Welcome to Inside Honolulu! It may look like a party with all of the twinkly lights and garlands at Honolulu Hale, but there’s plenty of serious work to be done. Civil Beat is reporting from the inside.

10:15 a.m. Kobayashi Finds Hope in New Leadership
City Council member Ann Kobayashi is still thinking about yesterday’s gubernatorial inauguration.

“We were all so excited,” Kobayashi says of yesterday’s event. “Sitting there, you feel so much hope.”

If change is as good as Kobayashi believes, there’s a lot of hope for the city, too. Come January, five of Honolulu’s nine City Council members will be new.

8:59 a.m. Cabinet Gathers for Weekly Meeting
Honolulu Managing Director Doug Chin stopped to chat with Civil Beat on his way to the regular weekly Cabinet meeting on the third floor.

“It’s been really quiet,” Chin said of the week thus far.

City business may be slow, but City Hall itself is bright and noisy with school kids and a loop of Christmas carols over the loudspeakers.

Many city leaders attended Gov. Neil Abercrombie‘s inauguration yesterday. Mayor Peter Carlisle planned to attend a Pearl Harbor memorial service this morning. City council members and their staffers are prepping for tomorrow morning’s council meeting, while four — soon to be five — new council members are prepping to take office in a matter of weeks. District 1 is still waiting to vote on who will represent them. Ballots for the Dec. 29 special election start going out this week.