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Another area I think they could save in is in the parks. I think the county does a good job of parkswherever they have control , because they are interested in protecting peoples' lives. The county is responsible for the health and safety of the population on this island. The state has beautiful parks but they don' t care about lifesaving, they don ' t put life- guards or other things so I would think that being that the county has the control and the responsibility of the health and safety of the population, that they should be in charge of parks. Whereas, the state would be more efficient in building roads and maintaining them. They should have overall juris- diction of roads. Road projects, particularly in this area, get shunted way off in the background. We have been trying for twenty years to get this road built from Waimea to Kawaihae for the development of our farms. Every. year they shove it in the background. Ten years in the future, there is never a way out. Progress is just marking time there. There is very little mainland shipping. People get slaughtered on this road. But the timetable for that is way in the future. Maybe some of us will never live that long.. Another thing I would like to touch on a little bit is the county taking over the assessment and the collection of real property taxes on this island. I have been working with Senator Hara and Stephen Yamashiro and giving them the input of people down in this area. They have been doing a lot of study on the thing and they are going to have a big meeting in Kona in about two weeks. County officials and state officials. They invited me togo to the meeting but they said, well , you' ll have to pay a $1.00 registration fee. Why does a private citizen , by invitation, have -to go to Kona and pay my own gasoline when all these public servants go„ there and their registration fee is paid by me, actually, as 'a=taxpayer® So I 'm not going because I can ' t afford to. I think that'-ythia matter of tax reform and everything should be carefully studied and I think they should welcome input by citizens and not try to extract $100 from them every time you go to that place. Another thing on this tax reform that we have been working hard on, too, is to get some protection for the elderly. In my case, more than 50% of my social security income goes to pay real property taxes. Why shouldn ' t there be a ceiling on that? $200 or $3'x00 would be the dmaxlmumo_I-paay ”'" . :k $1 ,800 a year just on my. home. Half of this island pays only_` $7 dollars. Fifty percent pays only seven dollars. I think for the people on social security there should be a maximum tax and that should be written into the charter. I don ' t know whether that can be done or whether this would have to go to the legislature or not but I think there is a big area for tax reform to be worked by the county and byf=the state officials. I would hate to see them, after this Kona conference, just dive into something and not have it done properly._ I _suggested to Senator Hara that what they ought to do is�go:_to_all 'the mainland states and try to extract the best :tax reform that they can get and put it into the Hawaii system before they get, something like Proposition 13 shoved down their throats like they did in California. Then you can ' t live with it. I think Mr. Austin covered the area pretty well and I , too, am in favor of better area representation. Like the last, time, when ' Bill Kawahara was sick , nobody from West Hawaii was there to represent him. rY ' -14- . .