It’s the end of an era for the Honolulu City Council.

Ernie Martin has been chair for almost a year, and three other newly elected members aren’t up for re-election until 2014. But five seats are on the ballot this year, including those belonging to the body’s two longest-serving members who are being forced out of office due to term limits.

Who wins those seats and replaces those veterans could shape the direction of the city for years to come.

We found out about the men and women vying for those jobs this week. Of 17 total registered candidates, 14 completed their 10-question Civil Beat surveys, which we’ve published in their entirety. (You can find links to each one at the bottom of this article.)

We’ve already compared the candidates in each race to see where they differ. Today, let’s look at all the answers across all the races to see where the candidates stand as a group.

Rail

The four members who aren’t up for election this year — Martin, Stanley Chang, Tulsi Gabbard and Breene Harimoto — are all consistent votes in support of the Honolulu rail project, even though Gabbard has raised concerns about cost in recent months.

Combine those votes with the overwhelming support for the system among candidates and it becomes clear that the City Council will continue to push rail forward. If Ben Cayetano is elected mayor, he’ll have few allies on the council when he moves to kill the project, and if either Mayor Peter Carlisle or Kirk Caldwell prevail, they can count on support.

Only District 1 incumbent Tom Berg, his 19-year-old challenger E.J. Delacruz and District 5 incumbent Ann Kobayashi oppose rail, and Kobayashi’s answer was more ambiguous (“The City should proceed cautiously”) than you might suggest. District 3 challenger Chad Kaukani said he’d look at other technologies “if rail can be stopped.”

Those who said rail should proceed touted jobs and economic benefits, transit-oriented development and traffic mitigation, and said the decision has already been made by voters. Many tempered their support by saying they’d work to ensure the project is finished on time and on budget without cost overruns.

Interestingly, the political support for rail doesn’t exactly align with public opinion. The most recent Civil Beat Poll found support among likely primary voters at 40 percent.

Tax Exemptions

Civil Beat asked the candidates if the city should consider eliminating property tax exemptions for homeowners, nonprofits and other special interest groups if it means lowering rates. Most candidates said the exemptions shouldn’t be eliminated.

The exceptions:

  • Berg said he voted against property tax rate proposals this year because the bills “give credits to the mega-rich to fleece us all” and said the exemptions for credit unions are “a scam on all of us.”
  • Kymberly Pine said, “Exemptions should be removed for those entities that show no benefit to the city taxpayer or to the mission of the City.” She said she would not take exemptions away from churches.
  • District 3 incumbent Ikaika Anderson said he proposed eliminating the homeowner exemption during his first year in office, and said a review of data shows that 80 percent of the homeowners would see a “significantly lower property tax bill.”

Some candidates disagreed with Anderson’s findings.

  • Ron Menor in District 9 said, “It is not clear that eliminating those exemptions would definitely or significantly lead to lower rates.”
  • Martin Han in District 7 said, “The elimination of certain exemptions for homeowners and non-profits would probably not result in a dramatic reduction of tax rates for the rest of us. Losing the homeowner’s tax exemption would actually result in an increase for most people.”
  • Alex Santiago in District 1 said, “I am not in favor of repealing the homeowners property tax exemptions at this time, because to eliminate them altogether would hurt too many families who are just struggling to get by.”

Depending on how the elections shake out, the much-anticipated report from the Real Property Tax Advisory Commission could end up on the shelf for another couple of years.

Read the full responses from all of the City Council candidates:

District 1

District 3

District 5

District 7

District 9

Michael Levine is a former Civil Beat staff member.