The Finance & Economic Development Committee met on May 13, 2025, to deliberate and make preliminary decisions on the Mayor's FY2025-2026 Annual Budget, including Bill No. 2949 (Operating Budget), Bill No. 2950 (Capital Improvements), and Resolution No. 2025-21 (Real Property Tax Rates). The session began at 9:00 a.m. in the Council Chambers, Lihu'e, and focused on public testimony, review of the supplemental budget, and council member proposals for amendments.
Okay, good morning. I'd like to call to order the Finance and Economic Development Committee and the fiscal year 2025-2026 preliminary budget decision making session. Let the record reflect that all members are present. Councilmember Quolee is on his way and will be a little late. He's stuck in traffic. Today is the council's opportunity to offer amendments to the mayor's budget proposal for the fiscal year 2025-2026. I'd like to remind the committee that any proposals to reduce or remove an item requires four votes. Any proposal to increase or add an item requires five votes. Please also keep in mind that any additions that you may be proposing should have a corresponding reduction or identification of funding or revenue source. Once a proposal is introduced, I respectfully ask that members be concise and considerate with their time during the discussion period. On the schedule today, we'll accept any public testimony and then hear from the administration with a brief overview of the supplemental budget communication. After that, we'll entertain any council member proposals. As usual, I want to respectfully ask that the council members make their final commentary on the budget during the second and final reading, which is scheduled for Wednesday, May 28, 2025, rather than at the end of the decision making today or in the committee meeting next week. This request again, as usual, is being made so that council services staff can immediately be in working to incorporate any changes made during today's budget session and prepare any prepare and post post notices, floor amendments, etc. relating to our ongoing budget process. So just state your name. Thank you. Good morning. So state your name, the light will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds left, and red when your six minutes is up if you need it. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Cheryl Lum. I am the executive director for YWCA. I humbly am requesting that as you're considering your budget and budget modifications that you consider YWCA as our nonprofit provides a very integral and important service to our community. Um for uh $30,000. And we have not experienced a budget increase. It's remained flat from the from the county uh for the past five years. And with the increase in cost of living and our operations and doing business, um, we are requesting a budget increase to support our operations. The family violence shelter is a 24-hour operation. Um we have uh victims that are brought to us at any time of the day and night, and we need to remain open to support our victims. The shelter and our sexual assault treatment program uh supports the beginning of the healing for our community. Um so it's a really important part of what we do for our community. And so I would really like to request that you look at your budget to see if there is room and wiggle room to support the um lack of increase for the past five years as well as supporting um the decrease in the voca funding that we will be receiving that we have um experience actually. And um at this time, our our budget, like being able to operate. Um we have actually a deficit. Um, and so we are at a deficit for our operations of $380,000. Um, so if there's any room where you can be able to support an increase anywhere between 80 to 380,000 dollars, that'd be fantastic. You have to look at those heart numbers, but if there's anywhere that you can pull from to support the operations, we need to make sure that we are continuing to service our community to make sure that we are the place where we can start to allow our community to heal when they're experiencing such trauma. So thank you very much. I have a clarifying clarifying question, Consumer Coding. Did I miss an email? Did you send us any notification of this request ahead of time? Um I did send an email. So sorry. A few weeks back. A few weeks back asking for an increase of eight to 80,000. And did you request that from the mayor's office as well? I did. Okay. Thank you.