• Kalapa’s column Kalapa’s column Lowell Kalapa is a shill for the business community. His tax opinions are always slanted to the benefit of business, never the common citizen. His 11/28 column insults the citizens of Kauai, Maui, and the
• Kalapa’s column
Kalapa’s column
Lowell Kalapa is a shill for the business community. His tax opinions are always slanted to the benefit of business, never the common citizen. His 11/28 column insults the citizens of Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island for taking measures to protect themselves from the debilitating rise in property taxes by calling their response “emotional fervor.” Mr. Kalapa, getting taxed off your land is more painful than emotional, as TGI front page story that very day on the Kilauea farmer, Sherwood Conant, emphasized. Kalapa never had a bad word for negligent county councils that gleefully spend the increased tax revenues brought in by rising real estate prices without thought to the harm they are doing to many resident homeowners. Scolding a negligent county council is not allowed in a Kalapa column.
Mr. Kalapa makes the horrible suggestion that homeowners can tap the increased equity in their homes “to borrow money from the bank” to pay the increased taxes. Bad idea! You must pay about 8 1243320nterest on a home equity loan (hel). Will squeezed homeowners take home pay cover the additional payment of a hel.? But that is of no concern to Mr. Kalapa, who disingenuously claims that those with a property tax cap will demand more and more services simply because they will not have to pay for them. The truth is residents want new comers to pay for the increased costs their arrival will entail for infrastructure improvements. We simply do not want to pay for the additional costs necessitated by a flood of new arrivals, thank you very much. And don’t forget, new buyers buy with the full knowledge of the tax structure. They know they will pay more, as every new owner does when the new selling price is reported to the taxing authority. There is no difference in initial taxing between the present system and the Ohana Kauai Charter Amendment (OKCA).
Biff Whiting
Kalaheo
