01-16-2009, 04:31 AM
This idea has been around a while, and I don't think anyone has done a detailed study of what the tax rate would have to be. It would certainly depend on the level of services and infrastructure provided, and I suspect it would be more than we pay now. That might not be too bad, depending on what we get for our money.
I don't think the County of Hawaii will be too thrilled over this idea. They probably get more tax revenue out of here than they spend, at least when one looks at Puna as a whole. (There are documents on-line which confirm this, but I don't have links at the moment.) HPP might be even more skewed to the County's advantage than all Puna because we have no parks, no police station, and no county roads. We DO have a small fire station and a single water line running to the fire station. It has always been a wonder to me that, in this litigious age, no one has filed a class action lawsuit against the County for the obvious inequities in the provision of services and infrastructure. They, including the recently retired Saint Harry, have always shouted "substandard subdivisions!" and gotten away with it.
The politics of all this will be interesting to watch. I was pleasantly surprised that Faye Hanohano would propose this. She did make some appearances here in HPP at neighborhood functions during the election season, so maybe she is more tuned in than I thought. She does not have a strong record of getting legislation passed, but her previous term was her first, so she might do more as a sophomore than as a freshman. The rest of the Legislature might not want to open a Pandora's Box of localities demanding autonomy statewide, though, so I don't expect a groundswell of support. And what does our Legislator's cousin, the Councilwoman, think of all this?
This should be very interesting, but the bill may never get out of committee. Still it's a start, and somebody is finally bringing much needed attention to the fact that we have a problem here.
Cheerfully re-evaluating my opinion of Faye Hanohano,
Jerry
I don't think the County of Hawaii will be too thrilled over this idea. They probably get more tax revenue out of here than they spend, at least when one looks at Puna as a whole. (There are documents on-line which confirm this, but I don't have links at the moment.) HPP might be even more skewed to the County's advantage than all Puna because we have no parks, no police station, and no county roads. We DO have a small fire station and a single water line running to the fire station. It has always been a wonder to me that, in this litigious age, no one has filed a class action lawsuit against the County for the obvious inequities in the provision of services and infrastructure. They, including the recently retired Saint Harry, have always shouted "substandard subdivisions!" and gotten away with it.
The politics of all this will be interesting to watch. I was pleasantly surprised that Faye Hanohano would propose this. She did make some appearances here in HPP at neighborhood functions during the election season, so maybe she is more tuned in than I thought. She does not have a strong record of getting legislation passed, but her previous term was her first, so she might do more as a sophomore than as a freshman. The rest of the Legislature might not want to open a Pandora's Box of localities demanding autonomy statewide, though, so I don't expect a groundswell of support. And what does our Legislator's cousin, the Councilwoman, think of all this?
This should be very interesting, but the bill may never get out of committee. Still it's a start, and somebody is finally bringing much needed attention to the fact that we have a problem here.
Cheerfully re-evaluating my opinion of Faye Hanohano,
Jerry
],
]