Council confronting need for tax hike

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer

After two months of grappling with the budget, the City Council may have to adopt a property tax rate increase even higher than the one proposed by Mayor Jeremy Harris, said Council Chairman Gary Okino.

It will be a bitter pill to swallow for a council that has resorted to excising money for postage and auto parts from the budget in an effort to avoid raising taxes.

"I think we just have to bite the bullet and say, 'Hey, this is the best we can do,'" Okino said.

Okino agrees with Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi that some provisions of the mayor's budget proposal have a "phantom" quality, such as overly optimistic revenue projections: for instance, $685,000 for a $2 counter-service fee at satellite city hall and $8 million for an optional garbage pick-up.

But unlike Kobayashi, Okino does not suggest that there was anything wrong about the mayor submitting the budget, fee and tax rate proposals as a single package and using the projected revenue to balance the budget.

While Kobayashi has suggested bottling the budget up in committee and allowing the mayor's $1.178 billion budget to pass without accompanying revenue generators, $25 million in fee bills and $23 million for a property tax rate increase, Okino has come to the same conclusion as the mayor.

According to Harris, the city charter indicates that if the council holds on to the budget, the whole package he proposed March 2 will pass, along with all necessary proposed ordinances for the next fiscal year, including the fee bills and tax rate resolution.

Because of this, Okino thinks it unlikely that the administration will come back with a budget proposal that is more palatable to council members.

"I think the ball is in our court and I think the administration knows that," he said. "It is ultimately our responsibility to put together an adjusted package that is a balanced budget."

The administration has maintained that it submitted a lean budget to the council, and Okino, a former city planner, can see that there is little fat left to trim and too many line-item cuts will cripple city operations.

"If we want to cut more from the city, we need to look at whole functions," he said. "There's no point in cutting half the parks department. You might as well have no parks department."

Because there is little to cut from the budget, only a few unpopular fee proposals are likely to be rejected and the city needs an extra $2.1 million to pay for arbitrated pay raises for firefighters, even Kobayashi has said, "Somebody is going to have to bite the bullet and just say we're going to increase taxes at a higher rate."

Okino knows that "somebody" is the council. "I think we'd certainly like the mayor to help share the blame with raising the taxes more, but it's with us at this point and that's a fact of life," he said.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.