Mayor’s priorities a sign of progress

Mayor Kirk Caldwell has sharpened his pencil and scratched out a good amount of waste from the city budget, an encouraging start to a fiscal planning season that, in the wake of some rough developments, had threatened to be a tough slog.

There were still question marks hanging over the spending plan as laid out in Wednesday’s State of the City address, including funding mechanisms such as bus advertisements, which the mayor still has not relinquished. Caldwell underscored what he sees as the distinction between billboards and the bus ads and restated his opposition to the former while the latter stands to bring in an estimated $7 million. But outside bus ads would put Honolulu’s hard-won signage restriction at risk of legal challenge, so it’s still a bad bargain. And the City Council later Wednesday shelved the mayor’s plan for a garbage-collection fee as well.

Overall, though, Caldwell’s speech included some welcome revelations about city policy, especially the administration’s willingness to reevaluate all its spending assumptions.

The counties all may get a boost from the state Capitol, if a proposal to direct more of the hotel room tax revenues their way is approved, as it should be. However, the mayor is starting with what’s called "zero-based budgeting," meaning that he asked his department heads to start from nothing and justify all their spending.

The decision to deactivate 618 positions and cut vacancies is laudable because it will help the city manage labor costs, saving on future retirement costs as well as current workforce compensation. Maintaining services, while saving the $37 million these positions would have cost, will be the challenge going forward.

It would have been preferable if, in the first place, the city had held a harder line on contract negotiations with unions, talks that increased the city’s long-term liabilities. However, this is a good course correction, and taxpayers have the right to hope the approach prevails at state budget discussions as well.

Caldwell gave his speech from Ala Moana Park, his way of affirming that a healthy parks system is central to Honolulu’s quality of life. A $39 million outlay for upgrades to parks islandwide should be easy to defend among the priority items, although the Council must evaluate the details to ensure taxpayers get the best return on their investment.

While the plan to sell the city’s 12 affordable rental projects has stalled indefinitely, it is gratifying to see the city look elsewhere for ways to finance another priority, the homelessness initiative. About $18.9 million from the Affordable Housing Fund will go to its Housing First program to find stable housing for the most chronically homeless.

This will provide the subsidies to get the vulnerable population off the streets. But the mayor is also petitioning for $3 million, mostly for social-service support to help these people toward a more stable, healthy life. Honolulu’s homelessness crisis merits this kind of focus, so it’s good to see this resolve to make real progress.

Another advance in long-sought improvements is the plan for protected bike lanes connecting the university and downtown districts, mainly along King Street, as well as bike sharing. This should put some substance on the talking points about multimodal transportation.

The fiscal 2015 budget battle will surely be contentious as talks begin in earnest at Honolulu Hale, but at least there are ideas on the table that should produce a useful blueprint in the end.