Hundreds come
to speak on
Council budget cuts

People show up to fight for everything
from a Filipino-American Center to
neighborhood boards and swimming pools.

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Maeda Timson says she is insulted with the City Council leadership's theory that Mayor Jeremy Harris' community-based visioning program was rigged.

"We know in our communities what's good for us," said Timson, chairwoman of the Makakilo-Kapolei-Honokai Hale Neighborhood Board.

The longtime Makakilo resident looked at City Council members and added, "We don't need you to tell us what's good for us."

Council Chairman Mufi Hannemann assured Timson that only $100,000 had been cut from the Ewa area's $2 million visioning program.

"We're not dissing all the recommendations before us," he said.

It was that kind of evening for Hannemann and Council Budget Chairman John Henry Felix, who learned earlier in the day that they would be out of their positions, possibly as early as next week.

More than 300 people had signed up to testify last night at a public hearing on the year 2000 city operating and capital budgets. By midnight, less than half the people had spoken.

Many of those testifying came from a rally in the Honolulu Hale courtyard led by Mayor Jeremy Harris, who has criticized the Council's leadership on the budget.

People showed up to fight for funding for everything from a Filipino-American Center in Wai-pahu to threatened positions at the Neighborhood Board Commission, to swimming pools also said to be in the path of the budget ax.

Hannemann, Felix and Councilwoman Donna Mercado Kim alternately explained their budgets. Funding had been put back for the Fil-Am Center, while other cuts had been exaggerated by Harris and their Council colleagues, they said.

Not all those testifying were unhappy with the outgoing Council leadership, however.

Lynne Matusow of the Downtown Neighborhood Board supported the move to delete $500,000 for a Chinatown art enterprise and information center.

Matusow said the visioning process was flawed and contrary to what the mayor had promised the downtown community -- a community service center.