Repairing roads worth the cost

Fiscal policies are changing significantly from former Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle to new Mayor Kirk Caldwell, but that doesn’t mean extravagant. Carlisle scorned the idea of the city borrowing money, but Caldwell makes sense in proposing to take out a loan at low rates to repave the city’s distressful streets.

Carlisle took pride in his "responsible," conservative budget, "clamping down on new projects that we can’t afford to build." He was fond of saying about the fiscal restraint: "If you’ve got a credit card and you keep on using it, it’s not going to get you out of debt."

Now Caldwell is proposing unprecedented road spending of $150 million in the next fiscal year to repair the city’s most damaged streets, nearly double what the city spent for repairs last year.

It is envisioned as the start of an aggressive five-year plan to repave 1,525 lane-miles, with the needed funds to come from issuance of bonds.

"I believe when bond rates are low, it’s time to ramp it up," Caldwell explained. "You get more bucks for the dollar spent, more roads repaved for the dollar spent at a time when we’re in a recovery."

He is right, in the same way that a homeowner may be wise in making major improvements by refinancing at low mortgage rates, not flexible like credit cards.

The question is whether the level of work Caldwell proposes during a single fiscal year can be achieved on time.

In previous years, city departments had trouble spending $77 million during a single year and even lobbied against the current increase to $100 million, said Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, chairwoman of the Budget Committee.

"How are they going to do $150 million?" she asked.

That’s a crucial question Caldwell and crew need to answer and nail down before prematurely floating bonds.

No doubt that the mayor’s road plan is constituency-friendly and politically popular — especially with labor unions — but the timetable must be feasible.

Kobayashi noted that the city Department of Design and Construction was hindered last year when it was obligated to choose a contractor who submitted the lowest bid on multiple repaving jobs, even though the firm lacked enough staff to complete all the work at once.

That prevented the department from spending its full annual budget — so there might be cause for the city to review procurement rules, to retain bidding fairness but also to allow more-expeditious work.

Nearly 28 percent of the 3,517 miles of roadways for which the city is responsible range from poor to "failed," according to the city’s Department of Facility Maintenance. Its report says the city "should be able to run multiple scenarios based on budget and time with some certainty."

The city and state have put off street and highway maintenance to pay for more popular projects, but Caldwell is right in asserting that road maintenance, sewage, garbage pickup and, yes, road repaving are what "the city is about."

Just as important to elected officials, of course, are construction companies and labor unions, which estimated that a five-year effort of fixing roads would create between 75 and 125 new construction jobs in Honolulu.

Caldwell said the city’s departments are confident they can complete the five-year plan on time.

He acknowledged that the amount of road repairs estimated is "an enormous increase in the amount of work done." But if the bureaucratic dips can be overcome, the dividends would be worth the proposed loan.