Kailua’s satellite city hall closes this month

The Kailua Satellite City Hall at the Keolu Shopping Center will issue its last vehicle registration sticker and collect its final water bill payment on Sept. 30, city officials said late Friday.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced the facility’s impending closure on Aug. 22 but gave no date until Friday. The shutdown is a cost-cutting measure in the face of budget restraints. The city is estimating a $26 million shortfall in the current year’s budget and $156 million next year.

"After careful study, the closure is fiscally prudent and the Kailua staff will be relocated to other full-service locations to decrease the wait time for the public," city Customer Services Director Sheri Kajiwara said in a statement.

City officials said the Enchanted Lake office has been serving an average of 16 residential customers an hour, much lower than the 58 to 78 customers an hour helped at other Oahu satellite city halls, she told the Star-Advertiser.

The city expects to save about $200,000 annually as a result of the closure. While the four employees are being shifted elsewhere, they are filling existing vacancies, she said.

Kailua and Waimanalo residents are being urged to use the full-service satellite city hall at the Windward City Shopping Center six miles away in Kaneohe, Kajiwara said.

Her office has received about three calls of protest since Caldwell first announced the closure on Aug. 22, she said. Kajiwara said she did not foresee the location reopening in the future.

Windward Councilman Ikaika Anderson and Kailua Neighborhood Chairman Chuck Prentiss weren’t happy about the announcement.

"We would’ve liked to have been consulted on it," Prentiss said after being told by the Star-Advertiser about the closure date. "We still feel it should be kept open. It’s a big asset to the community here."

Bill Hicks, another Kailua Neighborhood Board member, said the city should have held public hearings on the plan before making a final decision.

Hicks said he found records showing that the Kailua Satellite City Hall handled 53,599 vehicle transactions, more than any other satellite city hall on the island. Vehicle transactions make up 71 percent of all transactions handled at the satellite city halls, he said.

But Kajiwara said many of those were transactions involving auto dealers, which are supposed to be handled only at the Fort Street Mall Satellite City Hall but had been allowed to take place at Kailua as a convenience to Windward dealers since the location was so slow.

Kajiwara has asked to speak at Thursday’s Kailua Neighborhood Board meeting, Prentiss said.

"She’ll probably get some feedback Thursday," he said, noting that she had not told him of the closure date.

Anderson said he had pressed the administration about the justification for the closure and has received only scant answers.

"I still don’t feel we have all the answers," he said. "I’m not saying there is no justification to close the Enchanted Lake Satellite City Hall. What I am saying is if there is justification to close it, I have not seen the data to support the closure. And we are owed that information."

The date of the Kailua Satellite City Hall’s closure first was discovered by members of the public who saw a news release while visiting the City and County of Honolulu’s website.

The release, however, had not been emailed to the media or even to members in the Caldwell administration late Friday afternoon as planned, Kajiwara said.

She said she is looking into the glitch.

The satellite city hall’s closure is the second major blow to Kajiwara’s department as a result of the budget crunch.

Several weeks ago, the Hawaiian Humane Society announced it was drastically cutting the services it provides through a city contract because of rising costs and the inability of the city to provide more funding to the nonprofit agency tasked with animal control services on Oahu.

The humane society had asked the city for $800,000 more to continue to provide the same services, but the city was not able to provide the extra money, Kajiwara said. As a result, the humane society is no longer picking up stray animals or responding to complaints of barking dogs.