Council adjourns,
humbugs ‘Scrooge’

The goodbyes were said, a lei was presented and a cake was ready to be cut as the City Council prepared yesterday to adjourn for the year and celebrate the holidays.

Not so fast, Mayor Jeremy Harris said.

In a letter to the Council, Harris said he was calling a holiday season special session of the Council on Dec. 14. He wants the Council to confirm the 13th member to the Charter Commission and also wants the Council to vote on a bill that would designate important agricultural lands on Oahu.

"The mayor has decided that he wants to be Scrooge," Councilman Charles Djou said.

Council Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz said he is not sure there will be a quorum to vote on anything, because several Council members have already indicated that they will be out of town during December.

"It's very apparent that Jeremy Harris does not want to let go of the job," Dela Cruz said.

Djou said the Council could simply go into session and then immediately adjourn to fulfill the mayor's special-session mandate.

The mayor was en route to the airport and unavailable for comment late yesterday afternoon.

The Council spent the last part of its regularly scheduled meeting yesterday saying goodbye to departing Councilman Mike Gabbard, who decided not to run for re-election and made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. He received a lei and made a farewell speech. A cake stood nearby, ready to be passed out to Council members and their staff.

Even Managing Director Ben Lee said his adieu to the Council.

Last year, the mayor called the Council into special session on Christmas Eve to vote on a vehicle weight tax increase to pay for police officer pay raises.

Djou said the agricultural lands bill is in his Zoning Committee and that he has not moved it out because he is waiting to see what the Legislature does with the issue next session.

"The only emergency is that Jeremy Harris is leaving office," he said.

Measure setting limits on peafowl passes 7-2

A bill limiting the number of peafowl in a residential area to two per household was approved 7-2 by the City Council yesterday.

Councilwoman Barbara Marshall, who introduced the bill, said the measure would "codify what is logical" by adding peafowl to the menagerie of poultry already regulated in residential areas under animal nuisance ordinances.

Marshall also acknowledged that the bill does not address the feral peafowl problem.

Animal rights activists, however, said there are people who take care of more than two peafowl, and, if the bill is approved, it could lead to peafowl being euthanized or let loose.

Bill gives war troops a property tax respite

Members of the National Guard and military reservists would be allowed to defer paying their property taxes if they are called up to active duty, under a bill passed unanimously yesterday by the City Council.

Councilman Charles Djou, who is in the Army Reserve but has not been called up, introduced the bill and said the measure is a "small and important gesture" to Guard and Reserve members on combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The measure allows members of the Guard and Reserve to defer paying their taxes until six months after their active-duty status is terminated.

Counsel named in spat with mayor over fees

The City Council will be using its own attorneys in a legal showdown with Mayor Jeremy Harris' administration.

The Harris administration has already said it will take the Council to court over a bill that rolls back monthly parking fees for downtown parking garages, fees that were raised by 50 percent earlier this year. The mayor said the bill is illegal because it unbalances the budget.

The Council voted yesterday to designate attorneys with the Office of Council Services -- the legal and research arm of the Council -- as special counsel in the anticipated court action by the administration.

Normally, the Corporation Counsel's Office represents city officials in legal actions, but the office is siding with the administration on this issue.