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Council budget chief City Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi assured city employees and hundreds of others gathered at a public hearing last night that the Council will not trim jobs as earlier threatened.
promises no layoffs
Kobayashi's assurances comes
after crowds pack a public hearingBy Gordon Y.K. Pang
gpang@starbulletin.com
"There will be no layoffs, no one will be fired, no one will lose their jobs," Kobayashi told the overflow crowd that had gathered inside the Council chambers and spilled onto the Honolulu Hale courtyard. "There were cuts in there that we did not intend but we didn't have the information to cut properly, and we're still receiving information."
At the end of a marathon session that began at 6:30 p.m. and ended shortly before 5 a.m., the Council voted 7-1 to approve --on the second of third readings -- a $1.2 billion operating budget and a trimmed $400 million capital improvements package.
Councilman Steve Holmes voted against both measures, in apparent protest to the drastic cuts threatened by Kobayashi. Councilman Jon Yoshimura was absent when the votes were taken.
Kobayashi said afterward that many of the cuts proposed would be restored, likely at the Budget Committee's next meeting on May 16. The Council is not scheduled to take a final vote until May 29.
Kobayashi said much of the $19 million in cuts to the operating budget she proposed can be taken from an estimated $30 million in vacant, funded positions.
However, the news was not as good for those who are seeking to restore some of the $75 million in proposed cuts Kobayashi is suggesting be made to the administration's capital improvements budget. Mayor Jeremy Harris is proposing a $475 million budget for the 2003 fiscal year that begins July 1.
Kobayashi told the Star-Bulletin this morning that the city's increasing debt service will make it difficult for some of those projects -- including most of the second phase of Central Oahu Regional Park -- to be restored. She added that she and her colleagues are trying to find even more that can be chopped from the capital improvements program.
From Honolulu Symphony fans to soccer moms, hundreds of Oahu residents representing different interests converged on City Hall last night to object to the Council's proposed cuts.
More than 400 people signed up to testify, and the meeting began with a call by Fire Chief Attilio Leonardi to clear the overflow from the Council chambers for safety reasons.
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The Harris administration has been criticized severely by Council members throughout the budget review season for taking money from the dedicated sewer and solid-waste funds to pay for operations.But the administration struck back, working phones and e-mail trees to bring out supporters of Harris' many projects. Shortly after the scheduled start time for the hearing, Harris addressed the throngs from a podium set up at the front of the Honolulu Hale courtyard.
"It's all about quality of life," he said. "There's no reason (to cut the budget). We have a balanced budget."
He urged the crowd to "go upstairs and send a message to the City Council."
Council members were not about to back down. Kobayashi, who has been at the center of the budget uproar, defended her preliminary plan to chop 5 percent across the board from all city agency budgets except public service departments, which would get a 1 percent trim.
Kobayashi noted that $60 million is proposed to be taken from the sewer fund and $18 million from the solid-waste account to help balance the general fund. "Raiding funds is not the way to balance the budget," she told the crowd. "We have to make these hard decisions."
But city department heads, including police Chief Lee Donohue, said the proposed cuts could have dire consequences.
Donohue said two of his four planned recruit classes would need to be canceled if his department gets a 1 percent cut. With retirements and other departures expected to raise an existing shortage to 295 uniformed officers by July 2003, Donohue said, "This will cause a severe reduction in our quality of service to our community as well as create a potential safety problem for our officers."
City & County of Honolulu
