City must strike the right balance of revenue and services

Running the city is not much different from running your household or business. Expenses continue to rise; rarely do they go down. If you want to maintain or improve your home or business, you need to find the resources. If you don’t have all the resources you need, you have two choices: tighten your belt and work hard to make more money.

This is exactly what we are doing at the city because the public pays property taxes and expects a level of service that makes their lives better.

Many of the issues that directly impact the daily lives of Honolulu citizens are city issues — police and fire protection, emergency medical services and ocean safety, water and sewer capacity, trash pickup and waste disposal. It is the city that paves our streets, manages our parks, provides public transportation systems and plans for our future growth and long-range development.

The public needs to know that given the implementation of the budget without revenue enhancements, the city will be making cuts to these programs, as vital as they are. For example, we are asking the Honolulu Police Department to reduce its police recruit class size by 20 police and to defer the purchase of nearly 500 police radios. We are asking the Honolulu Fire Department to both delay and reduce its fire recruit class size, and to delay the new ladder company for the East Kapolei Fire Station.

The Department of Environmental Services may have to delay filling refuse collection positions. Already, we have a problem with timely bulky item and refuse pickup service. We are still reviewing whether there will be a need to delay hiring of parks maintenance personnel, road paving crews, stream cleaning crews, and stored property and sidewalk enforcement crews.

That is why, this week, the City Council and the administration have been discussing the pros and cons of 10 real property proposals. The administration has been reviewing the real property tax collection system and we believe that certain classifications need to be updated. These changes are designed for greater fairness on how taxes are assessed, and to improve the effectiveness of the real property tax as the city’s primary source of revenue. Many are based on recommendations of the Real Property Tax Advisory Commission. This is something that the administration should be doing on a regular basis as part of good management and business practices.

These proposals do not raise taxes. Rather, they set the stage for the city to be able to collect tax in different ways, either as an addition of a new classification or the removal of an exemption. We believe it is fair to ask the question of whether organizations that have been receiving tax exemptions for years, if not decades, still warrant the exemption. We also think it is fair to create a new classification, as an example, for high-end properties whose owners do not reside at the property.

We emphasize that the administration would not impose increased taxes if it weren’t absolutely necessary to ensure core services and to protect the city’s fiscal health. The administration and the council will be working together in the coming weeks on the real property bills, to strike the right balance of revenue generation and important services on which the public depends. We look forward to everyone’s input.