Honolulu City Council Budget Chair Trevor Ozawa along with Vice Chair Ann Kobayashi will begin budget briefings for the 2018/2019 Fiscal Year on Wednesday, April 11, at 9 am at Honolulu Hale. The agenda includes review of the legislative budget, the executive operating and capital budgets, and Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) executive and operating budgets.
The council will also be discussing proposals for revenue enhancement such as the sale of bonds to fund rail and other capital needs of the City including housing and roads, increases in building and other permits, establishment of fees for refuse collection and disposal, and discussion of property tax rates which has traditionally been the source to fund City services.
The City Council’s new leadership is expected to take a closer and more critical look at the administration’s budget. Council members will be proposing amendments to the budget in areas that they believe are inefficient or wasteful. One area specifically will be departments with unused funds which continue to be rolled over to the next fiscal year. While council members raised a number of concerns about the budget last year and proposed using those dollars elsewhere, few amendments were incorporated into the final budget.
