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IMHO the best way to improve the roads would be shared crew, equipment, and purchasing power among the subdivisions. Paid positions with real supervision and performance reviews. Break the maintenance down into half-streets, so all owners have a say in their neighborhood's particular ingress/egress.
The county does need to settle the mandatory/lien issue once and for all. Whether allowing private subdivisions to file liens directly (judicial is too slow and expensive).
If the county gets involved as the bill collector, the current dues would barely cover the room full of highly paid county employees in charge of collecting. So there would have to be limits on growth of road dues, and administrative overhead.
Ultimately we are already paying fuel tax, and the county should just amend their road standards to take over the roads and maintain them as-is, with gravel or whatever.
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shared crew, equipment, and purchasing power among the subdivisions
If the subdivisions were capable of cooperation, there would already be a class-action lawsuit against County for illegally approving the plats.
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We as one large ohana have paid our dues in H.A. for over 40 years .
In the recent last several years there has been no newsletter - no voting and only sporadic meetings . No quorum no ability to directly contact the road reps . As a dues paying member the only way to contact the road reps is to ask questions on paper at the office and those questions will then be discussed privately in secret as to answer or not . To be a member means a person paying the yearly dues has the right to vote .But alas there is no vote any more and only a couple ( married to each other ) runs the entire subdivision of H.A.
If a person knows this couple then and only then is their access to their property maintained on a regular basis.. By their friends. Those friends have machines to do the work .
No accounting as required by law.No posting in the paper
for bid quotes from contractors other than their friends - no locals allowed .
And so yes we pay our dues but may not in the near future .
We rather as one large ohana give to Peter the 100$ or more per year to help maintain Rd 1 . At least we know where our money goes .
Mrs.Mimosa
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Why can't we just change the requirement for all roads to be 40ft pavement on 60ft easement.
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Fantastic idea rainyjim - except in H.A. the road lot is only 40ft wide and will cost about 3 million a mile to move the HELCO and Htel poles back into the 5ft utility easement .Who will foot that cost ?
74.8 miles of Rd in H.A.
Mrs.Mimosa
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Sounds like the County Roads dept will be hiring soon...
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Mimosa, I think you missed my point. The idea is to not have to change the road width, so poles wouldn't have to be moved.
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Some form of exception would need to be made for HA, considering the finances that Mimosa discussed.
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The right of way in HA is only 40 feet, not 60. I think that is mimosas point. Check out S. Kehau road in Nanawale, the right of way is 10 feet.
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Some very remote subdivisions up the Hamakua Coast have had the county pave the old cane haul roads whose width is less than 10ft .
Some roads in Hilo town have a width of 9ft .
In H.A. the road lot is only 40 ft width .To bring H.A. into compliance of the county minimum of 60ft means both sides of the road lot be widened 10 feet .
HACA retains the utility easement and not HARC .
The by laws and charter specially state that any change be voted on by all lot owners plus one .Meaning 50 percent plus one .
Then must be sent to the State Land Court for final approval .
Could take a decade or more of litigation .
Mrs.Mimosa
