Posted on: Friday, January 28, 2005

EDITORIAL
Vision teams have outlived usefulness

Mayor Mufi Hannemann is on the right track in recommending a budget that will not include money for former Mayor Jeremy Harris' vision teams.

Hannemann has stopped short of killing the vision teams outright. But curtailing their activities is the right first step while their ultimate fate is considered.

At one level, Harris' vision teams represented plain old democracy at work, with "the people" deciding "how to spend your money." There is no question they gave communities a sense of empowerment and — in some cases — produced worthwhile neighborhood projects.

But the reality is they also represented an end-run around existing government, including the City Council and the neighborhood boards.

When the teams first started in 1998, each of 19 communities got $2 million, whether their needs were equal or not. Yet in many cases, because what these communities really needed would cost far more than $2 million, the vision process effectively offered them consolation prizes.

What's required on O'ahu is strong central leadership and a clear sense of priorities, both of which have been made fuzzy by the visioning process.

Obviously there's a far greater need for decent road surfaces than for magnificent signage announcing what neighborhood we're in. And there's certainly no need to retain vision teams just to prioritize street repaving. With neighborhood board input, that's a job for the professionals at the city's Road Maintenance Division.

Proponents of the vision teams need to step back and consider how this feel-good process may have outlived its usefulness.