DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
People stood in line for service yesterday at Waipahu Satellite City Hall, which is set to close.
Waipahu losing its
satellite city hallThe closure is blamed on tight city
finances and fewer residents
using the area office
Casiano Pagdilao goes to Waipahu Satellite City Hall to renew his car registration, pay his water bill and buy bus passes.
"I work here in Waipahu, so it's closer," said Pagdilao, 37, who lives in Kapolei. "It's more convenient, especially during the weekdays."
Malia Gombio, 30, lives right up the road from Waipahu Satellite City Hall, located near Daiei on Farrington Highway. And this past week alone, she has visited it twice.
But she learned yesterday that the Waipahu site will close its doors June 30 because of cuts to the city operating budget.
"I don't think they should close it, because it's convenient," Gombio said. "Where's the next nearest one?"
Mayor Jeremy Harris said that two to three satellite city halls and the City Hall on Wheels -- or CHOW -- will cease operations as result of about $100,000 in cuts to satellite city hall operations in the $1.2 billion budget approved by the City Council June 4.
"We're just trying to find a way to live within the budget cuts, minimize impact to the customers," Harris said. "It is a realization in the budget that they did pass. There is insufficient moneys to maintain the satellite city hall system."
The city currently has 11 satellite city halls, part of a program that has been around for 30 years. Waipahu has had one since 1974.
Joy Wilson, supervisor of the both the Waipahu and Kapolei sites, said it may be difficult for his Waipahu clientele to get to another satellite city hall.
"More than half are elderly, and we do a lot of bus sales out of there, which means they are bus riders," Wilson said. "We have the ones that go shopping at Daiei by bus, and they come here to buy their bus passes and pay the water bill."
Carol Costa, director of the city's Customer Services Department, said Waipahu Satellite City Hall is a part of the community.
"It's always been there all these years, and they have sort of always relied on it," Costa said.
Those who use Waipahu Satellite City Hall now will probably go to either Kapolei or Pearlridge.
"Kapolei, it's going to be so crowded, so I don't know if I'd want to go there," said Gombio.
The employees of Waipahu Satellite City Hall will reassigned to those two sites.
Costa said that since the Kapolei satellite opened, the Waipahu location saw a 9 percent decline in use.
The City Hall on Wheels -- a refurbished city bus manned by one employee -- serves Ewa Beach, Laie, Haleiwa, Mililani and Salt Lake once a week. It currently has lowest number of transactions.
Harris said that the administration is looking at a number of factors in deciding which satellites to close, including how many satellites are in the area, how many transactions they are processing, employee workload and money saved if closed.
"The reason we are able to announce Waipahu is that it's fairly obvious when you look at the numbers, and (Waipahu and) the mobile (satellite city hall) come in at the bottom of the spectrum," he said.
Harris said that the announcement of the closing does not mean he will sign off on the budget passed by the Council.
"We have a number of issues on the whole budget to complete. We're doing line-by-line review with our fiscal people and our attorneys, and next week, we start the departmental review ... and look at the problems and the errors in there," Harris said.
"The difficulty is, we keep finding more problems and mistakes, and the question is, How are we going to sort all this out? I have to decide whether to veto, line-item veto or let it become law without my signature."
Harris said the reason the Waipahu closure was announced now was to give notice to the landlord.
"The difficulty with all these things is that you can't on a dime stop something that's been in place for 30 years. There are encumbrances, there are lease agreements, there are equipment rentals for Xerox machines and a whole lot of stuff, and so if you're going to be able to save the money, you need to act," he said.
