Audit slams Harris team for poor roads

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

Honolulu's pothole-plagued roads are the result of years of inefficient planning and work done by the city's road maintenance division, a city audit has concluded.

"Despite the potholes that needed patching and other road repairs that citizens demand be made, city road crews were directed to other city functions that provided questionable benefits relative to Honolulu's road repair needs," according to the report released yesterday.

The division routinely failed to follow good industry practices, city auditor Leslie Tanaka concluded. Of 24 best practices identified in road maintenance agencies across the nation, the city complied fully with only two, he said.

City officials yesterday said they generally accepted and agreed with the audit findings and recommendations, and they hoped to use them to change the way the division's work is funded and implemented in the future.

"Ninety-five percent of the criticisms are based on things that happened in the previous administration," said Laverne Higa, the city's director of facility management. "We're taking steps to address the problems and provide more long-term benefits."

The audit was conducted between February and May of this year, but largely covers the previous three years, during the administration of Mayor Jeremy Harris. Former city Managing Director Ben Lee could not be reached for comment late yesterday.

Tanaka found that the road maintenance division had no comprehensive plan for dealing with problems and instead often relied on citizen complaints, political pressure and "gut feelings" to determine which roads got the most attention.

That led to a situation in which city officials increasingly ignored preventive maintenance and relied instead on more costly, less efficient reactive fixes.

When it came to potholes, the division had no clear work standards and failed to follow the rules it did have, the audit said.

"The division road crews often sacrificed quality over quantity as they sought to fill as many potholes as possible," the report said.

One supervisor told auditors his crew patched 160 to 400 potholes per day, generally dumping the asphalt into the hole and smacking it down with a shovel. Another supervisor said crews patched 10 to 30 potholes per day, taking time to clean it out, fill it and then compact it properly.

"Work standards need to be enforced to ensure that all jurisdictions throughout the city are afforded the same quality of service," the report said.

City officials said yesterday that road crews have now been told to follow standard procedures for filling potholes. Minimum national standards call for the asphalt to be compacted with truck tires as soon as it is put down.

The audit also found that the division was not meeting its own standards to patch potholes within 48 hours of receiving a complaint.

Last year, the division met that standard in only 39 percent of the complaints received. That helped contribute to more than $53,000 being paid to settle pothole complaints in fiscal year 2003-04, a 480 percent increase over the previous year, the audit found.

Higa said the city recently added a new Web site to allow the public to report pothole problems and get crews to respond to them more quickly.

The audit also found that political pressure and decisions made outside the division exacerbated the problems.

Fluctuating budgets, unfilled vacancies, a lack of effective communication with elected officials, a decision to contract out all road resurfacing, and diversion of resources to other projects all contributed to making Honolulu's roads worse, the report said.

"Right now, about 30 percent of the positions in our department are vacant," Higa said. "We're hoping to reduce that to 20 percent in the coming fiscal year."

One of the biggest problems involved highway workers being tasked to do nonroad-related functions, such as the city's Sunset and Brunch on the Beach, as well as unspecified events at Dole Cannery and Honolulu Hale.

The auditors found that the division spent well more than 5,600 worker hours over a three-year period on such functions, using up valuable overtime money that should have gone to road repairs.

And that could have been just the tip of the iceberg, said the auditors, who could not find work orders or work reports for many of the job diversions.

"In total, we were only able to review work logs covering 30 of the 165 events, or 18 percent of the total," the report said. "Therefore the results reported here are probably significantly understated."

Higa said yesterday that $187,000 of the division's $14 million budget was spent on costs associated with 42 Brunch and Sunset on the Beach events in 2004. Department workers no longer do such work, she said.

However, city Managing Director Jeff Coelho refused to say whether other city workers are now doing the work.

"There's another audit on the Sunset and Brunch on the Beach coming out in a few weeks. I think we'll reserve comment until then," he said.

City funding for the events will end after 2005.

"My men are happy to be working on the roads again," Higa added.

The audit found that diverting road workers in the face of other city needs "speaks to the (previous) administration's lack of planning and consideration to the taxpayers of this city."

In a written response to the audit last month, the city's Department of Facility Maintenance agreed with many of the findings and recommendations, particularly the need for adequate funding, adoption of a pavement management system and implementation of a comprehensive work order system.

"In general, we're pretty much pleased with the report," Higa said. "That's the purpose of an audit to find out deficiencies and find ways to operate better."

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.