Good idea, bad timing

The practical safety and legal reasons are all there, but the timing is all wrong.

We urge county officials to find an alternative to moving forward now with a plan to buy a helicopter for the Kaua‘i Fire Department’s emergency firefighting and search-and-rescue missions.

At an estimated cost of several hundred thousand dollars annually (compared to the roughly $100,000 the county has been spending each year to freelance the work), we fear the repercussions of the cuts (or increased taxes) that would have to occur for this to fit into an already reduced budget.

A helicopter equipped for rescue missions and able to provide emergency medical services would cost about $2.1 million, Fire Chief Robert Westerman said this week. Plus, it would cost another $500,000 or so annually for maintenance, operation and insurance.

The county currently contracts with a private aerial tour company at the rate of roughly $1,000 per hour to provide emergency helicopter services for 30 to 40 calls annually.

The administration has already requested the Fire Department’s budget be slashed 7 percent across the board — even with the 7 percent pay raise already negotiated in the employee contract for next year. Clearly, the Fire Department is not going to be the one to absorb the added helicopter expense.

Charging for rescues, which the county is also examining, seems like an unworkable solution that would likely only yield a fraction of the overall costs anyway.

We understand the county may have its hands tied by Federal Aviation Administration rules, but we hope in the least there can be some sort of postponement deal with regulators.

Kaua‘i County has been skirting for years Federal Aviation Administration rules that bar training on single-engine helicopters that are not devoted to public use for at least 90-day intervals and limit the frequency of rescue operations.

If we can delay this significant hike in the budget at such an inopportune time — even just a few more years until the economy hopefully bounces back — we simply must. But if federal regulators are dead set on bringing us into compliance now, we obviously have no choice.

Should the latter be the case, county officials must really do their homework to find the most cost-effective means of making this reality.

And if county officials are selling this to us as a safety necessity, the helicopter must be reserved for such use in a centralized location. If a fire breaks out or some other emergency situation arises, we should have our chopper and pilot ready to go at a moment’s notice.

We shouldn’t have to first track down where the bird is — whether it’s the police using it for a green harvest mission, the film commission using it to give some producer a tour or the planning department checking for grubbing violations — and then re-route it, refuel it, reload it and embark on the emergency task at hand. This could present a dangerous situation that flies in the face of county officials who have touted improved reliability and response times if we had our own chopper.

We understand the gravity of the situation: Continue operating as we are and face the legal consequences while exposing ourselves to massive liability claims and even endangering our emergency responders via lack of sufficient training.

Westerman made his points clear when he addressed the council on Wednesday and in separate interviews before and after that key meeting. The serious ultralight crash last summer in Hanapepe — and subsequent multiple-day, perilous rescue effort — was apparently “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

We’re not saying we should defer any critical training for our emergency responders. We’re saying let’s make sure we’ve explored any and all alternative avenues to accomplish whatever it takes to bring us into compliance before diving into a very expensive long-term deal when we’re projecting reduced property tax collections and the state is considering taking our estimated $12 million share of the transient accommodations tax.

With at least one council member — Daryl Kaneshiro — shooting down questions from the community related to the timing of this endeavor, we are hesitant to support a head-first plunge into this with the expected approval at next Wednesday’s council meeting of a bill to spend $285,000 on the first year of the helicopter lease. Shouldn’t the county at least have an idea of where the money to fund this is going to come from before approving it? And as a consequence, an obligation to tell the public since it is their money they’re spending?

We are concerned about how we afford to make this happen without cutting critical programs, furloughing employees or raising taxes and fees at a time when residents are already struggling to make ends meet.