CHC 1979-05-22 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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That is somewhat of a radical concept. Everybody seems to be discussing the one-man, one-vote concept and that seems to be what is done everywhere but just to give an example of hew this might affect an • area, I" 11 take South Kohala as an example. There is very sparse population in that area at this time and there are quite a number of projected upcoming projects that are going to produce quite a large increase in their tax contribution. Yet, most of those projects in that • area will probably be in the area of vacation, resort rentals , hotels and so on , so the actual population of those areas will not increase at the same rate as the tax contributions of the county will. But there will 's C�ill be a great number of people in those areas that are not counted as actual population or residents in those areas. Because of those added people they will need more services than would be expected if you were just to look at the actual residents living there. They will need more police and fire protection and so on. "_ The second point, I support restrictive controls on the following: ( a) Number of county employees. In the past ten years the number of county employees has increased at more than twice the rate of the civilian population. I say that no one new be hired unless someone else 'is fired or retired. If we find that we do legitimately need • new people in one area then move them from other less productive, less needed areas. The second area that I believe should have restrictive controls on it is the county budget and county debt. We are all painfully aware of what spending more than we take in can do to an economy as so aptly demonstrated by our printing press happy inflation causing federal government. So let ' s balance the budget and keep it :t'i'At way and help to hold inflation of property taxes down. The third area, residential and agricultural property taxes. A limit should be set to prevent taxes from becoming a burden to homeowners, farmers and ranchers. The growth of assessed value should also be controlled not being allowed to exceed 2% per ',year except when property is sold. When sold, property assessment should be allowed to go to market value and be taxed accordingly. This measure will help to prevent the current speculative real estate climate from ruining those who do not wish to participate in the boom. The third area that I would like to comment on is that I strongly urge the County Charter be amended to . include the following two items : Initiative and Referendum. This will return power of control of expenditures to the people where it belongs and not leave it with a self perpetuating government. The second issue is the Sunset Law. This will prevent the waste_,of_;continuing unneeded and outdated programs through periodic rev-i_ew. That is the end of my statement but I would like to at this time, thank the five local groups who paid for the two page ad in West Hawaii Today that made the public zaiware of -13-