The great flood of 2018 has passed, but the weeks and months ahead will continue to require hard work and sacrifice.
Eventually, a year from now or hopefully sooner, a sense of normalcy will return to the lives of the many who have been hurt by the hard rains that fell upon our island.
Our community has been blessed by the outpouring of love and tangible help and support that has come in from all parts of the globe.
The daily scene of friends and neighbors joining together to help each other, regardless of status or demographic is truly heartwarming.
Our Kauai community has risen to the occasion and for that we should all be very proud.
But to sustain the effort above and beyond the vitality of volunteers and donations of food, rubber boots, bottled water and other essentials, government must move aggressively forward beyond the basics of the here and now physical infrastructure.
The rebuilding of the public infrastructure is but one important element that government is involved in and responsible for. The state and county highway crews are hard at work and the public funds for these efforts have been made available by the governor and legislature. Mahalo to Senate President Ron Kouchi and Reps. Nadine Nakamura, Dee Morikawa and James Tokioka, especially for their efforts to make this happen.
Other important government responsibilities are that of basic public safety. Police, fire and other first responders must also continue to remain on the job and with an additional focus made on the impacted areas. This is primarily a county responsibility and will require additional county funds to beef up those budgets to pay for the additional people power needed.
General help with clean up and debris removal will also be ongoing and hopefully federal, state, and county money and people will continue to be utilized to help in this mission.
Our local farmers in many of the most productive areas on the island have been to a great extent wiped out. Now, the county needs to reinstate the position of “agricultural specialist” previously deleted in prior budgets. A full evaluation of the needs of local farmers must be done immediately.
The county then needs to step up to the plate, solicit resources from federal, state, and private entities and provide our small farmers with the help they need to rebuild their fences, repair or replace lost equipment, and replant their crops.
Private property owners will continue to need the help and assistance, that often only government can provide.
The Kauai County Council should immediately stop property tax collections and defer all penalties on impacted properties until a full assessment is conducted. Many of the affected properties now have zero use available to the owner at least until the roadways are restored.
Other properties have seen huge reductions in market value due to the damage that occurred. These property owners at the minimum should have their property taxes (which are based on valuation) “pro-rated” to reflect the new values, and the actual collection of the taxes deferred without penalties or interest until the hardest hit areas are stabilized.
In addition the county (if it has not already done so) should immediately fund a “staffing up” of the public works department and all areas of the county that manage the permitting process involved in the reconstruction effort.
The permitting process in general deserves an emergency effort and evaluation as many decisions must be made. In normal times, all of the reconstruction would require a permit. In past disasters there has been a certain amount of “blind eyes” turned toward the immediate emergency repairs, but at some point this becomes irresponsible and exacerbates further public safety issues.
Generally speaking there are two classes of homeowners, those that are fully insured and those that are not.
It is reasonable to have a “means test.” Those that are fully insured and can afford the higher standards of compliance to existing building codes, setbacks and sewage treatment standards should be required to do so.
Those who legitimately are unable to afford full compliance, should have access to county low interest loans and grants, especially in the area of sewage treatment upgrades. The legal requirements that apply for grandfathering of improvements, building envelope, setbacks will be sorted out most likely on a case by case basis.
In the area of affordable housing the county should consider “freezing” the conversion of long term rental units to transient vacation rentals (TVR), even when located in a visitor destination area. The county should also look at the possibility of an emergency “rent freeze” mechanism, tied to a property tax benefit.
The damage to homes caused by the flood has reduced the number of available TVR properties, long term rentals, and owner occupied homes. The county must first and foremost take steps to preserve the available long term rental inventory and then provide incentives and disincentives to encourage homeowners to make their rental properties available at affordable rates to long term renters, especially in the areas hardest hit by the floods.
As displaced residents seek new rentals it is inevitable that they will look toward the east-side and then be forced to commute to their jobs and home reconstruction efforts, further exacerbating the east-side traffic.
Likewise the coming influx of carpenters and other building trades people, will further pressure the already nonexistent supply of long term rentals (notice I have stopped inserting the word “affordable”).
There is a plethora of housing available in Princeville if those owners (many absentee) would consider shifting their use from short-term to long-term rentals. Again, the county can use tax incentives (and disincentives) to encourage this behavior.
The above are just a small handful of issues, the County of Kauai can and must begin dealing with immediately. I am hopeful that my friends in county government already working hard attempting to deal with this disaster will take these suggestions in the positive spirit in which they are intended. I am hopeful also that much of this work as already begun.
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Gary Hooser formerly served in the state Senate, where he was majority leader. He also served for eight years on the Kauai County Council and was former director of the state Office of Environmental Quality Control. He serves presently in a volunteer capacity as board president of the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action (HAPA) and is executive director of the Pono Hawaii Initiative.
