doesn't work and how do i know because i did it i was an elected councilman in the city and one in in los and in california of the same size as maui about one hundred thirty thousand people and we had the same services as ma police planning roads water sewer busses the whole the whole gamut that we see here and i was the elected mayor elected for twelve of the twenty years i served on the council as the elected mayor and we ran that city with basically a city manager for directors for department for deputy city managers and three administrative assistants compare that five million dollars worth of staff all plus to other people that you still have to and that model is not unique it is used all over the country it is used all over california and cities don't start to get to this independent elected mayor until they get up over a half a million people and i hope they're nice and i'm hoping i'm not alive to see that here and now and i would suggest as a second thing that the elected may that you do keep it on like that mayor that needed to be interfacing with the government on a walk though you need the elected mayor and they should be chair of the council and they should be the person that runs the king the chairs the meetings and i will tell you as an elected mayor you have a lot more clout than just the chair of the council because you're the person that can talk to the city manager all of them can talk to them one on one but you can't discuss things of any significance or you run into the sunshine law when you talk to more than that so i would exi you keep that that you put this forth to the council you ask the people to support it and you save us all that five million dollars thank you and if you it's not a question since you've been involved in this in th structure one of the common themes that we hear about people that are concerned about this is checks and balances on a balance you know having a council with the mayor to kind of balance things out but what's your interpretation out or is that a problem  have member counsel and i can guarantee you there are more than enough checks and balances on that for me and you have nine on your counsel here you have a pretty broad selection of people and there will be checks and balances because ultimately you have to go back if you want to do anything significant you want to reorganize things you want to build something you want to pass a law you've got to go back to the council and get five votes and that's just a fact of life and so i don't think it's ever caught up with anything and the maven the mayor there doesn't have the ability to order the city manager to do something that is not already approved by the by the council in los angeles what were you doing there i was in and it's in a city outside of los angeles in california i was the i was on the council for twenty years twelve of them as the elected mayor the elected mayor elected mayor and we and we went to an elected mayor because as everybody knows everybody wants to elect the mayor and so we had one so would you say that when you when did you leave there i left i retired and from ninety eight yes ok so when you left there do you believe that you left that city and county in as good a shape as you possibly could absolutely and in fact i watched them and i guess i would have to say that they probably haven't they they continue along the same path we california cities have to be very frugal because they don't have the promise of the ability to just raise the property taxes so you have to do things very efficiently and our city was very efficient and i believe it still continues to be so this is a city of some a valley thank you thank you so much yes jonathan  and had a vote on the council i also reviewed the agenda before it went to the council and tried to make sure that everything was all put together before it got there and of course the mayors all have their wonderful things of all the things they get to go to and proclamations they get to given all that stuff in addition to that the mayor is the representative to all the governmental bodies so you're the one that talks to the legislators you're the one that talks to the county and in california there are twelve thousand different layers of government that float around there's associations of governments there's anyway you talk to all of those and in addition to that you're the person that the city manager calls when he says gee i've got this problem and i don't know what to do about it and i can't go and ask the whole council what do you think and so you have to have a sense of what you believe your council would agree to and manages in that sense what was the selection process for the manager and what was the evaluation process for the manager and for the administrative side of government we did i hired two city managers during my twenty years and we we did searches national national searches for city managers and then selected the  best applicants from that from that group and we used korn ferry i think for one and i don't remember who you yeah there but we did a national wide search for city managers and city managers  r are there's old a number of people that do him and was a second part did you have an annual evaluation yes no he had we had an annual evaluation of the city manager and of all the department heads and all  department heads the council only employed the city manager and the city attorney but the department heads all work sort of at the i guess i would say worked or worked for the city manager under contract  could be terminated at his whim i guess is what you'd have to say but basically under contract so we have valuated the men gave feedback to the city manager on how all of the partment has are doing their job you've heard testimony and people come in and talk about how to made recommendations on how they would have the the mayor elect did and how what their role would be on the council it's in they would have two votes they want a tie breaker box would be an additional one as one understand just real simple how you guys did it and how that elected mayor was determined well the elected was something that i do feel that people believe that they need an elected mayor and from what i've seen here on maui in the fifteen years i've been here i believe that an elected mayor is a good thing to have and  as the chair of the council you now know what your what your fellow council member feel and i think they should be put he should be put on the air she should be put on the council you know and then you get to that question of what do you have nine or ten or eleven or twelve you know how many people do you have to have and it is good to have an odd number obviously so you either need to scrunch the council down the eight or boost it up to ten the rest of them you know you have them here on one boat right just you know and so there was no regulations at all there is a wave slashing through the nation about whether or not that's legal and there's a lot of diversity and the rap about the government of government run this progressive movement county managers is it has lower turnout so has less community participation in the government what was your voter turnout like in your community well very high i mean it was up in the seventy eight percent ok that's news that does differ in the hand research i yeah i don't know counseling whoever councilman they thought was closest to their feelings or something and i would expect here in in maui although i can't say i see at all that people would go to their councilman here but i  did have a friend of mine who was a councilman in l a and in l a you don't go to the mayor i mean that's just you don't you go to the council and the councilman runs his district and he's kind of the little mayor in the district  city in california running to fifty a year did you have a turnover i mean did he stay well she did well i lost one the county stole the city manager made him the county turnover early on but that was because the council turned over and sometimes when the council turns over the city manager turns over to if you were to look at the demographics of simi valley can you give us possibly a profile of what those demographics might be simi valley is a typical suburban community you know on the edge of los angeles and people commuted to los angeles we were the safest city in america four years in a row of the size of one hundred thousand or or greater i think they're down the second now but it's pretty low yes it's one of the safest cities of that size  good evening my name's steve goldsmith been here on maui fifteen years speaking here as an individual and thank you for volunteering i too was asked to volunteer once and that's what i want to speak about tonight and thank you mr mayor for giving first hand and i hope to give you firsthand what it's like one of the ministration changes over i was asked by the mayor during his first first ministration to join the costa government commission it found out i taking over and i heard some of our testimony and i'd like to record set the record straight where really happened with me that's about as nice as i can say to her we were an advisory committee so we chose to choose energy or housing and those were the story those were the two things she said near election that she want to focus on so we chose energy we got her energy commissioner in front of us we started asking questions is clearly unqualified he had no goals but we tried to help with what was we try to work with them set some goals by the second meeting we got the word from the administration do not talk to the energy commissioner of the and then he ever again so then we switched over to the we said you know there's no ordering department which there is now it would really be nice to have an auditing department so we spoke to her county manager her manager who told us i'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off to  even talk to me for one year i mean literally this is what she said for anything more than just day to day operations putting out fires i'm drowning here i mean that's what it's like when ministration changes over from either mine or we then thought there's all this state money shouldn't there be now we lobbyists so we asked and the the answer was oh you know there used to be lobbyists again what happens when an administration changes over so without ever saying anything again within two weeks there was a lobbyist for the mayor and there was a lobbyist for the county council and then we later learned they were actually lobbying separately differently for the same only county it was it to another disaster we talk about separation of power this is for a hundred sixty thousand people you just need a good group of people with the same direction focusing on where they're going and setting goals to me personally the ideal which i don't think will happen just have a nine council members have a mayor elected from those nine from the nine council members the one or two year term they're just a leader of the council and they also do ceremonial like the mayor spoke of i don't think that's going to happen i think we're going to still want to elect a mayor is but to me that's the compromise not just tweaking the system like the mayor to ours was talking about were so beyond that and i just want to emphasize the power that all of you have i know it can be boring sometimes being a volunteer but you have the impact the if the possibility to change about the county for hundreds of years here for early start children and grandchildren as far as cost savings it's always blows me away that people are talking about whether it's one hundred fifty grand or four hundred grand her county manager the having that conversation is insane typically throughout the country the savings are approximately ten percent ten percent of six hundred million to sixty million my calculations are closer to twelve to sixteen percent i think going to save almost one hundred million a year when we switch not the first year of the sle we switch over to goal oriented professional management where i am so tired of getting e mails no trash pickup this week in play and only council versus mayor it's just happening everywhere r just to be clear it sounds like what i'm hearing is that you're saying that a a professional nonpolitical administrator would be a preferable situation working in tandem with council and elected council and elected mayor it was pretty clear to me that's what you said ok if i if i could just respond to those i forgot the voter turnout thing if you're ever on a committee and people don't show up it's usually because you're doing a good job usually and the state is talking about the afternoon thanks for the opportunity to testify my name is dave taylor i'm the director of water supply i'm testifying as an individual and my comments are my own and don't represent the department or the administration so i work for the county for about twenty four years i've been a civil servant i'm an appointee now i was a manager of a division i did a stint as deputy managing director a decade ago i've been in the department as elections have happened we've split off departments new directors of i've moved to set or etc so i have all things you've talked about i've experience for the last twenty four years i've watched a lot of your deliberations not every word i'm just going to share a couple of observations comments suggestions i've seen a lot of people debate different types of governance and yet i haven't really seen too many people put their finger on the problem we're trying to solve and everyone saying you know this is the right way to do it but i haven't really heard too many people say this is the problem we're trying to solve for example if we're saying that there's none of roads being paved well that's probably a resource problem not a governance problem if the problem is that the only roads that get paved are in front of the mayor's friends house that's probably a governance problem so i think if there was a little more discussion from the public about what are the problems and we look back in ten years how will we know if we were successful you can say a change of government governance likely to achieve that so that's my first just observation recommendation second i want to point out that there are four different ways that managers directors are chosen about a dozen the mayor points directly  another three of us where the mayor appoints the council approves there's four that are chosen by committees or commissions fire police liquor and personal services and three that are chosen directly by the council director per director of council services chosen directly by the council county auditor in the county clerk so we have four different ways we choose managers i wonder if the committee wants to look at all are some better than the others do some have these problems to some not the other counties do these in different ways my counterparts on all three islands are chosen by commissions or boards in that case and they are sort of semi permanent managers until something changes are those water departments run better than ours are they worse today have the same problems i think just a comparison of what we have might shed some light on will this solve these problems the last thing i want to talk about is for kitchen friction has to happen in democracy somebody mentioned the newspaper this morning the newspaper this morning basically is saying the mare is saying we should do something different so members of the council are saying well maybe not you have to have that friction in democracy so if we're not going to mayor whose job is it to say we should do something different if we have a city manager a county manager they're supposed to follow the council are they supposed to say we should do something different and have friction there or is it the council chairs job to say hey we should do something different then the friction is there there has to be friction or there can be no movement so i think the other thing i think the committee should think about where do you want friction what are the problems where we've seen the problems not have the problems and where do you want to put the friction whose job is it to say we should do it differently and i think if you compare what you're looking for with what people are saying you might find that leads you to a solution supply i'm running the county water utility it's about eighty million dollars a year operation my last job that's an appointed job my last job in the county was running the county waste water recycle water utility which is just a little bit less probably sixty seventy million dollars a year and that was a civil service manager division chief job which was not appointed by jobs almost the same as it was in that job and there's really no difference to me about how i manage being an appointee or being in that job so my counterparts on the other islands as i mentioned are sort of appointed by their boards they run things the same way i do so i haven't heard any problems talked about that are so large that i've seen a reason to change governance to solve them i see no reason to change maybe little parts of the charter different laws are helping they're done but i haven't heard anything so grand of the problem  think the solution has to be changing governance and i'm i don't understand why we change government unless we can find a problem that we can recognise that is so large that we say it's worth the effort and this is the only way to solve it so if we can identify that you know my mind might change but i haven't yet heard a problem so big that it leads to a governance change ok i appreciate your response thank you transparency more efficiency more effectively in our government so they are expressing the problem now it's maybe a generalized problem but the problems of people certainly are experiencing and you know one of the reasons affect a big reason why we're all here is to take a look at different form of government which may or may not include a governor a mayor and i think we're all sort of biased towards having an elected mayor getting to that point where we have a more efficiently running government by a professional individual so i think we have had those at all and so expressed yes those have you have you heard that type of thing in the testimony i've been listening to that my my point was that's a problem we all recognize that every level of government it's not efficient but to say it's not efficient well what is inefficient are your water bills too high you  know if you're going to say well that's the problem the water bills are too high ok you can dig into that and say would governments change that so just saying we want more efficiency or run better government more transparency there's some discussions about you know reports that people didn't have access to if you put your finger if we could put our finger on what we want to see these things every year maybe those can just be solved simply is documents that are put on a website you know i don't know that the transparency needs governance change maybe it does but you know i'm an engineer and so we're trained in engineering school to start really putting arse fifty percent of our effort into identifying the problem and then the solutions become obvious when i go to a lot of public meetings and people start advocating for solutions and i sit in the back and say well what exactly is the problem they are in the back of my neck sort of stands up because i'm wondering how are we going to recognize a solution if we haven't really clearly stated the problem and that's what i'm saying not a general problem be more efficient but a specific problem what's inefficient what's the measurement what would we see ten years later that would tell us hey we this and i think if we define a little better we'll be able to compare change of governance to see if it might solve ok thank you very much going along with that is there because it is very difficult to define what is the level of the patience i agree with you and what needs to be i think people can give you a general summation of what needs to be improved overall generally is there a difference between a professional manager running a government and a political appointed individual running a government into terms of generating efficiency and effectively  you know and has issues come up a lot and i don't know that any one person can answer that all i can say is what i shared i've essentially had almost a very similar job as a professional manager where i was a division head that's a civil service career position  i was running the waste water utility and now me political appointee were running the water utility i can tell you and most people who know me would say i'm doing exactly the same type of management i did that so to me i don't see any difference the public really wants talk of you not me maybe they see a difference but i can tell you in either job i have never been asked pressured to do anything differently because i was a political appointee then when i was a civil service manager i'm not thank you very much i'm not really talking about now a county only i'm talking about nationwide my adult life i moved here when i was twenty two i worked in maui county most of my career i know the people on the other islands i don't have any professional experience though i know people in those other places i can say is in my business waterways water utility management there's all sorts of different policies whether it's private ownership public models ours with with political appointees public models run by boards and long term managers i meet and know these people for years and we all manage the same way i feel like i could switch places with any of them in any of those models and what i do day to day wouldn't change at all and maybe that's water wastewater utility management and not other things this is where my experience is i can tell you with water waste water utility management i don't see the managers doing anything different in any of the different thank you proposal to talk about the tweaking rather rather than doing the full the full change there's a proposal right now in front of the county council required on the part and heads appointed by the mare through receive approval of the council you have any thoughts on the you know it hasn't been you know i probably watched as he said there's three of us that are approved by the council in for paying attention to this for at least you know fifteen years i probably watched half of the half of the confirmation hearings between water directors and corporation counsel and prosecutors most of them have been very professional a few i've seen sort of term political in my view mine i had to confirmations they were both very professional is long as they're professional they're fine when they turn political they can be problematic so one of the one of the issues that i've heard repeatedly from people who have been brought up is is the idea of continuity and that i think the mayor actually told us when he came in at the key is responsible to elect twenty four and he he ended up switching out twenty three and it's not an issue of quality of manager or person but i think there's a real continuity issue you know gave us statistics that is under mao county that the the average ten years of same as nationally so we should be thankful of that but the issue that isn't being address all the changes happen at once and it all happens because of the change one individual so i just want to get your idea on ideas if you were to tweak it under this current set up what tweaks how would you get around that even if you have a situation where a mere appoints and the council confirms you're still in a same position where you have complete turn over every time there's a mare i don't know there's any perfect answer to that i can tell you and i know you've heard this before i've seen it discussed at this committee the division heads are sort of like the sergeants in the army they're supposed to keep things running so when i was a division head not only did i get a new director but we split off and became a new department my job was to keep the wastewater system operating you know as the new director got up to speed learned about policy issues and i always look at it this way directors are supposed to come into direct policy not operations operations are supposed to go on put garters of whether or not there is a director or not and so if that's how it's set up or the division heads are keeping the trains running on time and the directors and deputies are really policy people well then there shouldn't be a huge problem with switching if on the other hand you're not running the department correctly and you've got directors doing daily task management that's going to be a real problem so i can tell you that in the two departments that i've been in that is you know of it we've made sure that management is done at the division level policy is really done that the director level and you can deal without any changes of policy for a couple months while somebody comes up to speed oh good evening thank you so much for letting me be here i do not take for granted what it means to be able to stand here and have a voice and for that i truly do thank you and you all have received testimony  that to the side because i've been listening to a lot of things and i don't want to spend any more time sort of repeating and rehashing what's been said but i wanted to back up a little bit because some of the other testimonies have sort of given me rise to want to talk about how we got here the previous testifier was mentioning not really understanding what the problems were and i think there's a very logical imperiously based research method available for why that happened very simply we have two opposite ends of the spectrum absolutely correct all things being equal they produce very different results different results they can only create what they were molded to make when you have a mayor council formed government he leads economic development he champions political responsiveness he's accountable to the community and the influences and that's the job that's the guy you hire that's the guy you vote for if he's successful in those initiatives you have what we have now and what we have now is explosive population growth issues with immigration and severely lagging infrastructure which sounds exactly like the united states did during the reform so now go back there that's when they decided to do the manager council the reason they wanted a manager is for all the reasons we've discussed ad nauseum but just to recap they are utilized to specifically and again you're right this is not about the current administration historically speaking they mitigate the corruption they resolve inefficiencies they oversee management and they allow for equitable enforcement and i need to be very clear that's one of the issues that people are so passionate tonight it's an issue of equity the real is the reality of that  one hundred years of research sense then tells us again and again if we do this this is what we create if we do this this is what we create so if we put in and if we switch over to this county farm manager form of government we are looking at a place that economic development stagnates political responsiveness not so much no one's really accountable so in short my solution like everyone else's is it has to change it has to be both i just don't feel like we got to keep flying all the way to honolulu before we get to big island let's just go to big island stop somewhere in the middle thanks so much should be an executive task i think it should be a legislative task i think that there should be a county manager absolutely i think it could be a very we get to get the egos out of the way this is not about a division of power it is not about who gets to control what it is a delegation of power you hire the guy that's the great politician because he influences in gage mn even if he makes people feel they show up to vote right but on the other hand you have to have someone who's walking out in force mitt it cannot be the mare right now enforcement is not happening because in his defense the mayor should not be focusing on that it's not with this model is designed for him to do enforcement needs to go to an enforcer who then is able to do keep performance indicators and ask more questions start asking how many permits did we do ask how long the process took the outcome was how many appeals did they have to do how long did the response time take a manager regardless of the industry takes those outcomes and that's how they jointly end separately that's the answer to the power and control model there jointly and separately responsible to the legislature by remaining executives but their article and it's about sort of if we have two ends of the spectrum if they dissolve together in the most perfect way what does that look like and so it's ultimately the sort of amalgamation it's it's literally we start walking towards a type three city that we we get to define it with all due respect to simi valley we have more diversity than that we're not rich white people we just are so we're over a thousand square miles it's two different animals let's keep it up all the apples there's a  table in here very simple but it shows sort of as they diffuse how they mesh together and if you go from one end of the spectrum and it identifies about ten or eleven different components and you guys can just kind of pick and choose i'm not an expert in howard county works i'm not an expert at politics i mean business and regardless of the industry management principles remain the same the c e o the job is not to walk out management the c e o s job is to remain visionary if nobody's creating vision there's no job for the manager that's where that back and forth of delegation so that there still is sort of that two party i don't know what the right answer is i feel like even if it were say the managing director and we just take that office and  throw the money out for a minute all things being equal let's say that if the if the mayor is involved maybe the mayor has three recommendations or something like that or maybe there's a vetting process that the council gets to go through and maybe it's just an open panel that there are three people or they get to at least i don't know review the resume but i think a lot of this and a lot of the concerns with transition can be answered because when you have better performance indicators people are coming into their position with at least an annual if not very clear expectation of what their measurable outcomes are what their benchmarks are because the council already figure that out the manager's job is to walk it out if that person is at above or below those benchmarks we know what coming into transition so if the transition in the downtime is truly an issue until there's money to make up for it the solution in that is better qualifications better experience if it took me six months to get acclimated to my new job i would no longer be employable you get about three weeks you know you figure it out and you go if you're qualified if you're experienced and if that needs to be rewritten into the charter to make some of those tweaks maybe that's where you pull in some of those  standards in the code of conduct and rewrite it that way but again i would caution we don't want to get two bullet points about the qualifications because there are times that common sense and compensating factors trump what's on the paper so you kind of talked about tightening up the minimum qualifications and things like that whether or not that is done in vision the managing director then selecting the director or would it be as it is currently with the mayor selecting them with the tate in the qualification or if the qualifications don't get to it enough do you think you would be better for the hired managing director to select the department head and would you have a problem with them  the mayor's tenure i have the privilege of having no idea but my best guess would be is i think that if the standards were tightened up from my perspective it's six one half dozen of the other so taking the standards that's those again those are policy changes that are charter amendments  again because we're not talking about the current administration it just changes who we look for the election it's a different kind of guy it's a different kind of girl it's who's going to work together who's going to do this correctly you guys know if you've got someone who's an incredible salesperson and someone who's an incredible accountant being equally incredible they can switch places so you don't hire someone that's an accountant salesman you bring it down and divide it out and that's exactly what has to happen with the staff and i think a lot of the findings will see that for every argument on one side there's an argument to the opposite of that so we're just going to have to bring it into the middle  in very carefully and you said you were not for change yet you are suggesting a lot of changes so the way that i understand and i'm getting to the question before he starts scolding me there is a we can't suggest policy changes for things that are in the charter in order to change the charter we have to have a charter amendmen so i understand with the understanding that you would support a charter amendment say for changing the qualifications for department heads which some of them just say five years experience that's the only qualification are you asking if i would recommend the qualifications get changed yes ok so in order for qualifications to get changed requires a charter admin ok so you would be in  that if that's what needs to get done to make it effective absolutely that's the job i mean what i was point what i was pointing out was in essence you're saying yes i am for change but wish there was a better way to  policy where to be ideal but if it's got to be charter it was got to be a chartered affair and i guess what i'm saying is from a management perspective what i'm saying is without having to understand the  loops in the committees i certainly don't don't pretend to but what i know for sure is if we're going to go all the way and come back somewhere and meet in the middle is that perhaps the most effective incremental first step to gain public support to not use voter participation to continue with economic development while someone steps in and says this is the policy or walking it out and now we can show you why that policy is broken let's take it back to the top and fix it it doesn't matter to me which paper needs to be moved as long as the process mo both how you get there that's all debatable and as far as a week may or versus a strong mayor i just don't see that happening the mayor is the mayor in a mayor as a figurehead is strong in an advocate for policy change and reform those things are measurable if the weaker the strong comes from enforcement then we've got to shift our  followed by a lot of cargo first ever i'd like to really thank you all for holding this meeting in the evening so we don't have to take off work in order to come and testify so i really appreciate you letting us have a voice tonight  i'm here to testify in support of a maui county manager and i believe i like mark hyde idea where the county county council will elect the county manager but the people will still elect the county council and the mare and the mayor will have veto power over the county council so that's the idea or what i would support and i support this because i think we can be way more efficient and we can hold our elected officials and the county manager more accountable one of the official sees apparently in this county manager type of government you save about ten percent of ten percent of the money so if we could save seventy million dollars every year be a benefit that's a veil years entire operational budget in the water so if we can give him entire operation budget by saving that money be really amazing also i think what tomorrow bolten pointed out when she ran for mayor i think it's ridiculous to marry has fifty two people in his office and honolulu has i think twenty two if i'm correct so you can ask her about that when you're deliberation fifty three twenty but anyways you can ask her about that in your deliberations so it's a grotesque amount of money being spent in the mayor's office and we could be far more efficient like the mayor from california said so and then the last thing i think when the county manager actually appoints these directors and hires a direction he's hiring them based on their qualifications and not whether they got three hundred thousand dollars in super pac money in the last election or whether they work for monsanto so i think there's actually accountability and there's a process to hiring really good talented people to be the directors of these departments so in closing i do support the county manager position and i really hope that you guys give us the opportunity to debate this as a community and vote next november so i ask you to support this amendment and and give us opportunity to vote and support our democracy for me but i want to do a little bit of clarifying with dr whelan there is a couple of days alter and seventy six years old i have been here is sixteen years and prior to that i spent sixty years  county city manager in my community and i can tell you that the world does not come to an end by switching to that i believe the county or city whatever one where the experiences and all these communities i work for a company that transferred me a lot the manager was hired by his account so there was no  lot more sense and when people say there is no opportunity for people to have a say in anything we have elected to council we have a lot of say we can recall them it it was more than one turnover and eight years was the selection process and evaluation process basically the selection process  city council hired a search operations group to find them candidates and said within the parameters that they wanted and they recommended i don't know the number anywhere from three to five downside to having professional on merit based management convincing people that not having an elective marriage is not a of any statistics regarding turnout in those types of government in the northwest states it stayed the same or actually went up a little but i don't really know the reason it went up a little bit in places like arizona and others it dropped a little bit but not substantially and you know i can't go down very far lot committee members mahalo for volunteering to this committee and thank you for scheduling a night i was a little bummed out because we do have two other big meeting that a lot of people are attending that wanted to be here too so but anyways you know i am here again in strong support for a county manager model and as mentioned before i believe it is a critical time county to take a more progressive approach at how things are handled and i think the people of mali deserve a system where there is someone held accountable for county operations it is extremely difficult to impeach mare when he or she is doing a poor job there for a county manager just seems like the the right solution because now we have the ability to adequately assess his or her performance and if the manager fails at doing a good job then the council has the ability to terminate their contre like a regular job like a regular business if your employees not performing then you know will bring someone more qualified more experienced  you know i want to just reiterate what i don't know her name but she pretty much nailed it and so she did a killer job but on top of that i'm pretty distraught at how much funding is being our tax dollars being spent in the mayor's office currently it's it's pretty disturbing considering there's a lot of other entities that are in desperate need of funding so therefore again i'm in strong support of a county manager model i want us to be more progressive and i think i think you as the committee members don't really have anything to lose by putting it on the ballot and letting the people of  our community have a voice and have the opportunity to decide how we're going to move forward you know the last meeting dave did the on had had mentioned about low voter turnout and i want to tell him that i did a lot of my own personal research after that meeting and quite frankly a lot of the districts that i looked in our counties that i looked into they average about seventy to eighty percent which is far more better than mollie not saying that that's to solve the issue but i know a lot of people don't vote because they don't believe in the system they think the system has failed they don't like the way it's being operated so i think by having a county manager again i reiterate that i hope it will help voter turn out in the future so hollow and strong support of a county manager thank you thank you very much manager the big push for me as i mentioned last time i testified is the appointment one of the earlier testifiers mentioned that the things that you're upset with this current administration that this is going to change those things but what i think was have and is this current administration has highlighted some areas that the system is broken and when you can use appointments to springboard political careers or pay back favors that's a broken system you know and this is where we live this is a community it's much more important than political careers and paying back favors and we need people in the you know that are great for the job has also made some great points i mean hearing david's credentials and how long he's been working in the water supply and being an engineer and now he's running so maybe that's a good appointment you know maybe if we can find people like that that are that are actually meant for the job not just you know like i said giving favors then that's where i see this being broken somebody mentioned earlier too that we need to find out what we don't like or what the bore you dave actually that we need to find the the problem can address the solution that is a problem to me another problem is that the person who's running the county the political aspect of that you know needing to be a right reelected every four years and therefore as we've heard you know earlier this year that your sole job as a department head is to help that person get reelected no that's not your sole job your sole job is to run that department and it should have nothing to do with somebody getting reelected and so i think that's another area that's broken that we can look at fixing and so this will fix those areas so i think that speaks directly to what dave was mentioning is finding a problem so we can find a solution and there's two or three really big problems that could be fixed by this th that we could be right the charters and and mccain to structure in that sense instead of the other since there were look you know there's no different ways to approach the problems that are being identified so could it be solved if we changed instead of changing the entire thing what i'm asking is that they also be resolved if we change the way in which we did things under the current structure and i'm sure there probably are other solutions that could come up and maybe there's another task force that's formed a look at those but to one of you guys are tasked with now is looking and i think that that will solve that problem and so i think what the purpose of this task force was is do we move this forward you guys are asked by the county to take a look at this and say ok should we move this forward and what i'm saying is yes i think this is you elaborate on some of the technical aspects in the way you would see fit in other words would there be a mayor what would the mayor's function be what would the process that came out of still having a mare and it's more you know showing up in britain cuttings doing things like that as far as betting and finding qualified people for the positions for the department heads that's again what my major concern is that we don't have you know the right people running these departments that are operational you know the bare operations of our county and i think those can come through a hiring board whether that's the county council or not you know we heard our mayor speak to this exact thing at the last house fire the last meeting where he said i didn't i didn't choose these appointments but i did choose the people who chose them and i won't tell you who those people are so it and i mean it's like let me be really transparent but at the same not be transparent at all you know i didn't i didn't appoint these people i pointed people to point them and i won't tell you no point of that you know who those people are i mean come on you know i mean so i think that there's we got to do better than that we've got to have qualified people running our county charter to solve the problem it would appear so and knowing that now that it's every ten years that you can meet to take a look at the charter i would go back to paul this question that you had earlier if we can make this through a charter change and that sounds like that's not adequate way to handle this is the next charter change or next time again look at the charters maybe in another what six four years that i would change my answer there and say no that doesn't seem like that's out of the way to handle the ok thank you question about where it stand on this i'm just wondering whether it isn't time to start you've heard and heard and heard and time to let the facilitator do the job she's getting paid to do and run the discussions amongst all of you and that's all i have to say thank you you have a question marge could you lay out what a facilitated discussion might look like as we really haven't had a chance to discuss facilitated discussion is one that doesn't get out of hand and every one has a chance to work within the parameters and answer the question or try to answer the question that's been given to you it's not changing the whole charter you're looking at one very small section of it and you're looking at a way just to improve or give the electorate a chance to vote on improving the way that we run this county and i would like to see a time when you can all start putting in what you have gleaned from all this testimony at this point which has only been about ninety five percent favor of this system but at this point being able to air it and look for what the differences are there are obviously going to be different opinions there are this many members there are going to be this many different opinions on how this should go but ultimately it's got to be up to you to hash out how this should work and i think we're getting in the way at this point well thank you and i am proud of this process is going through an intelligent questions being asked so it's great to see this process working are we tired of crony politics yes we all are very tired of that and that's what this is really about and we've seen that for too many years in too many administrations and the cronyism going through or do i feel that i appointed that the council appointing a city manager is a better way of doing that to avoid that yes i definitely do  my question is the way that we were voting for our county council members in order to do that we are investing all the power in the council members right we don't have a checks and balance so is the way they were electing our council members correct the current method of at large voting where basically a population center of the island is deciding who is going to be our count cancel numbers so we have the concentration of the voting basically coming from my  kukai district basically voting all of our council members in so our council does not represent the interests of the other parts of the island they basically represent the interests of the main population center and we all know that is pretty voting is the way to go the problem is this trip voting has been proposed many times by different committees over the years and i look at dates back to the eighty's when various commissions have been going through trying to get this prick voting but the county council has never gone for allowing district voting to be put before the people as a charter member change i can understand how the county council would want to have a appointed city manager county manager because that vast the power back in the county council is to their advantage to eliminate the office the mayor and the friction that that causes but it has not been to the county council advantage to decide to put a  a district voting measure before the people and change the way it's been done there were polling done in two thousand and ten by a west value group which she showed like seventy five percent of the people in favor of district voting ye this is not happened so for me the red flag is do we really have representation all district do we really have representative council members representing the districts they're from this idea that ok well they reside in the area but they're elected by the whole by the county at large doesn't mean that say third person who lives in up country maui represents the country values before their county council so i would put it to really think about this before we just all the power and county council that we need to fix the way that we're voting for and get district voting thank you  so this is my opinion that changing the way the county's elected is probably outside the scope of this group and we're here to look at a county manager and i understand your frustration with the elect the council but given those two things do you think you would use since we're not them doing thing with the election of how the councils elected do you think that this is something we should be addressing at this time accounting manager i think it's something that yes the county manager i believe is a better fairer way of to do it and it takes a cron the professionalism into the system with a county manager is definitely the way to go so we eliminate the crony politics what i want is that you asked several questions about what are the problems that are trying to be solved let me try to go some through some of these issues one one thing is that various departments in the county have side operate right now in silos and it's not a good way to bring these departments together i believe a county manager would be a person who could call the chairs of the department to chairs together talking directors together and begin working to improve the lin between the various departments another problem right now the political head of the county the mayor and i'm not speaking against allen or previous banners but they depend on political contributions and if you look for example at the present administration you will find that many many of the department directors executive assistants deputy department directors have given political contributions to the mayor's campaign not only as initially before they got elected but afterwards for the second election to keep their jobs i would like to see that problem gotten rid of i think what i'm really going to ask you to do and there are many other problems out there there's a separation for example the council members are not allowed to speak to the departments directly or less they want to go all the way up to the mayor and come down rather than trying to get a quick answer from some of the departments i want to break down those barriers and so i'm going to asking you is not the green sheet that i handed out to you has a bit of a framework what i'm urging is that you give this paper to your facilitator and have or have to she's listen to all the discussions that are gone add some of the items perhaps to this list of things that be considered so that you next time at your meeting have a facilitated discussion on what might want to balance what proposal you could make you've heard enough to say from the public at these meetings that this should be a change and least the public should be given an opportunity to vote on this as a charter and you should see what the recommendation could be to the council i would urge that you make a recommendation that be put on the ballot there are various things that are in this little list that i've given you here for one thing one job the mayor would have would be work with the county manager to repeal the graft of the budget which the council would eventually adopt mayor would not make the budget but would as the president does with the help of the county manager who has been in day to day touch with all of  qualifications should be the professionally or experience wise those of criteria that would be used to select the part we don't have that now and several departments adequately i my own experience and i've worked a lot with various county governor says that a number of the department directors are excellent and i'm sorry david taylor left because he's one department director and i disagree on many issues but i believe he's professionally competent has done a good job with the water power and on many many accounts i don't think that standard is held up by all of the department direct many of whom have been picked politically and i think that's unfortunate and i think that we can do much better by having a county manager hired on professional qualifications and giving him the opportunity to pick the best people possible to run each of our county departments in some cases they may go to a board like the police commissioner of the or the fire department or whatever my position might be to get recommendations from them but in the it should be the county manager  committee can do just as there's a limit to what a charter commission can do and every ten years and you know that kind of preempt doing everything that one might wish and maybe that wouldn't be the best thing to do anyway but do you think that if we are able to institute a ability for the voters to decide whether to have a council mayor manager sr and get that in place that those things that may not be perfect about it could be tweak you know and then two years hence and then again two years hence that maybe over the next decade we could really refine it or do you think it's necessary to wait until everything can be done and it's agreed by enough people to implement a whole slew because i mean you've got a pretty good laundry list here but it may make it more difficult to institute what i want what are part of us i think if you can put the statement that we should have a county manager mayor for which we keep the prison system that's the first thing and then to make some effort to define it when the charter commission as i understand it every ten years does its job it has several levels one is the actual wording that's on the ballot the second is the actual law that will be done and the third made them be really what they're intending to do and why they did the various things that the  commission puts out in their report that helps give substance to that and you may want to consider that you know that you don't have the right of the council when it puts it on the ballot will not put the exact wording of everything that has to be done but does the whole thing a that we would like to do need to reference the fact that the department directors will have adequate professional and experience qualifications and those will be drawn up by a separate committee at some point the future of your committee doesn't have to define all of those type of things  feeling in the associations that they haven't heard from any of that was one reason why last time you may remember i suggested that they be several meetings out in the communities to get exactly that but since that probably will not happen you don't have time to do it all  i get from all of our meetings with the meeting monthly for three years now that there is a lot of frustration at the present situation and there is a feeling i think among many of the oceans that it takes so long or it's so difficult or etc and they they but now what that change would be we have not sat down and examined is a county manager is it a mayor this is a a long how often those things have not been discussed i can't give you any new feedback on that part of but there is a feeling that changes should be should be made somehow or other because it's not working well right  now the first is regarding the job qualifications in the charter i think that only creates a problem for flexibility and change and i think job description partner qualifications should be in the charter is there a reason why you think that it should be in the charter i don't feel strongly that it has to be in the charter but i think a reference perhaps charter that department directors will be picked based on professional qualifications and experience that would leave it open to the county code then to actually define what those would be ok thank you the second question is regarding to question and i wish the ethics board would handle that kind of a question perhaps by the by again it is all rules or its own or even into the county code that no political cantrip contributions can be given by somebody who's appointed to the county government as a director executive assistant those kind of or as a deputy director those things should just not be there are around you know the secretary of the of the mayor has given contributions if you look at the list of contribut and i mean i think she may like the mayor she made up with but i just don't think that's that's an ethical thing i think we should not allow that kind of thing to go on and i think that she's a lovely lady and i don't mean to sneeze versions on her but i just think that practice it will be this mayor or the next m charter i think that's beyond your purview in terms of recommendations you have making you may decide that that is part of your purview and go ahead make a record i don't have a i don't have the mechanics worked out myself ok you just want to direct i want to stress that that is a problem right now i don't think department directors before the election and while they're in office should be giving money to their bosses as political contributions and then maybe even a blackmail there i'm not i don't know there is that says to you want to keep your job mayor would have both a veto a tie vote capability and a veto vote capability i don't think the mayor should have to cracks at it either be the deciding vote on an end of thing or a as a modification listed as well as one of the modifications to the current system i try to make sure that these positions the senior positions would not automatically turn over in other words when a new mayor comes in or a new council comes in that does not automatically mean the department wreckers or the managing directors get fired or if they have to resign that they would just continue and it would be up to the council to put a new managing director and county  and managers of departments i would think would contain just as they are full of state and county government but should continue as nonunion positions because the once you have the union in the they have certain job protections that would make it difficult to remove people who to go to a county manager itself it would change all of the relationships at the highest levels of the county so that would change it would be a potentially could also change the culture because rather than having a political leader running everything you would now be say what we want is professionalism and why that's important is that unlike let's say at the federal level with making really policy decisions on birth on marriage thing or of go to war and all kinds of high level policy the county is basically to serve the needs of residents fire police get work get rid of the waste water get rid of the rubbish security those kind of issues are ones that are done at the local level and they're really providing services we want professional people delivering services and not necessarily make it a political thing i don't think those are political to sit is not a question of republican right wing over a left winger and those kind of things and so i think professionalism should trump all these other political considerations thank you but you know i am just looking at that language about they'd be non nonunion positions and that i agree they shouldn't be a union designated position but i would assume that if someone who holds a union card as a member of a union were to be appointed by the managing director to one of these positions or become the managing director or even run for office because i believe we've had about a koala people who hold a card but then the card is kind of on the shelf while they then serve i mean i assume that that would be the old ok i know i wouldn't have a problem with that that's the the right to return and a person who is a but at the same time if i'm being incompetent as that dean or high administrator they can fire me from that position and i'll go become a factory number again because you're not saying they should not be union members you  position in that position they would be nonunion that way you have the flexibility of removing incompetence if it happens thank you all and i wish you well on one question just sort of clear there's no question of union and nonunion you're just putting it in there's just simply state that status quo that those positions would remain as they are today yes and i gave up and tried to nader my name is daniel kind of hilly thank you for holding this meeting in the evening so i don't have to cough or wallow for you know volunteer ing to be on this committee i know some of you personally and i don't know the others but i'm i'm i think this  great committee and i wish you all the best hi james good to see your brother on time i love you and his people i have a deep love for this place and i just want to see the very best for our community as the only reason i'm here tonight and so i'm not an expert in government by any means i'm here to learn and become educated but i'm an expert in my own  tides of change are sweeping over our island and you know change can be simple or it can be complex big changes always emotional i think we're having this discussion because this is a very important and emotional issue that has come at a very important that wales are we here talking about changing the form of government we currently have change is going to manage us or we're going to manage change one or the other and i have my concerns about whether their current form of government can manage the change that we have are experiencing now and will experience in the near future  my reason for being here is my concern for how t hey south mali has developed if that is a reflection of our current form of government then i think we need to make some changes bay and now it's a thriving urban community it's changed so much and we have problems there and i think one of the problems we have is that the seconds changing getting good policy and implementing it by putting them into plans of action we have so many good policies that have to do with land use that have to do with education we've had with housing culture environment but it's not being implemented that's what i see from as a community member out there these plans aren't being implemented their actions are not taken on critical policies and so based on that my experience with that something has to change and maybe it's a form of government maybe we should take a leap of faith and try something different so you know you folks that's what you got to discuss and come up with i just give you my my not oh as a community member my two cents thank  you follow that up professional colony manager would be able to stand up to the council to enforce our implement policies in the council hires the manager and we have a good policy document in the general plan and a plan and the community plans to see the council hires a manager and we know what the make up of the council is currently and and the gosh you're asking me do i know or how do i feel i would hope you know look and the best like as i would hope that would happen you have someone who's a professional has a background in training and management experience and working with  council members or knows how to set goals and and have benchmarks and timelines and produces some kind of report on a regular basis yeah i would like to see that kind of government that is accountable and transparent so i would hope that a professional manager that we would go out and find someone that would bring home the bacon so to speak for our people you know for our island for our environment you know but we really we have a lot of needs here and we are i have  pe you know i have opened this process i hope i have hope in what you're doing that this will create a better future for us whatever you folks decide and come up with based upon what you hear and your discussion i hope this will result in a better future because the way we're heading right now i'm not too confident in our future right now living here and now i'm very concerned about what's happening today so that's my that's like my twenty five cent answer sorry mr taylor not her water director said we should ask what is the problem and your answer is the failure of policy to be implemented is government i've lived in a lot of places for six of my children here three young and i've always tried to participate in the political process and try to serve the communities that i've lived in the best way that i could  when i went to a recent state of the county address i was really hoping to hear about waste water management injection wells you know which affects key where i live as well as my friends in the hina i wanted to hear about  the curbside recycling and is there a way that we could do that more efficiently i wanted to hear about affordable housing some of the issues that really affect me my for my community that i live in and stead i heard jokes about potholes and some other stuff which is no judgment on the on the speech but i wanted substance i wanted facts figures ideas plans kind of like every port i would get from a manager one of my managers i run three companies i started a nonprofit so i'm kind of an organizer in a business type person i also lived in a town that had a city manager no mare i didn't even miss the mare we actually voted more when we lived in that town than when we lived in new york city which had a mare for various reasons by the reason i mention this example of long beach new york where we spent a little bit of time was because they happened to have a city manager  not was in doing a good job they were able to replace that person with a well vetted highly qualified person right before superstorm sandy hit which destroyed the town and i have a brother in law there the high tide and a new boardwalk and new facilities for the community just to the credit of this person and for bid that if it was an election year my gosh what would have happened to that town because all these people be scurrying around to see can i get elected during this time it's not doom and gloom i'm just using the example that i know from from my family and from our life of how this plan worked so i'm from all the ideas that's been brought up i'm here because i'm in favor of this one i think it's a conversation we should have whether it's on the ballot or whatever you guys decide i appreciate having the conversation i think that in terms of the business structure the manager seems like a great idea to me i would like the community to have you know i say in it i think the community is well informed and can be if given the opportunity to have a say on this completely irrelevant because it's  poll but today they said would you what do you think of the idea of a county manager form of government and i just refreshed this forty five percent in favor thirty seven opposed eighteen don't know no opinion this could be five people could be five thousand i don't know but the conversations happening and i think it's a good thing because of the end of the day we need better waste water management we need more affordable housing we need you know protect our small farmers more ag land all of these things  and so these are the issues that are my concern that i'm hoping a county manager would be able to facilitate in a better way than our current system  ok thank you you followed by randy way my name is mike foley i'm speaking as an individual not representing any of the organizations that i volunteer for i'm here to support the concept of having a county manager like a few other people in the room i have worked for county managers and city managers before i moved to valley eighteen years ago i worked in california for thirty six years maui county is is actually very complicated it's a very large area it deserves a professional county manager and the county manager should be  hiring department heads who are qualified you probably know that several of our managed our department heads currently have no qualifications whatsoever they are totally on coffee by departments are run and chaos i know this from experience when i came here i couldn't believe that a county this complicated it would had to be managed by a politician  who basically is elected on a popularity contest but has no training or or experience running on a complicated government with thousands of employees and millions of dollars  the county charter has qualifications for a few of the department heads and in case you think that's a solution those qualifications are ignored completely  the qualifications are very minimal they're very brief they're very big but the qualifications that do exist are ignored the department heads are stars some of them are required to have a relevant degree and and some soup of his oriel experience some of the party heads don't have either one anyway so i think it a county manager can help to solve some of these problems it won't the main thing is i think that we need a professional county manager with both training and experience and we need department heads with both training and experience thank you michael for testifying and as i recall you were department director for planning your county for years or years so you have intimate knowledge of listening to all the different testimonies and i'm sure you've had an opportunity to see it on t v what would you recommend to be a proper structure from l a county well right i favor the i favor having the mayor a member of the council my experience has been with councils that have anywhere from five to eleven members and the mayor is a voting member he has a little more ceremonial responsibilities and he breaks the tie vote but is not there is he selected by the council members not not elected by the populace as a as  there i mean that that's been my experience i've seen it work that's what i'd recommend thank you mike mike could you describe the experience of being evaluated in hired and a manager type of system compared with the experience of being hired and evaluated if you ever were when i was hired and as the planning director sausalito there were two hundred eight candidates and the city manager took two months to decide made a great decision  i was highly qualified and others were highly qualified and we went through all kinds of the exercises to indicate what we would do in various types of crises including really upset council members  and when i was hired by other city managers it was a case of reviewing my my education and my training and and also what i would do in various different situations  when i came here i was i was hired by they are without really we really didn't talk about any issues he had reviewed my was never reviewed in the four years i basically did what i thought was right and fortunately we had very few alter cations  i really appreciated working with you i think you did a good job as a mining director even though maybe you didn't deserve it because you weren't evaluat the current qualifications are ignored and we're talking one of the things we're considering is tweaking i do you think that if we put in more rigid qualifications that there would be ignored unless you have a county manager i think they would well i think someone needs to look over if the mayor has sole opportunity to hire the department head so people should be looking over his shoulder to see that  part department heads who were hired are actually qualified for the job and that's not happening now and that's why i think a professional county manager is more likely to pay attention to the charter and pay attention to the qualifications and then a politician the council's made up of politicians yeah but at least there's a night of instead of one nine times as bad considered i mean i was never it was never came up i just laugh and there's no discussion with you is no discussion that someone was appointed and i i think i read about the paper  qualified and he he is really pretty unique and he and i both had been planning directors before several of the planning planning director since then have not been qualified thank you thank you appreciate  you ready aloha i'm randy wagner and i live in south now i have lived on maui for twenty five years and i'm an architect so i deal with all the department waste water public or all planning a lot with planning and i believe if we go to a county manager we will be able to preserve the character that we love of maui in a much better way i echo what daniel kind of l a said about south maui being a random hodgepodge and i want to say that the community plan that was written in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight is an excellent plan hasn't been updated yet however it is not implemented and it's my opinion that if we had a county manager that would be one of the things they would look to to guide their job and are numerous community plans our small towns don't have governments to protect them the community plan is really the only voice of the community except for the council member who is elected at large i'd like to give you an example of how i see that being a big problem right now i live in south now and walgreens wants to put a big box store adjacent to the oldest neighborhood in key hay and it says in the community plan that business development adjacent to residential shall be of a residential character and scale so a fifteen thousand foot store with twice the required parking i feel like that the planning department when that project came in should be in a position to say well that doesn't fit our community plan that description is not legal here so you need to find another lot or you need to adjust your program so far i've testified at the planning commission numerous times on this issue the commissioners seem to hear our position but the planning director sits there and looks like it doesn't matter what the community plan says and i feel like a county manager hired a professional planning director who directive was to implement the administrative policies of the community plans the character of all the individual places would be able to be preserved through the vision of the community members that are created they created in their plans so i want to give you one more example i have time ok i'm trying to i'm trying to do a project and to make it a little bigger than the original plan we had which took two and a half years to get the permit for and i went back to the planning department yesterday to get an ok on what i saw as something that made sense and the person that i met with said well we have to look at that all over again and i said well the person who signed this letter could we talk to that person and she said maybe if i see him in the hall i can talk story with him and i said well can i get an appointment with him and it was not possible the secretary told me i'll try he's very busy you probably can't get you know i'll call you and i just see that as major dysfunction i could get a building permit in baltimore city in a fifth of the time and i i feel like our communities deserve the right policy implementation and i think that accounting manager will have that as a guiding goal that's a mayor is not an administrator and mayor is an elected official good evening thank you for the opportunity to testify tonight one of the benefits of listening to other testimony is it's changed a bit of what i wanted to say one of my suggestions for the council is that they actually have testimony you have ten or fifteen minutes or an hour testament to beginning then and that's it and you can't make comments to what people have said especially the council members and sitting here is a cop who and when i was on the board of baku i proposed that and at their board meetings  testify they talk about things and people can come and testify again so the benefit i have is listening to what people have said so i'll try not to duplicate what's been said but we're talking about the fish and see transparency and accountability we don't have that now we're talking about the continuity of management in these various departments and qualify people educated people and perfect in the professional department heads and senior management and i'm glad something that they believe because i went to the charter commission in twice in two thousand two thousand and ten and here's people sitting on the charter commission basically ignoring suggestions that people put out you can't even get a second on different issues this was one having a manager system change in a way we do government the other one that is really important that sort of has been mentioned that it's not part of the earth you hear but it's all interrelated is the way we elect our council and i'm glad other people mention that because for example if a haiku and the han were a north shore district there would be a different representative on the county council now i'm not going to say who that would be so if we had district voting it makes a difference otherwise the nine people on the council are basically similar and if they are we're coming from different places and they hired a professional and that's again what we're talking about a professional individual to run this county i'm glad someone else mentioned some of the community plans our charter says we're supposed to have community plans every ten years and i just heard eighteen years so right away our current mayor and the last mayor to maybe four just ignore what's in the charter so it's important to have yes we don't have to spell out every cross every every i but we talk about professionalism who can say that the last few people have been running this county are professionals and i'm glad other people brought up the department heads because yes some of them without being too derogatory are just political payoffs they're not qualified to be in there but one person in particular who wasn't qualified did in its job was not the only criteria  yeah ok so the other one that was pointed out is our county one hundred sixty thousand people on three islands just now we count the seven hundred twenty square miles we're large enough now to have the communities being a lot more independent and you hear about key hey it was just a hodgepodge i'm glad that someone just talked about that we build buildings on top of floodplain and then every year it floods and you have to do some about it because there's this lack of professionalism in the department specially there with planning so for example on a walk through they have neighborhood boards maybe we can have cound ski hay lahaie and it could be actually with some kind of administration molokai having a little bit more independence and we're large enough now to incorporate those areas so remember there was a question that earlier statement and could we really do that and could the community actually choose people please remember that the people who are elected representatives the people who are elected mayor ministration they work for the people it's actually eat their servants like you are serving the community and i've served on a couple of boards and commission so it's the community that chooses and sadly when i hear some of the stories where you go in and i've had bad also happen to me where you just are basically ignored and the worst that i found and again i'm  what david said the charter commission this is something that should have been presented to the community like district voting they do a survey they find out that yardy of the community wants that district voting and charter commission decides we're not going to give a second so people can talk about it so the question was asked earlier you know we don't have to have every t crossed and i dotted but then you appoint people if a community wants to have a different structure and it could be some kind i do volunteer work for the key hay community association on the board of directors and i'm the chair of the design review committee our bible in the case is this the key hay mechanic community plan from the one nine hundred ninety eight and even though some people will say that there's a problem that this hasn't been updated this is a brilliant plan and the people that did this in one thousand nine hundred eight did an amazing job before seeing what life would be like twenty years later the problem is that nothing in this plan has been implemented the plans very specific if you look at a section like transportation it lays out nine different things that should be implemented and a prioritize them and if we look at those number one is what is now p k avenue that runs from longs to safeway that was done if we look at number two it's the north south collector road and everyone knows what the status of that is the thing that's really disturbing about it is that not only has it not been implemented but there are no plans to do so and that's over the course of more than eighteen years under different administrations so i don't believe that it's any specific mayor the fault i think it's the system itself and i think that we need department heads who are interested in getting our community the plans implemented rather than figuring out what they can do in four years to make a name for themselves and get reelected thank you evening thank you very much for the opportunity i'm speaking for myself as a twenty five year government employee here for the county of maui i'm strongly in favor of the council mayor and professional manager system and mr taylor one of my colleagues said what is the problem from being a line employ for him for the county i see the problem as the loss of knowledge intelligence continuity time offended he was staff and it all translates out to money in the twenty five years i've worked for the county i've worked under ten directors and deputy directors the amount of people that have been appointed in those position that had previous experience in my field zero i've had ten division chiefs or deputies the amount of number of people that have had previous experience in this field from other municipalities won every election cycle and i've been through six of them i had it down to a science in terms of months it would take me about eighteen months to get the concepts vernacular the vocabulary and the information transmitted to the people that would be actually approving the budget and projects that i would be working on so if you've got somebody for four years and it takes eighteen months to get them up to speed then you've got two and a half years then there's an other change and you've got your team and you're already going in this direction and then you stop we want to go in another direction ok so then you work on that but the point here is that i think that that we can do better and i do not think that the election system that we have in place right now serves us now nor with the in an increasing population i do not think that it will service in the future i do think we need to change under i i'm not privy to that the because the directors and the deputy directors were appointed by the mayors and the saw the ways division chiefs in the deputies were were vetted of course followed by dave followed by chemo followed by paula thank you i have a couple questions where you evaluated regularly i have not received an employee evaluation for many years a formal employee evaluation for many years and since twenty twelve be an annual process right it's always supposed to be an annual process so  seeing that you don't believe in the currying shock share a lot of issues has been brought up with the separation of power the checks and balances that accountability what checks and balances have you witnessed in the crate structure not much accountability i'm sorry what have you witnessed much accountability for the man i can't really speak to that i've had so many of them any of them and they have them they are accountable to the public of course and they do what they think is best i don't think that any i think i really have a strong admiration for anybody who goes into public service i just think that maybe as perhaps they are missing skills in an area that would make them exemplary and i think that a professional manager would  i didn't hear the question but it would be surprising that the in public works which was also include building permits and road management and variety of other services polluting engineering is a surprising that the director was not always management specialist it was surprising that there was so little ok thank you  yourself to question why you were not approached by higher ups to go through that process of being evaluated cetera et cetera let me know it just appears that it's been a long time that you've gone through this or felt this way so i would kind of beg to differ why you wouldn't question someone about an appraisal or an evaluation of what you do for all that that period of time it's a long time it is and i had many bar says and you've never taken it upon yourself to question why or why not i don't think we're here to discuss my  a student government so i would like to say that you guys are inspiration for me to possibly have one of your states in the future but i just want to say they do support this measure and i yeah i moved to maui three years ago with twenty five hundred dollars in my pocket and a one way ticket and i do find that student government is my passion but i love to hear from the people i really want to know what's on their mind if we're doing a good job or or not i talk to the chancellors i talk to the vice chancellors and i talk to my teachers and i get extra credit for being here today but i just want to say at the end of the day that we need to engage everybody and get them involved i may be the youngest person in this room because i care and i want to see this island grow and the rest of the islands are watching us so i just hope that you guys realize that you have to own it you guys have the power and you guys have to do what's best for the future for my baby because i'm three months pregnant and to see how things are have been for the last three years i can only imagine what it's going to be like in the next twenty years so i say thank you for your time and it's past my bedtime so i'm going home now thank you very much i think she disagree requests no questions well i have to take the county bus which we don't know when that will be here to go forward very quickly if we move forward with this discussion what would be a way to get the pulse of the feeling of the student body who maybe bring booze and drinks we had the young democrats here and we do a float the vote to try to get students involved and most of them don't even know what student government is or what advocacy is and i think how do i tell the students that tell me what's on your mind you pay a student fee we all pay taxes and at the end of the day it always comes down to our time and our money and we're all in meetings i was in a meeting this morning eight of doc but it's because i care and i take the time and i kind of feel like we need to stop sitting behind our destiny shuffling the paper and we need to get out there and talk to the people and see what's really going on so thank you very time you guys have a good evening and get day i love a chair and members of the special committee mahalo for allowing me to come and testify this evening on my behalf as i have heard the testimony this evening i have surmise the following i would like to preface my surmise by saying this money shall not govern politics nor should politics govern money in the business world education professional experience and professionalism that ten year of that c e o or edi is dependent upon the success of  and county manager framework in this way your mayor or whatever title role position he or she holds along with the county coun what collaboratively that county manager dependent upon education professional experience and professionalism in turn that county manager all of then that department heads also again dependent on education professional experience and professionalism their ten years should be dependent upon the success of the government upon the success of the government not upon political contributions or the good old boy network which currently exists in our government thank you and again i apologize or anyone else for you really don't have to so is it possible we've checked a couple of dates are people available on thursday march thirty first this is our last scheduled i'm sorry but i think so because it's really several members that cannot make it anyway on the twenty four so so far is anyone not available on march thirty first that about what are we doing here it was at one o'clock or at one o'clock anyone not available and we haven't ask a but she's retired available for this is that this is in the planning department to work in you check march thirty first you know what why don't we go ahead and set it for march thirty first and if we are go we're going to collect from you guys then twenty five twenty four it is of march is one we had a meeting scheduled i had we have a no meeting scheduled on march twenty fourth so we don't have it and i think you know i agree with some of the justifiers tonight that it's time for us to talk about this will work with laurie and see how we proceed on the thirty first but be prepared  your homework be ready to go wherever this discussion goes that's for sure i'm i'm hoping that we will have a a real facilitated discussion we are level of discussion and laurie w work with us to have this and i'm hoping that you will allow lloyd to do a proper facilitated discussion where we can actually state our ideas and discuss what we're looking at going and try to get lists of what we think  wanted to point of all the different documents that we got thank you but let me see i don't know if it's if we can do that well will put this meeting has been recessed to such and such a date actually it does allow us to have this discussion today but we could not recess this meeting because the location would have to be here again