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MS. SCHOEN: Oh sure, I’ll— <br /> <br />MR. BALSIS: --You’ll jump right in. <br /> <br />MR. DRUTAR: Thank you for letting me speak today again. My name is Michael Drutar. <br />I’m a real property appraiser with the County of Hawai‘i and the original petitioner on <br />this. I’d like to point out first for the record, I’m here on my own time. Even though I <br />filed this petition as an employee of the County, the County Corp Counsel has determined <br />that I have to drive out here on my own car and gas and use my own time, take vacation <br />time, to be a part of this meeting today. But I am here, because I feel this is important. <br />My comments are going to be a little bit stream of consciousness taken, as I was taking <br />notes today. <br /> <br />First, to Mr. Takai’s comments. One of the things that he said was he has no <br />remembrance of when an employee lowered his own assessment. I don’t know if this <br />happened after his employment, and I don’t know the name of the person, but I could <br />research that and get it back to you. I do know that there was a past assessor who did <br />lower his own assessed value drastically, and it wasn’t caught for some time. I don’t <br />believe the payment was paid that lowered—that he had affected, so I don’t know if the <br />County was out any money. But someone did lower their assessed value. And when he <br />was confronted with it, he quit. So these things can happen. Not everyone is completely <br />unscrupulous. I don’t even know if it was in his zone, but these things can happen. <br /> <br />He had also mentioned that this is the way it’s been happening for a number of years. <br />I’d just like to point out just because something’s been done wrong for a number of years <br />doesn’t mean it’s right now, just out of practice. I think the Code speaks pretty clearly on <br />this. We’re not talking about did someone actually change their value. Conflict of <br />interest is there to make sure someone doesn’t have the ability to change their value. <br />We’re not here to say that either of these two employees have done that. That’s not <br />what I’ve asserted, from the very beginning. It’s that there is a conflict of interest, and I <br />do believe it’s direct. And more importantly, Marilyn, who spoke at our last meeting, <br />answered that question after a little bit of pulling, if you remember, and you can check <br />your minutes, that she does affect her property. What she does affects her property. <br /> <br />There is an argument that they’re making that, well, it’s really diluted--we’re affecting a <br />whole lot of properties. To me that actually speaks more to my point. Even if a person <br />were only to—we’re going to play devil’s advocate—just lower their property value a <br />thousand dollars, and they’re in our minimum tax rate of $6.25 per—I think 6.25 per a <br />thousand dollars. On a neighborhood the size of hers, that’s $10,000 in lost revenue for <br />the County. That’s 1,900 neighborhoods being lowered—or 1,900 houses being lowered. <br />It has an effect. So you need to be more scrupulous about this. You have to really make <br />sure that, as you mentioned at the first meeting, the person comes in with a neutral <br />mind and doesn’t have the ability to even make a really small adjustment that wouldn’t <br />be caught. It would be statistically insignificant, but would directly affect their property <br />and directly affect the properties around them. And it’s not just lowering value, as you <br />13 <br /> <br />