Editorial
Neighborhood boards: Can they be revived?

It's sad but not entirely surprising that at least one-third of Oahu's neighborhood boards are in the doldrums. It seems clear that if something isn't done to revive them, they'll fade into irrelevancy.

Or have they outlived their usefulness?

Grassroots participation in governmental affairs is a noble cause, but it's questionable how meaningful this participation is at the neighborhood board level.

The boards have the authority to advise, and it's extremely easy for politicians, developers and other powerbrokers to ignore free advice.

It also has been relatively easy to corrupt that advice. While some neighborhood boards function effectively, others are taken over by factions that dominate agendas and lose sight of the community's genuine needs.

'Vision teams' hurt

The straw that may have broken the back of the neighborhood board system was the creation of 19 "vision teams," created by Mayor Jeremy Harris to give residents the feeling of participation by giving each team $2 million a year to spend on whatever improvements it likes.

The city says the teams aren't in competition with the boards because their functions differ, but it's clear the amount of influence they share has been ever more diluted.

The neighborhood boards were created by the City Charter Commission in 1972 because it was felt that the growing population needed a way to participate in government, and the City Council had grown too removed from the grassroots to allow the individual citizen to be heard effectively.

That's even more true today than it was then. Three decades later, it appears that we must either structurally reinvigorate the neighborhood board system by giving it real power — or restructure the county government to bring it closer to the people.

Unwieldy county

The City and County of Honolulu, after all, is a wildly unwieldy and disparate concept, stretching its political umbrella over densely urban Honolulu, the maturing resort island of Waikiki, the second city of Kapolei, bedroom suburbs like Hawai'i Kai, Kailua and Kane'ohe, ethnic enclaves like Waipahu, Wai'anae and Waimanalo, agricultural districts in Central O'ahu and numerous villages and neighborhoods like Hau'ula, Hale'iwa and La'ie, Wai'alae, Manoa and Palolo.

Obviously the interests of residents of these disparate communities are not congruent, nor should they be.

Choice of government

The choice, then, would appear to be either to make neighborhood boards meaningful by giving them real power, or to create a new level of government — community or municipal governments, functioning under a county government.

The hope, in either case, would be that interest in local government would revive as it grew closer to each citizen. It's a choice we all must begin thinking seriously about.