The impending return of five-day-a week government services was widely welcomed Friday, the final furlough day for state and city employees.

"My boyfriend and I went down to (District Court) to get his traffic abstract, and we couldn’t get that done because it was closed for Furlough Friday," said Kelly Wiles, 22, of Kaneohe, recounting a previous Furlough Friday frustration.

Twice a month for as long as two years, government offices, schools and other public facilities were closed as workers were forced to take unpaid days off to help close budget deficits.

To complicate matters, the state and each county had different furlough schedules. Most troublesome for parents of young children were the 17 furlough days in the 2009-10 school year, when they had to find child care on those days.Furloughs will be no more when the new fiscal year begins July 1.

Many government workers will get extra days off in exchange for pay cuts, but offices will remain open five days a week.

Haku and Nohea Kamelamela, 36, twin sisters from Makiki, work at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua. Because they are considered essential staff, they did not take furlough days, but said they were affected by the absence of co-workers who did.

"Sometimes we had to make decisions without upper management (on furlough), but unless the decision was very serious, it was not a problem," Haku Kamelamela said.

Furlough Fridays also meant no janitorial service at the correctional center.

"Everyone is relieved (furloughs are) over," Nohea Kamelamela said.

Robyn Hironaka, 30, of Mililani, who works for the Department of Health as an office assistant, said she used furlough days to run errands and catch up on rest.

"A lot of us got used to the furloughs, and now in a way I’d rather have the time off since we are taking a pay cut anyway," said Hironaka, who works part time at Starbucks to make up for the reduced income.

Kaneohe residents Casie and Blake Yoshimura, both 35, are also state workers — Casie for the Department of Health and Blake for the Department of Public Safety.

The couple said they used the days off to catch up with friends or errands but had to cut back on eating out and some entertainment to make up for the money lost to furloughs.

Public school furloughs, though not an issue for the past year, still left a lasting impression with many parents.

Eileen Nims, 43, a mother of three from Mililani who works at Pearl Harbor Navy College as an academic counselor, said she had to adjust her work schedule to care for her children when school was out on Furlough Fridays.

Her children attend Mililani elementary and middle schools.

"The year of furloughs was just crazy," Nims said. "It seemed like there wasn’t one five-day school week."

Nims saw other effects of budget cuts.

"Everything that was considered to be extraneous — music, PE, foreign languages — was cut," she said.

One school that avoided furloughs was Lanikai Elementary, a public charter school with more than 300 students.

"They redid their budget to avoid the furloughs," said Wendy Ferri, who has two children at Lanikai.