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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Navy housing scrutinized

By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

The privatization of military housing in the Salt Lake area has residents concerned that public services will be stretched too thin to cover the 2,000 homes now under city authority.

But city officials say steps have already been taken to make sure everyone has proper police, fire and emergency coverage.

"Clearly this adds more for fire, police and emergency services," said Ben Lee, city managing director. "Police and fire have said they can handle it, but we may increase the size of their staff slightly."

Grant Tanimoto, chairman of the Aliamanu/Salt Lake/Foster Village Neighborhood Board, said residents worry that transferring that many homes from federal to city control could increase the response time in emergencies. "The Navy has been patrolling their own housing area for years," he said. "The (Honolulu) cops now have to patrol the area. That is a lot more area to cover and no extra people."

Congress passed legislation in 1999 allowing the military to lease and sell off some of its under-used outlying properties and use the money to centralize operations and increase efficiencies in the Pearl Harbor area. As part of the plan, management of the homes in five family housing areas are being privatized.

The Navy housing areas involved are Halsey Terrace (503 homes), Radford Terrace (418 homes), Moanalua Terrace (752 homes) and Hokulani (190 homes), and McGrew Point (140 homes) in 'Aiea.

Thad Bond, senior vice president of Hawaii Military Communities, a private company, attended a recent neighborhood board meeting to detail plans for the public/private venture. He said the company took over management of the neighborhoods May 1 and has a 50-year lease.

Since 1996, the Pentagon has been diverting officer and enlisted housing allowances into developers' hands so they can get projects launched sooner. The private developers are then responsible for collecting the housing allowances and managing and maintaining the homes.

Bond said his company is the managing member in the project, which will renovate the homes. The company is paying what amounts to property tax to pay for the newly acquired public services, he said.

"We are going to go through those neighborhoods completely in the next four years redeveloping all the homes in phases," Bond said. "We spent a lot of time with the city and various public agencies prior to taking over and figuring out how to make that transition and how we would pay for those services. We are paying essentially the equivalent of property taxes."

Deputy Fire Chief John Clark said no new stations will be needed for the housing areas. Clark said the fire houses on Salt Lake Boulevard, Nimitz Highway and Vandenberg Boulevard will serve the area.

"We've been covering those areas from the day they were built," Clark said. "We would go in automatically with the federal fire department. So between those three stations, we have all of that housing covered."

Maj. Susan Ballard, police commander for the area, said police have been tracking the number of calls for two months to decide whether more officers are needed. Ballard said she will likely recommend two new officers be added to the area, one per shift.

"That extra person will be assigned to that Salt Lake area to handle the cases not only inside the military housing, but Salt Lake because it is a high-density area with a lot of different types of crimes."

Ballard said Salt Lake residents should feel assured that the transfer is being looked at closely. "They won't see any change in the service they are receiving," she said.

Reach James Gonser at 535-2431 or jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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