Editor’ s note: Walter Lewis’ column runs every other week on Saturday. It will return to its normal slot on Aug. 25. by Walter Lewis Our Kaua’ i County government has a disconcerting practice of disregarding the important issues we
Editor’ s note: Walter Lewis’ column runs every other week on Saturday. It will return to its normal slot on Aug. 25.
by Walter Lewis
Our Kaua’ i County government has a disconcerting practice of disregarding the important issues we are facing and instead paying its attention to matters of much less significance. A classic illustration is the Eastside bike path that has occupied a vast amount of the time of the County Council for some years now and remains largely unresolved. While its advocates enthuse about it, its completion or discontinuance will not have a major effect on the well being of our island.
A major concern for the people of Kaua’i is surely the management of the pyramiding growth occurring from tourism. One of its recent manifestations was the struggle by citizens in the Po’ipu area to obtain a moratorium on development to resist the massive developments being planned. In large part because of the failure on the part of our county officials to support this effort, it dwindled down to obtaining developer financial support for a rather meaningless traffic study for the area.
An example of the failure by the county to address the core of the problem arising from the growth of tourism is the presently pending Bill 2204 dealing with transient vacation rentals (TVRs). The purposes of the bill’s sponsor are to be commended, but the bill itself would have only a limited impact. In 1982 the county adopted an ordinance which divided the county into Visitor Destination Areas (VDAs) including Princeville, Kapa‘a, Lihu‘e and Po‘ipu and non-VDAs comprised of the rest of the island. It was clearly the intent of this legislation that visitor accommodations would be restricted to the VDAs. Although the law prohibited hotels and time shares and multi family dwellings in the non-VDAs, through an oversight, use of single family dwellings for TVRs was not specifically restricted. As an unintended consequence of this lapse there now are, it is believed, over 1,000 single family dwellings in non-VDAs that are in use as TVRs. The bill properly attempts to forbid new TVRs in the non-VDAs but most of the horses are already out of the barn. Still, closing the door for future TVRs would be of worthwhile value.
The properties now in use as TVRs would be a valuable resource as accommodations for our resident population. A good number of the TVRs located in non-VDAs are on land zoned for agriculture. The owners of some of these properties and the Kauai Real Estate Board have lobbied against Bill 2204 contending that the rentals from the TVRs are necessary so that the owners can make a living from their farm lands. No recognition was given that the vacation rentals only exist through an exploitation of a loophole in the law or that income could also occur from long term rentals to island residents. The incentive for TVRs could be significantly reduced if the county would enact, as it should to achieve equivalence, a provision in the property tax law that would consider TVRs as a commercial use of the properties and class them for property tax purposes the same as other higher rated visitor accommodations- hotels and time shares.
A threshold problem is that the county zoning for agricultural properties has been inherited from sugar plantation days and is seriously obsolete for today’ s conditions. With the price of such lands with potential for subdivision skyrocketing they are incapable of providing a real return on investment on their farming or other agricultural use. Owners of property zoned agriculture or open are thus under continuing pressure to subdivide and create sites suitable for rural estates for our visitors. Existing laws and practices of our Planning Commission do not provide barriers to this erosion of the open spaces that grace our island and contribute to its beauty.
As has been noted in Bill 2204 a majority of the residential units constructed since the turn of the century have been for use as vacation rentals. This has been occurring despite the shortage of accommodations for our resident population.
The priorities need to be shifted. Incentives and controls need to be enacted to diminish the emphasis on luxury homes for our visitors and to provide for an increase in the dwelling units affordable by our residents.
Are these needs matters that can be entrusted to our rather dysfunctional County Council? There is little in the council’ s performance to date that would lead anyone to believe that the council could effectively address these vital problems for the preservation of our way of life. Despite the onerous legal limitations that are in place, it appears that there is an urgent call for an organized effort to seek a charter amendment that would in the alternative impose pressure on our council to remedy the undue development accommodations for the transient population that is clogging our infrastructure or could be enacted by public vote for the same purpose. The need for action is now as the number of transient accommodation applications is alarming, and tomorrow will see a different Kauai if we do not act.
• Walter Lewis is a resident of Princeville and writes a bi-weekly column for The Garden Island.
