[ OUR OPINION ]

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UH needs to correct
arboretum’s systemic flaws

THE ISSUE Lyon Arboretum, which was closed in April, is scheduled to be reopened next week.

THE trails of Lyon Arboretum are scheduled to be reopened to the public by the University of Hawaii on Sunday, but systemic problems that led to the deterioration that caused its closure in August remain. State legislators should gain assurance that those problems will be eliminated before approving the $3 million sought by the university for further improvements.

In a scathing report, state Auditor Marion Higa maintains that the funds should be withheld until the university settles on a mission for the botanical garden that "has yet to be articulated." Since the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association conveyed Manoa Valley arboretum acreage to the university in 1953, Higa's audit asserts, "organization disarray" has resulted in its neglect and disrepair.

Higa's report says the arboretum's lack of a mission was caused by the university's longtime disinterest in the park, resulting in the fund-raising Lyon Arboretum Association's "encroachment on fiscal and operational affairs" and a protective arboretum staff. Alan Teramura resigned as director in April after the staff resisted his plans for the arboretum, it says.

The report likens such "organizational pathology" to "The Nut Island Effect," described in a 2001 Harvard Business Review article about the underfunded Nut Island sewage treatment plant on a small peninsula in Massachusetts. The plant's staff became protective of the facility, which deteriorated and was closed in 1997.

The similarities are "instructive," Higa says: "the isolation in which arboretum staff operate; the university administration's apathy, the line staff's self-sufficiency and self-governance; and the arboretum's condition eventually coming to light through the staff's public airing of its grievances."

Assessments made by museum consultants in 1982, 1989 and 1991 pointed to the need for the university to commit to the arboretum's management and financial support, but Higa says the university failed to develop a mission statement and strategy. James R. Gaines, the university's interim vice president for research, has appointed a task force to review the arboretum's mission and how it should fit in the university's mission.

Higa understandably is skeptical about the possibility that the task force, which includes conflicting interests, will agree on a mission for the arboretum any time soon. In his letter responding to Higa's report, Gaines did not give a timetable for the task force, but said it is important that UH secure the $3 million for "essential improvements in the arboretum's physical infrastructure."

The task force is not likely to come up with a strategy before the end of the upcoming legislative session. Legislators should not authorize such an expenditure unless given some assurance that Lyon Arboretum will no longer be a Nut Island.