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Dave Broyles _ PO Box 22 Papaaloa, HI 96780 aellulaz.$Q~$-- 2 y P Pl 3 ~ 8 Apri124,`'~~ Hawaii County Council CC'JN li ~ Finance Committee COUN I Y OF HAWAII RE: Appropriation for Irradiator vs. alternative loss of revenue To the Finance Committee: Last yeaz, I purchased 14 acres of former cane land mauka of Papaaloa. Like most of the other land in the azea, my land remains fallow at this time. Like neazly everyone else who owns fallow land, I have been approached by cattle people who want to fence my land and lease it from me for $20.00 per acre per yeaz. I would then pay them for the fencing whenever I choose to terminate the lease. Without agricultural exemption, my fallow land is being taxed at $1,200 per yeaz, around $85.00 per acre per yeaz. Fenced for pasture and placed under agricultural exemption as such, my land would be taxed at $35.00 per yeaz, $2.50 per acre per yeaz. I have resisted the idea of a pasture dedication, hoping that better agricultural possibilifies will emerge. At such 6me as I lose this hope, I will fence and dedicate. The collapse of the sugaz industry didn't turn the Hamakua Coast into a charity case that requires infusions of tax revenues from elsewhere in the county. Instead, the collapse produced a property tax windfall that the county can spend anywhere that it chooses. All revenues go into a single, lazge pot. At the rate that I am paying property taxes, one squaze mile of fallow cane land yields $50,000 in property taxes. Dedicated for pasture, that same squaze mile would yield only $1,600. How many such squaze miles aze there on the Hamakua Coast? Over a period of five years, each such squaze mile will yield $250,000 in tax revenues. Over a five yeaz period, eight such squaze miles will pay for the entire $2 million appropriation requested by Mayor Yamashiro. The total azea of such undedicated agricultural land on the Hamakua Coast is more than eight squaze miles. The collapse of sugar gave the county a new cash cow. Admittedly, this cash cow isn't a very lazge cash cow. But it is, nonetheless, a cash cow. Loss of the agricultural exemption for sugaz did enrich the county treasury to some degree, at the expense of property owners whose lands now lie fallow. But like all four legged cattle, cash cows do need some caze and feeding. Otherwise, this cash cow has a very limited life expectancy. As propeRy owners give up on the prospects for a brighter future, tract after tract will be fenced for cattle. Tract after tract will be placed under pasture exemption. Real cows will consume the county's present tax revenues, and with very little prospect for growth in the island's agricultural economy. Over a five yeaz period, perhaps extending retroactively for two yeazs, the property tax windfall from fallow Hamakua Coast agricultural lands will pay the entire cost of the requested $2 million appropriation. Is it reasonable to request that the wanly reinvest this windfall for economic redevelopment of this impacted azea, even without necessarily knowing the degree of benefit that will result? Or should this money be plowed into the general fund, to be spent n'~ elsewhere in the county? L J ~&ffiaerely yours (umrn. Dia FND Cl~ i-~10=_ .~~/c~ ~f ,~,o: PrQSented H Ret. U~ate ~~AR 2 4.1997 , .