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Welcome to Inside Honolulu! City Hall is decked out for December, and Civil Beat is reporting from the inside.

5:20 p.m. Carlisle Hasn’t Seen Rail Report
Mayor Peter Carlisle is participating in a holiday parade in Kaimuki, and hasn’t yet seen the financial analysis on rail that Gov. Linda Lingle sent to him.

“It’s sitting on his desk, unopened, while he’s in a parade,” said Jim Fulton, the mayor’s executive assistant. “That’s our official comment.”

5:10 p.m. Lingle Hands Over Rail Assessment to Abercrombie, Carlisle, Garcia

With one full day left in office, Gov. Linda Lingle passed along a final independent financial analysis of the Honolulu rail plan she commissioned in September.

Lingle said Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle, City Council Chairman Nestor Garcia and incoming Gov. Neil Abercrombie each got a copy of the report. She also sent a copy to federal transit officials.

“I appreciate the thorough financial review of the City’s rail project that IMG performed over the past three months,” said Governor Lingle. “I am confident these officials will appreciate the need to fairly assess the economic impact of this proposed rail project on Hawai‘i taxpayers today and for generations to come.”

Lingle’s press team has not returned calls for comment. It’s unclear when the report will be available to the public. The financial review cost the state $350,000.

2:38 p.m. Neighborhood Commission responds to Dudley allegation
The Honolulu Neighborhood Commission’s Bryan Mick rejects District 1 City Council candidate Kioni Dudley’s claims that the commission never informed him of the process by which he had to vacate his neighborhood board leadership post.

“It was encumbent on him to contact us when he moved,” Mick said. “He was in violation of that.”

Even so, Mick said Dudley is wrong that the commission never contacted him.

“The secretary of our office talked to his wife on two occasions, and to him on one occasion,” Mick said. “I invited Kioni Dudley to come look at our phone logs. He’s trying to use that for his excuse for being upset.”

10:53 a.m. ‘Tis the Season for Furloughs and Holidays

This week marks the only full five-day work week for thousands of city employees in all of December. The next two Fridays are furlough days, and the two Fridays after that are city holidays (Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve).

It’s not much different than last month, when furloughed city workers had one four-day work week and two three-day work weeks. The spate of holidays and furloughs in November and December means nine days off.

It’s part of why Mayor Peter Carlisle said this week that furloughs were “invented by the devil.” Of course it’s not no-strings-attached time off: Furloughs translate to pay cuts for city workers.

Each month for the remainder of the fiscal year has two furloughs and one holiday.

8:28 a.m. District 1 Candidate Ousted from Neighborhood Board

The Makakilo/Kapolei Neighborhood Board meeting last night erupted into what one attendee described as a “circus,” with one District 1 City Council candidate calling a city worker a “liar.”

That candidate, Kioni Dudley, moved out of the district to run in the District 1 City Council election. Dudley said he knew that leaving the district also meant he had to vacate his 12-year spot on the Neighborhood Board because the Neighborhood Commission had notified him.

Makakilo/Kapolei Neighborhood Board had the following agenda item outlined for Wednesday night’s meeting: “POSSIBLE APPOINTMENT TO FILL VACANCY DUE TO RESIGNATION (KIONI DUDLEY)”

But Dudley said he was surprised when a Neighborhood Commission staffer approached him at last night’s meeting and told him he didn’t have to resign.

“The Neighborhood Commission office people came up to me and said that there were other things that they had not told me,” Dudley said. “Among them was I had to file a vacating statement in order for (my position) to be vacant. The other thing they hadn’t told me was that I could appeal this. I was really offended they hadn’t told me, and so I then decided that I would go up and sit at the table.”

Dudley rejects city staffers’ insistence they tried to contact him before the meeting.

“I called him a liar because he was lying,” Dudley said. “He said that their office has been trying to talk to me and had talked to me but it just never happened. They said they had called my wife and it never happened. I said he was a liar and he is.”

Dudley said the board is “delighted” to see him go.

“The board is primarily made up of pro-development people, and I am pro-farm,” Dudley said. “Mufi, when he was the mayor, was very anxious to try to get me off the board because I was asking too many quesitons. That seems to have carried over to Carlisle. The Neighborhood Commission office has always been hostile to me.”

Eventually, Dudley said he led the near-unanimous vote to vacate his seat. One board member dissented. Makakilo/Kapolei Neighborhood Board Chair Maeda Timson and a representative from the Neighborhood Commission office have not yet returned requests for comment.