2011-01-14 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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the election year, usually gets some reaction both from the administration and the council. I think most people, let me say, I think that a large number of people in my district, and I think on the west side of the island, would not be opposed to a property tax increase if they knew they were getting some benefit for the taxes that they pay. MS. O’HARA: Okay with that said, to address my question specifically, if we were to make the suggestion that homeowners exemptions are only allowed for permitted buildings, is this a legislation that you would support? MR. HOFFMANN: I would advocate it immediately. MS. O’HARA: Because it would give incredible increase. MR. HOFFMANN: In fact, again, I don’t need to see it as something that came from us, but I would be the first one jumping up and down and saying let’s move ahead on this. MS. O’HARA: Okay. Now, I understand your concerns about agriculture, and you know I agree with you. Agriculture is very important to me and to the businesses I work with. But what I’m asking here is the use of agricultural exemptions on property tax liability. You can at this point, get away with throwing a one border of fence line and tethering a goat and take an agricultural exemption. So, I’m asking whether or not you would support a more strident review of whether or not agriculture is occurring on a particular real property piece in order to obtain that exemption. MR. HOFFMANN: I would absolutely support a strident review, a much more aggressive policy of checking on that. But I would do that before I would begin to go to the next step that you’re looking at which maybe trying to see if there are additional changes that we can make in tax revenues or anything else. I would support a much more aggressive review by an independent agency, by a check by the county of specific five or 10% of the ag lands that each one of the districts or however you want to do that as a survey to see what’s being done and whether there is a loophole here that needs to be closed. MS. O’HARA: Well isn’t ag exemptions different then agricultural designation? MR. HOFFMANN: Yeah. MS. O’HARA: So that’s what we’re looking at. So, I just wanted to be sure how you would react to something like that. You also mentioned that you would recommend reviewing something like the hiring freeze on a semi-annual basis. What would such a review look like in terms of evaluating efficiency of not hiring people relative to county services being provided? Please explain how you would conduct such a review. MR. HOFFMANN: I’m aware that the mayor currently has an administration review of all those people that are being hired at the moment. But if I had a hiring freeze at the present time, in order to see at least for a six month period of time where we’re going to be particularly with our revenue collections and how that would address some of our budget difficulties, balance budget and all of that. What I would do is if I were saying it would be six months, in November I would have the administration come back to the 11