held its first public hearing on wednesday april twenty seventh twenty sixteen on the proposed real property tax rates for the county in mali effective july first twenty sixteen through june thirty twenty seventeen and the purpose of clerk please turn your cell phones to silent mode that will proceed mr couper mr chair proceeding with presentation of testimony on the agenda item we've established limited telephone interactive communication that enables individuals from honna learn not to provide testimony from our district offices individuals there who wish to offer testimony should now sign up with the district office staff individuals who wish to offer testimony in the chamber please sign up at the desk located on the ace florida lobby just outside the chamber door testimony on all locations is limited to the item listed on today's agenda and pursuant to the rules of the counsel each testifiers allowed to testify for up to three minutes with one minute to conclude if requested and when testifying please state your name and the name of any organization you represent  please identify yourself and introduce your first testif thank you mr chair the morlock i described office is closed today and mystic share we have one individual who have signed up to provide testimony and dick cheney the individual is mr thomas oh a chair a low a counsel you must be doing something right but i'm the only one that is concerned about this i want to thank you sincerely for your hard work reviewing the budget i've been with you every every year for the last ten and  i feel i feel a sense of relief knowing that you know where the money is being spent in this county while we might not all agree on on on what's best you come up with a decision and i think that it's good and i testified today in support of the proposed real property tax rates and i thank you for restoring the four dollar and thirty five cent rate for the bed and breakfast homeowners none of us wants to pay higher taxes but that four dollar and thirty five cent rate that applies to bed and breakfast homeowners is a fair blend of the homeowner and commercial components for these properties it was indeed most disappointing that the state again hijacked one hundred two million of the one hundred twenty five million dollars that our visitors pay in th e returning only twenty three million dollars as the chairs proposed budget for told it's not pono that these occupancy taxes are not more fairly distributed between the state and the counties by my evaluation of what is pono now we county should have received at least fifty six million dollars or forty four point eight percent of the th e that we generate but we got w and we live to fight another day i am concerned however about the rhetoric that we used in the fight with the state over the distribution of these funds it mostly revolved around the idea that the visitors are not paying their fair share of the county's cost to provide services i don't think that the or is one iota of truth to say that now he's visitors do not pay their fair share in fact i submit that now his visitors are paying four  to ten times the amount paid by maui's residence i gave you a spreadsheet and hopefully give a little explanation to it here it shows the amount of taxes paid by each of these various categories per unit and i'm going to summarize here because i'm running out of time quickly but it shows that the permit did short term rental homes the hundred sixty one people who have come forward and got permits for their short term rental homes are paying the highest amount of tax per unit then anyone else eleven thousand four hundred dollars a year in tax and when you go to the bottom of that spreadsheet you'll see that homeowners are paying on average one thousand dollars in property tax per year and that's an average that's not a median half of the homeowners are paying less than seven hundred dollars in property tax  we also have visitors who come to maui and they stay in their own properties ok they live they they they they have a second home here and they stay in those second homes and i've i've put them in i don't know how many of those there are but we do have to recognize they're paying a large portion of our tax base and their homes or are left empty our visitors paying their fair share besides these real property taxes provide where the g t and the th e that they pay the tax they pay on rental cars on the gasoline tax that we just that we just passed and consider the fact that on any given day the census is one visitor to five residents i don't think there's any doubt that the visitors are paying their fair share and i do think that we as a county should say thank you to them thank you thank you mr crawley members  questions for the test fire i've got i've got one you're using units when you're calculating the average paid by the permanent s t r h's yes instead of gues a challenge with with your numbers but but i would suggest that if we divide that by the number of rooms as you've used at the hotel at the hotel level that the number would probably be reduced to about rent in the neighborhood three thousand by eight again yes if you're on the road he broke it down to rooms but but it but again my point was they can't rent it as the three bedroom house has to three different people they can only rent the three bedroom house to one party fair share because i think everybody in this room knows that the visitors are or pay more than their fair share but challenge is that the state doesn't see their way clear to providing us the resources to cover the visitors are paying their fair share hope that clears up chair i wasn't really referring to the folks in this room but but what was in the press a lot and that seems to be what the public will grasp onto and i've heard many mr clerk mr chair there are no further individuals who've signed up to testify in the council chamber if there's any additional individuals in the council chamber or the district offices who would like to offer testimony please identify yourself to the appropriate staff and proceed to that testimony lectern a district office phone at this time hon office we have any test real property tax rate proposed will be able to pay for the colonies requirements as well this is kept improvement programs at operations for the fiscal year two thousand and seven thank you thank you mr okama members any further discussion victoria no thank you mr clerk mr chair for the record resolution six dash seven you whine and there is no further business before the council thank you very much