Tax cap bill gains support

LIHUE — Among the County Council’s arguments that surrounded the homestead tax cap public hearing on Wednesday, several community members showed support for Bill 2606.

The bill provides a homestead tax cap for owner-occupied properties and long-term affordable rentals. It limits an increase to real property taxes in any one year by not more than 100 percent of the latest Honolulu Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers as published by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Anyone who has a home exemption or receives the beneficial tax rate for long-term affordable rentals shall receive the homestead tax cap, according to the bill.

Properties that receive the homestead tax cap will be assessed on value as long as any increase in taxes from the prior year doesn’t exceed 100 percent of the Honolulu CIP-U.

“(My family and myself) are firmly for Bill 2606,” said Kimberly Mclaughlin of Hanalei. “I really believe that this will help us out incredibly.”

Mclaughlin told the County Council on Wednesday that she’d spent the past four months researching the Hanalei housing market. She said her family has owned their Hanalei home for 31 years.

“I don’t think that the council realized the impact that taking off the tax cap and changing the classification of properties four years ago (would have),” Mclaughlin said. “I interviewed 18 families that have had to sell in Hanalei in the last two years and 13 had to sell because of tax pressures.”

She said everyone she’d interviewed had lived in their homes for at least 10 years.

Steve Lindsey, who also lives in Hanalei, said he’s in support of the tax cap, but believes it should be figured differently.

“I think that there has to be some flexible scale for figuring the property tax that necessarily isn’t a cap, but something that has to do with cost of living,” Lindsey said. “My suggestion is that you need to take a real careful look at the numbers.”

Bill 2606 will next be reviewed at the committee level.