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RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM Crews worked yesterday on a road resurfacing project on Makakilo Drive in Kapolei just mauka of Panana Street.

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Road ruin linked
to beach events

City road crews were
used to help with such
activities, an audit finds

The city neglected Oahu's deteriorating streets in the past three years by diverting manpower to popular social events, city Auditor Les Tanaka says.

The Jeremy Harris administration also opted for quick fixes of filling in potholes and steered away from long-lasting repair or resurfacing, Tanaka said in a report released yesterday.

"The former administration gave it (repairing roads) a low priority," Tanaka said.

Tanaka questioned the Harris administration's diversion of manpower from fixing roads to working on Brunch and Sunset on the Beach.

An attempt to reach former Harris administration officials through former Managing Director Ben Lee were unsuccessful. Lee's office oversaw Brunch and Sunset on the Beach activities.

The Department of Facility Maintenance's Road Maintenance Division oversees 3,477 lane miles of roads on Oahu, along with other duties including cleaning culverts and streams.

But the number of lane miles resurfaced by the city decreased from a high of 319 lane miles per year in fiscal year 1989 to 45 lane miles in fiscal year 1998. Over the past three fiscal years, the number of lane miles resurfaced declined by 52 percent, from 128 to 61, according to the audit.

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Department Director Laverne Higa said 95 percent of the audit pertained to the former administration.

She said changes are already under way, with Mayor Mufi Hannemann announcing in March his administration's four-point plan of attack on the "war on potholes" that includes pothole patching, first aid and resurfacing.

She also said complaints that the city's pothole-reporting telephone line was not working have already been corrected with a new online reporting system that was also announced in March. She said crews are still a "little behind" in fulfilling their promise to patch potholes within 48 hours.

"We have a major decline in the commitment of funding from the previous administration, which really restricted our capabilities in hiring people, getting equipment, getting supplies and just giving us the necessities to do our work properly," Higa said.

Higa said her department and the Road Maintenance Division are currently experiencing a 30 percent vacancy rate and she hopes that rate will drop to 20 percent during the upcoming fiscal year with additional funding.

Both Higa and Tanaka said they were surprised by the number of hours spent by road crews on Sunset and Brunch on the Beach activities.

The audit found that city road crews did about 5,600 hours of non-road work between 2002 and 2004 for Sunset and Brunch on the Beach, including setting up for the event that includes a movie, entertainment and food in Waikiki and other parts of the island. Much of that work was on overtime because the events are usually on the weekend.

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RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM Traffic cones kept drivers off a road resurfacing project at the intersection of Panana Street and Makakilo Drive in Kapolei yesterday.

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Tanaka said that because some records were missing -- another shortcoming found by the audit -- the amount of hours diverted to Sunset and Brunch may be the tip of the iceberg.

"We think that it's even greater than we found. We didn't think it was going to be that high," Tanaka said. "There was a priority on the Brunch and Sunset even though people were complaining on the roads."

Managing Director Jeff Coelho said Hannemann has stopped that practice, recognizing that resources should be spent on what the resources are dedicated for.

"My men are happy to be out on the road," Higa said. "Our road crews (are) not supporting Sunset or Brunch at all."

Hannemann also announced earlier this year that by next year, no taxpayer money would be used for the events.

The audit detailed a couple of trends that contributed to the overall deterioration of city roads.

First, control of resurfacing roads was slowly wrestled from the road crews.

Then, Harris' 1998 reorganization of the city departments caused road resurfacing tasks -- including planning, funding oversight and the actual road work -- to fall under three departments instead of one.

The former administration also stopped in-house resurfacing so that city employees would be responsible for potholes while private contractors would be responsible for the major resurfacing and rehabilitation work.

Also, road crews moved away from long-term fixes such as road resurfacing to more first aid and pothole patching -- a temporary quick fix -- in part to respond to public complaints.