Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi is taking about $50 million from vacant city positions in a proposed $5.09 billion city budget that anticipates higher inflation and growing expenses, but little revenue growth.
The City and County of Honolulu’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year is about $134 million less than the budget that the Honolulu City Council approved last year.
City operational costs are expected to increase this year because of “wages and salaries and cost of supplies, goods, materials and contract services,” according to the administration’s budget proposal. But revenue will be roughly the same, so some money was moved around to balance the budget.
The administration decided to redistribute about $50 million from salaries previously allocated to vacant city jobs.
“We took reductions of the vacancies that we felt that we wouldn't be able to fill, and we use those reductions and the related benefits for those reductions to fund operations and to fund essential services for the city,” said Honolulu Department of Budget and Fiscal Services Director Andy Kawano at a news conference on Tuesday.
City documents show that the largest reduction in salaries and benefits comes from the Honolulu Police Department, which has been plagued by growing vacancy numbers for years. About $17 million would come from HPD, according to the city's vacancy report.
Additionally, some $5.2 million in salaries for vacant jobs was taken from the Honolulu Department of Facility Maintenance, while $3.5 million from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation was redistributed.
Kawano said the jobs will remain, but they just won’t have funds.
“We're not eliminating jobs. What we're doing is we're taking the budget dollars from positions that are not filled, and we're reallocating those dollars,” he said.
Additional costs for the city include $52 million from collective bargaining increases in salaries and fringe benefits, and $10.5 million from homeless services.
Meanwhile, city officials anticipate revenue will remain flat — in no small part due to property taxes remaining the same. It’s the county’s largest source of revenue, contributing nearly $1.8 billion.
Blangiardi continues to refuse to raise property taxes.
“We've made a commitment not to raise property taxes and to live within our means. That's an easy trick to raise the property taxes. We're not doing that,” he said at Tuesday’s news conference.
The city also said that it anticipates inflation grow because of economic changes on a national and global level.
But despite having less to work with, Blangiardi was adamant that his administration’s efforts wouldn’t slow down.
“We will do more this year than we have in the last five years since we've been in office — more in housing, in homelessness, in services … across the board in every single department. This was smart. This was intelligent in what we did,” he said.
The Honolulu City Council has to approve the proposed budget after a review process.
Hawaiʻi Public Radio exists to serve all of Hawai’i, and it’s the people of Hawai’i who keep us independent and strong. Donate today. Mahalo for your support.
