It is not often that you can turn to F. Scott Fitzgerald for a lesson in City Hall politics, but there it was.
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them,” wrote Fitzgerald in a 1926 story.
Substitute Mayor Kirk Caldwell and the City Council for Fitzgerald’s “the very rich,” and you can understand how it is that no matter how much debt rises, city leaders continue to promise to spend more. They are different from you and me because they can always pick up another expensive project.
Two Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports early this month highlight how this unrealistic financial thinking is likely to cause continued worry.
First, the city unveiled its latest scheme to restore the Waikiki Natatorium, shut
40 years ago and left by city officials to fester and disintegrate into a dangerous eyesore.
Caldwell had the good sense to say he didn’t like the idea and preferred turning it into a beach, but said the plan to demolish the makai and ewa seawalls, and put the deck on pillars four feet above the ocean, avoids a threatened lawsuit. What it does not avoid is the estimated $25.6 million to pay for this plan. That, of course, is preliminary because the environmental studies have not even been completed — but what is another study after 40 years of aimless hand-
wringing and municipal inaction?
Further, fixing the Natatorium for nearly $26 million is chicken feed compared with the latest estimate for redoing the Blaisdell Center.
Compared with their mainland counterparts, Hawaii’s mayors have relatively little to do. They are not responsible for hospitals or schools, like mainland cities. Honolulu’s mayor has no major freeway system, no airport, no harbor, no welfare system. Just fix the streets, pick up the garbage, clean out the parks, run the zoo and make some passing attempt at planning — and the mayor’s job is done.
So every Honolulu mayor eventually turns to fiddling with the Blaisdell Center. Caldwell has been talking about redoing the entertainment complex since he won office in 2012; now his two-term limit is almost up and he has a plan costing a staggering $773 million — yes, nearly a billion dollars.
For that you would get a second parking garage, a new exhibition hall with a new performance space, a new arena and assorted arts ensemble buildings for hula and orchestras. Plus there would be a 2,500-seat sports pavilion for practices and tournaments.
We all know the price is only going to go up. Reports in the Star-Advertiser in March pegged the cost at $717 million; since then, it has already increased $56.1 million.
But wait, what about the city’s overbudget rail project, now pegged at $8.3 billion but with no plans for covering the estimated yearly $120 million operating costs for the train? Caldwell and the City Council fought for a month to scrape together another $44 million to satisfy the feds last month — so where is the money for running the train coming from?
Caldwell glossed over the Blaisdell tab, saying he would pause the project until rail funds are resolved.
Defining resolved is up for debate. State Rep. Sylvia Luke, chairwoman of the House Finance Committee, for instance, said nothing is resolved.
“They have never been straightforward with the public,” Luke said of Caldwell and Council.
Caldwell said he is looking for a private partner to help pay the nearly $1 billion for the Blaisdell. He thinks that a private firm would handle management and operations in return for paying some of the building costs.
Exactly how you make a profit from a hula halau or a youth orchestra or even an area for local sports teams to practice doesn’t make much sense. But then neither does a train that cost $5.26 billion five years ago and is now estimated to be on the heavy side of $8 billion.
Luke said the problem is that the city appears incapable of trimming a budget, it only adds.
“We wanted them to look at the process of cutting,” Luke said. “If they can’t handle $44 million, how can they handle a nearly $1 billion construction project?”
Unlike Fitzgerald’s very rich, Caldwell and the Council may be holding a check they just can’t cash.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.
