LIHU‘E — With the Kekaha landfill approaching capacity and multi-million dollar expansion plans on the horizon, the county’s long-running failure to address its solid waste issues set up a debate Tuesday at Council Chambers, pitting former Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura against
LIHU‘E — With the Kekaha landfill approaching capacity and multi-million dollar expansion plans on the horizon, the county’s long-running failure to address its solid waste issues set up a debate Tuesday at Council Chambers, pitting former Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura against the Carvalho administration in a rehashing of one of the more contentious issues of last year’s mayoral campaign.
As the Kaua‘i County Council heard testimony from County Engineer Donald Fujimoto and his Department of Public Works regarding capital improvement projects to be included in the upcoming 2009-2010 fiscal year budget, it was disclosed that nearly $400,000 will soon be spent to conduct what Councilman Jay Furfaro repeatedly described as an “ownership asset study” to determine the potential for a wide range of waste reduction or conversion technologies, including waste-to-energy.
Councilman Tim Bynum said plans to look into waste-to-energy options were “news to me,” and Yukimura complained in testimony that a line item in a previous budget had specified the council’s interest in a materials recovery facility, not waste-to-energy. She said solid waste professionals draw a significant distinction between waste reduction efforts like recycling and other diversionary techniques and conversion efforts like waste-to-energy.
“I’m not convinced one way or the other on waste-to-energy, but we haven’t voted on it,” Bynum said. “We shouldn’t pull the trigger until we pull the trigger. … We shouldn’t spend money until that decision is made.”
Yukimura called the change in strategy a “distortion” of the council’s will and said the $385,000 was a “misuse of funds” that could have been better spent on buying land for a MRF or otherwise moving forward in that direction.
Gary Heu, administrative assistant to Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr., defended the yet-to-be-encumbered, but already awarded, request for proposals by arguing the administration was doing its “due diligence” in planning and preparing for the “inevitable outcome” of council approval for one new waste technology or another.
“It’s prudent … to start making preparations” for the way things are headed, “and that’s all this ever was,” he told the council. He argued that waiting for council approval before starting to plan and then moving in a sequential order would slow the process down, and said many projects receive attention from the administration in the form of planning studies before they reach the council floor.
“Government moves slow enough already,” Heu added in an interview outside the chambers.
The study will encompass a wide range of waste alternatives, including waste-to-energy, curbside recycling and centralized composting, Heu said. Some of those projects are included in the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, a draft of which was released for public comment last week. It is available at kauai.gov.
Earlier in the day, the proposed operational budgets for the Departments of Parks and Recreation and Public Works were discussed with considerably less animosity.
Parks and Recreation, former home to Carvalho and now run by Lenny Rapozo and a handful of deputies, has a proposed budget of $9.8 million.
Public Works, represented by Fujimoto and a half-dozen division heads, has a proposed budget of $10.1 million.
All that remains on the preliminary departmental review schedule is the Finance Department, which will take place at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Finance saw its proposed budget drop by nearly 50 percent from its current year spending, plummeting from $24.8 million to $12.6 million.
But the drop is largely due to an adjustment to the county’s accounting practices which transferred an item identified as “other post-employment benefits” that had previously resided in the Finance Department’s balance sheet to other county departments and agencies based on the benefit costs of employees of those entities, pushing up the price tag for every other department while driving the Finance Department’s budget down.
The budget review process comes on the heels of Carvalho’s $153.9 million budget proposal for operational expenditures, released in mid-March.
The real property tax revenues are expected to be certified May 2, Budget and Finance Committee Chair Daryl Kaneshiro said.
The state Legislature reportedly advanced measures Tuesday that would, among other changes, divert tourist revenue in the form of transient accommodations taxes from county coffers to the state.
“We’ve been following that pretty closely. … That’s why we’ve been very conservative on this budget,” Kaneshiro said in a phone interview. “If the TAT is eventually taken away, we’ll find ourselves in big trouble. That amount is already in our current budget.”
The county had projected it would receive $11.8 million in TAT revenue. If the state does raid that revenue source, it could permit counties to add an additional 1 percent sales tax to help cover the gap.
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” said Kaneshiro, who has flown to the Capitol in Honolulu to testify against the proposal. “If it does (happen), then we may even have to amend the whole budget at that point. We just have to wait and see what the Legislature does.”
On or around May 8, the Mayor’s Office will communicate a modified supplemental budget to the council, which is scheduled to begin preliminary decision-making May 11-12. After deliberation, the council will jockey and negotiate with the administration until a final budget ordinance is passed. The 2009-2010 fiscal year begins July 1. To read the budget in its entirety, visit kauai.gov.
For further budget coverage, see a future edition of The Garden Island.
• Michael Levine, assistant news editor, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or via e-mail at mlevine@kauaipubco.com
