Why haven’t members of the Kaua’i County Council acknowledged recommendations made by Real Property Tax Task Force members instead of offering six different “piecemeal” tax relief bills to be heard at a public hearing today, Thursday, Sept. 22, at the
Why haven’t members of the Kaua’i County Council acknowledged recommendations made by Real Property Tax Task Force members instead of offering six different “piecemeal” tax relief bills to be heard at a public hearing today, Thursday, Sept. 22, at the council chambers in the historic County Building in Lihu’e?
That question is on the mind of both Mike Dyer, a former tax task force member, and citizen activist Dr. Ray Chuan.
“All I can say is that myself and eight other task-force members worked long and hard on our proposed model for property-tax reform,” Dyer said.
“I think that the council owes us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on our entire proposal. If they vote no, then they should immediately appoint a new and perhaps smarter task force, and put them to work, because this county is still desperately in need of sweeping property-tax reform,” Dyer said.
According to Dyer, Mayor Bryan J. Baptiste and his administration and members of the County Council asked task-force members to completely review Chapter 5A (Real Property Tax) of the Kauai County Code 1987, and to propose a new ordinance to members of the County Council to revamp this chapter.
The tax task force was asked “to focus on providing fair, equitable, and reasonably administrative proposals to address the issues facing the county and its property owners.”
Dyer said task-force members took their job very seriously. Meetings were held weekly for nine months. Every part of Chapter 5A was reviewed, discussed, and voted on. In April, 2004, task-force members gave their recommendations to Baptiste, Dyer said.
The recommendations included calling for a base assessment on all properties, and linking increases to cost-of-living increases based on the CPI (consumer price index) for Honolulu rather than the overheated local real-estate market.
For all tax-key parcels, average the assessments for years 1999 through 2003, and use the average to establish a base assessment for all parcels. There-after, land-assessment increases each year would be only up to the annual local inflation rate as determined by the CPI for Honolulu.
Among the other task-force recommendations are:
. Requiring that tax rates set by members of the council be at a three-to-one ratio of the building assessment to the land assessment. For example: $12 per $1,000 of assessed value for buildings, and $4 per $1,000 of assessed value for land. This would reduce the current overemphasis on the land component, and shift property-tax emphasis to buildings, which demand more in county services;
. Reducing the current eight property classifications to two classifications: long-term residential, which would include the current homestead class (permanent residents), plus long-term-rental properties, or those leased for more than one year.
In September, 2004, lawyers in the Office of the County Attorney delivered a new draft of Chapter 5A based on the task-force recommendations to members of the County Council for hearings and legislative action.
Dyer said the mayor seemed to be in support of the task-force proposal. “It seemed to me, during the hearings, that the majority of the County Council supported the task-force proposal.”
He cited one dissenter.
“An important exception was Chairman Bill ‘Kaipo’ Asing, who made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like the task-force proposal,” Dyer said.
Asing said that was not exactly the case.
“We will be taking up that issue around the end of the year. It’s a major undertaking, and it will take some time and planning to do that,” he said.
According to County Council-woman JoAnn Yukimura, Asing had said the tax-task-force findings required workshops and discussions.
“It was my impression we were going to dig into it. They did a Herculean job, and we owed it to them to take a look at it,” Yukimura said.
Dyer said he was speaking only for himself, and not on behalf of other task-force members or the task force as a whole.
He said a series of hearings were scheduled, and a couple were held. The November, 2004 election resulted in the passage of the Ohana Kauai charter amendment, and councilmembers stopped consideration of the task-force proposal, ostensibly to allow for the resolution of the Ohana Kauai issue.
“The council and the mayor have launched, much earlier than in past years, their re-election campaign,” said Chuan. “Last Thursday there were, on the County Council agenda, no fewer than six property-tax-relief measures: draft bills number 2142, 2144, 2145, 2146, 2147 and 2148. The most innovative one is 2144, introduced by Yukimura,” Chuan said.
“The task-force plan died under the cloud of numerous tax-relief bills concocted by the council since then, not only to confuse the public but, primarily, to allow this county government to continue to exact an ever-increasing property-tax revenue from the public, from $85 million in fiscal 2001 to $122 million in this new fiscal year, a rise of 44 percent in five years,” Chuan observed.
“In my opinion, some members of the County Council were surprised by the far-reaching changes that were recommended by the task force,” Dyer said.
“The proposal was going to make it harder for tax increases to be concealed within the rising property assessments. The council would have to raise tax rates if they wanted more property-tax dollars,” Dyer said.
“This may have seemed like a bitter pill to some of them, though, as I said, I believe the majority supported the proposed reforms. It is important that the council chairman did not,” Dyer said.
Dyer said it seemed like bad political strategy that leaders of both the Baptiste administration and council were fighting against the Ohana amendment, which passed by a two-to-one majority.
He said the task force proposal seemed to get very good reviews from the taxpaying public, but added, “the council has chosen to leave it on the shelf for a year, which also seems like a politically bad idea. But I’m not a politician.
“Maybe they know what they are doing, and maybe they don’t.”
