‘Poor optics’
In her article “No tax relief this year” (Tribune-Herald, June 3), Nancy Cook Lauer pens a somewhat revealing statement regarding potential tax relief for homeowners: “Several council members were inclined to keep the tax rates the way they are, under the theory it won’t make that much difference to property owners.”
This statement undermines the rationale of those council members who refused to consider the relief.
A theory remains a theory unless or until one decides to test it. And this one wasn’t.
Perhaps soliciting the mana‘o of a few constituents might have given some insight into the validity or vulnerability of this theory. I understand this can be cumbersome and perhaps time consuming, but it might have steered the discussion in a different direction.
As a result, neither homeowners nor commercial establishments received a break.
According to the article, council members Holeka Inaba, Tim Richards and Sue Lee Loy led the effort to provide some tax relief but, in the end, it appeared to be business as usual with the passage of a budget (the vote was 6-3) that included increasing administrative positions and council member’s contingency funds.
Poor optics and even poorer representation.
Clayton Kua
Hilo
No solutions offered
Recently, the Tribune-Herald wrote about what Newsweek described as problems with the permit process in the state of Hawaii as being the worst state in the country.
Hawaii County is the last county in the state to struggle with the permit process, which would make it the worst in the United States.
When the director of Public Works was questioned as to why this is happening, he only addressed the problems with no solutions and several excuses.
Once again, the taxpayers are burdened by these inefficiencies. This adds tremendous cost to the construction industry in Hawaii.
To his credit, he inherited this problem, but provided us with promises to fix the problem using the new computer software that the county purchased. Unfortunately, the problem still exists, as indicated by the Newsweek article.
Fortunately, we are in an election year, with politicians making all kinds of promises in their campaign ads, but no candidate running for the different offices have mentioned solutions for the problems plaguing the permit system.
However, the incumbents had years to address this problem, but nothing was done.
Shakespeare was right when he said a rose is a rose no matter what you call it. There are a lot of promises being made but no solutions offered.
This seems to be the usual case with the county and state.
Floyd Eaglin
Hilo
