07-19-2008, 04:09 PM
Green, One of the posts you may have missed had found that patrol police number near 40 (not the 4 that was placed on the first few posts in this thread...)
Remember that policing power is often based on population size. Puna has a population at about 4% of the population of Oahu. Even this whole county only has about a tenth of Oahu's population... there is no way, save for HUGE tax increases, that we can the level of services that Oahu has... hence, if you want want is in Oahu....
So many people are really bummed by the lack of services on this island.... I have said this many times, for the population size that this county has, spread over the land size, this county has far more services than most with similars (esp mostly agriculturally based counties...) If you are bummed, have you ever lived in a rural area of a county before (ie. unincorporated...) that is when you normally have not much of any services (county sheriff... that's about it...) and most of these areas have higher property tax rates! (I have almost always lived in unincorporated counties & checked all over the country before moving... this county tax rate is WAY low...)
So complain all you want, unless you want a much higher tax rate (our last house was 10 times this county tax rate), YOU are going to have to get involved.... with time, money, or whatever...
I should have added this... if you are not here, and thinking "well, I'm going to get involved when I move... my question is this " Why are you not involved now, where you are?" Many of the same things that might keep you from getting involved there are here.... It would at least be a good practice, & will let you see if that is something that you really want to do... If you don't want to get involved... how much are you willing to give up?
Remember that policing power is often based on population size. Puna has a population at about 4% of the population of Oahu. Even this whole county only has about a tenth of Oahu's population... there is no way, save for HUGE tax increases, that we can the level of services that Oahu has... hence, if you want want is in Oahu....
So many people are really bummed by the lack of services on this island.... I have said this many times, for the population size that this county has, spread over the land size, this county has far more services than most with similars (esp mostly agriculturally based counties...) If you are bummed, have you ever lived in a rural area of a county before (ie. unincorporated...) that is when you normally have not much of any services (county sheriff... that's about it...) and most of these areas have higher property tax rates! (I have almost always lived in unincorporated counties & checked all over the country before moving... this county tax rate is WAY low...)
So complain all you want, unless you want a much higher tax rate (our last house was 10 times this county tax rate), YOU are going to have to get involved.... with time, money, or whatever...
I should have added this... if you are not here, and thinking "well, I'm going to get involved when I move... my question is this " Why are you not involved now, where you are?" Many of the same things that might keep you from getting involved there are here.... It would at least be a good practice, & will let you see if that is something that you really want to do... If you don't want to get involved... how much are you willing to give up?