HONOLULU – Mayor Rick Blangiardi delivered his 2025 State of the City address from the Mission Memorial Auditorium in Honolulu at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. The full transcript of his remarks are below.
Aloha!
Good evening, and thank you all for coming tonight.
Your attendance is greatly appreciated, and I am excited to present our annual State of the City with you and our audience watching at home this evening.
To my wife, Karen: Your personal sacrifice is immense, and your understanding is more than I have a right to ask for. I love you for that, and much, much more.
To Governor Green and Lt. Governor Luke: Thank you, for all that you do for Hawaiʻi, each and every day.
Senator Schatz: Given the uncertainty going on in D.C., your leadership and your resolve have never been more important. I’m honored you’re here.
To my fellow mayors Rick Bissen and Derek Kawakami: This journey — this challenge — of leading our respective islands has been more fulfilling because of our partnership.
And to Mayor Alameda, we look forward to sharing the road ahead with you as we work to improve the lives of our people together.
Thank you all for coming.
To our City leadership team: I am inspired by each and every one of you — day in and day out — for all that you have done, and all that you commit to do, for the residents of Oʻahu.
Expectations are high, and there are a lot of people counting on us to deliver. Clearly they have placed their trust in us, with our historic win in the primary. We must deliver, we will deliver, and that is because of you.
And finally, to our City Council. Chair Tommy Waters, Vice Chair Matt Weyer and honorable councilmembers: I want to extend my sincere mahalo to all of you for being true and trusted partners, in our shared commitment and responsibility, to fixing the “Wicked Problems” of our beloved City and County of Honolulu — constructively, and collectively.
This is my fifth State of the City, and the first of our second term. My intention tonight is to provide you with an incisive update on the stellar work of our team in their ongoing efforts to tackle the critical long- and short-term challenges we face as an island community.
While I am proud to say we have created considerable success together over the past four years, my focus tonight is on the road ahead — and specifically on what you can expect from our team over the next four years as we continue to improve the operations of the City, as well as the quality of our lives.
Our growth as an administration has been steady and strong. We have learned and discovered much together about the many diverse needs of our City — and our people. We have planned well, and prioritized accordingly. Our collective efforts in the next four years are primed to meet those diverse needs through high achievement, driven by solid execution.
The stakes are high. The timing could not be more critical. This demands an invincible determination, from all of us, if we are to succeed. We cannot acquiesce in the face of so many of our people leaving — and so many others considering it — due to the high cost of living.
This is the leadership challenge of a lifetime for our entire team.
All eyes and minds are focused on the future as we work to create a better tomorrow in our embrace of much-needed change. Or, as President John F. Kennedy once said: “Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
We are facing unprecedented outmigration, and clearly the overall costs of living in Hawaii — for both goods and housing — are the primary catalyst for anyone considering leaving our beautiful home.
To solve this island’s outmigration issue, we must solve our housing issue.
Last week, we made good on a promise from last year’s State of the City to re-calibrate our organizational structure in service of that goal. Our resolution to create the new Department of Housing and Land Management has been formally introduced to the City Council, merging our real estate and housing experts into a single, unified operation.
Back in 1998, the City’s last iteration of a housing department was officially disbanded. In working with the Council, this new department will mark the first time in 27 years that the City has had a fully staffed housing department to lead in the construction of housing on O’ahu. I’m pleased to announce tonight that we’ve asked Kevin Auger, the executive director of our Office of Housing, to serve as director of the new department, with Cat Taschner supporting Kevin as deputy director — placing our focus on the development of housing and transit-oriented communities.
For most of the past year, Kevin, Cat and their teams have already been working as a single unit — completely re-thinking our housing strategy. Before every decision they’ve made in standing up our new department, they’ve asked themselves a simple question: “Will this help us create housing?”
Together, they have re-established a housing platform at the City that is geared toward execution rather than policy; toward development, rather than deliberation; and toward results, rather than rhetoric.
Their new housing plan has two key components.
First, that we stand up a development division within the new housing department — one that can spearhead our collaborative efforts with development partners to aggressively create new housing units on City lands.
Our team has identified at least 10 under-utilized City-owned properties that would better serve the public if they were transformed into affordable housing. These properties have been sitting around for years, with no plan or strategy — or the necessary infrastructure. Our housing department is activating them to serve the single most-needed purpose that we can offer our residents: as places to live. Solicitations for the development of five of those properties are already out, and we believe these ten parcels have the potential to add nearly 2,000 units to the housing market on Oʻahu.
To fully unlock that potential, there is a second key component to our reorganization: the creation of a finance division that can engineer new ways to address the cost of development.
Make no mistake, we have already made lots of progress. After a 23-year hiatus, our Private Activity Bond program is thriving. Since resurrecting the City’s program three years ago, nearly $670 million in bond allocations have been awarded to developers, including $140 million in awards scheduled to close later this summer to help finance more than 400 new public housing units.
That said, the simple truth is that our current affordable housing ecosystem relies too heavily on low-income tax credits and general obligation bonds — funding sources that are way too restrictive. To further accelerate the delivery of housing and execute on our housing goals, the City needs cutting-edge financing solutions.
Our housing team is exploring the use of multi-family taxable revenue bonds and the provision of low-cost construction equity financing to determine if these alternative structures make sense for our development partners across the island — many of whom are with us here tonight.
The bottom line is that we cannot build new housing units if we cannot make the projects pencil out. We are determined to introduce creative financing options that can be implemented on City developments, using City properties, with City infrastructure, for the good of this City’s residents, before the end of our administration.
When it comes to housing, I am proud of what we were able to accomplish in our first four years — and excited for what we are committed to doing over the next four. Last month, we proposed meaningful changes to the way the City leases property, to make it easier for development partners to quickly advance housing projects.
We need to offer more leasing options, which will help speed up the approval process. We cannot call housing our top priority and then insist on the status quo when it comes to our leasing rules — and making smart revisions to Chapter 38 will have a wider impact than just housing. We want to make it easier for government services and non-profits to lease City properties, to better serve our residents, and we look forward to working with the Council to make it easier to get projects moving in their districts with these changes.
It’s obvious that there are plenty of rules and regulations still standing in the way. Earlier this year, we started working with UHERO (the U.H. Economic Research Organization) on a top-down review of anything developers might call “red tape” to make sure we address any opportunity to reduce regulatory burden.
Knowing that “time is money” — and in real estate, development is big money — we believe every decision we make about housing regulations, including whether they’re even necessary, should be data-driven. As a facilitator, the sooner we address the systemic issues hindering development, the bigger impact we can make.
When it comes to our housing shortage, there is no bigger impact we can make — no bigger catalyst for change — than to unleash the full strength of our efforts on transit-oriented development.
Few places in the country support public transportation more than the people of Oʻahu. We rank fifth in the nation for per-capita transit ridership, and more than 90 percent of all residents on our island live within a 10-minute walk of a bus stop or rail station.
Going forward, our Skyline system provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to create high-density, mixed-use communities, where people will choose to live along the rail line.
But first, itʻs time to bring Skyline to Pearl Harbor. It’s time to bring Skyline to the airport, so residents flying out for the weekend do not need to sit in traffic to get dropped off for their flights. It’s time to bring Skyline to Lagoon Drive, where riders will be able to connect to Waikiki and East Oahu. And itʻs time to bring Skyline all the way into Kalihi.
We’re announcing tonight that the second segment of rail operations, from Aloha Stadium to Middle Street, will open on October 1, 2025.
Our team at HART, led by Lori Kahikina, continues to do incredible work. Construction on the third and final rail segment, through Downtown Honolulu and into Kakaʻako, will start this year — with the entire system slated to open in 2031. Our job now is to ensure that the housing developments, the new businesses and the new public spaces we have planned for communities along the rail line keep up with — if not beat — the pace of rail construction.
Perhaps nowhere is that more important for us than in the redevelopment of Iwilei Center. When we acquired Iwilei Center last year, we used the word “iconic” to describe our vision to transform the area into a mixed-use community with at least 2,000 new housing units. This month, we announced the next step in bringing that vision to life.
Right now, the City is accepting proposals that will enable us to select a development partner capable of creating the world-class community our residents deserve — a community that features:
- Affordable and market-rate housing;
- Commercial and retail spaces;
- Government services;
- Education facilities, including childcare providers;
- Recreational opportunities;
- and a rail park-and-ride.
With Iwilei Center, we are making good on our promise to build an equitable community where all residents — regardless of income — have the same opportunities to live, work, shop, learn and play as everyone else.
Thanks to an unprecedented $3 million in state and federal grants, we’re well into infrastructure planning for this new development. Our housing team worked with HART to completely re-shape the Kūwili Station, connecting it directly into the Iwilei Center community as well as a multi-modal hub at the base of the station, which will enable even greater transportation options.
Our Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency is making sure the new development is designed to stand strong in the face of future climate hazards, and our Office of Economic Revitalization will guide this new community toward robust business opportunities — especially for local small businesses and entrepreneurs.
And with $100 million in funding for mixed-use development in this year’s proposed budget, we have set the stage to break ground on this transformative project by 2028.
But the vision that we have for Iwilei won’t come together overnight. We know that planning and design — not just for infrastructure, but for the entire mixed-use development — will take years to complete. Given that we have already talked once this evening about activating City properties, we know that letting Iwilei Center sit empty and under-utilized while planning and design takes place is not in the best interest of our residents and our taxpayers.
Instead, while preparations for a housing development take place, we’re using the building to help address the second greatest challenge of our administration: homelessness. Last month, Governor Green and I unveiled Kumu Ola Hou, a groundbreaking new homeless shelter inside the Iwilei Center complex that focuses on brain and behavioral health.
For individuals who have spent years — or even their whole lives — on the streets, mental health challenges and traumatic brain injuries can make it impossible to transition back into stable living situations. Kumu Ola Hou is compassionate housing, steeped in Hawaiian principles, that focuses on restoring cognitive function through neuroscience and architecture. The model we’ve deployed is among the first in the nation — it’s being studied at universities and research centers around the world who are looking to us for insight into better ways we can treat our most vulnerable homeless individuals.
Kumu Ola Hou is the first of four separate homeless shelters that will open inside Iwilei Center this year, adding a total of 100 more treatment beds to the City’s inventory. As mayor, our ability to effectively and humanely treat our homeless population — our most vulnerable population — is paramount.
Homelessness is a gut-wrenching and heartbreaking reality in our communities — one that deeply challenges our minds and spirits, at every level, in trying to alleviate the pain and suffering we see far too much, in far too many places.
There is no simple solution. In fact, it is a demanding test of our human spirit to be purposeful, determined and unwavering, in our intent and our actions, to help these people with their incredible suffering.
As we came out of COVID in early 2022, we developed a comprehensive strategy — one that involved new facilities, key strategic partners, and a game plan to effectively reduce the number of unsheltered chronic homeless, the most difficult and challenging population on our streets. Then, not long after Governor Green’s election, we formed a Homeless Task Force of City, State and non-profit stakeholders that now meets weekly. The group is truly cross-sector, comprised of key members from City and State government as well as leaders from our homeless provider community, representing an unprecedented collaboration of skills and knowledge aimed at helping our homeless in every feasible way we can!
We know that many chronically homeless individuals suffer from mental illness or some form of addiction. Add to that, as we have painfully learned from our medical teams, many are also very physically sick, with cancer, organ failure and a number of terminal issues.
Proper medication and treatment has proven to be a game changer, so we have focused much of our efforts over the past three years on providing medical care including at new respite facilities like ʻAʻala Respite.
The work being done there is outstanding. The respite has already stabilized dozens of patients enough to get them into permanent supportive housing, and has reunited at least 15 patients with their families.
Facilities like ʻAʻala Respite have had a remarkable impact on our healthcare system. Let me give you an example: the first two homeless patients — just two — to be treated at ʻAʻala Respite last year were responsible for a jaw-dropping 80 calls to 911 in the entire prior year. If you take that call rate and multiply it by the more than 150 people that have received medical care on-site instead of making costly visits to local hospitals, we are dramatically reducing strain on our 911 system and our hospitals.
And for those patients sick enough to require advanced care, nearly every homeless person who is discharged from the hospital is now taken to ʻAʻala Respite instead of being put back on the street in a hospital gown.
We are approaching this challenge with love and with compassion, because we refuse to let our severely ill — our severely vulnerable — die alone on the streets.
But if this landscape wasn’t challenging enough, our homeless service providers estimate that in the past year somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people arrived on Oʻahu from the mainland knowing they would be homeless. Candidly, this takes the challenge to an entirely different level.
Reducing the number of homeless people on Oʻahu demands a bold, aggressive and comprehensive strategy. More importantly, it demands a capability of executing that strategy — and an unwavering commitment not to fade in the face of adversity of our most intractable problem.
I want to share with you our strategy.
I said at the outset that we needed to treat this problem effectively and humanely. It starts with our Crisis, Outreach, Response and Engagement team — better known as CORE.
CORE was designed to help mitigate thousands of costly 911 calls each year involving homelessness — calls which greatly taxed EMS, HPD and the emergency rooms at our hospitals, especially The Queen’s Medical Center.
This mobile crisis team is growing, allowing us to establish a second base of operations in Waipahu to better serve our homeless population on the West Side and in Central Oʻahu.
Outside of responding to 911 calls, CORE’s primary responsibility is to fulfill one of the pillars that our strategy is built upon: getting homeless individuals to engage the system. CORE is boots on the ground in our communities, establishing relationships and building trust with countless individuals.
We’ve found that our homeless individuals are more likely to engage the system if they can receive medical care — something CORE provides.
They might engage the system if they can get a free ride, or a free meal, but our CORE team faces a harsh reality: the vast majority of our chronically homeless population refuses help when first asked. Our CORE team knows that creating a rapport and building trust is essential if we ever hope to have these individuals voluntarily ‘buy in’ to leave their life on the street.
But leaving a life on the street necessitates that these individuals have a place to go, and that is where the collaboration, as well as the much-needed financial support from the Governor and the state, really begins to manifest.
In just the past 18 months, in the Iwilei area alone, we have established more than 200 new beds, in four separate facilities, that are supported by two additional medical respite centers, plus a one-of-a-kind homeless triage and treatment facility.
On top of that, in partnership with U.H.’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, we have dedicated space for the H.O.M.E. Project to provide medical care on-site at Iwilei Center five days per week. This innovative clinic is run by medical students and staffed by volunteers; for our homeless population, the H.O.M.E. Project dramatically improves access to healthcare and the quality of healthcare.
The beds at many of our new facilities are designed to be transitional, with the average length of stay projected to be 12 weeks before individuals are able to move into permanent supportive housing. Consequently, the multiplier effect should allow us to treat hundreds of people per year, in just these four facilities. Our goal in the next calendar year, given all of our efforts in creating capacity to provide care, is to help at least 1,000 people who are experiencing homelessness get treatment and get off the street.
This kind of consistent, intense support has proven itself as a way to stabilize patients and provide a pathway into supportive housing. Working with the state and non-profits, we have been thoughtful, deliberate, in our approach to opening new homeless shelters for specific segments of our homeless population.
Facilities with communal bathrooms and living spaces can be dangerous for young children, so we’ve opened family shelters in Wahiawa and at Waikiki Vista to better serve that population — with another family shelter coming soon to Hauʻula.
We have increased shelter bed capacity for kūpuna, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. For people with addiction issues, or mental health issues, or physical ailments, we have but one goal in mind: to get them the help they need to get off the streets.
To make a meaningful difference, our approach must be smart, calculated, and most of all, collaborative. I am very proud and grateful of our collaboration and working relationship with the state. Governor Green, I cannot thank you enough for your friendship, your leadership, our partnership, and your willingness to combine our hearts and minds with the necessary resources to properly fight this fight. From the bottom of my heart thank you.
We believe strongly in our game plan to tackle this crisis head on, and now it is about better execution at every level. For their efforts in driving that execution, I sincerely want to thank the members of our Homeless Task Force:
- Connie Mitchell, IHS;
- Laura Thielen, Partners in Care;
- Ryan Catalani, Family Promise Hawaiʻi;
- Jun Yang, the state’s Homeless Coordinator;
- Assistant Chief Ryan Nishibun, HPD;
- Dr. Greg Payton and his team at Mental Health Kōkua;
- Dr. Dan Kehoe and his team at North Shore Mental Health, including Kama Tam and Faye Manalastas;
- Dr. Scott Miscovich and Premier Medical Group;
- From the state, Dr. Mike Champion, Dr. Chad Koyonagi and Dr. Kenny Fink, the director of the state Department of Health;
- Dr. Jill Omori, Executive Director of JABSOM’s HOME Project;
- and Dr. Jim Ireland, director of the Honolulu Emergency Services Department, and his deputy, Ian Santee.
You know, to our point earlier about healthcare being a critical part of our strategy… If you include Doctor Josh Green, there are nine doctors at the table as we make all of our critical decisions about how we address homelessness — a testament to our approach of treating this issue with empathy.
Finally, I cannot finish this section without a very special and sincere mahalo to Anton Krucky, the director of our Department of Community Services; his deputy director, Aedward Los Banos; and Roy Miyahira, who recently joined our team as Director of Homeless Solutions.
Everyone I mentioned exhibits an unwavering commitment, on behalf of the people of the City and County of Honolulu, to tackling homelessness.
I want to say one more thing before we move on, and I want to talk directly to our residents. For all our efforts, we know that there is a dark side to life on the streets that preys on the vulnerability of our homeless and is also a real threat to our communities, and that dark side is the criminals that lurk about them.
Our enforcement approach when it comes to crime, especially involving our most vulnerable citizens, is centered on a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Recent Supreme Court rulings have allowed cities and counties to be much more aggressive if someone is illegally trespassing or breaking the law, or if they are determined by a licensed healthcare professional to be a danger to themselves or others.
The “Weed and Seed Chinatown” and “Safe and Sound Waikiki” programs have been incredibly successful especially when it comes to targeting habitual criminals with long rap sheets, and the combined efforts of both programs over the past three-plus years have led to nearly 5,000 arrests.
Our directive is to arrest and prosecute, to the fullest extent, each and every time someone breaks the law. I want to especially acknowledge the diligence of Steve Alm and his team at the Prosecutor’s Office, along with Chief Joe Logan and our entire police department, for their great teamwork and partnership in working with us to help make Oʻahu a safer place.
Many of you have heard me call this job the “challenge of a lifetime,” and there were times in the first few weeks of 2025 where it never felt more true.
When a stockpile of illegal fireworks detonated as Aliamanu rang in the New Year, few could have imagined the devastation: the lives that were lost, the families that were senselessly torn apart. We were all shocked by the horror of that night. It wounded our City, and our psyche.
The scene was described as a warzone — and we were horrified by the thought. I would like to ask all of you to join me in a moment of silence tonight to honor the victims of that awful tragedy.
Thank you.
None of us should have been surprised to learn of the bravery with which our first responders sprang into action that night. Paramedics, police officers and firefighters from across the island rushed to the scene — many did so without being asked, just to help in any way they could. They rushed to the scene because when you devote your entire life to protecting others from harm, that mission is all that matters.
Too often we take for granted the sacrifices of those who risk everything for us… The sacrifices of men like Firefighter Jeff Fiala. Just five days after the Aliamanu explosion, tragedy struck again. A house in McCully caught fire, and as the flames intensified and people fled the heat and the danger, Jeff and his fellow firefighters ran towards both.
It was an act of bravery that every single member of our fire department would have made. But for reasons we may never know, it would be the final call Jeff ever responded to.
Jeff’s sacrifice will live forever, not just in the hearts of our firefighters, but through the love we all share for those whom Jeff loved most.
Please join me tonight in welcoming Firefighter Fiala’s parents, Mike and Kristine.
His brother, Andrew, and Andrew’s fiance, Nicole.
And Jeff’s wife, Fiona.
Please know that you remain in our thoughts and prayers. We are profoundly grateful you are here with us this evening, and may God bless all of you.
Our first responders put their lives on the line every day for us, and our responsibility at the City is to make it easier and safer for them to do their jobs.
The decision to stand up Ocean Safety as an independent department last summer has breathed new life into the day-to-day working lives of our incredible lifeguards.
I especially want to acknowledge Kurt Lager, our Ocean Safety director, for his passion and his steadfast dedication in leading this great department through their transition. Our promise to Kurt is to do everything we can to support operational readiness at Ocean Safety while our entire team, along with the City Council, works to provide the department with resources that will re-shape their capabilities.
Later this year, on a piece of land overlooking Kailua Bay, the City will complete construction on the first newly-built facility specifically for Ocean Safety in its 107-year history.
Think about that!
That’s a legacy of life-saving that goes back more than a century… A legacy etched by heroes like Bill Smith, Eddie Aikau, Brian Keaulana… Heroes like Tamayo Perry, who we tragically lost last year on the North Shore. Tamayo was an incredible waterman who lived an extraordinary life and our thoughts and prayers remain with his family and his friends, all over the world.
For decades, our lifeguards have saved countless lives despite being asked to do more with less — especially when it came to facilities. And our commitment to the men and women of Ocean Safety is to upend that status quo in our second term.
In addition to Ocean Safety’s new Windward Operations Center, we anticipate spending millions over the next four years on the planning, design and construction of improvements to existing Ocean Safety facilities, as well as on the construction of new facilities — including one very special facility on the North Shore.
After countless conversations with community members, public safety officials and Vice Chair Weyer, we are announcing tonight our intent to purchase a highly-coveted piece of land across the street from Shark’s Cove for the creation of a world-class first responder hub. These plans are subject to a negotiated sale price with the current landowner, but will be transformative for our North Shore communities.
The proposed first responder hub will serve as a base of operations for our North Shore lifeguards, and it would feature a brand new ambulance station — dramatically reducing emergency response times. I want to thank Denise Antolini and the members of the community who fought so hard to make this happen, and I look forward to working with you, the Council and our lifeguards to execute this vision.I’ve said before that our lifeguards are the best watermen and women in the world, willing to rush into any situation — take on any wave — in service of others.
We saw it first-hand last summer when our City, and the nation, were captivated by the race against time to rescue Kahiau Kawai, a teenager who was separated from his high school paddling team off-shore from Waikiki. For nearly 12 hours, in what became the longest night of his life, Kahiau clung to his kayak in the open ocean — and the emergency response was overwhelming. But by some miracle, when the night was darkest, just before dawn, an off-duty lifeguard in a borrowed boat called to shore with three words his friends and family will never forget: “I’ve got him.”
Please join me tonight in welcoming Kahiau Kawai, and the lifeguard who saved his life, Noland Keaulana.
Noland is an Ocean Safety lifeguard, rescue ski operator and Hōkūleʻa crewmember — and in the days that followed the rescue, he would go on to say that nobody ever asked him to help. Instead, he called another legendary waterman, Nainoa Thompson, and simply asked to borrow a boat.
When Nainoa asked why, Noland simply replied — and this is a direct quote: “There should be no boy out there in the ocean overnight. I have to go.”
This is the cloth from which all of our City lifeguards are cut, and it underscores — emphatically — our need to better support the department, not just with facilities, but with leadership. Kurt Lager has my full support, and when the time comes, I will be the first person to testify that he should be the chief of the department. And Kurt, congratulations on your upcoming wedding!
Given everything our lifeguards have to look forward to, and given how much that critical first responder agency has evolved over the past year, it’s clear to all of us that standing up Ocean Safety as its own department was the right decision. We’re grateful to the City Council and to the public for their support in making that happen.
Reorganization made great sense for Ocean Safety, and it’s time to find out if it makes sense for EMS. Our administration has already begun to establish a task force to determine whether the Honolulu Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services, which operates our ambulance units, would be better off as a single, integrated department.
Fire-based EMS programs can be found all over the country, and with the number of 911 calls for emergency treatment on Oʻahu skyrocketing, we need to find out whether a consolidation of fire and EMS can improve response times. Equally as important, we need to study the impact it will have on the morale of our first responders.
We’ve consistently approached challenges like this the same way: with a commitment to understanding problems before offering solutions. In 2021, our first year in office, we took operational control of EMS from the state. We were confident that we could run EMS more efficiently.
In that effort, it became quite apparent that EMS needed to focus specifically on medical response, and that Ocean Safety had earned the right to be its own first responder agency. However, I want to be clear: in executing our vision, I strongly support Dr. Jim Ireland as the director of Emergency Services.
Jim and his team are in the middle of negotiations for a location in Kaimuki to place a new ambulance, which will serve communities from Palolo to Kaimuki, with backup service to Waikiki and Wailupe. The projected opening date is July of this year.
EMS is also working with Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center to start a brand new training program on the Waianae Coast, so that residents interested in becoming paramedics or EMTs will have easy access to training, facilities and instruction without having to drive all the way to Kapiolani Community College. I want to thank Waianae Comp and KCC for their vision and their willingness to make this happen.
These initiatives are all designed to improve services to the public, including our decision to study a merger between HFD and EMS, and we are doing so with the support of Dr. Ireland and fire chief Kalani Hao.
You’ve heard me say it already tonight: we have an incredible obligation to those who take care of others — not just first responders, but all of the employees who serve our residents, especially in times of crisis. Last week, we were thrilled to finalize our hazard pay agreements with SHOPO and UPW for hours worked during the coronavirus pandemic. We will begin issuing payments to members from those two unions in the next couple of months, and we are in the home stretch of negotiations with HGEA, with hopes that we can finalize that agreement soon, too. We now turn our attention toward agreements with the unions that represent our firefighters and transit operators, including bus drivers, because we are committed to making sure all of our employees are treated fairly.
To our essential workers: we recognize and respect the work that you did during the pandemic, and we will be forever grateful for the way you kept City operations going in our darkest hours.
The more than $130 million we’re spending on hazard pay reflects our commitment to our employees, while our proposed $5.1 billion dollar City budget reflects not just our commitment to our communities, but our priorities as an administration.
We’re committed to more than just housing, homelessness and public safety. To be candid, my biggest regret tonight is not having enough time to talk about the incredible plans that all of our departments have put together — and the incredible work you’re all doing for our people.
Work like what our Parks Department and Director Laura Thielen have been doing as champions for equity across our island. Laura’s focus on facilities in rural areas, including on a new swimming pool in Kahuku and park improvements across West Oʻahu, has been inspiring. Thank you.
And at Enterprise Services, under Director Dita Holfield’s leadership, where our six municipal golf courses set all-time records this year for both attendance and revenue — and our beloved Honolulu Zoo is also up in both categories.
Or at the Department of Customer Services, where wait times for driver’s license appointments are a fraction of what they used to be — and will drop even further as we begin the process of making those appointments available online for the first time.
Customer satisfaction has been incredibly important for CSD Director Kim Hashiro, and she and her team are doing incredible work.
Our proposed budget includes millions to fund the rehabilitation of streets, bridges and road infrastructure; the electrification of our transportation fleet; and the acquisition of new buses and TheHandi-Van vehicles, to keep our residents on the go. It also includes more than half a billion dollars for critical improvements to Oʻahu’s wastewater system — a system we all depend on.
Above all, we are committed to fiscally responsible spending as it relates to our budget and our priorities. Not only do we strongly believe that the budget we’ve proposed to the City Council is our best to date, but we’ve balanced it in a way that did not — and will not — raise property taxes. That is my commitment to you during my time in office.
One of the things we know is on everyone’s mind is the potential impact of federal spending cuts on our local government, our local economy, and our local people.
The honest truth is that we cannot predict the future — and on a personal level, it is not in my nature to overreact to situations outside of our control.
But our commitment to you is to control everything within our power to control. Municipalities across the country are going to have to adapt, whether they like it or not, and we are no exception!
In this year’s budget, we’ve asked the Council to commit millions of dollars to a federal funding contingency — one that we would only use if federal funding cuts impacted City employees or City programs. On top of that, in an extreme, worst-case situation, I have directed my team to propose an amendment to the Fiscal Stability Fund law that would allow us to use those monies to avoid significant impacts to our most vulnerable populations, as well as the non-profits that serve them.
But I want to be clear: as of today, none of our major programs have been impacted by federal cuts — including funding from the FTA for our rail project.
In this year’s budget, we’ve also requested funding to continue working on a challenge that affects every single person across our island: there is no escaping that we need to solve our landfill issue. I don’t think we could have applied more due diligence, study and thought into a major challenge than we have with the siting of a replacement for Waimanalo Gulch. Our Landfill Advisory Committee spent nearly a full year evaluating six potential sites and recommended none. We then spent more than two full years with our top military leaders, trying to identify a potential site on federal lands — to no avail.
We are keenly aware that the unfortunate circumstances driven by Red Hill changed the discourse of the entire conversation. But we have consulted with experts at every step along the way, and we stand firm in our solid belief that we can safely build and safely operate a state-of-the-art landfill that will represent no threat to present or future generations.
We also need to solve our City’s long-standing procurement issue — another problem people told us could not be solved on our watch. Procurement is the process by which we acquire goods and services from outside the City, and for years that process has taken way too long. It takes too long for us to acquire new fire trucks and garbage trucks, too long to purchase new HOLO cards and license plates, and too long to secure contractors for important projects.
This compromises our ability to deliver core City services, and to us, these procurement roadblocks are unacceptable.
As important as procurement is to our operations, the issues are familiar: we have processes that are redundant and inefficient, technology that doesn’t do enough to support our team and their goals, and too few people to make up for the first two problems.
Last summer, we established a Procurement Solutions Working Group and started attacking the problem, with staffing being our top priority. In this year’s budget, we made a request for ten more procurement specialists — and later this year, BFS, which handles City procurement, will become our first department to roll out an incentive program designed to reward and retain high performers.
We also have money in the budget to begin our search for a new tech platform — one that is easier for departments to navigate and easier for our procurement team to manage. In the meantime, we’re reviewing every step of the process to eliminate inefficiencies, knowing full well that hard-working employees across the City are counting on us to deliver. Most of all, we are dedicated to finding solutions that will help us better serve residents in every community and every Council district for years to come.
Some of the biggest challenges of our first four years are a lot less “wicked” than they were when we started working on them.
12 months ago, we promised our residents that within a year, the average amount of time it took DPP to conduct code reviews on residential permits would be less than one month. We have it down to two weeks. We promised that code review on commercial projects would be done in six months or less by the end of 2025, and it is already down to 60 days — and DPP is far from done.
Now, I want to be clear: other parts of the permitting process still need work, and we’re not saying that applications are being approved in 60 days. But fixing the code review process was something that people told us could never be done, and the data shows that the staff at DPP have already made more progress than has been done in the last 25 years.
For that, I want to thank and congratulate DPP director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna and her deputy, Bryan Gallagher.
The seeds of improvement that we planted over the past four years are finally beginning to bear fruit. After more than a year of system upgrades, Clariti — our new permitting software — will be fully operational by September 1. CivCheck, our cutting edge, AI driven plan review assistant, will go live this fall, helping applicants submit complete and compliant permits in their first review cycle — cutting down review times even further.
We believe even more can be done to streamline the process. To cut down on review times and address our housing shortage, DPP is developing pre-approved building templates for ADUs and ʻOhana dwellings that will fast track housing in our own backyards.
We don’t want to simply come out from under the backlog — we want to provide applicants with the fastest permit review times as anywhere in the country, and we’re closer to that goal now than we’ve ever been before.
We’re more than proud of our progress when it comes to staffing, yet another issue we identified just two years ago as one of our City’s “Wicked Problems.”
Since then, our Department of Human Resources has undergone the most transformative modernization of their operations in decades. After years where the City lost more employees than they hired, we are currently projecting net employee growth at the City and County for the third straight year. I want to especially acknowledge DHR director Nola Miyasaki and deputy director Bugs Baguio for their remarkable work.
Thanks to our determined efforts to raise salaries for engineers, that includes hard-to-hire departments like Design and Construction, where every new engineer or architect we bring on-board increases our capacity to improve City facilities across the island.
We’re already tracking a year-to-year hiring increase of more than 10 percent, and our monthly hiring average in FY25 exceeds our pre-COVID numbers by an incredible 62 percent. That hasn’t happened by accident.
By streamlining our processes and expanding capacity, we have cut the average time it takes to hire a new employee by more than half compared to what it was just three years ago — and in some cases, it’s down to just six weeks or less.
We have also allocated more staff to focus on employee outreach, with a new talent acquisition team that has hosted or participated in more than 110 recruitment events in just the past year. Together with the Governor’s team, we’ll be at two special recruitment events next month targeting employees who have been impacted by recent cuts to government spending and the federal workforce. To those of you who have been displaced: you have the skills, the expertise, to help our local communities thrive, and we hope you consider joining our incredible team.
By now, nearly three months into the fifth year of the defining chapter of my life, most of you know about my previous career in media and news organizations.
At least one person at the Legislature seems to think I still “control the media.” So it should come as no surprise to anyone that on January 5, a few days after we were sworn in for our second term I saw an editorial in the Sunday Star-Advertiser with the headline: “Blangiardi Has Much Left To Do.”
Now, clearly, thatʻs not the sort of headline that someone who “controls the media” would’ve written.
But the truth is? I didn’t mind. In fact, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
For everything that our team is capable of… For everything that our island expects of us — and everything that we expect of ourselves — we do have much left to accomplish.
The eyes of our communities are solidly upon us. Our local residents need housing. Our most vulnerable need help; our sick need medical care; our people need protecting.
These are challenges that we are running toward, not running from, and there is clear evidence that our efforts are paying off. In a survey of Oʻahu residents published earlier this month, the number of people who said they were committed to staying here — to staying home — instead of leaving for Vegas, or Seattle, or San Diego, was the highest it has been since 2012.
For the first time in years, our people have hope. They believe in this place — for what it is, and for what it can be. We believe in it, too — and we promise to work until the last minute of our last day to deliver.
God bless you all, God bless Hawaiʻi, and God bless America.
Aloha.
—PAU—
