While it is lamentable to have taken so long to reach this point, we were encouraged to hear county officials having substantive discussions this week on legislation regulating the growth of hotels and vacation rentals on Kaua‘i. Residents spoke loud
While it is lamentable to have taken so long to reach this point, we were encouraged to hear county officials having substantive discussions this week on legislation regulating the growth of hotels and vacation rentals on Kaua‘i.
Residents spoke loud and clear with their ballots when they approved a charter amendment in November 2008 with the purpose of limiting the average growth rate of transient accommodation units to 1.5 percent annually.
Unfortunately, the Kaua‘i County Council avoided really addressing the new addition to the charter until November 2010 when a departing member introduced a bill so drastically different from the amendment’s intent that the county has had to play catch-up ever since.
The proposal that interim Planning Director Michael Dahilig put forward Wednesday was a welcome step in the right direction. His amendment, which the council deferred until Sept. 18, swings the pendulum back to the original purpose of legislating smart TAU growth.
We particularly like that Dahilig’s proposal attempts to reconcile holding down TAU growth to an average of 1.5 percent annually while considering the huge backlog of projects permitted prior to the enactment of Charter Section 3.19.
There are some 9,200 TAUs already operating on island. Another 4,650 were approved prior to the charter amendment’s passage in 2008 but are not up and running yet.
To deal with the latter, Dahilig’s proposal calls for lowering the 1.5 percent TAU growth rate to 1 percent. This would hopefully cushion the blow of pre-approved projects to be built later.
In the interest of fairness, and to avoid wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money in settlements for violating developers’ vested rights, we support a plan that lets these already permitted projects come to fruition in a responsible manner. Also, the developers should not be allowed to sit on their permits forever.
What we don’t want to see when the economy rebounds is rampant development of TAUs — from pre-approved permits or newly proposed projects — that results in overtaxing and overburdening county infrastructure and services.
Another thing we like about Dahilig’s proposal is that it has the potential to be self-correcting.
Specifically, his amendment states that the total number of TAU certificates available for issuance during an allocation cycle shall be equal to 5.1 percent of the TAU inventory in the allocation base year (i.e. a 1 percent compounded annual growth rate during the five-year allocation cycle), provided that this number shall be: 1.) decreased by 50 percent if the TAU inventory in the allocation base year exceeds the allocation base year TAU target; or 2.) increased 50 percent if the TAU inventory in the allocation base year is less than the TAU inventory in the allocation base year of the previous allocation cycle and the TAU inventory in the allocation base year is less than the allocation base year TAU target.
That’s a mouthful, but the short of it is that the bill, if amended as proposed, seems poised to better adhere to the goal of limiting TAU growth at the responsible level voters identified in November 2008.
Kaua‘i needs to stay Kaua‘i. We’d venture to guess the vast majority of residents here have no interest in the island becoming the next Maui or O‘ahu.
We need a prudent plan in place that preserves our island’s unique rural character. This proposed legislation, despite its slow firing off the blocks, has an opportunity to be a model for other locations.
As the bill progresses in its formulating stages, we encourage concerned citizens to share their input with the county officials they elected to represent them.
