Looks like Honolulu City Council Member Stanley Chang has some questions about the Board of Water Supply’s budget.

In a two page document, Chang lists several items that caught his attention while digging into the BWS spending plan for Fiscal Year 2013.

Here are a few from Chang’s letter that grabbed my eye:

• Rate adjustments with small increase in customer base will increase revenues by $25.1 million.
• There’s a $500,000 energy efficiency audit planned.
• The information technology division is increasing its budget for “postage” from $550,000 to $1.115 million.
• Overtime in the the investigation section is cutting its number of positions by one-third but still keeping $264,000 in the budget for overtime.

Of particular interest to Chang are the increases for “contractual services.” Just based on a quick review of his numbers, BWS is increasing how much it spends on these services by more than $2.65 million.

It’s also increasing its “professional service” by $420,000 in another division.

We’ll see when Chang gets answers to his questions of BWS. It might be soon. He is the chair of the Public Works and Sustainability Committee.

—Nick Grube