With a multibillion-dollar rail project resembling an 800-pound gorilla at his side, Mayor Peter Carlisle boasts "fiscal discipline" in the city’s budget for the coming fiscal year. He can legitimately claim such a policy as the budget focuses on core city services, saving today to fund future obligations and maintaining the city’s high bond rating — but we caution against going too far in looking for ways to generate income at the expense of our island way of life.
The mayor rightly points out that the $5.27 billion rail project is in the hands of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, which gets its local funding directly from the half-percent general excise tax surcharge on Oahu. Unless the City Council agrees, HART will receive nothing from the city’s treasure chest, and nobody is even suggesting such a stipend.
In his "responsible" budget, Carlisle is calling for no increase in property taxes, the main source of revenue for city government. He projects a 1.5 percent increase — $28 million primarily due to rising electricity and fuel costs — in the city’s operating budget, which comes in at just under $2 billion for fiscal year 2013. He points out that the growth would be less than that of Honolulu’s consumer price index in the second half of last year.
His proposed capital improvement budget of $577 million is a mere 5 percent increase, resulting largely from wastewater treatment, highway and street improvements and public safety. This construction budget is $30 million more than a year ago, due mostly to requirements of the 2010 federal consent decree to improve wastewater collection and secondary treatment systems. It also includes eagerly awaited improvements to the HPOWER waste-to-energy facility, where a third boiler will start operating this year.
Meanwhile, Carlisle predicts, the city’s debt service will be lower than that from the previous year by about $7 million.
"We’re clamping down on new projects that we can’t afford to build, and we’re basically taking care of maintaining those things that we already have," Carlisle told the Star-Advertiser’s editorial board. "If you’ve got a credit card and you keep on using it, it’s not going to get you out of debt. We’ve been using our credit card too often, plain and simple, so we’re going to stop doing that." Such an approach is laudable, especially in these times.
Turning to potential revenue, Carlisle has his eyes on parking meters that accept credit cards and the ability for the city to pocket revenue already paid by parkers should they leave before time’s up. That’s a fair use of new, convenient technology.
However, Carlisle seems too eager to embrace the idea, perhaps in future budgeting, for parking meters at popular public locations on the island.
"There’s a whole lot of disadvantages to free parking, not the least of which fewer people get to use them," he replied to a question, "the worst of which is that people have the opportunity to end up then hogging that space from other people’s use rather than turning it over from morning to night."
At most beaches and parks on Oahu, residents are accustomed to parking nearby at no charge, even at the most popular spots, but Carlisle indicated he has plans to deny them something so good for nothing. Potential city revenue from meters can be had at "a parking lot wherever there’s heavy use. So it can be restaurant districts, it can be beach parks," he said. "It can be anyplace where people park for long periods of time, therefore making it so other people don’t have a chance to use those parks."
Most residents have the patience to take that chance for a day at the beach or park, which is one of the great, free pleasures of living on such a beautiful island. Requiring residents to put money in a parking meter in order to enjoy that bliss, especially on top of paying property taxes and other user fees, should not be essential for the city’s balanced budget.
