legislative analyst is willing bring i'm sorry took your job and said can i read the instructions for quickly please thank you 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 testified on the meeting agenda please sign up at the district office staff at that location testimony is limited to three minutes at two and a half minutes the light at the test stand will turn yellow and at three minutes the light will blink read if you are talking at the three minute time limit i will ask you to kindly stop when you begin your testimony please state your name and the name of any organization that you are representing we have established a connection to the district offices as you already realize and to be fair we we will work tape between each office our first testifier today is mr paul allowed them you paula well i've had a great deal of experience with county city managers and i wanted to share that with you so i brought you three booklets the first booklet is green and those are just things i happen to pick up from newspapers that were very very recent about the city and county managers and they represent news stories from about four or five different newspapers the second one is about two stories in depth one about a mr stillwell and another one about a mr gilling in the third booklet is a story that i wrote in my newspaper i had a newspaper and i knew all of the people who asked me to write that story as well as i knew killian and stillwell and  so i wanted to share that with you so that you get a in depth perspective over many years and i thank you very kindly would you   city managers county managers you just can't find out they won't tell you you'll get responses from the councils that hiram that say well we have looked into this and we feel satisfied but if it's so good why won't they tell you what is so good that you'll see most of these people have been fired or move on and they all try to seem to move up to a larger governmental body because they have more prestige and more money as a man as they move up you'll find that that the councils become dominated by the city managers  city managers attitudes and the doctor so you have to listen to me and them and the councils tend to back off and say all he's the doctor problem is you don't know if the doctor got it and kidneys are being kidneys and the problem the in the county manager position he's responsible to the council so here's his responsibilities and desires are to strengthen the council and strengthen the government and not take care of the people the mayor's responsibility is the people or otherwise he's out the next thing you'll see is that so many suits are involved it's just it's absurd but you'll see this in these papers and you also see that many of these gentlemen may be skilled but they certainly didn't get an a in plays well with others and so i think that you'll find the i don't want to give you my my real analysis i wanted  u to see yourselves these are these are papers these are stories written by papers and they are what they are and i thank you very very much for your time effort and energy thank you mr levy you've gone through a lot of work here and it's appreciated how what's the population of carmel well carmel's population is actually very small and i'm glad you brought that up because in one particular  been four thousand yes in one particular case the city man the city manager just said we cannot override the planning commission we would have to sue the planning commission mr eastwood got in and fired everybody just made it happen you know so the city manager was giving the wrong data to the council and the councils back you know say your experience is mostly with the city of carmel or no this is the you'll see and hear it also levy i think sometimes you look at the smaller cities as training ground for city managers in county exacts in the smaller counties because they have to start somewhere and it's so that probably the rotation out is higher as they gain experience they become more desirable applicants for larger cities they probably pay more so i think you would find that in any job situation they apprenticeships are in this small are companies whether it's you know a business a city or whatever  i think that i think that city deserves the highest quality and not apprentices i think that if you're going to apprentice you should do something other other than become a city manager it's way too important it's way too critical and i understand what you're trying to say but some of these people just just do not belong in that particular job and some of these some a great it's like everything else  i think part of what we're looking at is you know possible create tears for selection of these positions do you have any information on that and how these individuals were selected that would be helpful for us i can tell you that it really lot like to me like you if you had a tenant and you wanted to get rid of that can and and let's say that they were using tenant in place of a city manager and you really wanted to get rid of that ten and that tenant knew that you wanted to go and he checked with somebody and said listen i would like to rent your place and that person called you and said hey what do you how's this guy was it good and you say yeah this guy was great you're going to love them you know because you want to get rid of them and you  what the lawsuit so the important thing is you know the they have companies that specialize in hunting their head hunters and they hunt down these individuals who they think may be suitable for you are can see that in numerous cases they're not very successful they for their hires body but they're not necessarily successful and they're hired by the council and the council is doing its best to ascertain skills and abilities of the individual and it's really hard to tell you what that person did and what that person didn't do is like in the service where you see something written by a colonel and then assisted by a lieutenant and then finally down here's a little name of  you know the sergeant and all the work and so the but the problem is is really finding out how to get this done clearly and properly and more questions do you have any idea how many city or county manager is there are the u s troops are ok and of the people that you provided this information would you say that that was anything of a decent sampling that would be considered a scientific sampling well the ones i got you in the in the green one are arches all brand new stuff here and this and the late december november december and this is just a sampling of monterey county so i can't i can't testify any farther than monterey county in that regard and did you have you found any successful city or county of any yeah you know where this was great and i didn't write him up because he was great and so that the good ones they don't catch your attention ok last question so some systems have a mayor and a county council and together they select a city or county manager have you run into any of those type of situation what i've seen is the mayor becomes the head of the council he's a president of the council and so he falls into the same situation of getting  he gets information from the city manager and tries to act on it the best that he can he doesn't mean that he's particularly skilled in an area but the councils are not necessarily skilled in a particular area and they defer to that say to that city manager if the city manager is a strong talking individual one way or another he can persuade people through his knowledge and skills and that's a detriment and that is a detriment it can be a detriment because if the thing is is to really have knowledge and the skills to do all of the functions it's not necessarily the skill to be able to relate that some of our best politicians are great talker just one more question do you think the the results of these negative examples are are a function of the structure or the individual being selected the individuals function in the structure so without the structure they could not function and they can only function as far as the council's let them function so because a they have to answer to the council the problem violation of sunshine our next testifier is mike moran and he will be followed by paul chain's brown could you repeat  mike mike mor danny and committee volunteer committee members thank you very much for stepping up your government asked for volunteers to step up and you all did willingly give your time and effort to an issue that it seems from the key a community associations point of view that it's good to examine things you don't have to take a position you don't have been asked what your position on this opposition is we want to learn about it unlike the previous testifier i have no experience whatsoever so i want to learn our community wants to learn so thank you for stepping up and i also want to thank miss won't break who never gets any credit for doing anything and she's an extraordinary asset i think you guys have seen that already but from a community member who's often lost she is a voice of reason when you want to get information so i want to give her a little bit of credit this is the first meeting that we have been able to attend in person however we have observed much on our cuckoo and bless them for educating the community we did here and i believe it was the last meeting there was some discussion about the need or desire for evening meetings in the community and it was discussed when it would be prudent to do so so it's not the same as you guys having a meeting but i wanted to advise anybody who was interested in that the key a community association is having a meeting just to understand the issues this coming tuesday the nineteenth and we are very blessed that gentleman and do the same thing educate the community on the issue give open perspective and we're hoping we think our cuckoo is going to cover our meeting as well so if we felt it was worth mentioning to you and again it would might supplement what you guys are doing by having another way of getting information out to the community and we're just trying to do the same thing that we think you're doing is educate the community and our feeling is once you conclude once the cost of government a commission report is now and community educational meetings in unison can do just that allow concerned citizens to make informed choices so i have no advice to give you just wanted to express our thanks and encourage the community to listen and be informed and advice for your time thank you start yes thank you chair and thank you mr moran for coming down i know you know more than someone who got stuck with the job you really are doing up with that stance and community association is probably the you think there's some interest in this and do you think that when this committee gets into the more deliberative phase it would be the right thing to do in attracting interest and participation for definitely think so no i don't have an unbiased point of view i think that's always important and we all know that there is a lot of apathy when we see the just getting guys to register to vote is such a challenge but i think you will reach the people who are interested who do vote who do want to make a difference and do want to understand i believe there was a prior test a test him testify in a prior meeting with say about how much mis information and we run into that too when i was trying to get somebody to come to a meeting he said oh this is just an attempt to oust the mayor they don't like the mayor and i said what do you think if this were to happen that this would affect the current mayor and he said sure he'd be out of a job i said do you realize that it couldn't take effect during his last term he's no you got that wrong where did you get your information we heard it coconut oil is the kind of thing so you up there's a lot of misinformation so the more this can be countered and yet there are a lot of folks who can't get down here in the militia day and even the accolades i communities that's a very tough one to answer jonathan we struggle every time we have a meeting and said what's going to be the turnout and of course it depends on the size of the room if it were the key a community center no i don't think you'd get seven hundred a hundred people whether that holds if you were in a sprawl italy small room like ours where ninety or one hundred is considered a full room i do think that could happen if it was just one meeting if it was going to be sequential meetings no better mr chair members a special committee on governance i wanted to let you know but i have been out in the count community having conversation perhaps you saw the recent poll in the maui news where forty eight percent supported the change of the charter to allow for professional management where and thirty four opposed and eighty percent were undecided this is the prevailing sentiment in the community but don't take the news poll commission for your own it is important that you know that this question needs to be given to the voters i have heard horror story after horror story about the lack of professional management in the county management just recently we learned now a county is three years behind deadline for creating a metropolitan planning organization comply with federal law so the county can qualify to receive federal highway funds for local projects affecting this community due to inaction the administration has put millions of dollars of federal highway funding at risk that could otherwise come to maui and what about the demise of the maui film studio because a friend of an don to the administration did not want to have competition this also resulted in the terminations of the former film commissioner for doing his job and now what do we have for a film industry on not much let's talk about the maui county code and the charter where talks about the planning director show issue a report annually providing a detailed explanation of the implementation enforcement of the general plan a community plan to the marin council absent benchmarks milestones and timelines meaningful annual reports are near impossibility in any event these provisions of the charter and code have been ignored no any reports have been given by the planning director to the mayor and the council in recent years the community plans are supposed to be updated every ten years however no plans have been updated in a timely matter and in fact several are more than twenty years old think about the changes that have occurred in twenty years i could go on and on this inability to provide leadership for a community plan is only one of the reasons why there are no budget parks timelines and accountability for vision  community absent these basic management tools and assessing progress are you waiting the work that is being done is impossible please look at the kinds of transparency despite what mr lao said that you will you will find in culture manager forms of government go to their web sites i have and a community please look at other counties are size see what their administrative budgets and staffs are and look at what a truly professional management team can do for a community please don't get me wrong the people who are administering the company are well meaning very nice people who are running a three quarter billion dollar organization with more than twenty five hundred employers please is not a place for on the job training it needs professional experience qualified educated management that the council manager form of government provides thank you very much thank you very questions to charter section eight one three does say that the managing director is to evaluate the management and performance of each agency and i was wondering if you ever went to the administration and ask vision of what of what performance evaluations both for the county management and for the departments would look like i know not in detail but well i mean it's pretty obvious that you know what you need is you need to have policies establish those policies then have measurements associated with them they have accountability they have timelines they have you know the goals and objectives they're specific and everybody's given those tasks in the know are evaluated against the ability to be able to perform the tasks that have been assigned i mean it's a pretty simple thing to do but i mean it's just not being done they have you ever looked at the county budget and see now the formats and then how it sets up the example where the whole thing will be one of the few people except for the mare and keith reagan in you know the budget director who ok and that doesn't set up the criteria you're looking for no i think that those those that those criteria are not what a manager would establish for the kind of performance measures that we're talking about those are not performance measures in my opinion it's called a performance budget that's what it's called yeah i know you can cause you can call it a pig or you can call a duck a duck but you know if it looks like a pig and walks like a duck you know it's a turkey  thank you chair our next testifier is mark hi thank you final testifier signed up today is mr mark hyde if there's no objections own close the public testimony no jackson's two or four items on our agenda today and our first one is as a presentation pursuant to rule seven b rules of the council i've invited former charter commission member william procket to give us a presentation relating to the historical establishment of the current form of governance from our county from the transition from the board of supervisors to where we are today mr crockett was a vice chair of the mower county charter commission in one thousand nine hundred sixty six and sixty seven when it recommended these changes forward i'd like to strongly request said as part of our process in upcoming meetings that we have more of a a  facilitated this discussion and presentation on a number of the separate aspects of the tasks where we've been asked to  do and different areas of expertise where that we do have a facilitator on that and so i i think we need to create a process where members can  get to understand our our goals and create our own goals and objectives for this and also to simply is them as one would in any facilitated process and be able to discuss things like criteria evaluation and annual standards on what if there is a possible pathway toward having management then how would that manager be selected and implement d i think these are things i know we have the tick process which will be very helpful but i also think that we need to do that in a facilitated setting if i mean this is what you requested of our last meeting this is what we did and this is on our agenda today and the whole idea of what you just stated will be presented by our facilitator as i don't them three in our agenda today ok so i think there are pieces there i think maybe we will resolution itself on first point of clarification chair the resume is on the agenda as item number four today all right i thought it was in the beginning so that if there were any procedural questions gives an opportunity if the committee does have a procedural question to ask to raise it in the beginning of the meeting i will stop you from asking any questions from the beginning if you want to  was on the first charter commission and when i refer to the first charter division i referred to separate commissions because in fact in my mind and as a matter of the record now that charter commission proposed a foreign government like we have the mayor council form of government that first charter was defeated because we couldn't get ratified by the council by the community and second charter commission that the chairman referred to i was also on that and that charter commission was successful the charter  chairman that i would very briefly outline the form of government that we had prior to the adoption of the first charge because i think it's important we had a number of elected officials where the chairman of the board of supervisors we had members of the board of supervisors we had a treasure we had an auditor county attorney and a clerk those were all elected officials as you can see a lot of the administration was spread out among a number of elected officials there was one very important official who was not elected and that was a county engineer and he headed the department of public works for the county of maui now we had no charter who or did the job descriptions it turns about office the manner of selection of these officials come from and came from the hawaii revised statutes there was no integrated document called the maui county charter in order to figure out what how you the county operated you had to refer back to the hawaii revised statutes in addition to the department of public works we had a border water department which was semi autonomous or a time mystical you know you what kind of language you want to the chairman an executive officer we call them the chairman of the board of supervisors sat with the board of supervisors manage the meetings but the crew crucial question at the time was who actually manage the counting and this is what how the statutes describe the work of the chairman he says shall manage county affairs subject to and at the direction of the board meaning the board of supervisors have you just under that language you can see the difficulty there was inherent in that type of an arrangement because unlike the present there the responsibility the executive responsibility was held concurrently by the chairman of the board and the board itself work then of the two charted commissions and i'm going to get simplify things by saying the charter commission the first charter commission because both charter commissions came up with the form of government that we now have let me say very carefully and clearly that both of those charter commissions examined at great length the concept of a council manager form of government we spent on each one of those commissions i would say at least six months that time was the only thing to do during that six months but during that six month period he spent a great deal of time thinking about the basic form of government for the county of maui and both of those charter commissions opted for the strong what you i dislike the phrase strong but the ma council form of government that is a form of government we have two independent branches of government that are recognised and those branches of government work independent independently but hopefully cooperated there are three reasons why the charter commissions adopted that form of government first of all during the study period we had recourse first of all to the academic resources political science department at the university of hawaii no i haven't got a name of the person i believe there are two people from the university of oil a political science department who talked to us and i say i not only mean our commission but concurrently  and hawaii were also in the process of adopting their independent charters i can recall very definitely the academics coming to talk to us and also going to a joint conference over and hilo where they talked to all of the commissioners independently and we did our own independent research by looking at journals  and the gist of the academic thought at the time i'm not talking about i am talking about i'm talking historically as a historian at the time the belief of the academics was you don't say that a manager council form of government is good for this particular type of community a big community a small community this size of that size is the nature of the community that indicates whether or not the council manager form of government is appropriate and the gist of the academic thought that was given to us was that if you have a homogeneous community which you could typify by looking at they do us city if you have a homogeneous committee the council manager form of government was very good on the other hand if you have a heterogeneous community where there are a number of different interests in the community then you wanted a strong mare because it was through that strong mary you could have these special interests respond to the leadership of a strong marriage that was one reason why we went for the other reason and there are three of them i'm going to outline for you the second reason in part goes back to this indefinite indefiniteness that existed in the relationship between the chairman of the board of supervisors and the board if you look and reflect upon that definition that i gave you the definition of the who is going to be responsible for the affairs of the county it's very ambiguous and and there was a history of members of the council interfering and again given their vagueness of that definition i suppose you can't really say they were interfering because the executive responsibility was vested in the group not solely of the  but there was a record of people in the council sorry the board of supervisors micromanaging the individual departments course the most important department was a department of public works and also department playgrounds and we were concerned that that practice we're concerned about their practice because their idea that the individual or super  members of the board would attempt to be involved in active management of these individual departments we thought was not the proper way to run the county money and the third reason goes back to something you undoubtedly came across when you took your first class in government or political science it's  concept of the checks and balances in government and you chief checks and balances in government when you have two independent branches of government and i like to read to you what the report of the first charter commission said in this regard it's been ten minutes so can you kind of wrap it up i'm just about finished i got a horse thank you very much got worse to take care of  and this is what the first charter commission said the american political doctrine that there must be checks and balances between the various branches of government rests on the basic premise that government is in fact composed several separate branches there are no checks and balances and government can become inefficient arbitrary or even corrupt if the executive and legislative and legislative functions lumped together and performed by one monolithic body i was the jasper the report and i didn't realize it was so elegant but anyway if you want to really get some insight into the doctrine of checks and balances you to the federalist papers which were written by madison hamilton in the federalist papers explain very clearly how the system of independent branches in check and balance for each other and how in the law and eventually it's a citizen who is protected by the checks and balances thank you very much one last of coin one last point to m i've noticed in the lead up to your appointment a lot of commentary about the conditions economic conditions in the county of maui back in one nine hundred sixty seven share some economic history with you the one of the commentary that i read refers to maui at that time as being a very small little place dominated by a couple of plantations and therefore the charter that was drafted at that time really was not suitable whether or not it is is not for me to say that's your job and i'm certainly not expressing an opinion on that but i don't think that's a correct reading of maui's economic history late one nine hundred sixty s couple was on the verge of going to this matter of fact i believe the first two tells have been built one involved with getting kind of poly going at that time the development done and while there was ongoing the plans for the prepared and also the time the camer and the final thing i'd like to suggest to you at my age it's delighted delightful to go back and read what you get when you're forty years old i drive to the report and i read the report this morning in preparation for this meeting and i would suggest to you that you read the report not because i drafted that because i think it gives you some good insight and of the thinking that went into the preparation of the first charter  check and balance is his right to veto outline and again this is based upon the several branches that we have in the federal government and state government the mare the budget that is prepared by the council we included in our financial provisions which i think pretty much continue that the council's power over the perpetration of the budget and the scheme scheming schematic outline for the budget gave the council a great deal of authority because it did limit the ability of the mare to transfer funds around within the marriage would not have unfettered discretion in moving money around the once the appropriations have been made by the council that in the implementation of the appropriations that have been made the did not have the authority to start moving funds around however our various their various provisions in the charter self that were by the council can limit the near thore of the mare and vice versa that's the concept of checks and balances i understand so if the mayor if there were a county manager and there was an elected mayor and that elected mayor had a veto right wouldn't that satisfy the checks and balances hitchers describing well now you're asking for an opinion and i don't if you want me to answer more  don't think so i don't think that really sound as far as the underlying concept independent government independent branches of government especially there but that's for thank you very much for your presentation was very informative i'm not sure if you meant for the checks and balances portion to also encompasses a count ability  in their recent mine and also in reference to mr james brown's testimony did an article stating that the farm ation of the metropolitan planning organization is three years behind schedule and it's supposed to form when the urban core reaches fifty thousand residents which hopping back in two thousand and ten and i don't know if it's taxing and balances or accountability but we could stand to lose one hundred eighty six million dollars in federal funding for projects no i'm not sure if the checks and balances show who should be accountable is it the former director of transportation who just retired would it be the managing director would it be the mayor the accountability i guess my question is those accountability playing into the checks and balances like waving definitely read the charter of seventy six but it feels like we don't have enough accountability not only with this metropolitan planning organization and also our community plans in general  the and so yes wondering about that as i see it and i think this is the way we should see the concept of the people and barack by their ability to vote people in and out so if you want to deal with the general concept of accountability i believe express your opinion that when you appoint a council manager is serving electing america the county the people of the county loses a great deal of a kind of accountability because as i see it and i'm not a political scientist if anything but as i see it accountability the concept of accountability in government  vote the power of people to vote and i think to the extent that you remove from the power of the people to vote the mayor or and you're losing accountability and that's my response to the specific question here in regard to the particular situation that you described i again i think it another opinion if i may we went in during the trip working on the charter and i was on another charter commission later on as appointed by animal to boris i think it's very dangerous to start looking at specific anecdotes in order to guide your actions i think you have to maintain a very broad frame of reference because that's what a charter is a charter is a framework for government to start drafting a charter based upon specific kind of dogs that you may be aware of or other people or where i think it's a very dangerous practice also vote they can hold people accountable now i agree you can say that about the present federal administration i suppose republicans would say how in the heck are we going to hold m obama responsible for things that we disagree with i guess that you have a difficulty but i think you come down in and democracy accountability rest with the people because they have the right to vote and as soon as you make one of your important officials nonelected you're losing it to that extent a great deal of accountability you just said that the accountability goes when a person is an elected the chairman encouraged us all to read the charter and gave us the charter to read which i did and your comment in brought up the point that i was surprised to read it says that the managing director in the event that the mayor is unable to serve and mr mayor i wouldn't wish that on you that quoting from the charter that the managing director if it's within a year of the next election would become the mayor how is there accountability there how is that in the framework and did that when did when was that was that in the seventy i think it was the seventy six feet which you said you were on the seventy six charter commission that know i know you were on the sixty seven i thought you said you were on the following oh no not a following i was on the commission that was appointed by merit of ours and so i recall that he them all right well it leaves that question open of how did the charter commissions arrive at pointing at having a non if there are no objections i'd like to defer item number two but i don't number one and now pursuant to rule seven b of the rules of the council i've invited the mirror to join us and to give a questions that we like to be to you i was at the cost of government commission meeting this morning and they were talking about this very topic and i think it would behoove you to get the minutes of what they were talking about the research that they've done because it'll answer quite a few of the questions that you may have one of the questions that was answered very distinctly was is there a cost savings and they went through some very extensive research through the national associations on an average and they found that there's no real cost savings so but again i would refer you to them to see what their research indicated now as far as testimony by one of our testifiers as far as the delays in the county planning process i would pick to say yes q to look at the council allowed delays in all of the process and how they postponed and extended one time after the other that was an administrative that was council extending the period even the time that they had to analyze the community plans in the hope planning process and i know that the a lot of the speakers were actually part of that system so they understand very clearly that most of those delays were not administrative they were council requested because the various commissions that we're looking at the citizens group that was looking at it requested time  of you were on that committee so you know we're talking about going over some of the criteria again from the cost of government commission this morning they do have a list  ways to analyze what the communities looking for in form of government and i didn't have time to write it all down but there were some that they were emphasizing one was professionalism the ability to have professionals in the positions another was the turnover rate of county officials another was whether or not there was improvement to the provisions of service for people within the community through was saving two restructuring of the executive offices and i think it was kind of interesting in that when they use napa valley as a example or something that's very comparable because they did the research on it again i ask you to look at their research and they actually found that with the same by the same type of population the cost increase is tremendously more it was no real savings it was a tremendous cost increase the city manager there was paid about two hundred fifty thousand dollars and they had twenty something departments they were paid about one hundred eighty thousand dollars but again look at their research because they went through some very extensive research and i think that it would help you to be able to do that now one of the major issues that i think needs to be looked at when you're doing this in tone i am in favor of doing analysis and looking at different forms of government in trying to see if there are ways to improve the system and as was pointed out by one of your testifiers this does not affect my administration the charter amendment does not affect me on a personal level of professional level so i don't want anyone to get the mistaken idea that i'm trying to defend my child i feel that the community is the judge of whether we're doing a good job or not i think one of the in the major issues that really needs to be examined is why are we doing this at this point what are we trying to be able to accomplish we talk about goals what are the goals what are we trying to do is our government system falling apart are we a second rate community or do we rate on the in the national level or in the comparison to other communities and i think that you'll find that we have and will make to see whether we are dependable when there were stable whether we are working in the right direction or not we're a double a plus rating and if you read what they have to say about our community you're going to find that they degrade our administration as one of the top rated administrations they're not finding a whole lot of flaws in what we're doing and i think that in trying to do analysis if you have something that's working really well we're one of the best tourist destination areas our economy is strong there's a lot of things that are going on in emergency situations have we handled it well and we handle it poorly if anybody is looking for the perfect county and i think that's what a lot of the critics try to compare are they say well you know you have this that's gone wrong that's going wrong this is something you can improve that i will tell you for the record when we sit down and we do our budget there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of improvements that we would like to implement that we think should be implemented however we are limited by the economy that we have and our budgeting ability to what we can make improvements on and with what we can do in any timely manner if you look at a lot of the departments you're seeing tremendous changes happening in occurring as we said almost every department has that has personnel having better equipment they have better capabilities the computer upgrades are going in the community is being serviced by different components computer for instance if you have a traffic jam now you can get a report in the computer you can get reports on or kinds of things and i will keep going to that and his presentation but you're seeing a lot of improvement a lot of areas do we have it all can we cover it all know the one of the weakest computer systems in the entire county is probably what our administration has to work with and we've been trying for years to upgrade the systems but we have had to go through the council who has restricted our ability to do that in many instances when we are trying to make improvements to our economic situation and i go back to one main plaza we could have bought one main plaza for ten and a half million dollars and that's even with the ground under it with that half a million we have spent over ten million dollars just in lease for half the building because the council wouldn't buy it when we look at the key school ten years ago we had a proposal from ever dolling for one dollar in exchange for a property that we're not using as part of a park that hundred fifty acres above the police station that will never really be developed into a park we could have a one dollar exchange that and he would have created a key high school and sold it back to us and the state for a dollar that was taken out when we look at the ability to have a homeless shelter like what we have were slated to have on the council took it out and now we have to deal with the homeless problems when we talk about the homeless situation and all of the challenges we have right now under the governor's emergency declaration we were trying to create homeless situations solutions we've been waiting over fifty the days before the coun emergency meeting a call to emergency meeting with the council to try and expedite the process of us working with the homeless situation we've sent we when i went down the second time i told them i would be sending them bills the very next day because that's what they wanted over fifty days later over fifty days later they haven't had a mean they're only now scheduling the meeting this is the group that is being proposed to manage the manager now there are many many items that have been put into the county budget and we look at checks and balances that i do not expend money for why because i believe there are bad expenditures and i'll give you examples the community center was put in by one of the council members in the piece of property  the property money was appropriate for millions of dollars was appropriate for it we do not have site control of the property we don't even know where the problem is actually going to end the project has not gone through the planning commission got its approvals we don't even know it's going to actually happen but they wanted us to spend the money to build a community center start the work there is that a good expenditure of county money no what are you going to do with the with the properties what are your plans for the properties this is like seven million dollars they have no plans for the property they have they have no clue what we're going to do what it's for what they wanted us to do this because some community group came in and said they wanted the properties in actuality a and b were selling those probably for over twelve million dollars so the seven million dollars would have needed to get their disjointed properties and we still don't have a good justification for why the pick up the properties are we expanding funds for it you know so when you talk about checks and balances the administration checks and balances to make sure that as the council is appropriate funds and they are the ones that create the county budget they approve every penny in the county budget where that the check is is that if they put things that are inappropriate in the county budget we just don't expend if it's not possible to do we don't do it what can be done and what we have been doing is fixing the roads and you see you see the progress they're fixing the part you see the progress there we've been making changes within our computer systems we've been making plans that we've made public about in buying property for creating a shirt so that we can change the very way that our structure of government is put together in other words if we have right now we have all these different bay shirts all the different mechanics all the different equipments all scattered if we put them in one place we can have better management of ordering parts better utilization of the personnel better utilization of all the equipment that we need to to do the operations if we put together a building that contains all of our information storage is one of the proposals then we won't have all the information for the county being stored in cardboard boxes into who knows where that gets lost many times because the person who put it there leaves service we're trying to make those improvements and if you look for the record on the record as where all the suggestions come from for the major changes of government you're not going to find it coming from the county council you're going to find that they're coming for the administration to make the major changes why because that's our dealing with the public we have large as an elected official as an elected official to get my position i have to go into the community and i have talk to people all the corners of this county i have to get to know the people in the county to the level that they will actually vote for me  a county manager doesn't have to do that he doesn't have to have any kind of connectivity with the general public because he has no responsibility to the general public as a mirror i have an absolute responsibility because not only is it about elections it's about personal commitments when i go into the community as mayor and as a campaigning for the office i talk to people they ask me can you work on this project or can you work on that project if i say yes i'm obligated to do it because these are my friends these are my neighbors these are people that i know on a one to one basis and i have to face their wrath in their criticism if i don't perform well i am sticking on our current form of government i'm trying to explain what the benefits are but what we can figure out really is the we can figure out the comparison tristan the current stuff well that is the current stuff this is what we're doing the analysis on is where that is there is a better form of government than what we have in selecting my officers to work with me all my department heads this is not a random selection we go through and we screen to find the best people because every one of them is accountable and if there is complaints i am accountable for those complaints so we go through and we select from our communities and from where we have to the very best people that we possibly can and i will hit each and every one of my managers against any other community as a whole i believe we have the best group of managers directors of deputies anyplace and i think every award that they have accolades that we have if you put them all together you're not going to find very committee communities become close to what we do the basic question is what is the reason for trying to change a system that is working very well and that is what you're looking at the system changes the difference between a mayor who is elected by the community and has to have the trust of the community has to buy that trust with commitment and hard work versus a county manager who just paid to do a job is night and day county manager at any time he doesn't like what's going on he can pick up and he can leave if he's not from this community just moved back to texas or wherever he came from there's no rules or regulations that say the county manager would have to be someone who knows the community in the people in it and that is a critical issue in deciding whether or not you're going to hire somebody from outside to come in our community is very different from most communities in the entire nation in how we operate yes there are differences in other communities but we are a very large small community and we have a lot of issues that we have to deal with from the mayor's position that most other communities don't have we deal with a lot of foreign dignitaries we deal with that with the you have to have a fear that has the ability to make a decision and to get the action going there will resolve the issue that is appointed by from the state gives the mayor the that authority and managing a hired manager it would be very very difficult to see what authority they actually have because a lot of the state and if any of you have any dealings with the state legislature that may take centuries because they have no moral motivation to change the legislation just for money and they would have to go through hundreds of different statutes no proper technical standpoint keith presentation i'm going to ask him to go through and present his technical presentation thank you good afternoon chair members push there pretty quick thank you chair members good afternoon keith regan managing director for the county can do i need to use this to advance ok very good so those three topics for discussion this afternoon that i would like to touch on with with you they are continuity professional management of our departments as well as how i advice statutes with regards to con woody you all understand what continuity means i don't need to go through that in terms of defining it for you but at all levels of government you know there are contingencies there are built in for continuity and it's sometimes called the coop or continuity of operations continuity of government and at a federal state and even here at our county level we do have provisions for continuity of government continuity of operations and you know the organizational charts that you've probably already looked at are great resource to be able to provide you some information about continuity of operations and as i stated there's multiple layers that exist currently within our county operations the existing structure and this is just a general high you know overview of each of the departments each of the departments they have a director and they have a deputy director and they may be called chief or deputy chief but they are in essence the same and when you really boil it down the purpose of having the director and the deputy is to carry out the vision of the mayor as well as the policies of the county council so a lot of times you'll you'll hear you'll watch budget meetings where the council is talking about different things and projects that they want to see done and you know oftentimes the directors of the departments will take that information go back and use that in their vision as they're running their departments to move forward and address some of that but the next layer which is very important here is the division heads and these are the the management that occurs b department the department director or deputies and these division heads they are not appointed by the mayor these division heads are in fact civil servants but they are responsible responsible for the day to day operations of our county government and you almost can almost call them operations managers in essence if you look at from a private sector standpoint so when you look at what we currently have in terms of our existing structure the mayor currently up has the power to appoint eleven  department directors as well as eleven department deputies we do not the mayor does not have the authority to appoint any division heads all the division heads that exist our civil service and if you look at the total number of division has that exists throughout our county system and that's all departments we have about forty five civil service division heads right now currently four of those positions are vacant and under under recruitment due to retirement so we do a quick analysis of turnover just to kind of see what the what does the years of service look like for our directors in our current administration and from our experience you can see that the average years of service for a director is about three three and a quarter three point two seven years primarily because we did have some directors who retired and moved on and so that did impact our years of service but seven of the eleven directors that are currently with the administration have served at least five years in their current roles our deputy director is a little bit more now we haven't had very much turnover or retirement you know in those particular positions in the average years of service is almost up about five but nine out of eleven of those deputy directors have served with our administration for four five years at least five years and this is just kind of a visually visualization of what i'm talking about in terms of longevity  continuity our directors and our deputy directors again just the visualization and our division has this is a little bit more telling again these are the civil servants these are the individuals who do not move average and thirty seven of the forty one division heads and i put forty one because four are currently bacon and under recruitment have served at least ten years or more so you can see again graphically  depiction of what i'm talking about in terms of the longevity longevity as a release the continuity so when we talk about continuity what we're looking at is really turnover and more turnover generally you'd have more challenges with continuity right and experience because you have to get up to speed you have to understand what it is that you're doing and what you're working on but you can see from from our analysis and from what we've looked at statistically you know we do have relatively stable director in deputy positions appointed deputy and director positions in the county as well as extremely low turnover in some of the most critical areas which is in fact in the operational aspects of our county government which is in the division heads of our county so the continuity of key leadership positions and positions with with direct operational responsibilities does not appear to be a concern at least not from chair should i just push through this and questions at the end ok very good thank you so you have heard a lot about professional management of our county departments and i really want to address this because it concerns me a great deal when i hear those messages being put out mention that the charter was distributed and was reviewed by all the members and it really spells out what the qualifications are for each of the departments and i think this is very important because this is a key this is key to making sure that we're putting qualified individuals into these positions and and each of these different chapters that outline or describe the response the qualifications for the directors or the departments  it very clearly states what he or she shall have in order to serve and i used my my example up there for a managing director but we as an administration of the i should say the m as the chief executive of the administrative branch is really required to follow these minimum qualifications the mayor he or she must follow the charter by law and so part of that process is and i think the mayor discussed this but vetting applicants who may be applying for these different director and deputy positions and we have in the past and we continue to rely upon some analysis that's conducted by the department of personal services as part of this process to make sure that if there is something that we have a question about that in fact that deputy or director is in fact qualified for those positions and just kind of a quick overview  i did a very quick analysis of the charter requirements and you can see that there are currently no none of the departments have any language in there that identifies a minimum level of education so this i think is a is an important fact because when you talk about you know these types of responsibilities perhaps education is one of the key components to that to making sure that you have a qualified individual serving in those capacities seven of the departments do have a require a minimum of five years of administrative experience five of those require a minimum of three years and three of those departments are absolutely silent on years of administrative service so again another interesting point with regards to the charter and how qualifications exist within the charter perhaps something to explore as you go forward but eight departments identify a type of experience the type of my experience required so and as an example you can see here that they specifically in the fire department require that the chief has fire control experience i think that makes sense law enforcement is the same thing police require law enforcement experience liquor requires law enforcement experience so that's just some examples of of some of the qualifications that exist in the existing charter so i just want to talk a little bit about our management team so that you have an understanding of who we are and what some of our qualifications are in again this is only i'm only speaking about our existing team and i can't speak for you know other administrations but all of our directors and deputies meet the minimum qualifications minimum qualifications as identified in the charter five of our directors hold masters degrees five deputies hold masters degrees eight of those directors or eight directors hold a bachelor's degree and ten deputies hold bachelor bachelor degrees and there are actually ten directors and deputies who hold multiple degrees so in other words they have a j d and they have a bachelor's degree or they have multiple masters degrees or they have a master's degree and a bachelor's degree so  just want to put that out there because i really want to make sure that the community understands that we're not just putting people into jobs who are not qualified or do not have the education to back up their experiences in their ability to perform for this community and just a quick overview of some of our findings you can see that based on our presentation that our directors they do meet or exceed the existing charter requirements eighteen appointed directors and deputies have college degrees existing charter does in fact lack the minimum lack a minimum level of education and the years of administrative capacity it really varies from department to department and i'm not sure why one department says five years of administrative experience and another one says three and why there are some that have absolutely they're not even talking about administrative experience i think that's an important thing if we're going to have qualified directors who have experience we want to make sure that we spell it out exactly what that is and that's part of that process and it's very inconsistent in terms of identifying the type of experience only a very few number of departments spell out the type of experience they like to see i want to talk a little quickly actually the mayor already kind of talked about it it is a concern it's something that should be at least looked at through this process you know there are a number of statutes that exist there's a least one hundred thirty five statutes that we're able to identify that have language in there that talks specifically about the mayor shell or the mayor must and these are going to be areas that  if if this does move forward that they're going to have to be addressed on a state level because you're going to have to have language in there that talks about the county manager shall the county manager must in addition to having that language about the mayor so it's just something to put on  your radar as you're going forward to be aware of it and be concerned so again under thirty five laws and that was just a very cursory review and that's all i have chair thank you very much do we want to team have a question of the chair and write on the proposed plan of action that we received and i suppose we are a paperless committee so that's why we all have our computers out in front of us on one c f task one there are questions to address and there were four questions for those given to them to the mayor's office prior to this meeting  of because the for questions i was reading this i was under the assumption that these were the questions that the mayor went to answer because it seems appropriate i think the first question was what is now i county's current form of government i think we all are in the end what that is and it was further elaborated the second one was what is working and not working in marin county management operations and i was hoping that we would get those answers so if they didn't have the questions beforehand maybe we can give them to them now and asked them to answer them in writing at their earliest convenience to fill us in because i think this is important information they want to we address that when we get to  some of these questions in writing i'd much rather just tell you real quickly ok well the pro that's question answered time so good looking at what works and what doesn't work the administration can come with with a lot of changes in a lot of ideas on how to change it one of our biggest flaws right now is that the council takes a huge amount of time to review issues and many times we never get an answer no i'll give you an example we had a we have an offer for two to purchase three to five acres right here and well eight and there fourteen acre gift that would have gone with it the council chose never to hear it it was to bear franken if i may interrupt you i think what we're looking for is some concise answers and you're saying part of your problem in that ministration is the council takes too far of time we have a huge agenda today with the tigs nexus and so that was why i was i'm sorry that you didn't get these questions because i resources a lot of time we don't have the proper of equipment to do the work and were prohibited from getting the personnel we needed a lot of areas and the council makes a decision on what we can purchase and not can get access to all of our expenditures in very short order after after any thing is spent or charged so the review is done directly by the county council they have the ability to request any information and indeed they do ask us to give them all the documentation and everything else so the overview of what is happening with the administration really takes place at the council level currently we do our own evaluation but the council is the body that is constantly reviewing everything that we do and any deficit that we have any changes that we have to make recommendations can come from the council  that last question is could the current form of government be modified to address what is not working without changing to a county manager form and government what you're telling if you could get rid of the council you'd have no problem with small no action the council serves a purpose the checks and balances to me is important however the attitude that we have to fight on every issue i think is bad and i've offered to counsel any time they want me to come down and speak to them i should be perfectly happy to speak to them any issue any question that they have any any requests requests that they have for personnel we sent them down would never deny them but the reciprocal is not true there is absolutely no checks in bout no no checks or the council action and that by charter the if you look at the charter there is no check of the council action so there is no  body that can go in and say ok counsel i want you to speed up this process why aren't you here meeting on this process why aren't you whatever there is no ability to check and balance it out mr mayor i think we should be  problems in the current charter that you see need to be addressed in order to in order to improve the efficiency of our county government not you know the council has an open ended way of doing things but i mean  city county honolulu ours meets two weeks out of the month ok the biggest waste of taxpayer dollars in my opinion is the fact that i have directors depi directors that sit all in these chambers and many times you get asked one or two questions or none at all and yet sometimes i'll have three four five directors deputy directors requested by council are directors when they're when they're requested usually less than a week before the meeting and they have to change their entire skin jewel's to be able to go to the council meeting and they have to do all the research where the council cult council service does not do most of the research for the council members they formulate questions to the administration the administration is the one this charge to do most of the research and many times were duplicating a lot of that research but it takes an enormous amount of time and energy from our staff to be able to prepare all this information and it takes it away from their normal jobs because not one of our positions not one of our our positions within the county is do research with the council so a lot of our administrators times a lot of the staff times are taken up in doing research and sometimes these are literally books that we have to send back to them in documentation for entry one question or two questions that may never have a decision so if i'm looking at a correction that needs to be made is somehow correct that so that we're not wasting a lot of our director's time and we can actually have they're generally the highest people in our departments have them actually do the work my cursory review of the charter and looking at the minimum qualifications for department directors that it just seems that it's kind of a hodgepodge of you know administrative experience and i think if you can you know somehow standardized the minimum level of administrative experience and perhaps for some of the the key departments if maybe some or all departments should have a very clear  expectation of the minimum level of education that's required to hold those director positions i would also state or like to state that when you look at the deputy positions there's really very little discussion about deputies in the charter and i think it would be a good place to look at improving the charter by having language about our deputies because in the event that the director is not is not there you need to make sure that the deputy is able to take on that role and responsibility and will have similar qualifications so that the job will continue to get done to its highest possibility so if you were to ask me i mean that those would be areas where i think i could use some additional assistance thank you but i would caution common sense and experience is even more important in my mind than formal education in a lot of cases so there needs to be some allowance for common sense and practical experience if you work can have the wording for the term moment please i'm sorry yes thank you very much and i have three questions and french i want to i really want to thank you mayor and managing director for being here and being so open and i do consider that we have a good government and now a county and i appreciate it for what it does but i also coming from a professional corporate management background i know that it's our duty to look at how to possibly do two thousand and fifteen and two thousand and sixteen first and foremost member star yes there are goals and objectives and you can find those in our performance space budget which is submitted to the council and reviewed by the council on an annual basis so that is available online you can go to our count county dot gov and find that information it's public it's transparent and we do have that as part of our budget process when we come down here on the floor so now i've answered your question i have never seen it in that seven hundred   the other thing too is we do have generic goals we have set we're trying to find and run the most efficient county that we can so we're always looking for ways to heal cut unnecessary costs and to be able to build efficiencies into our system hence the proposals that i've told you about move all of a shortage is to proposal in trying to build our own building instead of renting a lot of those kind of things or to cut costs and we've been very continual review of the finances organization message and methods of each department cetera et cetera and assuming that you assess it departmental performance you know and it's not up to the council it's up to the mare yes in a systematic way with departmental goals objectives and performance standards could you please provide the committee with copies of departmental performance the departmental performance against implementation chapter of the general plan in accordance with charter section eight eight point hyphen three and may we play see the most recent management report card in accordance with that could you repeat that yes it does he and ministration manage  executive departmental performance against the implementation chapter of maui's general plan which is laid out in section eight chairman yes you know i think these are excellent questions that are being posed by a number star and i would think that if you could provide that to us in writing ok that we would be more than happy to provide you an answer in writing so thank you very much affect and thank you for being here and thank you for doing a good job i will tell you that on the lot of the finances our budget director goes over the finances of our finance department goes over the finances of each department on a continuous basis so we'll probably be providing you some of the charts on how they do it i'm not sure and sweet regarding the turnover information that you provided you gave some tenure like three point seven years are there benchmarks or comparables that we can use to kind of put it into context  that means or how that compares chair there maybe i just don't have those available with me right now but we'd be happy to do some additional research and provide morning it might be a good idea to get it from them directly because they actually did some national  research thank you for being here and i have a few questions just touching off what member starr said i know that you folks are familiar with the implementation chapter of the general plan and i notice that there's twenty  action items my question my first question is do you track the performance of each item if twenty pages of action items from our office no planning department probably does some of it  as the different projects come up and different things come up then it's discussed and looked at but quite frankly the lot of the things in the general plan are not implement there is there is no timeline on a lot of things there is no finance capability of it there's no funding capability of it there's a lot of the issues that were in the general plan are not trackable or implemented  so my final question would be do you have any problem with the people voting on the form of county government they'd like to see through and let's thorough process i think  good to look at different forms of government and if there's a basis for if there's a reason to put something before the public then i see no reason not to put it before the public if there is sufficient evidence that things are going really bad and that the bad form of government that makes sense but i think that should be universal as well and i think the council system is something that all should be also should be evaluated i would propose that like honolulu a community boards should be formed so that each of the communities would actually have members of the community represented on those boards and elected and that the community boards should elect the council member to represent their community so we would have absolute community participation on the council there were people that were active within those communications into those communities on the council and i would be guaranteed people are taking the time out to keep keep track of what's happening within their community on almost a daily basis i think there would be much more efficient and i would follow up question how would community board members be selected in members similar to our own or has already established a lot of the rules but in that you know in our community the main thing that most people want is they want to know that they are being heard everyplace we go and the people have this feeling the government does not hear what people have to say and it's very important in my mind that the community be representative of the very core of the people within the community community association and all of the different associations there should form a community board and get people elected in their community because they are the most active people they know what's going on in the community and selecting a member of that board to be represented on the council would guarantee that the members of the council are actually paying attention to what's going on within their community right now there's no guarantee at all that the council members are even you know they're technically part time so if we're going to have good governance we need to be looking at all of the aspects of government not just the m you've been in there for a number of years and it is a place position that you believe in if not you would not be serving in in that realm and thank you by the way for your time and for coming in a nutshell could you could  summarize what you see as the top of two five advantages of having this system and style of government the top advantage that i see is that the ma forced to go out into the community and meet most of the people in the community at least a majority to get their support for his ideas and concepts to get elected and he has to continuously do that throughout the entire term because it's not just for you election there is a legal requirement for the mayor to be representing the community and i think that's something that  even the paperwork and everything that has to be done that's really critical you know just the sheer home ability to understand all of the different departments and to be able to manage all the different departments if anybody thinks one manager can manage all of our departments then you really need to understand that our system of government i have keith is my managing director who manages the  county departments in that area herman has to manage the public side the foreign government side the state federal and all of those other contingencies and whatever complaints com from the community and when you get below that each to each director has to be able to manage their specific areas but it's coordinated up through keith and in the government side up through herman and we make sure that everything is handled but we have literally hundreds of questions brought to us every month and it takes enormous network to be able to address most of those the community requirements and requests so it's not that that's the strength of the mayor's position is that we have a very strong network and we can create that strong network trust is another very very key component i have to have absolute trust in every one of my directors and deputies my managing director my chief of staff they're all there representing me and making sure things get done within the community i have to be able to know that i can trust that if i did not appoint them and i did not have control over the situation then if i were hiring someone just because i have the field position they may or may not do a good job and i i will always get the blame for it as mayor that's another key component you have someone that you can say is responsible a system where you have a county manager and they are beholden to the council because the council appoints them who is responsible right now whenever you have an organization in this  mayor is always responsible no matter where in the hierarchy it happens so if somebody as a janitor is creating a problem we have to go and look at it we have to make the correction the complaints all work their way up to my office i have to handle situations with federal state foreign governments to sit at the table to just get openings to sit at the table with a lot of these people you have to have the prestigious of the office of mayor otherwise you don't even get the appointments and that's a critical component of being mayor the recognition at that level that you are a decision maker because when you're meeting with with people of prominence in positions they want to be able to talk to a decision maker county manager again is at the  he may make a decision council can cancel it out my word is gold when i'm speaking to foreign dignitaries or people at the state or federal level this is why we're able to things but their cooperation between entities emanating from the ability of the mayor's office to be able to have those meetings with big big corporations like n b i get to meet with the top executives they want to meet with me because i can make a decision i can put them in the right direction or i can just tell them no don't do it and it's done what my position is one of the decision makers manager may or may not have that ability and there is no guarantee of the longevity so if you didn't know somebody was going to be there and if they were emotional ties to their leader than the money is you know it's a very poor way to have trusted to build for a relationship so the mayor's position why is this system of government better is because we county of maui has someone that they can look to that they selected that they can trust that they know is going to be here and is living here that has roots in families within this community that are not going to move so they know that the decisions they can go directly to a person and be confident that they'll do what they need to do i recently have seen proposed amendments to the charter that basically allow confirmation by the council of all of your appointments all of your directors any comment on that not the deputies i think it's just the directors right now there are four directors that are put in by commission  personnel service liquor commission police and fire i don't get to point close to the rector's and deputy directors there are three directors that are considered critical that the council has to approve but quite frankly most of the council members have no clue what's going on in the departments and they don't know what the qualifications that we need to be able to have to manage the departments we have that i guess the best example in the best way to to stem this we have a lot of boards and commissions and those boards and commissions many of them actually have the ability to make decisions and to direct th areas many times and we send members down to be looked at reviewed by the council on many are dismissed for personal reasons and we cannot have a government that's run by the whims of personal response even our corporation council and our prosecuting attorney the council run them over hell and back for that in the appointment review process and we know why that was done and it was a lot of it was personal reasons and politics so you know i don't think it's necessary honesty that's a critical  department lot of the departments the council would have no clue as to what their current requirements really need and the mayor has to have confidence in his appointees he has to be able to have a relationship with his employees that's something that the council may try and break thank you ok no objections will defer this matter thank you very much i'm not sure it's a point of personal privilege but as a member of the electorate all of us elected all of the council and and the mayor and i think that the mayor just took a pretty cheap shot at all of the council and i don't think this is the forum for that and i don't appreciate it and it's a fodor i don't appreciate it but i think you think you're at the top of the thing aren't body and even though it was trance it was transmitted by the chair this was not written by the chair i would like to turn the floor over to laurie at this point to explain a possible  where it is described that my role is to provide neutral assistance and guidance and to aid the committee with achieving its objectives right all agree so here's my proposal my proposed plan of action now the copy of it was posted on the website but you also got a copy a hard copy today right am i correct you know you did not see printed your hard copy ok all right so in the plan of action i've indicated three task those specific tasks that you were given so take a look at the handout right now i think it's also on screen thank you kim the first task consider a county manager form of government would improve management in operations from ali county in order to do that we need to examine the current structure which is what we just heard today from mr william col and he did address the majority of those questions and we know that he will be giving us some other written documentation with regards to more specifics to those questions th excuse me can i ask a question sure on this i mean i say i do agree that that's a first step but i also feel that what we were presented in that analysis was filtered and it was maybe two possible points of view but there were there were other points of view and i think we need to open our process for that for example one of the community members who has extensive experience says someone in corporate law and structure wrote or said twenty five page  paper you know a tree this is in depth and you know i'd like to have a presentation in that area by that person who's actually in the army and certain mr hyde and maybe there are other points of view that we need to examine and so i don't want to say we checked that off and now we're past that ok so what you're saying let me let me clarify what i'm hearing you say is it you wanting to hear some specific presentations from those that testified this morning but given more time to l'abri on what their expertise area or research has been about well maybe very they testify this morning maybe they didn't but i think there are other resource people that we need to hear from mean you know i don't think that we've gotten the full you know we've heard the story but now let's hear the rest of the straw with regards to the current you've heard the story with regards to one point of view from the current administration what you're looking at is getting more information from their resources yes ok did you get a chance to take a look at the plan of action and the tigs responsibilities here so i did but i also feel we need to have  a parallel parallel process in this committee and you know i'm hoping that we can have these functions as time goes on and a facilitated manner where we can look at what exists we can look at our goals and objectives we can organize them as we feel are important i mean you're a professional that at doing that i want to see that process and my understanding is that you know we're lucky that you're here but that's really what we're here for so you know we need to go deeper ok i think that johnson's done something but i don't think we need to read leave it to the one individual or a few individuals to be hearing from i think we need to be doing what the charter commission didn't allow us and worse was go out to the public and hear what the problem is we're supposed to be addressing a problem for not just your problem then what are we fixing so what is the problem and it's hear from the community and find out what the problem is that the find by the general community and one or two individuals and then  broader look and see if there's something there you know and find out what this but the primary issues are and secondary issues or if it's just about paving roads then it's not a structural problem if it's you know i never can get together the government to respond to me that i might be structural problem you know but we need we need to take a broader look at this than just the system soon that there's an issue because something was raised and it came through a political structure i agree we have to define the problem however i don't know that going out to the community because from charter commission you get a handful of people who come to testify i don't know that that really tells you what the community is feeling i was a little uncomfortable with some of our questions today we seem to be arguing with the testifiers instead of ok here's what they say take it with a grain of salt and move on it's it's factual for us and that's what we need then we evaluate it as a group it seems like we're trying to evaluate it through our questions and i don't i think that's wasting our time practical suggestions and i think that's what i was looking for today and that was why i asked about i was disappointed that these questions word answered that they weren't aware of it or they didn't get answered they didn't get answered so with this charmaine said that she had some specific thoughts about things that she would change if she had the ability to wh mayor and i think isn't that what we were looking for today for a marrow or carol what would you change what would you do differently and if you get rid of council way to vote that was middle and the only way that you can do that is to hear from various sides and now we've heard from the mayor and hopefully we'll hear more from the mare as they he goes back and looks at these questions and answers them in a cooler manner perhaps and you know what i'm saying and then give an opportunity for how long did it take today but half an hour forty minutes but an hour there are groups out in the community that got a lot of research on this we what we wanted most of all was t molokai but i don't want to see this get kind of done down to either pro con or you know i really dislike the definition of well first we have to decide how broken it is and then if it is broken then we can do something because you know i feel that's a recipe for you know let's let's criticize and fight then i'm sure all of us can sit here all day long and say what's wrong with this administration or say what's great about this administration and throw rocks and complain but i don't like to go there because i don't think that's productive that's productive it just creates more animosity and maybe that kind of animosity and that kind of divisive part of our biggest problem at this time instead i want to use what skills and what science there is in management and there's a lot of it across the nation that applies both to corporate and to government and i want to have more resource people who served as managers and we have one guy who worked for twenty years who was you know one of our our planners jeff would lie to present to work for twenty years and i counsel a manager form of government and has a lot to say on it there are many people i think we have a lot of work to do i an exception a permitted x exception to the restrictions of the sunshine law on our members talking to each other outside an open meeting i understand that that means in the context of a take and its relationship to discussions by the main body which would be to a special committee that they too may not concurrently discuss the same subject matters in other words if the take is tasked with the subject matter while the team is exploring that subject matter and until it is no longer constituted that is at the time it gives its report the main body may not to us is telling me and it's uncomfortable i think it's ridiculous but i've never had to work under these kinds of rules before i disagree with this but i'm not going to violate it if that's what our experts are of our reno i believe office of information practices act and she was very clear that the two subject matters may not overlap and it is also my understanding that with regard to  previously in this counsel what with respect to the county auditor and another with respect to disappear the disparity in real property tax rates that while the takes were doing their work the main body did i think that's more like at an examining the current administration rather than the crane schuck chair because i know a few of us have worked under the government through transitions and you know i started under that i am what but as a county employee you would see it was it was not if it was you know they ok we're going this direction ok now we're going to use their action and now we're going this direction and the the lack of understanding of the people you know when one administration left and the took all their directors and everything with them i know a lot of people were confused as to like why is rob parsons out knowledge things like that you know so i think what we were doing today was not examining the structure we were examining our colleagues in ministry which i don't have a problem with but i think it's  has a similar group like this and they finished theirs ok so they have a report out if we want to take a look at that so i don't have a problem with not having it so it's a consensus my gut feeling from what i'm hearing is that we should probably just do the work ourselves as a group it's not my opinion it's a chair ok so i understand correctly looking at what barry has fit together for the two tags they don't have anything to do with us hearing further about different types of it ministration yes it does well if you look at it says we're looking at specifics look at at least ten counties or cities that have recently changed their form of government what prompted the change what did they do in transition it doesn't talk about different styles of governing we can add that specific point i'm saying if it doesn't in the tags we can talk about it as a group correct if the tags aren't talking about it we could talk about it as a group that is correct if fatigue is formed and they have storage specific parameters the lock committee at large cannot speak about those but they can speak about other things so what you could do is if we adopt the tig are we adopt the concept of the takes and if we adopt the particular things in our regular matings to which the tigs according to the schedule that i set up it's pretty quick with the tig so that we can have other people do presentations about different forms of government that is correct and i'd like a clarification on one point in this prohibition on kind of double dipping on the same issue between it again the body and doesn't that relate to decision making not to being able to have a presentation means it means it would violate the sunshine law if both bodies in the main body are addressing the same subject during the same period of time what about public hearings killing body hold public hearings well the things are in function yes as a matter of fact i also addressed a question along those lines to be today and the answer is yes but again they county manager form of government i mean i think it's going to be broad that's the point you can't go out with you know really narrow perspectives to to general public expect more than three people in the room support of information  chair i can see where what's happening is we all need to get the information one way or another all together the same information so if you're talking one side like this and half of us don't hear it we want to make sure that when you after you talk here and then and then let's talk a little bit and i apologize for interrupting you know we kind of we seem to have some movement on form and i'm not sure how i hate to take votes and think that to go to the question of whether there's consensus no ok because i feel that that's our job to gain to research and gain knowledge we do need input from the staff but we have to be able to hear it from the source and and discuss it and i disagree i think our job is to go back to resolution is to consider whether this is this form of government or not it's going to be better for operations and come up with a recommendation doesn't specify research i think what we want to gather is that there's as much unbiased information neutral information that we can form an opinion on and i don't the structure thing we're talking about is getting really confusing you i don't know how to get the information i think that's the first point when you start figure out is how do we get information could release agree it mean there's so much information out there and in so many it it's it's just down can we agree to start with what the staff has to offer and then look what more direction we need where then what you're asking may very well be part of our kelli arena for the examination based on what we receive because to say what we need now i mean even in retrospect with the guests that we invited today and now are saying we didn't get our clear purpose where we very clear with what the purpose was for the invitation and did we have a paper to look at  go yes this was fulfilled or not that we could help keep everything on track instead of went all over the place they we kind of did and still doing point of information i just was wondering if i had heard from laurie before that the staff had take about fourteen differ cities are compiled with similar demographics when are the able to transmit that to us through email too late goal right before the meeting and then come to the meeting ready to discuss it or use that against the sunshine law no they were ready and prepared to give us that list of cities and counties that you would be researching in that tegan and then with contact information so that they made easier for you with similar in those cities and counties had similar demographics is a chair would be easier if i made a motion that was very specific and strong ok ok so i would move  the questions as outlined in the propose a plan of action for the two tags one and two the staff prepare the answers to those questions in a draft form and that be those that information be conveyed to the committee for further research and discussion after we have received the documents the the determination will be made whether there needs to be further information or are whatever so you'd like to feed like to have the motion modified to say only research that there was no i just want to study get somewhere well what i was doing wasn't all encompassing i was saying the at a later mother point so may i have that motion restated please ok that the staff will be directed to research the questions as outlined in the is there is nothing in any of these it says it's all about city manager it doesn't say anything about different forms of the mayor point it should  that's what i think what we're asking to do is gather examples of this form and for the staff to collect it so they make a motion that the staff collects the information for take one and present and prepare it for the com we'll try this at this time i'd like to entertain a motion for the office of can't go services stuff to research questions posed for one an research or investigate they took a look at c b s they did a balance ok they gave you a balanced look at cities that went from one form of government to the other so council mayor form of government to council manager form of government and they also took a look at those counties and cities that went from council mayor council manager back to council mer so a balanced several that have functioned successfully with a council manager form of government for decades fairfax county virginia would be one good example and you know we know that deputy manager for the last twenty years or so we want some that also have just function and function took us fully you know or even some that function of function badly so not having to go through motions for  still why not take a look at that list and learn from the counties that get awards of excellence right so they're going to take a look at the counties that's the second part to  take a look at the counties that have a received out award this last year and match up those counties with similar demographics that we have hey that's the second part that's the b part where it says examine counties and heading and cities that are demographically similar maui county and that have won the two thousand and fifteen air national city county maj min associations local government of excellence award and those are the questions that they'll look into and those who make that was included in the motion resident that both take satirist and that's to explain the process factual information that we come up with before posting we can provide it on the day posting and if it doesn't if we aren't ready exactly for posting we can provide it to you two days before the meeting well we can compile it two days before the meeting but i think we have to hand it out at the beginning but we will certainly make our effort for posting as we always do because that's the cleanest way yeah but all kidding aside this is to be prepared for us for the next meeting is that the goal that is the goal here of course and posted six days before that an want to limit it to just the first set of questions for take one emotionless or both for the next meeting ok let's do one so i mean the research time it's not going to be that easy and you know we already trip one would be a possibility that they could furnish a partial report to the next meeting and the other would be that the date that the date could move if necessary i  is to make sure we keep rolling as fast as we can yes that's true should be amended and if so how the form of government should be structured timeline for that would be somewhere around march to april so that's doing anything on that is kind of premature isn't it intends correct i'm just time to slowly began researching the availability of going out into the communities evening meetings because it it's really tough to be able to book the news without a few weeks or  true but ok all right so i'm just giving you the big picture the plan of action you know task one test two thousand tests three those are our task as stated in the resolution and then the last task would be number three prepare a proposed charter amendment if this is the recommendation right cary just a comment and so if you know charmaine was to come and talk to us she should be here i mean so we're open to public testimony every time we meet well i suggested that and she suggested she like more than three than three minutes and you know if we're all as a body we want to do this thing we can do it but if you know what i mean i don't  heard from the current administration that we invite charmaine to virus to speak for ten minutes that way there is a group it is in the community that has been looking at this whole government governance thing for more than a year and i think that we should give them an opportunity to say how they why they came to the decision what if formation they found and some of that we've already gotten but it's it's good when you get the opportunity for the exchange of information ok so so when we start doing these groups that we're to take testimony from that's beyond three minutes we're going to limit it to ten yes ok and then and we're going to take like two of these or how many you want to take for me to three meeting three and i give says they're not going to have your word that you guys won't use the question and answer period to extend their testimony no absolutely not i mean if there is something that's now because you can be questioned i would prefer different we're fifteen minutes different than to be limiting our our questions and i also look to the future where we have a facilitated ability to discuss  not only it may be that mr hyde wants to make his own presentation but there is also a study group though you know you just got to know i'm saying there's a study group or so what if mr high doesn't want to make a presentation for somebody else ok calling going going back to making these things as short but as beneficial as possible and going back to the idea of having specific questions do we have to do that here is a group now what is that process i'm not sold on the specific questions i really don't want to say anything but you know you got to make exceptions to testimony right more than three minutes you got it and you're going to fight people here they're going to be call resource people yeah thank you they can to be any kind of like or whatever and they've got to be related to the presentations as long as it falls within the priorities of the committee and that's what how the adjust yes and the resolution on just in case the one you know efficiencies of government the cost of the cost that first time we met that's the cost of government yes so can we get that and can we get that without it having to be on the agenda can we just get it our web site as well ok so it will be on there because i got the notice of the meeting this morning i think that was forwarded to you but all mediums are posted six days in