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If you missed Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s State of the City address on Monday night, you didn’t miss much.

Delivered against the backdrop of Caldwell’s plans for re-election later this year, the mundane to-do list he said he plans to address this year doesn’t exactly set the world on fire. Perhaps it doesn’t have to, from his point of view: The mayor faces no challengers so far, holds a modest approval rating and may only need to play small ball to sew up a second term.

But the city’s needs could benefit from more imagination and bolder ideas. Caldwell’s speech provided the following instead:

• The mayor will ask the City Council for $100 million to continue progress in road repair. The city has repaved 1,000 lane miles under his leadership against a five-year goal of 1,500.

• He’ll ask for $490 million to improve city sewer lines, which seems an ambitious leap from this year’s expenditure of $213 million. Progress, we should note, is mandated under a federal consent decree that requires the city address sewer issues.
• Caldwell would also like $23 million to improve or renovate city parks, playgrounds and related restrooms. For those keeping score, Caldwell reminded us that the city has built 10 new parks, fixed 16 playgrounds and restored 27 restrooms, including an undisclosed number of toilets.
• The mayor plans to ask for $6.6 million in the FY2017 budget to house another 173 chronically homeless people through the city’s Housing First initiative. That would double the number housed so far under the program, but that is within the context of nearly the nearly 5,000 homeless people identified in Honolulu in 2015 — a number so troubling, it drove the city and state to declare homelessness a Hawaii emergency. The 346 total Caldwell would house amount to about 7 percent of that total.

The closest the mayor came to a big idea Monday night was a proposal to meld all city transportation services — rail, bus and para-transit — into a single administrative unit under the executive branch. Caldwell argues this would bring greater accountability to transportation issues.

But even under the best scenario, this wouldn’t affect the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation for another five years, or not until construction is complete on the Honolulu rail project. Which is roughly equal to closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.

‘More Aggressive Oversight, Greater Transparency’

That brings us to the biggest hole in the mayor’s Monday remarks: the lack of any specific response to the massive overruns of the past year on the $6.6 billion Honolulu rail project, other than, “I’m frustrated.”

Caldwell lobbied hard for the state and City Council to extend the general excise tax surcharge, to help fund the rail project through 2027. While the mayor nebulously called for “more aggressive oversight and greater transparency” for rail, the issue was more important as a punch line than as an action item.

“My reputation is on the line. I’m going to see all of you for the rest of my life and have to explain what happened with increasing costs,” he said, to audience laughter.

Caldwell declined to take questions from reporters.

Caldwell offered no serious details on how the oversight would be handled or the transparency accomplished, and declined to take questions afterward from reporters, including a query given to his communications staff from Civil Beat on rail project specifics. So the joke was on taxpayers, who might be forgiven for not getting it, given their aforementioned $6.6 billion tab.

As Civil Beat’s Anita Hofschneider reminded readers Tuesday, only 16 percent of respondents to a recently released Civil Beat poll expressed satisfaction with the rail project.

Then, too, Caldwell didn’t even mention any need to fix the ongoing problems within the Honolulu Police Department. To his credit, Caldwell stepped in last month when Police Chief Louis Kealoha was about to promote to senior leadership a police major with a troubling history of domestic violence. But Caldwell has stayed all but silent on the department’s other woes, including many high-profile incidents of officer misconduct that suggest shortfalls in screening, training, oversight and accountability.

Purely as an electoral matter, Caldwell doesn’t need to show much ambition this year. A steady hand and attention to the pothole politics of the city, combined with a $1.6 million campaign bank account balance, may be all he needs to win another four years in Honolulu Hale.

And there is something to be said for the progress the mayor is charting in the areas he focused on Monday. Lord knows our streets, sewers and parks, as well as the plight of our homeless population, need the continued attention that Caldwell stands ready to provide.

But we had hoped for a bolder vision outlining what the future could hold for Honolulu, as well as an actual plan to bring accountability and cost containment to the most expensive public-works project in Honolulu history. Something that might articulate a near future for our city other than that of a gridlocked metropolis struggling to accommodate new congestion in its Kakaako core, house thousands of homeless folks streaming out of downtown and Waikiki and deal with a police department beset with turmoil and criminal investigations.

We couldn’t help thinking that this is the sort of speech that a mayor gives who has no one nipping at his heels. So far, former Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona and City Council Chairman Ernie Martin have both been widely discussed as potential challengers, but with only about six months remaining until primary Election Day, neither they nor any other serious contender has indicated any intention to run.

Honolulu deserves better from its chief executive officer. Ideas for the future that live up to the scale and promise of one of the world’s best known and most beautiful destinations. The know how and energy to convert those dreams into tangible realities. The ambition to do as much for Honolulu’s residents as the tourism industry does for the millions who flock here each year for dream vacations.

It’s a demanding position description, but one with a ton of possibilities. Any takers?