I am a 79-year-old retiree, with more than 50 years of state employment (32 of those years at the University of Hawaii at Manoa), and in all that time I never, ever, experienced a raise equivalent to or higher than 6%.
Where does the City Council get off with a 64% raise, especially at a time when many of us kupuna and families are struggling to recover from a pandemic era that left many unemployed or with reduced work hours — and then put into a recovery of inflated costs for food, household goods, gas and rent, not to mention increases in the cost of education?
At the expense of the people, their families and friends, councilmembers dare to accept this exorbitant increase in pay: a direct insult to the taxpayers. And where are the voices of the state lawmakers or union leaders, whose constituencies have to beg for pay raises less than 10%?
Or is this to be precedent-setting?
As a taxpayer and voter, I am smarting from the slap in the face delivered by the Honolulu City Council.
L. Ku‘umeaaloha Gomes
Aiea
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