Category Archives: Planning

Rep. Choy set to appear at UH Manoa Faculty Congress on Wednesday, March 16

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Manoa Rep. Isaac Choy, who introduced a bill this year to allow legislators to take full time jobs at the University of Hawaii while retaining their legislative posts, is scheduled to hold a short town hall meeting on the UH Manoa campus on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 16. The meeting is open to all UH faculty as well as the general public.

For more information on HB1556, refer to my post here on Thursday.

Choy, currently chairman of the House Committee on Higher Education, will make his appearance during the Manoa Faculty Congress Meeting on on Wednesday, March 16th from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in the Architecture Auditorium (ARCH 205).

UH Director of Athletics David Matlin is tentatively scheduled to provide an update on M?noa Athletics.

Both Choy and Matllin will finish with a Q & A conversation, according to an announcement of the meeting by the UH Manoa Faculty Senate Executive Committee.

During the 2015 session, Choy introduced a bill that would have resulted in the elimination of many UH language programs and a quarter of all BA programs. Luckily, the measure, HB555, died in committee.

Testimony being solicited on whether Maui should adopt a “county manager” government

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An 11-member special committee appointed by the Maui County Council is in the process of gathering information and soliciting testimony on the question of whether moving to a county manager form of government would improve Maui’s management and operation.

The committee has already held six meetings, and faces a June 1 deadline for making its recommendation to the council.

The next meeting is scheduled for next Thursday, March 10, at 5 p.m. at UH Maui College, where the committee hopes to hear more from local residents on the possible forms for county government to take.

“This will be the committee’s seventh meeting,” Tony Takitani, chair of the special committee, said. “We have heard from the two most recent mayors, as well as national and local experts, but would like to hear from more Maui County residents before making a recommendation.”

Members of the Special Committee on Governance:

Special Committee

The committee’s website includes links to a number of background documents about models of county government. There’s some very interesting reading here.

City’s explanation of discrepancies in real property tax assessments don’t satisfy

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Thanks to Star-Advertiser business writer, Andrew Gomes, for his story on Sunday about the discrepancies between the selling prices of high-value Oahu homes and their often much lower appraisals for property tax purposes (“Home price, taxable value can diverge“).

Here’s the basic thrust of the story:

…in the upper reaches of the island’s housing market where trophy properties shine, it’s not uncommon for city appraisers to value a home well below what a new owner paid.

Sometimes city appraisers can’t justify purchase prices as a “real” value. As a result, an owner’s property tax obligation can be based on land and building values far below what they sold for, resulting in less revenue for the city.

“Sales price and cost is not equal to value,” said Gary Kurokawa, the city’s deputy director of budget and fiscal services.

The difference for a multimillion-dollar home can amount to tens of thousands of dollars not flowing to the city.

Some of the examples are eye-popping.

Gomes cites the example of a Black Point mansion that sold a few years ago for $16.5 million, and then got a $1 million facelift. It was assessed for tax purposes at $9.5 million in 2015, but dropped for 2016 to $8.4 million, a 50% discount off its selling price two years ago.

Gomes reported:

“Sales price and cost is not equal to value,” said Gary Kurokawa, the city’s deputy director of budget and fiscal services.

I admit that I’m confused. Here’s an excerpt from the applicable city ordinance.

Sec. 8-7.1 Valuation–Considerations in fixing.
(a) The director of budget and fiscal services shall cause the fair market value of all taxable real property to be determined and annually assessed by the market data and cost approaches to value using appropriate systematic methods suitable for mass valuation of real property for ad valorem taxation purposes, so selected and applied to obtain, as far as possible, uniform and equalized assessments throughout the county.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the best “estimate” of a property’s actual market value is the price someone has just paid in an open market transaction.

You don’t have to look far to find agreement with this proposition.

“The only real measure of market value is what a particular house sells for. Period,” according to the website CREonline.com.

Could something be amiss with the city’s standard methodology? Under what circumstances do appraisers walk past an actual sales price to assign a dramatically lower (or higher) assessed value, which by law is supposed to approximate the market price?

Perhaps there needs to be a better explanation from the city’s end of just how they actually made the assessments that Gomes cites in his story.

Profiting from fear mongering

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Just in case you missed this sobering Washington Post item a few days ago, do take a few minutes to check it out (“What was fake on the Internet this week: Why this is the final column“).

The “What was Fake” column started about 18 months ago to debunk fake Internet “news.”

But it really didn’t work because the Internet has gotten more partisan and more blatantly cynical in creating and passing on fake news. Too many online sites now pride themselves in profiting off of fear-mongering, or so the WaPo writers concluded.

I find its conclusion profoundly depressing.

If you’re a hoaxer, it’s more profitable. Since early 2014, a series of Internet entrepreneurs have realized that not much drives traffic as effectively as stories that vindicate and/or inflame the biases of their readers. Where many once wrote celebrity death hoaxes or “satires,” they now run entire, successful websites that do nothing but troll convenient minorities or exploit gross stereotypes. Paul Horner, the proprietor of Nbc.com.co and a string of other very profitable fake-news sites, once told me he specifically tries to invent stories that will provoke strong reactions in middle-aged conservatives. They share a lot on Facebook, he explained; they’re the ideal audience.

And more:

Needless to say, there are also more complicated, non-economic reasons for the change on the Internet hoax beat. For evidence, just look at some of the viral stories we’ve debunked in recent weeks: American Muslims rallying for ISIS, for instance, or Syrians invading New Orleans. Those items didn’t even come from outright fake-news sites: They originated with partisan bloggers who know how easy it is to profit off fear-mongering.

Do read the column. And do ponder its implications.

Have a nice day.