Good luck to Kauai County as it takes firm strides against a problem that has certainly confounded the City and County of Honolulu: bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) and transient vacation rentals.

Kauai’s Planning Department has been cracking down on illegal short-term rentals since last year. Now the Kauai County Council just passed a bill narrowing the definition of a B&B operation to require that the owner live in the same dwelling, caps the annual number of B&B permits to 10, and prohibits B&Bs in the state land use agricultural district without a special permit. This strict redefinition was needed to distinguish a B&B from a transient vacation rental, which is subject to a different set of rules, permits and fees.

North Shore shoreline protected at last

Perseverance and preservation go hand in hand. That’s obvious in the years-in-the-making agreement signed into law by Gov. David Ige that preserves four miles of undeveloped shoreline on Oahu’s North Shore as open space for public use. The 664 acres stretching from Kawela Bay to Kahuku Point were saved from development — demonstrating the importance of sticking with worthy goals even when the going gets rough.