June 2025 Message from Council Chair Tommy Waters
Chair Waters speaking with Councilmember Tyler Dos Santos-Tam during Full Council meeting on Wednesday, June 4, 2025 in Council Chambers (Courtesy: Council Support Services).
Welina mai kākou,
As I shared with you in May, families across Oʻahu are facing growing financial pressure. We see it in rising food costs, utility bills, and housing. Adding to all of this, a proposed 115% sewer fee hike — as reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser — threatens to push household costs even higher. Let’s be honest: this spike isn’t just about today’s needs — it’s the price of decades of deferred maintenance and missed funding opportunities under previous administrations. But we shouldn’t ask today's families to shoulder that burden alone.
A plan that my team have been working on and will be introducing offers a better way:
Use visitor-generated OTAT revenue to diversify funding
Inject $24.5M in upfront capital to improve sewer fund liquidity
Implement predictable, gradual rate increases, not steep jumps
Avoid up to $783.5M in future debt, improving bond ratings, and saving taxpayers millions
Caring for our island’s environment — and meeting our obligations under federal consent decrees — is a shared responsibility. That’s why general funds and visitor revenues should play a role. Sewer infrastructure protects all of Oʻahu, not just ratepayers.
And while this ultimately may not be the exact path we choose in order to defray sewer fee increases, introducing and discussing Bill 43 is a challenge to our City leaders to help us find the right one. Putting the costs exclusively on the backs of ratepayers in this economy is irresponsible. Putting forward bold and creative ideas with the explicit goal of helping our residents survive and thrive is responsible leadership — and it’s how we build a more affordable, resilient Oʻahu for generations to come.
To be absolutely clear, sewer rates must be increased to cover regular repair and maintenance of this system. That is an island-wide imperative required of us to ensure adequate infrastructure for our waste for generations to come. We need to partner with the City Administration to look at this problem differently, and diligently work with the Council to find reasonable solutions - anything short of that would be a disservice to our residents. We are working under a set of unique and extreme circumstances, and failure to act accordingly, whether consciously or unconsciously - is a decision that will affect residents and households for the next decade, and I for one want to work together and exhaust all options in order to provide some relief in an area that we can actually control.
Mahalo,
Tommy Waters
(This message was written and published before the June Full Council meeting took place on June 4, 2025).
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If you have a concern you'd like to submit, feel free to contact my office and we'll be happy to assist you. Email: tommy.waters@honolulu.gov | Main Line: (808) 768-5004
