CHC 1979-04-17 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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General Plan -amendments. We are having hearings all over the island , with the next one, tomorrow night in Ka' u and so far we 've had lousy attendance except for the one in Kona 'and the one in Puna. CHAIRMAN SAKiTA: Thank you, very much, Mr. Dahlberg. Next we would like to call on Mr. Floyd Pulham. Mr. Pulham represents the Naalehu Community Association. MR. PULHAM: I was asked to represent the Community Club here this evening. However, that organization will have a meeting later this week and I hope to convince them to send you in writing their opinions on this. But I did agree to come here this evening and tell you what we have been talking about. As many of you know, I spent the better part of last summer in Honolulu doing this same thing with the state constitution. So I am very familiar with your problems. I can commiserate with you fully about trying to get people out at hearings and I would like very much to help you in any way that I can because of that. First of all , I would like to answer a question that was raised earlier because there was mention made to the bonded indebtedness of the county. That is fixed by the state constitution so that would be a starting point. I realize that possibly you could make it more stringent under the County Charter if you wanted to but be aware that it is written into the state constitution. So you will have to start there and work down. I , too, was at that meeting in Pahala the other night and I , too, will _apologize that there aren 't more people here. But, as I said., I couldn ' t get them out from my areas either so I don ' t know. I would like to support, first of all , starting with some of the things that have been mentioned. The limit on county spending. I know you talked about that. You were wondering how you were going to go about it. I don ' t have a final solution either but I think that were you to limit the real property taxations which is where the bulk of the county money comes from. We are talking about operating money, the bonds being already fixed by the constitution. If the limits that they could be raised in any one year--and it is my under- standing that you have a proposal before you limiting it to approximately 1% on the taxation itself and 2% of the assessed valuation and could not go up more than that in any one year-- it would seem to me that that would be a very good place to start. I haven ' t checked on the figures because I don ' t have them. This would appear to be a prudent way to do it but above all , in light of what others have told you, what Mr. Anderson has said earlier, we have to find a method of limiting government spending. If we don ' t we will be faced with the California - 17 -