Posted on: Friday, October 11, 2002

City shifts 'vision' money to neighborhood boards

By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser East Honolulu Writer

After telling community vision teams their budgets would be slashed, city officials now are planning to allocate $500,000 to each neighborhood board for community projects rather than the $1 million authorized last year.

Officials also are suggesting that the boards finish up projects already started and spend the rest of their money on road projects, rather than letting each community decide where the money be spent.

Last year, the first year the boards were given a purse for community projects, the boards were free to use the money on a wide range of projects, including bike racks, bus shelters or new meeting facilities.

But the city is working with a $450 million capital improvement budget, down $100 million from the year before, with hundreds of projects vying for consideration.

Last month, the city said it planned to consolidate its 19 vision teams, reducing the number of capital improvement projects they can launch and cutting their $2 million budget to $1 million each.

The vision teams were started by the city in 1998 as a way to give people more of an opportunity to become involved in the planning and selection of capital improvement projects and they are responsible for expenditures that include numerous projects, from skateboard parks to canoe halau.

The neighborhood board system has a longer history, created in 1972 to increase community participation in government. The city views the 35 boards and its members as grass-roots representatives who make recommendations and prioritize community projects.

The city plans to lay out the new process for spending capital improvement money at a meeting tomorrow where it has invited 4,500 guests, including representatives from vision teams and neighborhood boards. The "Focusing on Vision" meeting will be held from 10 a.m. to noon at Neal Blaisdell Center Pikake Room.

City officials will discuss new ideas and guidelines for the vision process and the neighborhood board capital improvement projects, said Ben Lee, city managing director. The city might reconsider if the community strongly objects, Lee said.

"Everything is up for discussion," Lee said. "We want to solicit input of the neighborhood boards. It's an empowerment process."

But Hawai'i Kai Neighborhood Board Chairman Charlie Rodgers questioned how communities can feel empowered when they're being told how to spend their money.

"Clearly we should be looking outside our own communities and joining with others," Rodgers said. "But by telling us to finish up our projects and picking which roads to resurface doesn't give us any flexibility. We're fortunate here in East Honolulu. We have parks and park playgrounds. But in other communities they're not so fortunate. This was supposed to help every community achieve equality."

The city has thousands of miles of roads that need improving, Lee said. Some roads are in better condition than others, and the community knows best which roads need resurfacing the most, he said.

But Ann Kobayashi, City Council Budget Committee chairwoman, said road resurfacing is a city function and does little to empower the community.

"The neighborhood board should be given the opportunity to work on other projects that will improve the community," she said. "The sewers, roads and other basic services are a function of the city government."

The administration is looking for ways to cope with the sharply reduced capital improvement budget.

"The city wants to do an islandwide concentration of road projects to be more efficient," said John Clark, deputy fire chief who attends the Kuliou'ou/Kalani Iki neighborhood board monthly as a representative of the mayor's staff. "The city wants the community to prioritize the projects up to $500,000."

Since the vision team process started four years ago, 44 vision projects have been completed, 111 are in the planning and design phase and 100 are in the consultant or contracting phase, said Carol Costa, city spokeswoman.

Last year the council approved 143 pitched by the neighborhood boards and another 368 projects from the community vision process. None of the 143 neighborhood board projects has been completed, but the city estimates they will cost $30.4 million to complete, Costa said.

Reach Suzanne Roig at 395-8831 or sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com.