——

During his third State of the City address today, Mayor Rick Blangiardi vowed to address some of Oahu’s most intractable “wicked problems” by easing homeless, reducing island traffic through better coordinated traffic lights and overhauling the city’s troubled Department of Planning and Permitting.

Blangiardi also wants to help home owners address eye-popping property tax assessments with a proposed one-time tax credit that’s now in front of the City Council that would give 152,000 home owners $300, which would particularly help owners of smaller mortgages, Blangiardi said.

“If you own and occupy your home, that credit, for the upcoming tax year, amounts to an $86,000 addition to the current homeowner’s exemption of $100,000,” Blangiardi said. “All told, we’ve set aside $45.5 million for immediate tax relief — money to help you and your families offset the cost of living and we’re asking the City Council to work with us to make that proposed relief a reality.”

In front of Gov. Josh Green and Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, who were in attendance for the more than hour-long speech inside the city’s Mission Memorial Auditorium, Blangiardi pledged to work with Green and Luke on developing more affordable housing and one of Luke’s key initiatives to expand early childhood education.

He singled out and praised city department heads and many of their employees, especially city emergency medial technicians who are dealing with an incredible post COVID-era workload.

Blangiardi got emotional as he talked about a meeting he had with five veteran EMTs who range in experience from 15 to 40 years on the job to understand the volume from their points of view.

“Our EMS team received nearly 130,000 911 calls last year and crews responded to more than 85,000 medical emergencies, all with a city fleet of just 21 full-time EMS (Emergency Medial Services) units. In simple math, EMS responded to an astonishing 235 calls per day.

“These increases in call volumes and medical responses are putting an incredible strain on our resources, the most important of which are our colleagues: our EMTs, paramedics and dispatchers,” Blangiardi said.

When he asked the veteran EMTs why they stay on the job instead of leaving for higher pay, the responses were blunt and universal, Blangiardi said.

“Each of them looked me in the eyes and said: ‘We love what we do.’ That is dedication — humbling dedication — in the face of incredible adversity.”

Blangiardi wants to study whether EMS’ lifeguard and ambulance services should be separated into individual departments and whether DPP also should be broken up.

The average wait time to get building permits approved takes over 300 days, which Blangiardi called “painful” and “unacceptable.”

DPP oversees regulating short-term vacation rentals, enforcement, affordable housing, transit-oriented development, zoning, land use, plan and project reviews, inspections, historic preservation “and many other issues affecting communities across the City and County,” Blangiardi said. “If efficient permitting is a priority of our people and businesses, then we must consider whether the Department of Planning and Permitting should continue as one department.”

Among changes already underway at DPP, the city now uses an artificial intelligence bot to review plans at night to pre-screen four of the 10 most common errors that add to delays.

“The bot has already reduced the average wait time for pre-screening from an average of five months to an average of five weeks, and we believe the bot can cut that time down even more,” Blangiardi said.

This livestream video has ended. Watch a replay at the top of the page.

Transcript of 2023 State of… by Ed Lynch