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Mayor Rick Blangiardi is a guy who likes to talk, so much so that he needs his hands as well as his voice to express his many thoughts.
Which makes it impressive that he’s done more listening than talking in his first two months, focusing on fully understanding the city government and its challenges before running to the microphones to prescribe grand solutions.
Leadership often starts with asking the right questions of the right people, and the former TV executive and his team — who are mostly new to city government — have done so diligently in mapping their plans.
The new administration got a crash course in the nuts and bolts of city government by immediately having to craft its first budget, producing a conservative spending plan that covered a projected $73 million deficit without major program cuts, tax increases or workforce reductions.
Blangiardi budgeted $101 million to start rail service from Kapolei to Honolulu Stadium, but noted that “there is a lot up in the air with rail,” and is giving new leadership at the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and his own transportation team a chance to devise a plan before publicly injecting himself into the discussion.
On the pandemic, he’s avoided confusion by working within former Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s tiers system while making his own adjustments for funerals, sports and bars as falling COVID cases allowed reopening more of the city.
Perhaps the best example of the new mayor’s approach is on homelessness, as he moves to keep his campaign promise to end Caldwell’s “compassionate disruption” policy of rousting the homeless from one place to another.
Blangiardi’s housing director, Anton Krucky, is consulting a broad range of people who know the most about homelessness on how the city can move to less police involvement and more reliance on paramedics, mental health workers and social service outreach.
Krucky told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Ashley Mizuo, “If you want to understand what’s going on with someone, ask someone who’s done it.”
Krucky said the priority is “putting something together like this in a thoughtful manner, understanding all the pieces we have to do so that when we do deploy it, we know what we’re doing.”
The consultation of those who provide on-the-ground services to the homeless gives hope to outreach leaders for progress on the seemingly intractable problem.
“They’re meeting with a lot of different people to ask and find out what’s going on, which is huge,” Heather Lusk of the Hawaii Health Harm Reduction Center told Mizuo.
“I mean, how many times have we had somebody come into whatever community and be like, ‘OK, this is what we’re doing now’? And so far, it seems that they’re asking the right questions and learning.”
Voters didn’t elect Blangiardi to be quiet and go with the flow, but by doing so early, the mayor is laying a solid foundation for future pushes on the major changes he promised.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
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