The Kaua`i County Council’s Finance Committee has approved a resolution increasing vehicle beautification fees from $2 to $5. The measure, presented by Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s administrative assistant, Wally Rezentes Sr., would provide more than $160,000 in the next 12 months
The Kaua`i County Council’s Finance Committee has approved a resolution
increasing vehicle beautification fees from $2 to $5.
The measure,
presented by Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s administrative assistant, Wally Rezentes
Sr., would provide more than $160,000 in the next 12 months to assist in
removing junked and abandoned cars from the island.
After listening to Ray
Chuan, a persistent critic of the plan, who said that $160,000 wouldn’t even
pay half the $400,000 he claims is required, the committee members, except
Councilman Gary Hooser, agreed Wednesday to approve the measure and send it on
to the full council.
Hooser said the fee increase alone would not get the
job done.
Other committee members agreed but said an initial step was
needed now.
Rezentes said $3 of the $5 would go immediately to removing
derelict vehicles (that’s the $162,000). The remaining $2 ($108,000 annually)
would first go into the general budget but could also be sought to use in
vehicle removal.
By comparison, Big Island charges a $4 vehicle
beautification fee, while Maui has arranged for a private operator to move cars
on that island and profit from the junkers as his payment.
Kaua`i has
shipped approximately 4,500 abandoned vehicles off-island in the past two
years.
The Finance Committee chairman, Councilman Jimmy Tokioka, approved
of the Maui method but noted that no one on Kaua`i had stepped forward to run a
similar program here.
Earlier Wednesday, Mayor Maryanne Kusaka, speaking to
the Rotary Club of Po`ipu Beach, talked about the problem. Kusaka told the
Rotarians that the derelict cars were abandoned by the non-island
population.
“Transients are to blame,” she said.
John F. Barretto Jr.,
whose company, Auto Aid Limited, towed all the junked cars on the island from
1968 on 1989, said laughingly of the mayor’s comment, “All those haoles come
here and don’t know how to treat our island.
“We towed cars on the island
for 21 years. We stored them and I did all the paperwork and noticed all the
owners. It hasn’t changed that much.”
So is the problem
transients?
“Absolutely not,” said Barretto, a former council member who
failed in his attempt to return to the council in this month’s general
election. “It’s the local people. If you go to Anahola, that’s an area with
very few transients, very few tourists. But it was and is a critical area with
many derelict and abandoned vehicles. That isn’t tourists. They are not the
problem.”
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext.
252) and[dwilken@pulitzer.net]
