Problems are the result of government inefficiency
I just finished reading Keith Okamoto’s letter on the op ed page.
It seems to me that a lot of the problems with the water wells can be traced to government inefficiency. I recall that in 2017, we had five wells down at one time. Why do we still have three wells down and just added a fourth. Why haven’t the other three wells been brought online in five years?
As for the “redundancy and resiliency” of the North Kona area, this is a joke. The Wai’aha Well B is under construction but they still haven’t procured a drilling permit. I could issue a permit in an hour. This permit should have been procured at the same time as the construction permit. This is absolutely an unacceptable process that we see our government repeat over and over. Study it to death, engineer it, and go to bid with partial permits. Our county should be ashamed of themselves. If they can’t run this process more efficiently , they should not be employed, period. There is no reason the citizens of Hawaii County should suffer for this Third World government.
Now we repeat this inane process with a new well, Keauhou Well Phase 2 Project. This same department says it will take nine months to complete the planning and design. After that they have to go to bid and award it. And then I guess they will apply for half of the permits required. And then they can start construction followed by applying for a permit to drill. This project is at least three years away by government timelines. The planning and design phase should include all permits required to get this well online as soon as possible. I’ve seen faster turtles.
This semi-autonomous Department of Water Supply isn’t capable of working together with the permitting department. The county needs to be completely restructured with private enterprise doing much of the work that they are incapable of doing efficiently and cost effective.
And then there is the Building Division …
Vern Ungerecht
Kona
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Farmland vacation rentals
Vacation rentals on ag land. State law requires houses to be farm dwellings have a connection to agriculture if they are built on agriculture zoned land. So 20 people are asking the state Land Use Commission to rule that they should be allowed to use these buildings.
Obviously not intended as farm dwellings to be used as short-term vacation rentals. Surely they want to keep paying the low class of property tax, which is agricultural but in reality the 5,000 square foot building pictured in the Sunday edition on what appears to be at least 5 acres should be paying taxes on commercial or hotel resorts since that is their true usage and assessed value by the county they need to be re-evaluated.
Yes, the state Land Use Commission needs to tighten up. The language is to prevent these kinds of people from finding loopholes but to be clear these people only seek to exploit the community for their own personal gain. Very Trump-like mentality, they seek to classify tourists as crops.
Rusty Iijima
Waikoloa
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