Learning how folks talk at City Hall is part of the job for new journalists in Honolulu. Included in the vocabulary that is exclusively a part of local journalism is the Hawaiian phrase “uku pau.” Uku means flea and pau means finish, but in the Honolulu Hale context, uku pau refers to how refuse collection workers could end their workday once they finished their assigned route.

It was formalized in United Public Workers’ contracts as “the parties agree to recognize the existing refuse collection task work (uku pau) system as a method of determining a day’s work in the applicable Employer.”

As one legal reference explained, “uku pau” means “to jump around like a flea to quickly finish the work.”

Seems like a creative way to both measure what is a fair job and how to evaluate a worker’s performance.

All that crossed my mind when learning about the latest city adventures with its budget, including how much to pay City Council members.

The short story is their salaries are going up a lot. You might want to think twice before saying “Let’s get a committee together and it can figure it out,” because Council salaries are going up 64.4% to $113,304, up from $68,904.

In a letter to the Honolulu Salary Commission, Council Vice Chairwoman Esther Kia‘aina explained why her job was both complex and taxing.

Saying she puts in 40 to 50 hours a week working on the Council, Kia‘aina calculated that she answers “hundreds of daily emails and phone calls” and tracks and follows up on constituent concerns with various city departments. Responding to constituent concerns takes up about 40% of her time, she said, and another 40%, includes “preparation for and participation in Council meetings, committee meetings, executive sessions, and meetings with the Administration and directors of departments on district related projects.”

Finally, meeting with city officials, ranging from the mayor’s office to the fire department, takes up the remaining 20%. Still, Kia‘aina, a former U.S. assistant secretary of the Interior for Insular Areas, says she loves the job.

Of course, there has been a public outcry over the raises and the ham-handed way the Council handled the subject. First treating the subject like the raises were radioactive and couldn’t really be touched, and then waiting until a decision was imminent before actually getting a serious public discussion underway.

One defense for the pay raises was that more money was needed to lure the really good candidates into the race. The question immediately raised is, do you mean before the pay raises the candidates were subpar because the salary was low and primo Council candidates would not work for just $68,904? A check of the last three election cycles show that no Council races have gone uncontested. In 2018 all three Council races had four candidates for the slot. Races in 2020 had between six and three candidates each, and last year there were 17 candidates spread among three races.

Perhaps Honolulu needs uku pau Council members. They get paid when they finish the job. You promise a park, collect when the chain-link fence is complete. Swimming pools holding water that isn’t algae-green means “Good job!” You just have to know the vocabulary.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com