The Honolulu City Council wants to cut around $25 million in salaries for vacant city positions.
The council is reviewing Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s budget for the next fiscal year and is looking to cut expenses — largely to pay for other projects like wastewater infrastructure.
On Tuesday the council’s Budget Committee proposed what were mostly administration-wide cuts to Blangiardi’s proposed budget.
Council Chair Tommy Waters is concerned with the administration’s proposal to increase sewer fees by 115% for Oʻahu residents over the next decade. He hopes to cover some of that proposal by reallocating funds currently set to fund city jobs that haven’t been filled in years.
“It's to help defray costs from the sewer bill for our local residents. We're utilizing money that's already there, sitting there not used — lapsed even,” Waters said.
The largest cut the council is proposing is $12.4 million, which would come from salaries meant for the Honolulu Police Department. The department currently has around 700 vacant jobs.
“It sounds like a lot, but when you actually dig down deep, there's over $146 million in vacant positions out there. We're only touching a fraction of them,” Waters said.
The council’s proposed cuts included $7.5 million from the city’s sewer fund meant to pay for Department of Environmental Services salaries — although it proposed to replace those salaries with general funds.
The salary cuts also include $1.8 million from the Department of Planning and Permitting, $1.2 million from the Department of Facility Maintenance, and $630,000 from the Department of Design and Construction.
The cut proposals aren’t set in stone, but they are a starting place for the council, which is asking city departments to identify and describe positions of need, so it can consider reallocating funds for them.
