By Pete Hoffmann, Councilman for District 9 (Waikoloa, Waimea, Hawi, Halaula)

It’s that time of the year again – budget season – that time when politicians sound intelligent and well-informed, but do their utmost to avoid the tough decisions in the hope that their constituencies will forget how they’ve eventually voted.

I know this sounds cynical, but past experience indicated this practice occurred all too often.

This year’s budget, prepared against a backdrop of an uncertain economic future, is shaping up as a traditional exercise. The mayor’s draft budget continues some reasonable budget initiatives, i.e. reducing vacant funded positions – but not nearly enough.

Some decreases are programmed in operating costs and overtime and travel will continue a downward trend – but again not as great as they should decrease.

We will save ‘pennies’ if we eliminate the County bands and we might save more on relatively minor contractual agreements. But in order to keep the revenue in line with the expenses, the mayor is advocating a revenue- neutral rate adjustment to our property taxes.

The specific rate adjustments are not known, but in any other jargon, this translates to me as a tax increase.

Putting aside for the moment the linguistics involved, the draft budget continues another less desirable trend, that of omitting the “500 pound gorilla” we know is present in the room at all budget discussions, the one budget item that is never publicly highlighted and rarely acknowledged by administration officials; i.e. the number of County employees.

Let’s face it, approximately 65 percent of the County’s budget is spent on personnel/staffing costs. We do a great job tip-toeing around this topic, and spend hours debating issues that are (at best) on the periphery of our $374 million proposal.

Until we as public officials, have the guts to begin to address this topic, to examine whether or not we are overstaffed, to accept at a minimum that we should not fill positions vacated by retirement or attrition, we have done little to fix our primary budget difficulty.

The current administration may not be responsible for the significant increase in County employees in recent years, but it must have the courage and the foresight to begin this politically volatile discussion, and in doing so, make real change happen.

It ain’t easy, but no one ever said it would be. I suggest we begin now so that we won’t have to raise property taxes and further burden our residents.

To give me a better understanding of your opinions on this critical issue, I have prepared a survey card regarding budget priorities. Some 2,000 of these cards will be mailed to random constituents in this district.

I ask that you take a few minutes to complete this card and return it to me. If you do not receive a card, please let me know. There will be some cards on hand in my Waimea office and I will have others with me at all upcoming ‘Talk Stories’ throughout April. Mahalo.