Editorial: Tax rentals, curb single-use plastics

The Honolulu City Council is facing final decisions Wednesday on two bills that promise to upheave the way business is done across important sectors: tourism and food service.

It is more controversy than Council members usually schedule for themselves at a single meeting, though that shouldn’t stand in the way of taking a tough vote, without delay.

Votes are due on:

>> Bill 40, which would initiate the state’s strictest ban on single-use plastic items — utensils, straws, plastic and foam clamshell boxes and the like — supplied by vendors of food prepared for immediate consumption, except for items that are sold pre- packaged rather than dished up on the spot.

>> Bill 55, which would create a new, distinct tax class for vacation rentals. Among the details to be worked out is whether legal transient vacation units — the unhosted, whole-house rentals known as TVUs — should pay more than residential rates, regardless of whether they’ve been operating legally for years with a nonconforming use permit.

They should pay more, and so should bed-and-breakfast (B&B) units, the latter numbers of which will be increasing again once the city begins issuing permits for them next year.

These rentals with their higher traffic put a heavier burden on the public streets and utilities, so owners of both types certainly owe the city treasury more than the residential rate. At a minimum, TVUs should pay a higher rate than B&Bs, because they lack a resident as host and do not serve a permanent residential purpose at all.

Complaints from homeowners that higher taxes make their business unsustainable can and should be dismissed. The Council is responsible for a rational and well-planned land-use policy, not for advancing the business uses of residential property at the expense of the actual, full-time residents.

The tolls on peaceful neighborhoods will not evaporate simply by ignoring them; the same goes for the problem of fossil-fuel products in Honolulu’s waste stream. Bold action is required on both.

The version of Bill 40 that provides the food-service industry a year’s lead time to prepare for a gradual rollout of the ban makes a reasonable allowance for the securing of, and adjustment to, new suppliers of alternative packaging materials.

As it is, the bill incorporates some expansive exemption options for individual companies and groups while manufacturers of those alternatives ramp up for the heightened demand. Advocates worry, and with good reason, that the city could give in too readily to complaints about inventory and pricing problems for these items.

The plain fact is that unless and until food vendors in sufficiently large numbers are made to order replacements to plastics supplies, those items will never become price-competitive.

Bill critics complain, also rightly, that plastic overwhelms the entirety of retail packaging and that food service represents a small percentage of that bulk. But it makes sense for local authorities to add their weight to the global campaign against excessive packaging, to start the process of re-educating the public here.

And we must not forget: In outdoorsy, casual Hawaii, take-out disposable containers are part of the cultural landscape — and the physical one. Litter overflowing trash cans at parks easily blows into storm drains and streams and onto the beach, all of which ends up further fouling the ocean.

Living within our physical limitations, managing Oahu’s waste stream and crowded neighborhoods, is an imperative that can’t be shrugged off. The Council and the mayor must enact Bills 40 and 55.