• Roads dangerous at night • Property taxpayers treated unfairly Roads dangerous at night Risk your life on Koloa Road at night, especially if your windshield is not clean inside and out. White lines at the sides of the road are desperately
• Roads dangerous at night • Property taxpayers treated unfairly
Roads dangerous at night
Risk your life on Koloa Road at night, especially if your windshield is not clean inside and out. White lines at the sides of the road are desperately needed and essential for keeping your place when headlights are coming at you.
The same is true for the Tree Tunnel Road and upper end of Poipu Road. Bikers, pedestrians, animals or parked cars would be in extreme danger on any of these roads at night. If oncoming cars have their lights on high beam, you are virtually blinded.
I’ve complained about this for several years but apparently not to the right people in order to get this job done.
Joyce Packard, Koloa
Property taxpayers treated unfairly
Apparently there is a new property tax classification for residential use called Commercialized Home Use. If you fall into this category your tax rate will change. The 2016 rate is not yet determined but for tax year 2015 the rate for Homestead was $3.05 per thousand dollars of assessed value, less exemptions. The rate for commercialized was $5.05, substantially more.
This is what happened to an elderly friend of mine whose residence was changed this year to commercialized. She called the assessor’s office asking why.
They asked a series of questions about her property use to which she told them there was no change and it is her personal residence and was not two units. The assessor said if it was not used to generate income, nor a two-unit structure, it would require a verifying inspection, then it could be changed back.
The assessor came out, agreed it was not commercialized use and said a new property assessment would be mailed out reverting back to the original status which was Homestead. Two weeks later, she received a corrected assessment with no correction. She showed it to me, it said “corrected” but wasn’t and still showed Commercialized Home Use. It said she had 30 days to file an appeal.
Why would she need to file an appeal when it’s been determined by the assessor’s inspection to be a single residence not generating income? He had her sign a form stating that and said it would be changed back to Homestead. That didn’t happen.
The assessor’s office has not returned her voicemail message or replied back to the two emails she’s sent them in the last two weeks. Is this any way to treat our kapuna? At approximately 70 she qualifies for the age exemption, also the low-income exemption and has a job. She says the extra tax amount she will be billed is more than a hardship, she simply will not be able to pay it.
Paulo Tambolo, Wailua Homesteads
