Directors detail costs
of Council budget cuts

Leeward Coast bus riders will have to wait a little longer to catch the Country Express. And the backlog in getting a building permit may get even longer.

Those are just some of the impacts from cuts the City Council made to the operating budget submitted by Mayor Mufi Hannemann, department directors said during a public hearing on proposed city budgets last night.

Some on the Council say there may be more cuts coming to pay for employee pay raises on the budget.

"We had to tiptoe around that, because we don't know the impacts," Councilman Nestor Garcia said. "You've got to talk about revenue enhancement or very dramatic cuts."

The City Council yesterday voted 7-2 to give preliminary approval to a proposed $1.35 billion operating budget.

"This budget is a prudent budget," Councilman Rod Tam said.

Councilmen Charles Djou and Gary Okino voted against the bill, for different reasons. Djou said the budget is still too big. Okino said the cuts will hamstring the departments.

The Council also approved a $457 million capital-improvement budget and proposed increases to sewer fees, vehicle weight tax and charges to rent facilities at the Blaisdell Center.

All the budget measures now head back to the Budget Committee.

Budget Director Mary Pat Waterhouse lobbied the Council to restore cuts made to key initiatives by Mayor Mufi Hannemann, including the Mayor's Review and employee training.

Waterhouse said cuts in her department could mean a couple of employees would be laid off.

She also said a $1.3 million cut made to automotive services will mean the city won't be able to maintain garbage trucks for the curbside recycling program, which won't start.

Other directors also talked about the impacts to their budgets.

Transportation Services Director Ed Hirata said his department can live with a $160,000 cut of federal funding to his public transit bus.

The cut will mean it will take a few minutes longer between buses for the Country Express.

Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said money was cut because she believes federal Community Development Block Grants should not be used to subsidize city operations, but to assist financially nonprofit organizations that help the poor and needy.

Hirata said, however, that while he believes the department can work around the cuts, those grants were appropriately used to fund bus operations that also assist low-income residents living along the Waianae Coast.

Planning Director Henry Eng said a $465,000 cut to a part of his budget that does mandatory reviews of land-use plans will mean that staff -- instead of outside consultants -- may be taken away for other duties like processing building permits. "Everybody I've talked to said, 'You've got to reduce the (permitting) backlog,' so the message is quite clear," Eng said.