Council OKs $1.22B
budgetUnanimously rejected are pay
hikes for the Council itself and
the top city administrators
Property taxes for businesses, municipal parking rates and trash hauling fees are going up after the City Council approved yesterday the $1.22 billion operating budget for the fiscal year 2005 beginning July 1.
While the budget also includes $6.2 million in pay raises for white-collar employees, it does not include 21 percent pay raises for the City Council and 5 percent pay hikes for the mayor, managing director, deputy managing director, city prosecutor and corporation counsel and their first deputies. The Council unanimously rejected those raises yesterday.
"I don't think probably any of us really like this budget ... but I think given the constraints and given what we have to operate with and given what we do have ... I'm going to support," Councilwoman Barbara Marshall said.
The Council approved the operating budget, which came in $6 million higher than the version sent by Mayor Jeremy Harris, by a vote of 7-2 with Councilmen Gary Okino and Charles Djou voting no.
"This is a terrible budget," Okino said.
Okino decried the cuts to vacant positions that will affect, for example, road resurfacing and lines at driver licensing sites.
Managing Director Ben Lee said some of the reductions that were made were to positions that were recently filled.
Lee said the mayor's policy is not to lay off anyone, but "we're going to have to take a hard look as far as how we can ... not lay off anyone. How we're going to do it, I don't know."
Lee said he has not talked to the mayor about what he will do once the budget is before him.
Okino and Lee also criticized the budget for its "micromanaging," with the frequent use of provisos to restrict specific spending.
Peter Radulovic, executive director of the Office of Culture and the Arts, told the Council that his $399,000 budget is restricted by provisos that transfer money for day-to-day operations to other programs.
"The most disturbing thing is that there are no moneys within the current expenses to operate my department. I have no moneys to buy pencils, I have no moneys to buy paper, I have no money to repair statues that are required by ordinance," Radulovic said.
Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said the increases in the budget were needed to fund much-deserved pay raises and other required costs that the mayor did not include in his budget.
The budget includes a 7 percent increase of tax rates for commercial, industrial and resort/ hotel properties that is expected to bring in an additional $13 million a year.
Also increasing are parking rates, with meters and municipal parking lots rising by 50 percent, expected to bring in $2 million in revenue.
Commercial trash haulers would be paying more to dump their loads at the city landfill and HPOWER. Tipping fees would go up to $81 a ton from $72.25 a ton, but the increase will not take effect until Jan. 1.
The Council also approved a $298 million construction budget, which is about $12 million more than what the mayor submitted. Kobayashi said several added projects were for district drainage improvements that came about because of recent heavy rains and flooding.
Okino also criticized the spending in the Council's own $12 million budget. He said that while the executive branch's budget was scrutinized for cuts, the legislative budget was left virtually unscathed.