Kailua-Kona Inefficient government ADVERTISING Public needs to ask the right questions It is common to hear folks complain the local government is inefficient and does a poor job at serving the public needs. I agree government is often inefficient and
Inefficient government
Public needs to ask the right questions
It is common to hear folks complain the local government is inefficient and does a poor job at serving the public needs. I agree government is often inefficient and sometimes does not provide the best service to our community. This is not only a result of less than optimal governance by the few folks we put in power, it is also a reflection of how poorly we act as the bosses of this system.
The power in our system does not flow from the people we elect. It is a reverse system. The power these elected and appointed officials have flows from us. If they are not making the system work, it is a reflection of our poor management as owners of the system. Here are some examples of recent events in local governance, which should spike immediate public questions about how the system is being run:
1. The proposed settlement of the Hokulia Bypass Road appears to obviously leave a gap in funding. The county is receiving a note (mortgage) on a number of unfinished lots in phase two. The reported “value” of these lots is $20 million. The idea is that if the county needed to, it could liquidate the collateral (roughly 45 unfinished lots) and receive $20 million (roughly $445,000 per lot).
This is a fantasy. There are finished lots within phase one that have been listed for sale for over a year in the mid $400s. These lots include golf course memberships, which are not likely included in the collateral the county is receiving. These lots have not received offers. Any bulk purchase of unfinished lots would likely be heavily discounted to account for development costs (finish the roads and utilities to the lots), costs of selling the lots (commissions and closing costs) and allowing the investor to make a profit. Why would someone pay $20 million for 45 unfinished lots when it is apparent they can probably pay that for finished lots and get golf course memberships? This note is not collateralized as advertised and we should be asking why this is in the interest of the county to move forward.
2. The county is paying for studies essentially to push under the rug issues that could be solved with some backbone. We are about to pay for a study on how to make the real property tax assessor’s office more professional and fair.
This problem could be easily solved by simply forcing the county to follow the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice in their assessments. There is a whole section of these standards devoted to property assessment. While a great deal of the nation follows these rules, the county does not. This allows the county to ignore methods of valuation that are more complex than their current personnel may be familiar with. Large shopping centers and hotels currently are not valued by any income approach. Because we allow the real revenue-creating arm of the county to operate in this less than professional manner, we have allowed the system to fall behind in its ability to handle the complexity of the real estate on the island. This means it likely has become unfair. Large and complex properties are likely under-assessed to avoid challenges, meaning they may not be paying their fair share.
Differences in the accuracy of the assessments from neighborhood to neighborhood are often apparent. The correction to this issue is to use the tens of thousands of dollars that will be spent to study the issue to hire more highly trained staff and to require they follow the basic standards the industry elsewhere has followed for decades. We are no longer a small sparsely developed island. Our population and the complexity of the island’s real estate development demand we professionalize the assessor’s office.
Let’s hold our employees’ feet (the County Council, mayor and legislators) to the fire. If we did get by with furloughs, where the county and state essentially did without 20 percent (one day a week) of its funding, why can’t we find significant cuts in spending and use some of the money to upgrade areas of our government which have been allowed to lag behind the rest of the world too long and give the rest back to the households of Hawaii?
If we want to accept an agreement to allow the county to not receive the funds from a bond to build a roadway in exchange for poorly collateralized paper, explain why it is in our best interest.
If we are going to build affordable housing priced at $290,000 when the median price for homes is very near that, explain why creating more low-priced housing is beneficial in a falling market.
If we are going to create Hawaiian Home Land homes and sell the homes at $300,000 plus on leased land, explain how we are benefitting the Hawaiians when they can buy the same sized new home on fee simple land for roughly the same amount. Obviously a handful of developers and owners will make money in these policy decisions, but what about the rest of us.
Good management means the voters need to ask hard questions of those we allow to manage this system.
R. J. Kirchner
Kailua-Kona
