Old Lahaina Town Utterly Destroyed - Recovery & Relief Efforts

[offgridguy]

We still don't have Pohoiki back, Maui should look to Puna for a window into their future.

[HiloJulie]

Even more good news!

President approves 100% federal support for Maui wildfire debris removal

https://mauinow.com/2023/09/22/president...s-removal/

[offgridguy]

Federal money, spent on County time.

[randomq]

Did some snooping...

TMKs of the area the fire may have initially started in:

4-6-018-017-0000 State of Hawaii
4-6-018-024-0000 Bishop Estate

Notable the Bishop Estate land is 1137 acres with an estimated value of $3.7M and paying $21k/yr in taxes. Many homes in Lahaina on less than 1/5 acre were valued around $1M. If you do the math:

Bishop estates land in Lahaina was valued at around $3000/Acre and taxed at $18 /acre /year! Imagine $3000 an acre on Maui? That's like 15x less expensive than land in Puna! And in Puna we pay hundreds per acre in taxes, not $18!

Maybe by the grace of God or the State of Hawaii the fire didn't touch the Bishop side of the downed poles, however unlikely. Even then, we should discuss how little we are charging these large estates to sit on fallow land, how that land could solve the housing (and rebuilding) crisis in Maui, and how fair taxation on the land would either benefit the public, or encourage the landholders to sell it for more productive and less combustible uses.

We literally have working homeless that can't find housing or land to build, while old money oligarchs sit on thousands of acres either doing nothing with them, or leasing small portions to business for income.

If the state doesn't do something about this, then they are just paying lip service to workers and families while bowing down to their wealthy masters

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Thanks for researching the real estate tax math randomq.
If anything, the valuations are less than I would have thought, and I would have expected their tax rate to be a gift.

[offgridguy]

Screw the valuations, how about general liability for failure to maintain their property in a manner conducive to public safety?

Bishop Estates is sitting on a largesse of how many acres and how many millions?

Time to shut off the Federal funding tap and look a little closer to home for our rebuilding budget.

[Rob Tucker]

There was a time one could look up tax records very easily. I did so looking up Shipman's property tax records. I found they were paying $6,000/yr on 12,000 acres. Good deal.

Knowing the CEO of Shipman I casually mentioned that fact to him. No big discussion.... buy a week or so later a citizen could not look up property by owner's name... had to have the TMK numbers.

Oh Well.

[offgridguy]

Holy spit! I remember going to the website and running into that change!

[randomq]

True, but you can search by map or address, then zoom out and click around to other properties.  It just takes more work if you're trying to find all properties owned by one entity.

I imagine you can still do some kind of public records request from the counties, it'll just take a lot longer.

I don't know if anyone has the cojones or the proof to try to hold Shipman liable, but at least if this tragedy gets people talking about oligarchs sitting on thousands of acres of fallow fire hazard land while ordinary people are homeless, can't afford rent, can't afford to buy land to build a home, can't start a business because of limited expensive commercial space, etc...  Maybe some good can come out of it.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Update on where HECO will get the money to pay for lawsuits etc from Maui wildfires.  
From you, the ratepayer.  If you read the article they’ll explain how raising your rates without going through the usual process will actually SAVE you money.  In the long run.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/01/hawaii...n%20August.