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Welcome to Inside Honolulu! There’s not much on the at Honolulu Hale this week, but there’s always something going on. Civil Beat is reporting from the inside.

2:15 p.m. City to present Aiea-Pearl Transit-Oriented Development Plan

Tomorrow night the city will present to the public a draft of its transit-oriented development plan for the Aiea-Pearl City area. The plan covers development ideas and zoning recommendations areas within about a half-mile radius of transit stations planned near:

• Leeward Community College
• Pearl Highlands
• Pearlridge

The Department of Planning and Permitting isn’t posting a draft of the plan to until after the meeting tomorrow night.

The San Francisco-based urban design firm will accept public comments on the plan until January 15, 2011. E-mail: adam@vmwp.com.

1:11 p.m. Simplifying city money, Carlisle-style

Mayor Peter Carlisle said money is “the biggest thing” he focuses on in his new job. To simplify the complicated budget he’ll have to present in March, Carlisle breaks spending down into three parts.

“The categories that I see are rail, which has its own funding source. Then sewers and other related matters, which also has its own funding source—”

Here’s where Civil Beat interrupts: Actually, the mayor and the City Council will have to determine the funding source for massive sewer upgrades, and ratepayers¹ will foot the bill.

“Right,” Carlisle said. “It all comes out of sewer fees, and you’ve got a consent decree, so you have to (do it).”

Back to the list.

“So it’s rail, sewers and related items, and then finally, everything else.”

11:49 a.m. Slow and steady at Honolulu Hale

Civil Beat briefly caught up with Honolulu Managing Director Doug Chin outside of the mayor’s conference room Tuesday morning. He was chatting and laughing with cabinet members and city attorneys.

“We’re working hard here,” Chin said with a smile. “No, we just got out of our regular Tuesday morning cabinet meeting.”

On the other side of the third floor, Mayor Peter Carlisle left his office around lunchtime, and cracked a couple of jokes before continuing on his way. He has no events listed on his public schedule, but is at Honolulu Hale today.

10:45 a.m. Longest month ever

It’s been one month — technically 35 days — since Mayor Peter Carlisle was sworn in.

“It doesn’t feel like 35 days,” Carlisle told Civil Beat. “It feels like a lot longer than that. It’s an interesting life where you lose track of what day it is and what you’re doing the next day because you’re so focused on the project today.”

The big thing right now — and “always,” Carlisle says — is money. He still needs to find a budget director. But he’s comfortable taking his time on personnel issues.

“The thing I am happiest about is having kept the people here, and not having come in imprudently firing people sight-unseen,” Carlisle said. “And I don’t regret in the slightest having sought the job.”

Carlisle said he’s continuing to get used to being “Mr. Mayor.”

“I stopped being Peter, and I’ve become Mr. Mayor,” Carlisle said. “I really can’t emphasize enough that while my job has changed, I haven’t changed. But I am going to have to get used to people treating me as Mr. Mayor. People want to have leaders and they want to have people in positions where they can be confident.”

10:27 a.m. City politics on-demand a month behind

Like Xerox or Kleenex, Olelo has become the brand name substitute for public access TV at Honolulu Hale. Even in the city’s budget, the debate over the cost of taping public hearings refers to “Olelo.”

In reality, Council TV is a city contractor that produces all of the coverage of council and committee meetings.

“Olelo provides channel time and equipment, so City Council members tend to use that name, but we do all of the programming and producing,” said Council TV producer Glenn Booth, who also produces content for Capitol TV at the State Capitol. “It’s usually up on the same day. Right now we’re updated through October.”

Many people turn to Olelo for taped version of meetings, but their only goes up to June 2010.

Booth said the city had been working with an outside company called Granicus — which manages coverage of public hearings in municipalities across the country — but isn’t anymore. The best place to catch up on televised city activity, he said, is the . The last posting is from an October 13 Council meeting, but Booth said they’re working on getting caught up.

He also dispels concerns about City Council members — or other city officials — having the authority to keep certain footage from being posted, or even filmed in the first place.

“No editing, very much like CSPAN,” Booth said. “We cover everything. Every council meeting. Every committee meeting. The only thing we don’t cover is something like an agriculture task force that meets now and again. But we cover all of the regular full council activity.”