Assuming the county has exhausted its ability to slash any deeper into its plethora of programs, services and positions, furloughs seem the lesser of all the evils sitting around the budget table this year. As department heads took turns this
Assuming the county has exhausted its ability to slash any deeper into its plethora of programs, services and positions, furloughs seem the lesser of all the evils sitting around the budget table this year.
As department heads took turns this week before the Kaua‘i County Council, each fighting for their piece of the $146 million overall operating budget, we didn’t envy the lawmakers charged with making these difficult decisions.
The directors made strong cases for keeping their budgets in tact. But the reality is an economic meltdown of historic proportions has translated into less revenue. Property taxes, the county’s primary revenue source, are down 8 percent from last year. And so our local government, like so many families around the island, must find a way to make do with less.
Do we want to see an end to program’s like the humane society’s collection and cremation of road kill, a service that includes scanning dead pets for embedded microchips so wondering owners might be notified? No, but these and a list of others are unfortunately on the chopping block.
A line must be drawn in the sand, as they say. And so we urge our elected officials to resist furloughing public safety workers.
Despite their union differences, lifeguards must be included in the same protected list with police officers and firefighters. With a minority of our beaches protected as it is, we can’t justify reducing the number of water safety personnel on duty to save the lives of visitors and residents.
Although this has already been negotiated with the county, we call on the unions to ask their members to accept a 12-month pay freeze in the hopes that the money in the budget going to pay their substantial raises next year might instead be used to keep public safety positions fully operational.
Since inflation has been mostly kept in check, maintaining current levels of pay won’t have the same sting as in years past when inflation was out of control. While a pay freeze may not be the cure-all and some furloughs would still be necessary, it could ease the overall burden.
Along the same lines as lifeguards, we also can’t fathom furloughing emergency dispatchers. We must preserve that key link between the caller in distress and the men and women ready to help.
Those exceptions aside, we can stomach temporarily furloughing other county employees better than, say, laying them off or making permanent across-the-board pay cuts. The proposed furlough plan, which generally calls for certain workers to take two unpaid days off a month, would preserve seniority and maintain benefits. It would also allow the effected employees to search for part time work on those days to help relieve the financial hit.
In some departments, like the 24-7 wastewater division, we suspect there will be a threshold where the increased amount of overtime necessary to continue operating with fewer staff members offsets the savings intended through the furloughs. We hope the county keeps its eye on this line.
Many companies throughout the island, not to mention the state and nation, have had to deal with furloughs, often enduring them when they have already cut to the bone. In these challenging times, where more is expected of less, we encourage residents to embrace the aloha spirit at our core and exercise patience with one another as services decline in government and the private sector.
While these times are indeed tough, there have been worse.
We urge the County Council to really scrutinize the mayor’s furlough proposal at the public hearing on Tuesday, weighing how each position impacts public safety on Kaua‘i.
