With the election just around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about charter amendments. 

I already told you about Tom Berg‘s repeal-HART proposal, which will get its (and potentially only) hearing today in Kaneohe.

Here’s another one on today’s agenda that has flown under the radar and is already up to its third (and final) reading. That means if it passes with two-thirds support, it’ll be on the ballot come November.

Reso 12-44 would ask voters to create a Grants In Aid Fund designed specifically to give money to nonprofit organizations so they can “provide services to economically and/or socially disadvantaged populations or provide services for public benefit in the areas of the arts, culture, economic development or the environment.”

The rationale is that the city’s primary mechanism to fund those programs is Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The CDBG allocation from the feds has dropped about $2.5 million in recent years and could drop further, the council worries. And, of course, there’s that whole $8 million snafu with the senior facility in Wahiawa that could hamstring the city even further.

The current version of the charter amendment would put 1 percent of real property tax revenues — about $8 million, according to the administration — into the Grants In Aid Fund every year. A proposed amendment to be considered today would make it 1 percent of all general fund revenues — about $10 million — every year. Both versions would require that at least $250,000 be spent in each City Council district.

The administration had been largely mum on the proposal until Tuesday, when Mayor Peter Carlisle sent a strongly-worded memo outlining his many concerns. Here are the key ones, from my reading:

• (3) The charter amendment presumes that CDBG funding and other federal or state funds will never recover from its decreased levels, or that funds from private sources will never fill the gap.
• (4) The charter amendment permanently reduces the city’s flexibility to consider its financial circumstances and various priorities from year to year — including direct services, infrastructure, fiscal stability, unfunded liabilities, public safety and recreation, to name a few — and to appropriate property tax or general fund revenues accordingly.
• (6) The requirement that a minimum of a quarter million dollars be “expended annually in each council district” is vague and unenforceable.

Carlisle also points out that nonprofits already get significant help from the city in the form of $26 million every year in property tax exemptions. In the end, he writes:

While we may respectfully disagree as to whether addressing the recent shortfall in CDBG funds is best addressed in this manner as a matter of policy, I do not dispute the city council’s prerogative as the legislative body to place measures such as this on the ballot for voters to decide. Where I feel particularly compelled to speak up is when I believe the implementation of such a measure will significantly and negatively impact city operations or its fiscal stability. This is the case here.