HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-11-03 April Lee Testimony GP 2045From:Sophia"s Mom
To:WPCtestimony
Subject:Testimony on the General Plan for the 3rd Time this year.
Date:Sunday, November 3, 2024 10:52:51 PM
Aloha Honorabke County Officials,
I spent a lot of time making online comments on the general plan that you proposed and I
testified already, online with you, on zoom. It seems that the county doesn’t understand our objections to the current changes in the plan,
which talk about things that appear to indicate that we would want smart cities, and that wewould want stakeholders versus homeowners. We farmers are just not making our thoughts
clear to The Hawai’i County leadership? We prefer the general plan from 2005 and amwondering if the new Governor’s leadership is causing this confusion about what we, the
people, want. Believe me, we do not want to change that much. We would love to have therights of farmers to keep their land without taxes being levied as if we are in RS
neighborhoods, because we’re not doing a business on our agricultural land. It’s hard enoughjust to manage a parcel of agricultural land, much less make it into a new business in order to
afford the taxes on it. There’s no money in selling vegetables and fruit! You get like very littlemoney selling fruit & vegetables and it takes a lot of time, plus it’s only good for so long. very
few of us are able to manage large animals. The people. I know that are doing that are alreadyrich because they had money to buy large tracks of land, which the animals require. They
could afford to build butchering capacity. That’s very few people. Most of them made theirmoney in the business world on the mainland and moved here. I tried to explain to the county
there’s a lot of stress and mental illness being in farming. Plus the suicide rate is high forfarmers!!! if you would like statistics on this, I would be glad to provide them. You haven’t
worked so hard as to run a farm but when things get tight and there’s no food coming in at theport, believe me you’ll want us around.
Let’s go back to the way it was and forget all this highfalutin attempts to become somethingthat we’re not, profit-centered business people who farm. We are families who produce food
for our own consumption and give away what we don’t eat to the community, not via formal501 C3’s, which is difficult to say the least. There’s only a couple of those available in my
area.I don’t know why you didn’t hear the Farmer’s saying “look if you raise my taxes this much, I
have to sell my land”! I can’t survive on retirement and Social Security and pay those kind oftaxes. Let’s support ag. which is what Hawaii island is supposed to be all about. The general
plan is not making agricultural production by our homeowners a priority anymore with thisplan. Nix it! Let’s be ‘homeowner centered-Farmer centered’ and not ‘stakeholder centered’.
Mahalo for considering our views,April Lee
Hawi,HI 96719
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