HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0926.012 2018-2020 • e
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Sun 5/10/2020 10:03 PM
Support Bill 169 Cty Cncl
To: Council Testimony
Support for Bill 169 re. two tiers for property tax
for Hawai'i County Council, Wednesday, May 13, 2020
from Cory Harden, Hilo 333cory67a gmail.com
Please support higher taxes for high-end properties. Current policies have generated million-dollar ~°
properties where no one even lives all the time--while we have people forced into homelessness and
subjected to early-morning sweeps without enough time to gather their few possessions.
Please also consider other sustainable ways to balance the budget:
• create a County grant writer position. That may have prevented the heartburn at Mass Transit,
which almost lost about $7 million in funding, and jeopardized future funding, because grant
reports were not submitted.
• support alternative economic drivers, such as diversified agriculture, instead of the current
tourism model with luxury hotels that drive up real estate prices.
• explore public-private partnerships for solar power, wastewater treatment, and water recycling.
For example, in 2016 the Honolulu Board of Water Supply(BWS) inked a $33 million contract
with a Noresco LLC to reduce BWS's electric usage by about 8 million kilowatt hours annually--
enough energy savings to pay for the contract.
But beware of pitfalls:
• The Hawai'i County contract with Waste Management Inc. has no end date.
• O'ahu paid Covanta over$6 million from 2013 to 2016 because it didn't send H-Power enough
garbage. There were also penalties from HECO—over$2.7 million since 2014.
• A company that built a toll road in California required that the state do nothing to compete with the
toll road—not even improve public transit.
Mahalo for your consideration.
Comm. No. 12
Ref. o: Lt�rrGr
Ref. tote MAY 13 2020