Tough job:
What to cut

The Council wants help
in slicing the budget; funds for
the homeless and city jobs
are at risk

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

The roof over the homeless is leaking. The stage for the Honolulu Symphony is shaky. And for the first time ever, city employees are fretting about their paychecks.

City Council members this budget season are being forced to make tough decisions like never before.

"It's very difficult trying to determine the priorities," said Budget Chairman John Henry Felix. "That's why we're going through this very exacting process."

Felix is urging the public to argue for their favorite city-funded programs at a Council public hearing at 7 p.m. today.

Lynne Maunakea, executive director of the Institute for Human Services, said $200,000 in Community Development Block Grant

monies she got last year through the city isn't available this year.

The Harris administration has not replaced the funding, and she's been lobbying the Council to bring it back.

Maunakea says she was shocked when she found out about the funding loss. "Maybe it's a case of me assuming too much," she said.

It costs about $1 million annually to operate each of IHS' two shelters. The money from city block grants was to help pay for operations at its men's shelter on Kaaahi Street.

Councilman Duke Bainum questions if it's right for the city to continue funding arts-and-culture programs when the city is laying off workers and leaving out funding for the homeless.

Even more questionable, Bainum said, is the mayor's placing of $100,000 each for the U.S. China Conference of Mayors and the Asia Pacific Environmental Summit.

"When you put IHS in one hand and the U.S.-China summit in the other, there's no comparison," Bainum said.

Some Council members, including Chairman John DeSoto, are suggesting that Harris' entire $578,300 budget for "professional services" under the culture-and-arts category be axed.

The current budget is $493,492.

The symphony ($100,000), the Hawaii Theatre ($100,000), the China mayor's conference, the environmental summit and "new festivals" totaling $25,000 are among the 15 programs listed.

Michael Tiknis, executive director of the symphony, said the $100,000 city share to his $5 million budget represents "an investment in the city that creates jobs in the community. Every dollar that we would lose would hurt us."

The symphony has been "dramatically downsized," he said.

Felix, long a patron of the arts, is wary of eliminating or reducing funding for programs such as the symphony and Hawaii Theatre.

"A community without these kinds of cultural activities winds up being a community without a soul," he said.

Council members also disagree how money taken away from other areas should be spent.

Bainum may want to use the money for the homeless-shelter operations, but DeSoto wants to use all the money to fund the salaries of 15 firefighters for a new hazardous-materials company at the Kapolei Fire Station in Campbell Industrial Park.

Councilman Mufi Hannemann views his top priority as determining exactly which of the layoffs proposed by the administration are justified or whether the cuts should be made elsewhere.

He's already determined that at least 15 positions cut by Harris in the Real Property Assessment Division need to be reinstated, and he's looking at other areas.

"It's not going to be easy," Hannemann said.