Environmental groups are worried a proposal to include parks in the city’s Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund would hamper efforts to buy areas in dire need of protection.

Oahu voters in 2006 approved a change to the Honolulu City Charter requiring that money be set aside each year for a fund dedicated to preserving conservation lands. Eight years later a proposal to broaden how the fund can be used is raising the ire of environmental groups concerned the change would leave significantly less money for the intended purpose.

Resolution 14-91, which will be heard by the City Council’s Executive Matters and Legislative Affairs Committee on Tuesday, would ask voters this fall to approve language allowing the fund to be used "to maintain lands used for land conservation purposes including city parks used for outdoor recreation."

Council Chairman Ernie Martin, who introduced the resolution, said he supports land preservation and that the fund has been used for several key projects in the North Shore-Central Oahu district he represents. But Martin said the fund is underutilized when there’s a critical need for improvements at city recreational facilities that have been purchased for land conservation or passive recreation.

For example, he said, city parcels on both the makai and mauka sides of Haleiwa District Park have been left undeveloped and are "an embarrassment."

Martin suggested that untapped money from the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund could be used to clear vegetation and even develop parking and ball fields.

At the May 7 Council meeting, during which the resolution received initial approval, opponents said the language in the proposed charter amendment would allow the fund to be used for routine park maintenance.

Martin, however, insisted park maintenance is clearly a core city responsibility that should be funded by the general operating budget, not through the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund. "I would never let that happen," Martin said, adding that he is willing to amend the language in the resolution to ensure the fund would not be used for maintenance.

Doug Cole, executive director of the North Shore Community Land Trust, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that passage of the 2006 amendment establishing the fund "was a clear message from the voters in Honolulu that a fund dedicated specifically to land conservation was needed, and that was what was established."

Changing the language to allow for general park improvements and maintenance would run counter to that intent, Cole said.

Representatives from other conservation groups voiced similar objections before the Council.

Among them were the Trust for Public Land, the Hawaiian Islands Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy.

"The charter amendment clearly states that (the fund) is not to be substituted for general funding for land conservation, but rather should add to historical appropriations for land conservation," said Lea Hong, Hawaii area director for the Trust for Public Land.

About $4 million from the fund was part of $25 million used to conserve 1,700 acres of the Galbraith Estate in Central Oahu, Hong noted.

Cole’s group helped push through a $400,000 grant that was leveraged with state and federal conservation dollars toward purchase of Sunset Ranch in Haleiwa in 2009. The city share was about a quarter of the total purchase price.

Most recently, city officials announced in March that $325,000 from the fund was being used to help create protection measures for the Hawaii Kai Hawea Heiau complex and Keawawa wetland in East Honolulu. The Legacy Land Conservation Fund, the state’s version of the conservation fund, chipped in $325,000, while the land was purchased by the nonprofit Trust for Public Land and transferred to Livable Hawai’i Kai Hui.

Martin said that while those projects were worthwhile, the number of projects covered by the fund have been few.

The charter mandate requires 0.5 percent of all property taxes collected by the city annually to go to the fund. Martin’s staff calculated that about $25 million has gone into the fund (about $4 million annually). However, only about $5 million has been expended, leaving nearly 80 percent of the fund still unused, Martin said.

"There hasn’t been an effective use of that fund," Martin said.

Benton Pang, who chairs the Clean Water and Natural Lands Commission, which accepts applications from nonprofits wanting to use the fund, said there have been fewer projects than commission members would like.

"I feel we haven’t done enough as a commission to get the word out to the communities to say these funds are available for them," Pang said, adding that members are promising to step up publicity for the coming funding cycle.

(Applications for the coming year are being accepted June 2-Aug. 1. Go to www1.honolulu.gov/council/cbc.)

Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s spokesman, Jesse Broder Van Dyke, issued a statement supporting the resolution.

"We need to change the focus of the (fund) to provide more flexibility for the city to acquire conservation land and provide for public access," Broder Van Dyke said.

"It has been difficult to use the funds under the existing cumbersome process," he said. "The executive branch of the city should have the lead role in land purchasing decisions of this nature."