good afternoon it's one twelve the meeting of the special committee and county governments governments joe come to order please turn off your cell phones are a committee members that are here today maj schaefer committee vice chair proceeding with public testimony for individuals who will be testifying in the chamber please sign up at the desk located in the eighth floor lobby just outside the chamber door if you will be testifying from one of the remote testimony locations specified meeting agenda please sign up with district office staff at that location testimony is limited to three minutes at two and a half minutes the light at the testifier stand will turn yellow and at three minutes the michael blink read if you are talking at the three minute time limit i will ask you to kindly stop when you begin your testimony please state your name and the name of any organization that you are representing as you see we have established a connection to the district offices and to be fair we will rotate between the offices on office is there anyone wishing to testify  now you can do so much more more efficiently with your word processing so in soft war software you know looking at making the leap to totally new technology here you're investigating the use an electric typewriter with correction memories it's just a fairly small improvement that makes sense there's been so much misinformation plain meanness and cover your backside rhetoric in the past few weeks that i know you are getting doses of it all so the idea is not to just look at the mayoral position but it where the functions will be taken or if they should have been laid on the mayor's desk at all in addition to adding a professional manager for implementing policy set by consulate the manager will be in a position having the responsibility for oversight and accountability to distribute work it's best pleated separating out any personal ambitions and biases from the issues at hand and every part of the system can use a tuner to note the difficulty in getting effective action is a symptom of the jumble of overlapping redundant duties this is systemic in some instances micromanagement has been felt necessary because the department directors are neither being held accountable for delivering reports nor officially running their departments they may not even realize the requirement for these reports or what should be included in them simply inserting a gold section in the budget is not fulfilling this charter requirement nor does it create a method to evaluate implementation of those goals it's fixing potholes while the road deteriorates it's stamping out fires when a person appointed to have a department needs to seek out a consultant to explain the job and how to do it we know the skills that person brought to the office are not those the position required part of portable management skills are necessary but awareness and experience in specific fields is what the taxpayers think they are paying for and those who may have knowledge of the functional parts may not have the management skills to create an accurate accurate budget projection rescheduling plan job descriptions need to incorporate the whole plaque package i believe a council meetings would be half as long as of off a cock who were not recording but that very exposure creates transparency that does not currently exist in the administrative side  american be elected and serve with the consul appointed from the consul elected separately or be an appointed sparks spokesperson as the statutes don't require any specific job role for a mayor it is just an all job descriptions to avoid any foreseeable future problems based on the abundance of prior experience around the country you very much any questions thank you very much you our next test fire is p feel that there's an adversarial tenor that's being taken on about this particular project that we're involved in quite frankly i'm perplexed i'm perplexed by perplexed by the entire that this is about him and his administration when nothing has been mentioned of his administration nor him and it makes me think that perhaps mayor has some ideas about defeating term limits in the future and being being worried about there not being a job for him as it's currently constituted in the future and that's a little interesting i guess i just hope that everybody recognizes that what this is about is about the future not about the prison we're looking into the future and we're saying that there are different ways to manage a complex organization in the way in which it's currently managed that's more efficient more effective and also more cost effective and economical so i think that going forward i hope that you'll consider that this is a win win for everybody that nobody loses except those who have big egos and large ambition thank you very would you like me to check with the yesterday office it's hard office is there anyone there wishing to testify office is there anyone wishing to testify resolution that created this body we have it there is to give us to be able to discuss matters on a broader in a broader way also know that the committee now is a document entitled eight staff is uploaded additional reference materials some of which are mentioned and i don't number three memos for now if there are no objections i'd like to move on to item number two presentations from former mayor charming of ours she is in a kind of unique position as a former mayor former council member and also a department head i don't think anybody else has done that nobody testifying or presenting on behalf of of myself really because i think that through the experiences that i've had working in county government for twenty years that i may be able to give some other insight or things to consider while you're going through this very difficult task that you have been assigned and charged to do it's a non daunting one and i want to commend each and every one of you for the amount of time and commitment that you are expending to try to make our government better for our community and that's what this is about it's about our community we are a system of laws the u s was founded on laws and we are we cannot have just free for alls as much as people would like to see that just does not make for any kind of community that you want to live it i wouldn't want to live in one of the questions that were posed to me by staff i appreciate process or so because muddle along with me but the questions that were asked were i think the questions that you folks are trying to seek answers to or input on as you go through this process and i was happy to hear this process does involve the community because on a number of these were it asked for specific examples of how things are or king and what do they see are the solutions etc that should come from the people who have been impacted and as you go throughout the community are the county i hope that you will hear some of the stuff that just kind of floats around is that little well you know i heard this and i heard that and you know we all in any kind of public position have been subjected to being interrupted while we were shopping for groceries or trying to have a warm cup of coffee and relax but that's what we're about once you sign up for being a public figure you are a public figure and people come to you i depended on a lot in my time as director of partner creation for the county when i was on the county council for ten years and when i was mayor when people stop me wherever i listen because sometimes it's the only time to could see me you know this is because of the way we operate this setting is not friendly to a lot of people it is that the wrong time with the day people are working so i hope that your meetings in the community will recognize a lot of people are working that you will try to schedule some meetings in the evening just like the budget when the budget goes out for hearings with the council how old's they're all in the evening so that many more people can come and that's what we want we want input from the community not just from those who are retired or they don't work in that in the daytime too i commend you for reaching out that that's important what what i did send to you was actually just regurgitating the charter and i worked off of an old version of the charter because it's been a while but what i did here was i looked at the charter and i believe that you to have started with the charter and i believe that's where you should start it's a giant leap to go from our present source style or function structure of government to go to one that that's being proposed as far as considered as a county manager so that we may need to get there but let's get there at a very planned and thoughtful way not in a knee jerk i heard this and i heard that we you need to fix it ok let's really get to what first step is always identifying what is really the true problem in anything and you're only going to find that out if you get information from a variety of sources today i chose to look at the the charter as it is as it exists right now and what i've done in that handout is i have three organize the information this is the chapter eight on the departments each of the departments there are fifteen of them in the county of molly and the first column is the name of the department of the very left side is the chapter reference dash point one is the department of management which is the first department listed in that title how it's appointed is the second column and the minimum qualifications are the third column i would definitely start with this to look at where it might be beefed up but when the charter was framed for the county of mali and i believe mr crockett gave you an excellent history of the switch or the transition from a board of supervisors type of structure to an actual county charter and that was a very very difficult time and they tried to frame the charter in such a way that it was flexible enough for administration and departments to function and yet specific enough that it would try to accomplish good management of the county you know people didn't sit down in a charter commission say how can we mess this up even more they didn't have that in mind they wanted to make something truly good and we're all here because we love where we are we love molly and we wanted to be the best it can be so i came out of my hole in the mountain up there to come down and try to offer some of my experiences to you so you don't to read all of that stuff there it's in the charter but if you turn to the last page of what i put in  there it does the summary is that there are fifteen departments described in the colony charter and it didn't start with fifteen departments ok departments were added as our county changed and the needs changed of those fifteen three of them are mer appointed and council approved and that's a corporation council the prosecutor and the water director the merrow points eight department hence management department of management finance public works parks and recreation planning housing unit concerts transportation and environmental management commissions point for people fire and public safety that's a fire chief personnel services  liquor control those are appointed by somebody else so that in a nutshell that's kind of what the organization is and it would it really wasn't always like that i don't need to get into when it happened and how it happened but this is what it is today when i began my stint in government i was appointed as the director parks and recreation buying my father so you want to nepotism there it is ok but what it turned out those i told my dad at one time when he first became there and i said because i am your daughter i am precluded from serving this co because i at that time felt i was the best qualified person to be the director parks and recreation so you look at the minimum qualifications and just about anybody can be director parks and recreation do you know the least requirements for somebody to meet minimally is running for the office of mayor or council you just need to be a living breathing living here on molly basically and be a registered voter there's no qualifications for that it is left up to the people to decide who they want to have as their representative what i was that what i did get appointed to the park so i had i think eighteen or nineteen months of my dad's last term to do something in the parks department and we you know how to found the meeting and all of that and i said yeah i want to try i think i could do something and eighteen months so i know i want to do it so i did and i got in there and fortunately for dues sufficiently enough that the next mayor america linda lingle kept me on as the parks director to continue the work that i was doing and that she wanted to do so the department heads are only as successful as the backing they get from the mare and from the council if not everything else stand still or you're just spinning your wheels so i did have the opportunity to do a number of things while i was there knowing that i was only going to be there for eighteen months but i said no i want to be able to make an impact on this county and my impact was focused on what the community needs were and we always have to have that as our driving  motivation what i was hearing at the time lots of stuff about the parks department and it sort of pales given the stuff i hear about the parks part now but because at that time there was a very sad actually small department with the director and a deputy having a whole lot of responsibilities that were just impossible to accomplish we tried our best and we tried to change the structure of the parks department while i was there and we did we put in two different divisions who created the division of water safety as its own division it came under well let me back up there are only two divisions in parks when i came in recreation and maintenance two divisions what got added while i was there was aquatics division of a cottage because we had a very important role to play in public safety as far as our residents being in pools and at the ocean and the second one we did was we actually put in a capital improvements because we're building stuff and we're spending so much money hiring consultants to manage things we should manage ourselves so it grew and it had to grow and i was i was happy it did ok so we'll fast forward to when i was on the personnel operating supplies equipment that was it a b c council would get the thing we did just headlines and numbers and that was it for each department and then they discussed that it passed it officials association it is the national association that does a lot of work in the r come accounting art of government they were pursuing and then a lot of work pursuing this thing called a program budget so this was going to be a change from an a b c just line on paper with numbers to a program budget which outlined what it is each department would be responsible for each function of government that was a huge transition gigantic almost as gigantic as moving from a board of supervisors to a charter but we undertook it and i was in that transition so i can tell you how difficult that was but that's on the whole of the meaning the program budget was a way to stress the part that we're all concerned about which is accountability and in the program budget there is a lot of verbiage and that verbiage points to the goals and objectives of what each department should be accomplishing during that time that year i would strongly urge this department this committee to look at the program budget you don't have to look at the whole thing pick a department and look at that department how the program budget then was once you get these goals and objectives outline the party figures out what are those activities to accomplish those goals and objectives and then how much money resources do we need in order to accomplish that that's the  a program budget the next step in a program budget is a performance budget now we had not gotten there and we still haven't gotten there but in a performance budget which is a more finite version of a program budget you actually identify in there the baseline data for each of the things you want the departments to accomplish and then a projection of what needs to be done in time and how much it's going to cost so then you've got the detail of accountability is so there is there's still a progression that i think can work for for us or needs to be considered while you're deliberating if i if i can go back to the a handout and look i want you to look at the department of management and and that's the first department listed you look at the department of management the qualifications of look at the powers duties and functions of the managing director it says number one this is a dash one points number one act as the principal management aide to the mayor to supervise the administrative functions of those agencies departments boards and commissions assigned by the mayor number three evaluate the management and performance of each agency i think you folks talked about this before prescribe standards of administrative practice to be followed by all agencies under his or her supervision by supervise and coordinate those functions as described in subsections except and those subsections just go more into detail about what it is  rm all other duties and functions required by this charter or as assigned by the mare who in their right mind would take this job you know fortunately i had a very good managing director but a lot of the functions that were managing director functions were taken and the mare did it now you look at the mare's function the mayor has got responsibility for all kinds of crazy things ok well first of all the managing director has the budget office civil defense g i s m i as d c d b g was out for alphabet soup ok all of these agencies civil defense you know g i s is our geographic information systems m i s is our management information systems our id o d is office of economic development and c d g is  community development block grant which is the federal funds that come into the money for that program to improve our communities important programs for our county when we were looking at all of the things that everybody's responsible for in the mare and managing directors purview we had been discussing it during my administration about forming a new department and that department would be called for one department of administrative it's administrative services that's where da and those department that department head would include almost all of the agencies that i listed before then you that would free up the managing director to actually be a managing director what is described in our charter worked at a time when the charter was implemented there had been changes to the charter to add more departments like wastewater was  broken out from public works environmental management was broken out from public works and so there are there have been changes depending on the need i think at some times when we look at today's requirements and look at the charter at what established it we're asking people to do impossible jobs we need to allow people to the time and the resources and the support in order to do the jobs  charged with in the charter and as mer i kept office of economic development directly under my office because i felt that was the single most important program for the bit is find the flexibility is great but just realize what it says and how impossible it is for somebody to do the job so taking all the personalities out of this equation i think that there needs to be maybe  forming another department as such as administrative services because i mean you know you and i and i would ask the department heads about it too if you're going to bring them in here i mean planning department has its own g i s people because there are specific to planning that's fine but you yes a good geographic information systems it covers all other departments they help the parks department they help the human concerns the part there's all kinds of things that they do but it's over reaching all of a number of departments it's not just finite so a lot of that goes on so i would say to look at the structures and exit as it exists today and see what kind of improvements can be made maybe this is a period that we look at saying ok we want to transition to something that gives us more accountability in what's what's going on i've also think that your committee your commission is charged with a whole lot of very important consideration to be made in a recommendation i personally do not think you folks have enough time to do a thorough job in reviewing this whole issue this probably would take more than a year to do and even given all the staff and consultants you me you know get in here to help you that's going to take time the fact that it's a public process that takes time so i would caution you about trying to get to a conclusion too quickly the studies that you folks have been looking at now are going to chance to look at them but you've got groups that are looking at different things when those reports come to you we want to make sure that what you're comparing is apples and apples and oranges and oranges for sure please bear in mind our state and our county have very distinct unique qualities that we want to preserve and not get diluted through a structure that recognizes only those really tangible things that you can count so when you're comparing maui county to any other county or city look at the demographics very carefully we have actually in hawaii this is my own take on no ph d in this kind of stuff sociology through our history we have developed our own culture which is a mixture of other cultures and there are very few places that i know of in the world that have been able to do that and underlying all of it now recognized in the last you know twenty years has been the contributions of the hawaiian culture and what the hawaiian culture has brought to making us what we are today we must not forget that and so do with that i leave you with bench thank you for being care i would be interested in hearing what and you what your relationship was with the council when you were mayor and were there things  when i was at the parks department i appeared many many times before the council you know through the mayor to the council when it came to budget and i recall one very difficult thing that i had to do at the time i was parks director and that was to implement what we now called the palace program the summer palace program we want went from an existing summer fun program that was i think it was eight weeks nine to fo and during the summer well as i went around and people talk to me about you know i still have to hire babysitters out to do this i can't watch my kids or any of my kids at home blah blah blah so i said you know we've got to change this i took office in april nineteenth april seventeenth and summer fun was going to start june twelfth or something there was no time to change the summer fun so we planned for a year what we're going to do the next time what i ended up presenting to the council and working with the ministration this time now it's day before school started in the fall it was a twelve and a half week program it went from three to five dollars a day ok kind of keep that in your mind so not people were going to pay five dollars a day knew what the council was going to be like i came up and did this presentation so i had to go pull out all kind of things what would it cost for you to hire a babysitter for eight hours five dollars a day or sign me up for that babysitter i also gave them methods by which they could supplement the program was designed the first year for eight hundred kids the registration was a thousand the first day i had to come back to the council twice to get money for additional staff and it just so whatever's it was that was probably the hardest thing i had to do before the council as a parks director but because i think the presentation was good they had questions that i couldn't answer but i got back to them right away and i had the cooperation of the mayor and the mayor's staff and other departments it's all about how we work together and sadly i see that falling  apart recently and that that's the to be important as a council member yeah i mean as a consummate ember it was difficult to work sometimes with the mayor and with the staff the departments and things like that but we found ways to try to to work it out and if we keep our information to actual facts or proposals with backup information to support what it is that we're for or against that that makes for a good environment that produces a product that's better than the one that was first introduced because of the give and take by the administration in the council so that's that's of what i saw happening when i was a bear i felt yeah we argued a lot when i was mayor and when i came from the council to become mayor we had we had a lot of fights about things but we always tried to keep in mind that what we were doing was for the good of the people and we worked out our our differences and yet sometimes i went home and banged my head on the wall and i'm sure they did the same thing but it's that given team that makes things better and not just as i'm the mayor and i want this arm the council then you're never going to get that i got five votes and you got zero you know that kind of stuff i mean that that doesn't really help the community the voters and if there's any voters out there listening or people who could be voting this stuff is important to you folks because it affects your everyday lives and while you don't want to come and testify or you don't have time or whatever the reason you need to make your feelings known to those people who represent to the mayor the council members of this committee anything that's going on the few feel you want to add something or whatever it doesn't have to be testifying you can send an e mail to somebody you can call somebody you can talk start with somebody else who might send it in for you attend a community meeting attend a hearing that it's in your district there's ways to participate but you know quite frankly those ways to participate are not part of our culture i hate to say that in our culture in hawaii it's been we elect representatives and they're supposed to think for us my auntie told me that straight out when i asked her about something and she said why do you think i voted for you because i don't want to think about those things you're going to take care of me so do it do your job so you've got to remember there's a whole ton of people like that too who are not brought up in the town hall meeting type of governance so yes all these million things to keep in mind  thank you for coming it's nice to hear your voice again and in our conversations with the public we've been hearing a lot of criticism of the planning process and how for instance the community plans are meeting their deadlines and and some of the documents are seriously suggesting that the process is kind of broken what's your thought about this well that process i was planning chair for like three terms i believe when i was on the council because nobody else wanted that job so i got it but it's another thing that's in flux and we did try to fix the planning in general and community plan section in fact we broke it up a quite a bit and we spent a year working on it and we had what we thought was a very much more workable plan i think part of the general and community plans that's broken if you want to say is that the general plan if you look at the original general plan and its subsequent amended plans the general plan was only about that thick a general plan is supposed to be general but sometimes when you put it in the hands of consultants they want to of course do a really good job and the general plan came out this thick the last time the same sort of thing has happened in the community plans i think there is too much restrictive information in the community plans and i think that contributes to the length of time that it has to get are sort of unreasonable because it has to go to hearing them they have so many days so many so even though there are deadlines there they're not realistic deadlines and the end to the council is the body that can is the only body that can extend those deadlines so that's why the deadline extensions came to the council and so of course it's you know that all of the council is the one delaying it while the council has a lot of work to do lots and i know because i was there and the community plans are  very complicated and take up a lot of time so that whole system probably needs to be looked at again and not so much detail and you try to write something that's going to cover every possible scenario that can come up and you know you just can't do that you're going to get an encyclopedia when you're done oh they don't have those anymore and they just have gigabytes and terabytes and stuff like that so it's terabytes known so they're just being on a ten page document charter that you would give us any advice on or shares serious thoughts well i think that the charter itself it is a very good document overall in the charter commissions in the past and every ten years as a charge commission they work very diligently in looking at the whole charter what i wanted to bring attention to was just the departments because that seems to be where the direct services to the community where that lies and to look at those areas perhaps and do that you know like i said we were looking at creating another department of administrative services to free up some of the duties and responsibilities currently assigned to the mayor and the managing director so that they could actually manage one of the thing we consider that i don't know where it belongs but the the budget office the budget director it's fine to be appointed and it has the budget director requirements if you're going to make it one is not a department it's a program but the personnel that work in the budget office should be civil service workers they should be people who continue year after year after year and not change out when there's a new administration because then you've got people trying to learn the budget while the budget is being submitted and that's awful you know the mayor takes office in january the budget due down to the council april or march i forget and i want to do march twenty fifth oh gee good guess march twenty fifth so that's how long they have to learn it so what the first budget is actually the budget of the previous mayor because that's already gone through all the stuff and it just happens to get submitted in march of the new administration which brings me to another point which is there is not enough allowance in the charter for a transition period when when it ministration changes and another one comes because it it's a scramble to get caught up on a whole bunch of things your first year you're scrambling trying to pick up whatever when i left office i i talked with my department heads and i told them to as soon as they found out who it was that was going to be appointed to be with them to do the orientation to show them what you were working on and it's not the stuff hit to the shredder and shred everything so we left i thought we left things on i wanted to leave things because it was it was valuable to me that these programs continue in these various departments for the community and that's what it is for the community thank you thank you law thank you for coming so my question is they that you've been a director under on numerous administrations and also a council person under various administrations and then you full accountability of the mirrors held to the people by the will do you agree that that's the best accountability that people have it ultimately is through the vote because we are representative form of government but through things like instruments like the charter and like the program budget the accountabilities and responsibilities are built in there and maybe that's where not maybe that's where it needs to be beefed up and you look at the minimum qualifications for some of the directors you can tell when you look at the summary the probably the most thoughtful minimal qualifications came from the department of personnel services because their personnel people the right job descriptions they do this do that that they may test and whatever the others or be generally with many qualifications so that there would be flexibility on the part of the appointing body to be able to select what you know whoever they thought could do the job so maybe you know perhaps in some of these cases it may not matter necessarily that someone has a college degree or not i think it's helpful but then that's not mentioned anywhere in any of the qualifications college degrees what is mentioned is managerial experience and it doesn't qualify it does managing an office of five people qualify you to manage  department of four hundred sixty people is that the kind of management you want to see people who demonstrate that they have been able to manage groups or supervise groups so and it is helpful if they have experience in the related field in a field related to the department they're going to be supervising and sometimes that you know that can be a problem maybe not always but sometimes it can be  also follow that you mentioned about the transition period would you recommend that the us is a body amend the charter it's more clearly defined the transition period if we are to stay with the current structure i think you should look at that right now it's accounted for that's a sixty day transition period that is allowed and it's stated in the charter and and then at the end of the sixty days that transition ends and for some departments is more important than others i think a transition period of sixty days is a good one but what happens is that there is not anything in the budget that would support being the newly appointed director and the outgoing director and because of that budget thing you know people are you know i'm out of here you know january second noon i'm done and the port director coming in is like you got to flounder around there for a while which is a too much of the time the story work could be a smoother transition but it does come down to everything comes down to the budget question good afternoon this is the virus they get for your time in coming to be here i'd like to apologize if my question puts you on the spot no no i just want to answer to that you mention the first thing we have to do with the fix what's the problem and then our next task is to listen or so we can discover what the problems are with your experience and now being there in the community where you see outside and you hear a lot in your opinion what you believe are some things that could be improved if we were to switch to a managerial form of government as we're tough at examining i don't know that it would improve it if we move switched our structure of government because what i see on the outside is more the function of each individual department and somebody needs to be held accountable for that department now speaking as a citizen because i signed up for those county alert things the thing that bothers me the most that i see the most is trash pickup this route is not getting picked up today due to staff shortage or mechanical failure i see that that happens but to see it as often as i do i'm thinking now what does anybody doing about this and has anybody asked the department what are they doing as the council members i mean that i'm sure they get all these alerts too so maybe the council members need to first maybe somebody can just an informal discussion with the mayor and see you know could you explain to it and this is the th have an informal discussion first with the mayor and say these have come to my attention and i see it on my phone you know what's happening with that department and then they are in america say well you know what i'm going to check on it and so then you get the works so that and then you see you know we know it is this and this is what is the problem and then you schedule it at the council you bring in the department head and the division head of solid waste and have them explain to you what is going on with it and i have a particular irq about this thing because i was on the council that time we went from manual pick up to automated and the twice a week big discussions about two can streak and six can weave from six cans to two one can twice a week so that was the big deal but as you know with all the recycling efforts above anyway that was the whole discussion so i am mystified that there is not enough personnel did they all retire after we went to automated i mean you know it took what three guys on a truck to pick up the routes before one driver and two runners which is definitely hard work now they have an automated truck one driver that's it what happened to the other two did they all retire did they get fired did they just move to other jobs not necessarily in the meantime we've increased routes because people have been building in live more people come here so somebody should be presenting that so the whole community can understand and not argue in the budget period about well if we don't have that much money we cannot produce this program but we get up the hands or build up the program it's obvious now to everybody you are laughing that this trash pick up thing is a big deal now i went so far when i was on the council to say the trash can is now sixty six gallons or whatever and you know for my needs we only need trash pickup once a week but no they have to go twice a week because they have to keep everybody employed to get laid people off and we're going to go to curbside pick up some time so we will use that second pick up for the recyclables and we all know kind of what happened that so i would bring them back in and make them justify what they're doing i mean i'd sure like to know what's happening with that and now that it's in as is going to be closing or cutting down we've got lots of big equipment operator became an excess that are free and if it's a matter of not having enough mechanics to maintain our equipment hey we've got a pool of people that are skilled that we could draw from and we should not let that chance passers by if we have it so start chair  that talking about this transition you brought that up in trying to identify issues that we're trying to fix it seems to be one of those issues that could be an issue the issue could be an issue where the transition period there's some challenges there and one of the strengths of the the county manager is maybe is being a little bit more consistent during transitions of of the mirrors so that there is more consistent management in place i want to get your thoughts on if you had any opinions on that if you thought that would be something that would help my my opinion it really is about i'm reluctant to jump from this to a county manager managed government when we have not given the charter as it exists with some tweaking our chance to actually make it so that it is workable why did this just come up now it didn't come up during my dad's time didn't come keep most time or alan's time or my time so it is something where you're there's a problem yes i'd admit that there is a problem but let's give what we have existing a chance improve that to see what improves then you have to hold those people accountable the accountable people are the ones who are responsible for those reports that they're not getting and fact i think some of those directors don't even know they're supposed to be doing reports quarterly i believe that some of that stuff is outlined in the community plans too so it's working for government is not easy i can tell you from being both ends  all parts of it it is not an easy job because you've got the community tugging at you constantly you've got personnel that are having problems and lots of little problems and then that doesn't go away just by the sheer size of the government and those departments but to play your your eggs in a basket of them of a county manager i think is premature i'm not saying it's not the answer it may be but give what you have already a chance to work and it's going to be making some hard decisions about that you know you want to make it so that every department head is confirmed by the council that's a possibility too as i would you guys want to do i don't think so but you could be fought the requirements and if you relate the requirements to the department then you force the mare and whoever he wants to appoint to justify why this person he feels meets those requirements right now none of that comes to the council well i was trying to say to summarize what you have said and and if it it seems like you're saying that first of all as good as outlined the job description is almost to do for they count for the mayor and they do him administratively director and that relationships are key for the for the government to work most efficiently and that you think that the transition time should be to better it should be different and that the manager qualifications should be expanded in being more definitive for each department that the budget director should be civil service no not the director the staff the staff the budget director should still be appointed by the because that budget director has to work with the mayor ok is there anything else that you would about now let me ask you this you had a relationship with the council that you were able to work with the council not all the time not all the time in on every issue yeah there are issues right and that would be something that probably how do you hold a lame duck accountable well you do it through the budget i mean there's ways to do it and you say ok we don't get these reports so obviously you've got people you know blah so we'll cut your budget by so much i mean the county council still has the power through the budget and even if the bearer vetoes the budget you got the override sitting over here and then it becomes law so there's a lot of power that the council hands the mayor doesn't have that much power it's a council and even though some people think it's different it really isn't when it comes to the nitty gritty as it lies in the council and that's one of the console themselves as member of the council members themselves have to among themselves figure out what it is that is important to take a stand on you can't you can't be fighting on every single issue sometimes you've got to compromise let that one goal you know that's just a minnow we want to get the wh the director and i was trying to find out if i would be qualified for the parks and recreation there at their position and he had said that you know it's totally up to the merits of aiding committee to decide if you know being a nonprofit there for five years fit the criteria of administrative capacity knife if you were to beef up the criteria or the minimum qualifications would it still be the marriage committee that vets it or would the seventy four obligations for the appointed positions for the different departments and it was a much surprise to a number or of people that a lot of the oh i could go back and count but a lot of the directors and deputies the first time i met them was  their interview and that you're doing this at the beginning of the year when you're trying to set up so war stuff that goes on but i had a committee that that went through the all of the applications for certain positions and some apply for more than one and then they would come in with a list of maybe fifteen and then we would meet in and i would narrow that list down to see how many were going to interview the problem that i had that i didn't foresee when i was mayor and i said you know i want to open it's up to the community i advertise with the advertiser not knowing that the advertiser puts their classifieds online so i got numbers of applications from the east coast where it was snowing and cold and everybody want to leave oh god i didn't come to mali and so i did think about that at the time but it was you know some of the so that's why the number was so high about three hundred seventy four if i had just limited it to hawaii which i didn't want to do because we have people e who have gone to the mainland because there weren't jobs here and would like to come back so i didn't want to preclude anyone who was interested in coming forward but it's a process and it's a very long and and time consuming process but i think you know we ended up with some really good directors and deputies and the ones that rise to the top are the ones who have experience that not just the five years longer than that but what did they supervise what was their that where they did supervision so you're seeing it up to the director of person now to be involved or not because the presentation given by the current administration says that the this four years that then they say ok that person has that they don't go any further really than that and they check if i don't know if they do background checks or not it's not a requirement i think except for police and fire and some of those but you know it's a  chiefs there's currently forty five in the fourteen positions manage that the to be operating and then the directors are appointed indeed oversee the bigger picture in your experience as director and council member and mer what would you characterize the relationship between the chiefs and the directors well they have to have at least a good relationship they have to be able to provide the information that's needed in order to make those reports because when you get a big department let's say like public works your division chiefs are very very important in there because they say they have an area they're responsible for they have some goals and objectives that they're responsible for that they're supposed to turn over and the mare she meets with meets with not division heads or with meets with the directors the directors meet with the division heads and sometimes they'll bring the division heads to the directors meetings to explain a particular issue that has come up so that the hierarchy is important the relationship once again it is important to your division head it is makes the world that's what keeps the county going while we're going through these transitions of new administration's but the director cannot fire that division and not for not without cause and it's very difficult to fire anybody because you've got the unions involved and then you also have personnel services has to be involved with your firing and you can't just fire somebody it takes about two years to fire someone because you have  if they're not performing you have to give them counseling and i specific program of what they're supposed to do with reports like weekly sometimes you know it quite a process you can't just fire people if you want to  and i went through that in parks too i thought somebody drunk sleeping at the golf course was supposed to be working was good grounds to fire somebody and it was the fifth time but it wasn't i had to go through this all these loops in school or whatever's before finally could make a case and that involved lawyers and personnel and union and whatever it's not easy to do but it's not impossible but it takes a lot of time of america thank you for coming what we're trying to do here is we're trying to approach county governance in a way that provides us more efficiency effectivity and transparency so it looking at all these different forms including the existing form which bring up today about relationships and when relationships are good and when relationships are not so good between a legislature and the administrative aspect of the government it's very difficult for the county and for the populous to have to depend on the relationship areas if it doesn't happen properly we've got problems if it happens properly everything goes exactly well we see it in washington we see it here we see it all the place when we take a look at a county manager type of person in a business environment that person might be a chief operating officer and he's usually hired and can be fired by the board of directors and the chief executive officer relationship is important in for him to prosecutors charge to attempt to get it done but it isn't the thing that makes things happen and exactly and it isn't the thing that will bring the whole company to  relationships are good but the real accountability comes in the details and the details ours expressed in those so called measurable objectives and those measurable objectives they take a long time to develop you know i went to national association county meetings and bob all those workshops and things but it boils down to you've got to sit down with your people and say what is your job supposed to be parted chartered to this according to your budget it's this now how do you directors meeting and something like that and we were presenting our what we've accomplished for that quarter whatever thing and one of the things came up and it was written out and i remember it clearly because i just thought it was yeah you could make numbers say anything kind of thin it was statistics on the meals on wheels program we all know what that is right to take meals to homebound people and they were saying they increase their service by twenty eight percent in one quarter so whatever the percent was all that's great what a great thing so that effectiveness is that efficiency not necessarily and i just asked a dumb question at that meeting and i said how many people was that and they gave me the number i said ok and the last number was whatever that's how they got to the twenty eight percent i said and then i asked how many people need that service silence so they were effective because they met their goal exceeded their goal they were efficient because they did it within the money that they had but did they serve what they're supposed to serve ok if the if they had three hundred people they were delivering meals to and increase it by whatever that twenty percent was and did it for the same amount of money yet there are a thousand two hundred people that still don't have meals is that serving our community so a lot of that needy greedy work needs to be done it's like of all others just statistics you have to know what questions actually meet the needs of the community so just having figures  percentages and increases and statistics don't do you any good because it comes to a baseline a projection of what it's going to be in the future what that cost is going to be between now and the future and beyond and then how do you measure it and those of you that i've worked in private sector and some of us that have worked on this on the side know that it is in those details and you want to get details you go work for the federal government and that's the ones that put us through training to run the upward bomb program and moaning community college at the time was a federal program we were required to attend training on writing goals objectives making budgets measurements and we got our funding depending upon how well we did in our measurements and reaching our goals and objectives that was i mean i hated those sessions but my god i learned a lot through that but it does boil down to that and you have that simple case of meals on  wheels or the summer program you've got eight hundred kids are designed for eight hundred kids have you met your goal yes have you done it effectively yeah you get eight hundred kids have you got your budget yes what's the need out there we found out on registration day twelve hundred kids and a wait list after that so that's the whole trick is what's the baseline and what is the need and how are you going to it there to serve that you know i'm not saying the county manager is is not the right way to go we be end up that way but what we're dealing with i think today is the accountability for what is or isn't going on and i can't provide all that stuff that's got to come from the community i gave you one the trash pickup but there's others mother pet peeve is why is the sign at pump a softball park in the condition that it's in and it's been that way for six years because i go if that's ok i'm dumbfounded that there are goes that object is that are required no there are well it seems to be one of the big problems that it's not as clear as what you haven't seen them yet where you first detail the way they should be that that's what they're not detailed but at least it's a starting point because we remember i said from the program budget the next step is a performance budget which then gives more specific information about how you measure the success or failure of a particular your firm and everywhere else that i work you always have that as the number one thing starting with the training that you keep repeating and that is very important and although i do understand i hear what you're saying about changing our government structure isn't necessarily going to address our problems do you believe having someone who is appointed and serving long term do you think that will make government more transparent or less transparent if the if this person as you setting it up is accountable to the council it will be very transparent you will not be able to have any secret meetings with your kind of manager that all has to be done in public so it begs a transparent and just as government has to be each other they're supposed to be providing high quality late great service at i designate a county each part but we actually respond on the nine on one system which takes us away from our dating mandy county beach parks in the goals or objectives that state that's what our goal or objective is and i have brought it up to some people but it nothing seems to have been so just whining like i mean is this something  that's what what would you suggest to do when the goals and objectives aren't what's actually being done in it i having i mean i've been working for fifteen years and i just recently looked at the goals and objectives and  there is a big disconnect there and although i have brought it up to supervisors in their actors and nobody really seems to care there i understand that and i'm just as frustrated as you are about the schools and we were very hard on goals and objectives but like with all goals and objectives they change the more fool for time but there is not even a training for the directors as a whole for them to know that he your program budget by the way is a document it's law it gets passed by the council if there is something some things that need to be changed clarified or the situation is changed we need to do it through the instrument you don't have a county co and say i don't like that last i'm not going to enforce it which happens too often and i happen to be very respectful of the law and i spent many hours over here in the council taking things that were outdated unnecessary whatever and deleting them from the county code in some cases or reworking them from the beginning of the section to the end so that's relevant for today we have so many outdated laws on the books nobody wants to attack it because it's not glamorous it doesn't make the headlines you know who cares except i guess a lot of people cared when we got rid of the hitchhiking law  but did they care that we change the cool eg park qualifications for farmers to apply nobody cared about that only the farmers who are trying to get into the ag part that couldn't they are the only ones so it's very natural but there are things you have to do to make the organization successful and that does mean looking at the thing like the county code but those all take time and you've got to remember that when administration comes in they've got fifty million things hitting them all at once somebody i mean they need to go through a training and so does the consul they need to go through training also the program budget they want to go what is their program budget any more there still is they want to go directly to the line items a b and c and that's that's the comfort level is to go through those not you and i both that's comfort but you look at your let me give you an example you have a checking account ok you get your statement you check your ledger this is a check for that check that check are you looking to see man i spent a lot of money on this for this category i got a cut down here so you make a conscious effort to though you know i'm not going to go you are successful for that month but when you look at what your expenditures are have you paid all the bills you were supposed to pay during that month no maybe not have you spent my gosh i spent this much money at such  such and i'm such an anal person that i actually keep my mileage every time i fill up and i have it broken down to the cents per mile it costs me so i allow myself so much money for gas in a month if i'm getting close to whatever i cut those trips out the unnecessary ones i'm not going joyriding today because i'm going to be over my mileage budget and ok anyway there's a lot to it but i think it comes down to information and training thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you i have written what some have described and all describe as a told to you it's twenty seven to twenty nine pages in length and broken up into chapters was some brief summaries and i know all of you are going to read that you might read some of it i hope it's helpful because i do like to express myself in writing it helps me to crystallize my thinking and i also submitted some references to you that i think you'll find extremely interesting and i highly commend to you the williamsburg virginia website which i think has the most elegant display of transparent and accountable government that exists in america it's a city of fifteen thousand people and what they've accomplished is just mind blowing they use a citizen survey that is a nationally based tool to get to the customer in the customer is us how are we doing on a whole host of criteria and they use that information year after year to see how they're doing on a number of criteria and they have a benchmark which is national data how are we doing compared to everybody else and then they take that information back in and do their strategic planning process and they look at what is working and what isn't working in combination with departmental level things and build a strategic plan that gets translated into a budget the budget doesn't live on its own the budget is a tool for implementing the strategic plan that then translates down into action plans in the departments with goals and objectives that are based not on process so much as they are outcomes so let's take the feed the people example seniors who need to be fed that the mayor just talked about it is difficult it's a management job to create effective goals so that you can drive the work where it needs to go so the first thing you do is you say how many people need to be fed and you that would be that where you'd start you might say how many people are being fed and so if it's fifty and there's a thousand the next thing you would say is well k where do we need to be next year and if the goal is to feed a thousand people how will we get there and when can we get there what are the milestones along the way to achieve that laudable in and so you then come back in the budgeting process and say how much money do we need to do that because you have to organize your resources around the work to be done and then that comes into action plans if you get the money you can if you don't get the money you can't go there or that's a policy decision the legislature might say you know what we want to do that we just can't afford it ok what can we do what's acceptable i could fit through so take a look at king county washington and it talks about best practices in municipal and county strategic planning and it went through twelve different jurisdictions and how they go about this process and the thing that i took away and in one of the emails i sent to you one of the organizations that they used was the state of virginia and there is a flow chart that you have in the e mail from me showing how that process flows and it is a this is a continual process of always flowing around like this to see where you want to go do a situational analysis what's happening what's the world look like again take it down into the budget take it down into the action plans have the metrics the goals and so forth carry all that information back into and start the process all over again now a step back and talk for a moment about where we are the county wide  to set the tone for how we're to go forward that was adopted in two thousand and ten the general plan of the maui island plan was adopted in two thousand and twelve twenty two years after the previous plan was in place now one question you have to ask yourself and it was a frustration i think for all involved not just the community but everybody else involved with it is just taking so darn long and so one question is what is the right timeframe for planning is it twenty five years i don't think so if you managed your retirement account that way and let's say you re up that every twenty five years or twenty two years you might be surprised you know as to how things turned out so you would begin that and say well wait a minute this process is broken i think everybody would agree the planning process is broken whether it's community plans or the general plan and guess what that's the foundation upon which we do our work and so if you're planning process is broken everything falls apart and so how do you get to a better planning process it's called leadership you a dinner for the problem and you lead and you build consensus around that and you start defining what does that look like what are the best practices look like what are other cities and towns do how might we learn from that and bring that in and do a better job and there are so many things in what she said that we could build upon and resonate with me i also believe that relationships in doing anything are important the fellow that was in business with me who was a medical director used to show this goofy chart to the employees that was really told the story it was a picture of a canoe and one picture showed the front half of the boat was going this way and the back half of the boat was rolling that way and the boat was just kind of in the water spinning around and then he showed another picture everybody's in the canoe and they're all paddling the same direction and guess who got further you know it's the one where bodies working together they get to get to the door done and so i agree that relationships are important and i also observe and i think  apparent that relationships between the executive in the legislative branch of this county are dysfunctional and broken in a way that does not serve the people and we are what counts government is here for one purpose not for government sake to serve the people that has to get fixed so if you will go to a short video on the website you'll see it's a four minute video you'll see maui county's situation played out in cartoon fashion and what it says is they haven't they had an elected mayor they had electric council and they they didn't get along and they played to their each to their constituencies the voters and they did this and they did that no they did it no they did it they won't do  then they describe that they went to council manager government which is a collaborative form of government and how structurally it drives people together now there are various ways to supermarket and have somebody come up and say hey we're going to talk to you about something and we want that connection here but we also want our operations to work well in the fish unli and deliver great service to the people and that's where i think we have problems and i believe the solution is meritorious said you know running in a large organization is very difficult you got that right this is what this government was like when our charter was created fifty years ago is entirely different than what it's like today it's very very complex and quite frankly we need to separate the role of the chief executive officer in chief operating officer which are currently married together in an elected mayor we need to separate that create an effective role for the chief executive officer to be a oracle for the people of voice of the people and then we need to take the operations which is kind of blocking and tackling work over here separated from politics and then hire the best person for the job to do that based upon the job description that takes into account the current situation the job description needs and the minimum requirements that we want and i think it's really important to do a situational now says because i think what maui county needs is to bring in the concept of quality management and that's not to see there are two techniques of quality manager they're actually quite simple they are to plan to do to measure to reassess plan to do to measure to reassess and these all have goals and objectives tied to outcomes and then they're transparent and accountable now we elect our mares quite frankly the level of dialogue that goes on in the election campaigns is not really based on outcomes it's more based on name recognition and incumbency and that sort of thing that's not just a problem here it's a problem everywhere but i think we would be well advised if it's not just departmental accountability although we definitely want that but it's it's an accountability for the entire government structure and that can be done through transparency now are going to school when you're given an exam which i've been given by you to answer the questions all right and i got these questions on monday i read them on tuesday and i i really was stunned they're very good by the way take the first question in what areas are the county not to t fish and them providing a fish are essential services and police state specific examples that's the first question that's really tough and i think that's a great question for the mayor because our chief executive officer who runs a seven hundred million dollar operation should be able to appear before you and answer that question in spades he would provide benchmarks for you he would provide the critical indicators and he would say this this is what counts this is tied to the success of our local government these key things and here are the benchmarks we want to achieve in here's what we are achieving we did it last year was this this year it's this here's the train line or there's a train line we've got make improvement so you should have that information i should have that information that's one of the reasons why i got started on this entire journey about looking at government structures because i don't see the transparency i don't see the accountability and really you know we should demand it so i tried to answer your question and then i'll just walk you through i'm a citizen like you i'm not an insider i don't work for the government so here's what i did i called the clerk's office tuesday afternoon and i said you know i've got this assignment i've got to speak to this group and i want to come into your office and see that two thousand and fifteen director departmental director reports that are required by the charter to be filed with you in the thirty nine t days following the end of the fiscal year oh we don't have those  well can you get them because you know i really want to come in i'll drive into your office in a while you can take a look at them i've seen the ones for two thousand and two thousand and thirteen fourteen by the way the paper brown they're not on the internet they're filed in the  file and i don't think anybody ever looks at them she said well you might call them errored mirrors office and see if he has them i said you know i'm not going to do them ok in the two thousand two thousand two thousand thirteen fourteen director reports there really aren't tied to the general plan the strategic plan any of the budget goals and objectives i think the police department does a pretty good job of data metrics but the rest of it you know it's just floating there's nothing there so i couldn't answer it by going to those things so i then looked at the general plan because that's our county strategic plan i went to the monitoring and evaluation and implementation chapters where i would find the meat and you know it's pretty neat with that says this was again passed membered two thousand and twelve three years ago here's what it says quote we need pre designed and designated measurement tools we need pre arranged benchmarks to test the effectiveness of our actions absolutely that's the way business is done but i didn't see any of that information on the internet so i emailed this is again tuesday afternoon planning department and asked if there are benchmarks and would they please provide them to me and may i see the monitoring report fact i think one of us that of the  other day and i got an e mail back that neither exists now that's the plan that should be driving the budgets ok so we heard a lot about the budget so the budget is over eight hundred pages long and i have to tell you i did not read the whole budget but i did delve into it because apparently that's where the stuff is but it's not there either i mean there are some goals and objectives many of them are process  goals not outcome based goals there's no metrics there's no tying together of trims there's no measurement and quite frankly i can answer your questions i would to the goals and objectives specific for the mayor because that's where you really should see the big stuff and i've recommended in my e mail what what would the big stuff look like and i think of you know big stuff would look like bring quality management technique to maui county  be a huge winner or maybe be improve the planning process and then you start delving into that you know having that conversation another one i think is really important  picture goal would be make the county easy to do business with while you know where would you begin with that where you might start talking to developers and other people to do business with the county and say are we easy to do business with i mean that would be an interesting question and i know the answer to that one we are not easy to do business with oh ok well you know what are we to do about it who's going to lead that and then of course that would drive all kinds of activity underneath but you know that's just not happening and so what happens with the planning process i sat in this very room two weeks ago and they were agonizing over the little guy community plan that's the easiest one and people are throwing up their hands of what are we going to do you know this is the first what do we do we get around a key hey what's going to be a lot of work and already there are eighteen years old on average eighteen years old so i wrote to one of the council members who was exasperated after that meeting i said here's what i would do if i was in a county manager form of government i would call the manager who incidentally would attend all council meetings and work directly with the council and i would say to the county imagine that this thing is broken we got to fix this and i want you to go back and come back with an action plan or some recommendations with best practices as to how other jurisdictions do with us and how we deal with this and that would be the beginning of a journey but in our current structure which some people call it balance of power i don't think so i think it's just fractiousness in our current structure they're not talking to each other you know they just can't you know you saw the presentation by the mayor two weeks ago he spent probably a third of his time blaming the council and i spoke at the key community association last week with the mare and he did the same thing and you know that's just not working for us the beauty of council manager government besides bringing in professional manager a manager to run management operations is that you marry up and you'll see this in the doe gallus video you marry up the executive a legislative branches into what's called a collaborative form of government where people actually work together so my solution is that i think it is time to make that leap i think we've written that this horse long enough of this fifty years and quite frankly taking incremental steps i don't think is what's needed i think we need to take the big leap  recognize that we're a big county with big responsibilities and a lot of money and a lot of stake and to the extent that we have inefficient government here it doesn't just stay here it bleeds out into the community so the veltman perhaps don't happen other things don't happen in great steps that we can take or delayed and doesn't have to be that way i would absolutely separate the manager county manager and all of the directors from the electoral process i don't think anybody thinks that's a good thing because you lose the cotonou a t and everybody like like the mirror was saying everybody goes out the door a once and then everybody has to come in they  learn their jobs i mean that's just not thoughtful and i think they ought to be hired based upon solid job descriptions and minimum criteria i think that's a given and we've we've suffered with that and i think it's too bad we even have to talk about it because even if it's bacon to the charter what those job descriptions are i mean prudence just dictates you hire great people to do the work and they need to have knowledge about the areas they're to lead i mean it just is common sense so those are some changes that i would make and i thank you for your time i've been silent so far and when i think about you know a manager and i think about some of the fiascos that have gone on at the university of hawaii in the last few years  nobody's elected they are appointed they do use nationwide searches and then when they don't work out it costs the university of a lots of money to get rid of them and that's my big fear yes you can write a contract so that you know it's performance based and so forth but we know in reality whenever you have to get rid of somebody at a high pay it seems to cost a lot of money how do you see foresee not having that happen and many of the people they're hiring come in not knowing anything about hawaii york especially with molly having such a wide variety of areas and so forth how do you get through that well  i think a lot of the mistakes that the university of hawaii have made are in their top positions in sports positions and in those fields i think it's common for longer term contracts because the that's just what the beast is and more money and they often have terminations clauses and that sort of thing in the with county and city managers that's not necessarily the way it's done number one it's less money and number two there are typically that will contracts so there their tenure is based on performance and they don't do the job they're gone typically without any contractual now on the front end let's talk about the fund into this process because that's important too because it as this is come up in different community meetings where people have said in fact the merits that people wonder whether the council is able to hire a good manager can they do it and i think the answer to that is yes they can do it but there's there's an art even to that and one of things that i submitted to you in the last couple of days was they rather link the track by the i c m a about how to hire a manager and there are ways of doing it  o s when i've been on boards i've hired by presidents and so forth and there is a process you go there it is there's a process you go through and i've always for top positions used the recruiter for one thing and then they help the organization define what it is you're looking for the job description that sort of thing and then scan the field and then create criteria for evaluation and one of the criteria for m would be cultural fit because everybody talks about that we all know that that's going to be important and so it may be that there are somebody from iowa that might fit here i don't know maybe not and so you'd have to look at that clearly and given the sensitivity toward these big payouts you said you know we're not going to do that and you know what coming to work for a county like this in a beautiful place like this you know a lot of us are here because the the benefit  job here has wonderful weather and beautiful people and great scenery and so there's that too you don't necessarily have to say we're going to pay you a ton of money and all that answers your question kay that's going to help yes it does and yet i i come from arizona where it is on a lot of main natures and in fact my father was the mayor of a small town which was a dollar a year job and you know it was he ever got the most votes in the council election became the yeah and they were totally ran by a city manager it is an area of it probably geographically one of the largest cities which is not really a city but so i have some  marc your question minute ago was can the council hire a city manager i get your responses being a little cautious yes the hiring of a manager how you go about it is really really really important and of course this councils never had to do that and that is a skill set that would have to be developed number one and i think baked i would bake in the charter too to make sure that this got done right i would bake into procedures in the charter which is quite unusual in a way to say here's what you have to do and it's part of that i would probably want to nest some community involvement in the selection process not in the final selection but in the vetting process because one of the things that would be a travesty too is if the county manager became a political hire because that would sort of defeat a lot of what is being you two are trying to accomplish and i would also put in quite honestly it probably doesn't belong in a charter or maybe it's an administrative procedure if there is such a thing where a recruiter should be brought in to help with common problem that everyone has been sharing is accountability transparency lack of benchmarks and goals and lack of regular evaluation with regular reports for assessment do you believe that could be every advantage with our current structure of government and would it be bar costly fishnet to do it that way you see i believe that structure drives performance so i think you should structure yourself in a way that's designed to most likely achieve what you want to achieve so i'm going to say i don't think the current model will do that and i give you a reason why because the every term of office we get a new mer we get a new managing director we get a new set of directors and we start all over and you're only as good as the people that come in the door and your structure doesn't help you and that's why i think structural change is so important you know now you know it's it's going to have to say about it others think you know that's why we have it that's why there is the discipline called management otherwise you could just bring in a lot of good people you know and have them do good work right come in every day and do good work but that's not the way it works you have you have management structure for a reason i mean the military is highly structured to get things done so i think we have to have that intelligence structure and we have to have a separate manager now you know it's fast and if i can just add on to that one of the keys i think if you decide that professional management is something that would serve maui well at this point in  life then you need to decide what is the appropriate role and it's not easy what's the appropriate role for america now when i first started this journey i was thinking along the lines of what kate was describing where from among the city council you would pick the mare and that would rotate jurisdiction to that would rotate year after year after year but then i started listening to the community in the concerns i had about the council i thought you know what that's not going to work too much of a change and maybe it will work for us so if you look at the no gallus video that's way over here where the mer they have an elected mayor they have a county or city county city manager and the mare i don't support this is the chair of the council wow i think that's too much power but so figuring out council kind of the nogales model and have a vote and have veto power and the conundrum there is we have nine council members so if you added ten now what do you do well that was that stumped me for months and i say you know what in the corporate world they have different classes of voters so the american have one point votes you know you'd never have a tie and if he is the one who's has that one point five vote you see he's the old woman they say he or she is the ultimate voice of the people and should cast that so you know it's doable  and you know it's it's not a secret that maui has become a retirement community you know everybody wants to live in mali and this is a loaded question and it comes to me on my community do you think that this position if that vote should go that route to higher city manager who do you think that this person be a he or she be a resident of  i think that's probable but i wouldn't close the door and one reason which somebody has already talked about is there are a lot of great people from hawaii who've gone to the main like like a lot of kids say you know what in my twenty's and thirty's i'm going to go do something else but then a lot of want to come back and they're not residents of hawaii and i say bring it on you know why for the job yeah but cultural fit everybody's going to be looking you know can this person work here you know that it has to be a successful higher thinking you know i think one of the question you you're talking about a very professional manager how do you see that different than supposedly our current managing richter are you saying that it's not strong enough for because if this hired manager is at will they could change every year or two i mean it's not like it is guaranteed that it would be continuity so how do you see the difference in our current managing director versus a professional yeah i think if you go back to the history of the managing director it was a position created out of the one nine hundred seventy six charter commission and in the notes from the charter commission they said you know this is a complex organization in and the mayor needs some  or she does not hire or fire the directors the mayor does that now they might cooperate or they might not i guess it depends on the choice of the merit the time you know but i don't think that's right you need that direct line of authority and accountability to drive results and the other problem with the current position i think came out in an article the maori news that was quite devastating talking about the maui film studio you know the article i'm talking about and the comments that he made and you know i know i have met the managing director i think is a wonderful guy i believe the structure causes that behavior and it's survival instinct you know because your like he said my job my family my kids all depend on getting the mare reelected and so there's a certain kind of behavior that gets warped not necessarily to do the people's business the way it should but how do we manage this problem politically and so i think the problem is to remotely faceted we need to take the politics out of management and we need to free the manager to have some independence and clear line of authority with the job to be done without maybe inner political interference well mark thanks for coming today at a couple of questions that came to my mind the first one was you know when you talk about the people's business during the last  election and the time since then i'm share many people have felt that there's divisiveness in the community amongst different some people see grown here not flown hand or things like that and so when you talk about the people's business and there already is an existing big divide how would one hired manager work for the people when the people are at the invited well management is not a political thing what managers do is what do we do here i mean in county government we pave roads and we supply water and that sort of thing it's kind of you know nuts and bolts work it's everybody benefits everybody wins or everybody loses in that so i don't really see it as us versus them every everybody i think if you said to you take every population you want out there you want good and effective government i bet there isn't a person i don't care who they are who'd say whether you're from them flew here your group here i want a good effective government you want transparent government oh yeah i'd like to have that i mean if you go down what we're talking about here is just it's kind of straightforward stuff now when it comes to policy up here and you know cultural heritage and our sensitivity to it in a sensitivity to the environment and all the things up here that are policy driven fine politics you know how about it figure it out have a really testify and do their developers in our community are not there are filing firms come here to develop and they don't not all of them want to develop what the people want to be develop they have their own ideas of what they want to develop so i don't want to ask those developers i eat to do business with i want to ask them will you develop what the people want need to develop well you know they're going but should we manage development by being difficult to do business with torturous in the pub or in the permitting process i would say no that doesn't serve anybody's interests it just makes it harder to do things it makes housing and holly is it the existing conway policy plan that we're going off of yes that's supposed to curious true for the next fifteen years and you know it took us twenty two years to get to this point i don't think we're going to be a minute any time soon you know let's hope that in fifteen years we'll have a new one or thereabouts but we have a community planning process that really gets down a little bit closer to the land and the community gets more involved because there are you know advisory groups that are form that can provide that input and they can provide specifics as to even each parcel land now it's a very difficult thing but i think you know that's where the nuts and bolts has to occur where the community decides what they want what they don't want but what we do want is once we have those rules and things and once we have those orders in place we want the administration to follow one one fall the law you know one of the reasons i'm here is because of the medical case and just being flabbergasted by the administration's own willingness to abide by a land use commission order the community plan which is a very specific about that piece of property and i step back and say what is going on here and that's when i say that's when i realized that you know we need we need t had to have a look into that and if you have would you like to share that with us if we do change over there still is another day mare would you believe that that elected marriage should appoint all of the boarding commissions and i don't know if we're allowed to but i'm in the charter to put you know they call for the state commission on water resource management and there has to be a cultural put the seat at the table what about putting a culture a seat at the table for like say the planning commission an r and environment a seat at the table or a historic seat at the table and things like that well you know when i testified before jonathan starr said do you think we should tinker with the liquor commission and some of the other things and i said i really don't think so because you create so much change that people will be afraid and if we could just get this one thing done i think it would with lead in the right direction where other good things could happen now specific to boards and commissions i think there are some the quite frankly there are so many of them and not only the ones that are in the charter but then there are other ones that are created offline that are in managed by the mayor and i just think that that's an awful lot of busywork which doesn't really produce some of them very good don't misunderstand me but some of the blue should go away but as to appointment to those things i think the mayor a mayor should continue to appoint to boards and can commissions because he or she is in touch with the people however what i'd like to see is what you're describing just like with a job description what is that what are the demographics and things we might want to see like in a planning commission and how do we achieve some kind of a balance there that would be marvelous thank you oh i'm sorry i really don't give a listen and then again so the discussion has been primarily about at that county manager position and if we're looking at a structure that's going to let's be the most successful  what are your thoughts on the roles and responsibilities of the council and if there were specific changes that you would recommend could you talk about  well the way i think the council would be impacted in a county manager form of government is that and this is typical in it would be baked in the charter i would hope and expect that the county manager would sit with the council  every general council meeting so twice a month they're in dialogue with each other that's that's one change and there's an exchange of ideas i think mr phillips brought up where people working together even the marriage said you know on the parks when we talked together we worked it out and got a better solution i think that is one change some people have strongly suggested that they want to see district voting and and that would perhaps be a good change and i know that that was debated in the last charter commission it wasn't acted on that's one more of those things that i think is a bridge too far that it's worthy of a bit of a discussion a later time and probably will come up with the next charter commission but by my murder by merging together structurally the manager in the council and and the mayor potentially as in the new gallus model i think you will see dynamic change occur just by virtue of the structure now if the question is should we have minimum criteria for council members you know i agree with the mayor no it's what you know whoever wants to step up at the plate gets elected they get the job and then we get to throw them out after two years if they're not doing the job and i think there might be a little bit more of that when we had transparency and the goals and objectives and see how it's going you know now you've got some to talk about feel that a two year term is would be best in this in this case or a longer term or far out so much i think two years is actually a good idea because it creates greater accountability in a shorter period of time as you're transitioning to a new model if you want to have that chain and hold your council member accountable i don't think four years would be appropriate difficult to deal with the county because the county really doesn't give you any guidelines in many instances she brought up the instance of the developer and if in that say the planning department or in the policy statement of the mayor or from the county council that there would be a statement says to what type of projects now a county is looking for in terms of governance then the developers who wish to step forward could step forward and meet those particular criteria's i think you know from personal situations you walk into a great deal of confusion and you just really did don't know what's going to be thrown at you from day to day working with each one of departments but i think that is a particular problem and why things don't get done in our county no i think you're you're right about that we certainly know that we want  and i don't know that we really have a good pathway to get there are struggling with that i agree with the the principle of guard lines absolutely and  oh i was at the association of community association meetings in there we're talking about h c you know slander and we're what's going to happen and one gentleman said i thought was a really salient point he hoped that it wouldn't be done hodgepodge without a plan you know for all that land wouldn't it be great and i said you just described keep it for you know we don't want more kias you know so if you had guidelines and a big plan for that you know that would be really wise and then you could have the right things in the right places and encourage the right kind of development and developers could step forward and say look you want those things i'm going to i'm your man you know y discussion i mentioned was here in this chamber yes no i mean when you have the public meetings there you hear from the public that you're part of a community yes you know i've been a past board member and officer of the key a community association and i talk to those folks regularly i just attended i did a presentation on a subject matter to the association of community associations and i'm not going to lose it is a great group of all the community associations have come together monthly and talk about issues of commonality my question is the composition of the members that attend those meetings are they retired people are they so the age bracket order are they born and raised in hawaii are they of white and sister e c i i represent the district and the i don't know and our demographic is very different so i have a very different seat name listening to everyone but i have to be sure that with the feedback there again saying that we want to change which part of our population is very diverse you know even on medicaid we have a very we have a no increase in our grain retired people from other states that are coming and they see the struggles their cars are really trying hard to preserve and sustain and honor our island culture and not lose that so i need to make sure that when we get in this feedback they really appreciate what you have to share with us and i think it's really important that our feedback from what the public is saying that they want is coming from all facets of our population all age groups all cultures everyone that lives here i've spoken to the two kalani community association and there were young people and old people and all kinds of people in that crowd a key a community so she asians largely gray hears retired people and that does characterize that group the association of community associations people helli and he's been of great cultural impact to me here so you're absolutely right you know i spoke to the k c a last week with the mayor and by the way that's showing again you'd be delighted to hear saturday morning nine to ten thirty with a cup of coffee and a scone on channel fifty five you know what one word is going to that i'm s thank you mr chair match so a couple of questions that we talked to our chemo ask you about the term changing the term of council members in this if this new plan was adopted would you change changes few things as as you need to change and also have a mare that can outlive you know the council too so he's going to be around or she's going to be around for a little bit longer maybe than some of those members and so they better you know get along is the second question was raised by paula and that is is regards to the age creepy if it is that you've talked to get feedback from and and what came to mind was it really doesn't matter how old or how young or where you're from if you just want government it just like a government and i think that's what you're talking about isn't isn't that much more effective response of government yes but you also want the cultural sensitivity and part of the currency of of government aside from you know fulfilling goals and objectives you know which is kind of mechanical is you have to have trust and you have to have faith in you have to believe that the people that come here to do the people's business are sensitive to you  to wrestle with but we'll never had a time for it so we pass the buck on to the this group when it's probably will happen if you were driving and congratulations on that and i kind of agree with you that our long term planning process is the least members and i'm not speaking about the individuals here on the speaking about structure that the don't really have to listen to the public and the two of you nine there are kind of fixed positions because of the structure well i would put it to you this way you're not losing a mayor you're gaining a manager it's a little different concept and i think what you're really speaking to is the frustration that many people have that the people that are supposed to represent their area really aren't elected by them they're elected by central  maui or it could be anywhere and so is a problem but i guess i just feel that that's a problem that i would prefer to defer to the next charter commission to chew on and have the public come it's a separate issue that i just think is is huge and i would say take that off the table and get one thing done ok the second question could you color around a little little detail that mare position you're talking about so sort of a like a member of the council but not power civil tell me what what is balance of power the balance of power comes down to the veto now you know the mare came here and said testified that you know i have the veto but they always override it so maybe it's not that important but i still think it's important to have it there the other thing he said is that and i don't think this is a good thing he said sometimes i just don't do what they tell me to do and that's a veto power like a pocket b two i got what i heard him saying i mean he definitely power right when you get down if you think about balance of power it is the veto power and i would recommend that the mare retain that is really important for people to know that there is that governor there and maybe you'd even step it up and say you know what given that we're making a structural change maybe the number of votes that we need to overturn a veto needs to come up one i don't know but that could be a way of providing just a little bit more power over your keep these guys over here in line with this kind of a change but i think the flavor of marriage comes in you know chocolate vanilla strawberry in this model and i think it's important to the people this county the marriage still be a real into tea in the government structure but i also think it's equally important to bring in professional management and start marrying these people up so that they are getting along and doing the people's business in our favor rather than fighting with each other and pointing the finger thank you that there's been kind of a lot of discussion about policy versus i think what we're talking about is this process and the process of operating in more efficiently and effectively i don't necessarily think we're talking about change of policy and i think that's probably more of a council's responsibility to communities responsibly but i think we're looking at spec best practices so that we can execute the policies in the plans that were that have been developed by the elect guess in the planning process and also the council but you know i think we want to be careful of where we are but when grouping together here are completely agree with what you just said again the policy takes place up here and then once the polls see him decisions are made you handed off to the manager you know the manager's responsibility is to implement and to do it  well i hope with the group we can stick to that one i mean it seems like where we get off to a lot of other things but we're talking about a manager i have to to come answer questions i mean because i'm not really familiar with what is your background i practice law in san jose for seventeen years i went to stanford university as an undergrad i went to law school sent a clear university and my first year at a law school i was a law clerk to the santa clara county superior court and then i went into private practice and did appellate real estate litigation commercial litigation i did family law and i also became helped some doctors found an h m o in in santa clara county in the seventy's and i was there outside general council doing their corporate stuff and getting the license and then i had a serendipitous  my career where the h m o gained a certain amount of of wind and did quite well and but the people that i assisted in founding the company wanted to retire so they asked me kind of out of the blue  practice and then become the c e o in chair of the board of the company and so i did and to be honest with you k when i did that i had no management experience it was really weird and so i went on a journey of learning and i learned in part from the employees but then training from as i mentioned before the american medical association and brought in quality management through consultants who kept we completely reformed the company into the kind of thing that i know that we could have here so as o j t i find that very interesting because i think a lot of really good managers say it does start that way other question has to do with the key hey community association you said that the association the people who come to meetings are mostly the grey haired and it isn't key hey a strong young local community our age portion of it yes but how do you get them involved well we try to when i was the vice president in charge of membership you know i struggled with that because put the fact of the matter is that young people here are just working so darn hard they don't have time to go to community meetings at night quite honestly so it's hard to get them involved you know thank you you know do not know can we do a quick thing right now when we adjourn yes we could stick around a little bit make sure that you know how we get on and view everything there's a lot that if there are some of the e mails have attachments and then some things are going on the web so if we could just get an e mail saying we put new attachments on to this so we can have one way to focus and if i see an e mail deal because can i can i just make up is in my pocket can i make a few comments that there's a lot of research material that you have to read and so as you're reading at come up with some type of  form a piece of paper split it down the middle strong mare county manager and just date the pros as you're reading it because if you just read it all it just you know and then you go to read it again and and you forget so keep track of why you would support a strong mare and why you would support a county manager that way when you come back next time you can talk about what was on that list and have a discussion because i also want you to remember that we've got a lot of ideas today i lot of ideas great ideas on how to modify this structure you know and the we've got to make the decision as whether we want to change the form of government have decide on whether you want to use a form of government first and then after that you can talk about the structure and the specifics of the structure does it make sense yeah and know that we can still have a strong marriage but modify the structure to incorporate a lot of what was shared today you know like sherman said don't just change it all maybe we can modify it anything else yes things before you go all right so on document the one intitled subject forms of county governance structure and performance i was going to drive you to ask answering the question should the county of molly's chief executive remain an elected position or become an appointed position that's the question that we're going to drive to answering next time and then i'm going to this is just that a thought you can modify it if you want but if everyone would state the answer to that question and why and how it would impact the effectiveness of the organization and then we can have a discussion because like magid stated what reports you're looking at that are most of it to you because somebody will probably have the same or conclusion but look at a different report or a different conclusion but look at the same report so cute try to keep it evidence based and try to refer to that or you see a city that seems to be amazing let us know that's what you're looking at and that's what's that's influencing your decision making because that's that's going to keep the discussion of a and i think relative and at the end of the day we might have to write a report so we want to say that you know this city was the one that caught our eye or this report was the one with more influential information that seem to draw us to this conclusion direct you to will have the agenda all of the attachments that you're supposed to be getting and it will have a video that they can but you can all see video of what today's meeting way that you can buy that laurie can digest her directions i think it's like a glorious and james directions i don't see why they can't digest it and put it in there as part of something i able to communicate i mean i don't think that spirit of sunshine doesn't always to repeat  understanding we're simply you know i just took what she just stated regarding our you know you indicated the question ok mayor versus county manager etc etc i just think that a lot of what was presented to us today the questions that came up during today's discussion i would have reacted to laurie requests i just think we were in so much detail today about other things that we failed to to realize states there fairly clearly what are the charges and the first charges should we change our form of government that's the first question and i think that's where she's trying to get us in because we have a time limit which we got to start forging forward but i just believe that we've deviated from the stor have the request was to get information you wanted to hear the research and you know we have to think the council services for all the research that they did because they really busted their butt doing the reports that you have so thank you thank you thank you you mean they've worked long hours and really put in a lot of effort i feel bad that we're not covering it today but they're going to read it for homework and i've also been slipped a note that says  was interested in what provoked the changes in government in the governance and so i went on the web and read the local newspapers about what led up to and that the synopsis said that i provided some of it a little more enhanced a little more because it talks about the twists that the government took it on the governance tech but some of it was like peyton place i thought that you all might be interested in what see if young people don't know what