EDITORIAL
Hanauma Bay money should be for the park

Given the controversies and struggles over money that have surrounded Hanauma Bay, it's easy to see why City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi thinks the best solution would be to give the park near-total budgetary autonomy.

But as attractive as that idea might seem at first blush, it is no real solution to a complex and convoluted problem.

For starters, even if Hanauma Bay were given budgetary autonomy, the result would be somewhat of a fiction. For instance, if a major natural disaster forced major reconstruction or rebuilding of the park, the city would have to foot the bill, not the Hanauma fund.

Still, at the moment, Koba-yashi is correct that Hanauma is self-sustaining and should be protected from any move that would make it less so.

In fact, the bay today generates more income from admission fees, concession payments and the like than it costs to operate and maintain the park as well as pay debt service on its improvements.

So productive is the Hanauma Bay special fund, in fact, that the council recently considered taking $1.1 million from the fund and placing it in the city budget.

That idea, to the degree it was simply an effort to balance a cash-strapped budget, was correctly rejected. But the Hanauma Bay fund remains an alluring attraction to cash-starved city officials.

The bottom line is that Hanauma Bay, unlike most city facilities and attractions, is a positive money-maker. The first step must be to use whatever surpluses there are to pay past-due bills, including $200,000 owed to the University of Hawai'i Sea Grant program for an education program at the bay.

At that point, the story gets complicated. The proposal to shift surpluses from the Hanauma Bay fund into the general fund does not contemplate taking any of the admission fee revenue, which the court says belongs to the bay and the bay alone.

Rather, the proposal is to take some concession and parking revenue, which was not directly covered by the court order. From the city's point of view, this transfer is only fair since the city pays for the operation and maintenance of surrounding recreational facilities such as Koko Head District Park, the Botanical Garden and the firing range.

At one point income from Hanauma Bay was used to support those "surrounding lands" activities under the original agreement in which Bishop Estate ceded those lands to the city.

But courts have ruled against using Hanauma Bay income for anything other than the bay itself, leaving the city responsible for the surrounding facilities. It has inherited expenses the Hanauma Bay fund once covered.

In an additional irony, the city has been "repaying" the Hanauma Bay fund for the money the fund spent on the surrounding lands facilities to the tune of about $1 million so far. The court said about $3 million is owed altogether.

So, in the short term, is it a revolving-door situation. The city pays the Hanauma Bay fund, contributing to its surplus, and at the same time seeks to take concession monies for other purposes.

The principle that Hanauma Bay should not be a revenue generator for other city services and needs is an important one. That was the heart of the court ruling on admission fees.

Once the books are cleared up, the best policy should be to keep admission fees and other charges at a level that covers ongoing costs but does not produce a surplus that will tempt folks to grab it and spend it elsewhere.