HONOLULU — Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. underscored the importance of Kaua‘i keeping its share of hotel tax revenue from the state in his testimony Wednesday morning during a joint hearing of the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means committees.
HONOLULU — Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. underscored the importance of Kaua‘i keeping its share of hotel tax revenue from the state in his testimony Wednesday morning during a joint hearing of the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means committees.
“Needless to say, the future of the (transient accommodations tax) is a huge concern for us, and we realize that maintaining the present distribution formula is likely not an option,” he said. “However, losing all of the TAT, combined with the other known revenue shortfalls and fixed-cost increases we face, could result in a 19 percent reduction of our budget and seriously challenge us to provide the basic health and safety services for which we are responsible.”
The county is proactively planning for the shortfall by developing plans for a two day per month furlough, restructuring its debt to facilitate a significant one-year savings, examining programs, proposing increased fees for services such as wastewater and vehicle registration and adjusting real property tax rates to potentially buffer the impact of reduced valuation.
“We are operating on a reduced budget this year and have had to manage expenses closely to avoid reducing services and/or furloughing employees,” he said in his legislative message to the committee members.
“Measures such as: dollar-funding vacant positions, ‘short-funding’ positions, reducing travel budgets by 50 percent, consolidating cell phone plans, reducing our take-home vehicle fleet by 64 percent, severely limiting equipment purchases, freezing the salaries of the mayor and appointed department heads, and a host of other initiatives have been employed this year to deal with the shortfall in revenues.”
Department heads are currently developing their budget proposals for fiscal year 2011, which begins July 1. Those proposals will be submitted to the Kaua‘i County Council on March 15.
“This exercise will be even more difficult than it was last year, due to the fact that we are anticipating as much as a $29 million gap in revenues, and some departments have already reduced their budgets by 10 percent or more.”
A discussion on the county’s budget for the current fiscal year and preparations for the upcoming fiscal year was included in the mayor’s testimony, along with a request for the funding of four projects, a county news release says.
The projects include: the reconstruction and protection of ‘Aliomanu Road; improvements to the Kapa‘a new park; open space/park land acquisition; and the development of the Kilauea agricultural park.
The county projects the total cost of those four projects to be $14.6 million and is asking the state to fund half that amount.
The mayor acknowledged the state Legislature for working closely with the county during the last year on issues of mutual concern, the release says.
The mayor also noted the package of bills being submitted this year by the Hawai‘i Council of Mayors that represent their collective requests.
For more information, visit www.kauai.gov.
