In life, the reasonable assumption is you get what you pay for. Put another way, you pay for what you get.
Property taxes, for example, provide the means for each of the four county governments to provide basic services.
Property taxes collected entitle citizens to police and fire protection, ambulance service, paving and repairing of county roads, refuse collection and disposal, delivering and maintaining a reliable drinking water system and szqewage disposal, to name just a few county responsibilities.
But this system of "paying for what you get" does not apply to the island of Niihau. The County of Kauai, which includes Niihau, has been the fortunate recipient of property taxes from Niihau since time immemorial in return for providing nothing.
No police, no fire, no county road maintenance, no emergency medical services, no refuse or sewage service, no county landfill, no delivery of drinking water in short, nothing in exchange for the annual payment of property taxes.
The owners have never missed a payment and never complained except for one year when Kauai County attempted to raise property taxes 200 percent from $25,208.37 in 2008, to $75,910.01 in 2009. When the owners inquired about the basis for the increase and gave notice to appeal, the county decided to raise Niihau taxes from $25,208.37 in 2008 to $28,188.43 in 2009, and to $29,635.34 the next year, in exchange for what the county has always provided nothing.
When Hurricane Iwa hit Hawaii on Nov. 23, 1982, news reports indicated that damage sustained was $536 million, or $755 million in 2014 dollars. It was reported that Niihau sustained major damage. But Kauai County contributed zero toward repair of the damage, despite the fact that Niihau property taxes were collected by the county that year.
When Hurricane Iniki hit Hawaii on Sept. 11, 1992, the damage was much more extensive. According to news reports, total damage sustained by the state was $1.8 billion, or $2.99 billion in 2014 dollars. While no reports commented on the damage sustained on Niihau Island, Kauai County contributed zero dollars, just as it had done when Hurricane Iwa hit a decade earlier.
When an unattended death occurred on Niihau, the island’s owners called Kauai police and flew the police round-trip to Niihau by helicopter and paid all the expenses.
When a shipwrecked individual walked into Puu-wai village after running his Boston Whaler aground, the Kauai police were called and the individual and police were flown back to Kauai expenses paid for by Niihau.
The inexplicable and disconcerting reality is that the County of Kauai has been consistent, if nothing else, in taking in nearly $400,000 in property taxes from Niihau since 2001. In exchange, the county has provided zero services. Period.
The Garden Island newspaper reported on Sept. 28, 2010, that a fireboat was spotted at Niihau. But the article’s purpose was to report that disciplinary action was taken against firemen from Kauai for fishing off of Niihau, not to provide county services, according to the office of Mayor Bernard Carvalho.
Legislative attempts to remedy this unfair situation by creating a Niihau Fund as a repository to collect the property taxes paid to underwrite repairs and maintenance that are ongoing on Niihau, just as in other counties, is pending.
The bottom line is that the County of Kauai should immediately cease collecting property taxes from Niihau until such time that it provides the same services afforded all other people on Kauai.
The phrase, "fair is fair," doesn’t apply when it comes to Niihau.
