no good afternoon members we have two items for today we have a lot of people that i would like to share comment on the second i don't so we're going to clear the agenda by taking up the first i don't at this time so the first item we have before the committee is b f thirty eight deaths forty one this is an amendment to the fiscal year two thousand and sixteen budget the subheading is department of parks recreation boy who golf course program and so if there is anyone there would like to give testimony on this item only please make yourself known you know the majority of you it is for the next item but is there anyone wishing to give testimony on the parts request at this time make yourself another kate will go to our district office on the ms for an end is anyone wishing to provide testimony on the is a transfer of funds from the bartman park and very creation operations to equipment for some expenditures of equipment within the golf course operations that require additional funds from what was originally budgeted and small fifteen thousand dollars so the information is there before you and we have the director as well as the park superintendent here to answer any questions you might have thank you to estimated revenues department of finance countywide costs department of parks and recreation park maintenance program way of the gulf course program called fund total operating appropriations and total operational appropriations operating and capital improvement projects as well if you do need any family and this would also allow and also allow staff to make any non subs before we take up testimony in the chair will give a short overview with this i don't and then we show take and disappear when all we have about thirty one people are requesting to provide testimony this afternoon  we should give all of you in your opportunity to share your comments with us some of the opening comments i'm going to share with you members of the comedian our community  this county wants to go and whether or not depending on the cycle this county wants to continue to put forth between fifteen and thirty million dollars a year for subsidies currently in the current year budget we're looking at about a twenty one million dollars subsidy to agriculture and whether or not we should maintain it is a pain it is a fair to those that pay for it and those that are receiving it does it continue to be justified to continue to provide the subsidy for this type of properties so that is part of the discussion or the committee and community also earlier as far as two thousand and one that i can recall and the intent is to develop a standardized tax assessment methodology that would eat up quite equally to both the home sites portions of a parcel as well as the home site portion of the this is on a piece that we printed out and present to the whole community and if you quickly ask questions around regarding agricultural homesites what is the home site of the current  in general home site he's in the area primarily used as a residential dualie unit we should also continue to discuss how ag land for agricultural homesite is determined  calculated in our hand the answer is no under the proposed from say bill of approximately how much of a tax increase would land owners see on average an agricultural property with we'll see a an average of two hundred seventy dollars per year if this proposed bill passes kenny homeowner exemption still be claimed by the property owner the answer is yes the bill will not impact your application for homeowners exemption for your homeowners  so that the public is aware this is one of many steps this committee is intending to look at all the subsidies so not just agricultural land historic buildings subsidies both review whether or not non profits should continue to receive subsidies this is about a policy to bring forth consistency and equity as we assess and we should consider taxation for whom states you're happy too happy to thank you for that comment so as i said earlier here it is your lot or your all hold on guys caught our guys hold on guys hold on guys everybody will have the opportunity to share your point of view when you have you testimony please everyone i know you have differences of opinion and that's fine and that's what we are here to hear this afternoon your points of view regarding this proposal so at this time i'm going to livestock by products and plants for food fiber energy flowers and foliage tree farms bees and related natural products biomass nothing seeds and then there were also clarified that egg use those not include the use of areas primarily as yard species setbacks landscaping or for the planting or fruit or ornamental trees flowers and vegetables primarily for home use and also in the urban steet land use district it won't include pasturing or grazing so just kind of the other key ones definitions were adding the hairs on the land use change so for the this section of the code for land dedicated for specific agricultural use a change o  and moving further down we define substantial and continuous agricultural use and it will include necessary in customary fallowing periods  section five would be an amendment to three forty eight through a five which is goes over the classification allows for a portion of a parcel to get the homeowner exemption as opposed to the entire parcel as it's worded right now moving on to section six on peach five land use three forty three twenty would be deleted it's essentially getting rid of the existing value the existing section for dedicated land st forty eight three fifty in section nine on pete seven is being deleted as it's being taken up with the new proposed section so if you could skip the peach  ok this is where it starts on the new section three forty eight point three five one on the first step in all of this would be the petition for dedication so an owner of land that would desire to dedicate specific agricultural but the petitions would be due on july first by july first two thousand and seventeen this is to give real property tax enough time to ramp up to take all of the review all of the applications with the proposed ag committee and we did choose owner as opposed to just anyone because this dedication has a penalty attached if you don't fulfill it it's the roll back and we want to avoid the situation where land is dedicated with all the owners knowledge or consent and when farming stops they're subject to a rollback we we want to make sure the owners aware of exactly what's going on with his land his or her land ok so part of the application will be in part want to agricultural use plan form which will be filled out where the owner is leasing land will need a copy of the lease and we're asking that the lease term should be greater than or equal to the term of the dedication again to prevent situations where there's no one left to farm the land during our dedicated period the next section the declaration we're going to request the state of hawaii license for the agricultural purpose the next section would be a transcript of an applicable federal tax return including schedule required to submit its own twenty five hundred dollars because businesses will be having the tax return so if one business has multiple team keys under it that same twenty five hundred dollars fireman would be for multiple team keys technically if it's the same business applying for a mall just some evidence that the pros dedicated is currently in our cultural use as specified in the petition and dedicate aerial produce farm income prior to the expiration of the dedication period for those types of farming that don't immediately producing come and there's a waiver from that twenty five hundred dollars requirement for certain in certain circumstances it's in section c unpeaceful will get to that then then there's different fireman's for urban state land use district then the next section b on peach bottom of each eleven the director will receive these applications and he will transmit them to the committee which is created in section p on peach sixteen the committee would make a recommendation to the director to approve or deny or the director alternately has authority we feel that the director will likely follow the recommendation of the experts but it is ultimately the director's decision on to page twelve eleven over the various things that director would should look at as mentioned before see contains the waiver that would also probably be reviewed by the committee also put in a section on d to transmit the agriculture use plan to the department of planning planning does currently require a farm plan but it's a little different than this and we just are requesting ascending into the planning department so everyone's on the page or we hope to be on the same page  moving on to the section this is where the this column is taken into account so all down will be assessed at its market value if you dedicate for five years you receive a fifty percent discount from fair market value dedicate for ten years eighty percent discount for a fair market value fifteen years ninety percent from fair market value and a twenty year dedication will get you a it's just going to be assessed on its own the home site portion on its own not as a portion of the whole parcel and it will be valued in that way and in this bottom part the director make determination as what the home site is in accordance with the definition as we stated earlier and we're looking at it so the minimal home site will be six thousand square feet in area which i believe is the smallest area allowed in for a residential lot section g change in agricultural use this goes on to allow for changes in the agricultural use and essentially if someone decides to go from ranching to crop production they can come in and do an application and it will be allowed you know if it's reviewed by the comedian recommended comments they can come up later and they can put their testimony and bring their different opinions up like you have stated if they don't and they cannot abide by these decisions or by these rules then they can be they can leave this really simple and i'm talking right now right now i will not keep tolerate hearing these little back door comments behind me thank you is to cheer you again please everyone is this is a very important discussion this afternoon you will have your up please continue thank you chair if you this necessary is part of the reason for the culture use plan was currently there's been a lot of discussion as to what's ag by having an original agriculture use plan as part of the dedication is it's essentially what the farmer is telling us is ag and then specter's we'll just have to go out and verify that what was said in the application is still going on and if it is fine no problem it's agriculture use because that was a decision already made by the director and the agricultural review commission or sorry or cultural dedication advisory commission committee so part of that was we also saw the need to allow for change so there's a process set up the next section section each allows for expiration five ten twenty years or five ten fifteen twenty years automatic fire upon the expiration dedication period unless renewed there's or nor process just have to do it the year before it expires the next section is the extension this came up was if you've already dedicated for five ten or fifteen and you decide midway that you'd like to further dedicate and get the higher discount benefit you can extend your current one and you get credit for the years already served in the lower one you can't get any back credit or anything in the sense that you will be eligible for the higher percentage discount for those years that are already passed but moving forward if you go from five to ten then your year four of your five year dedication will be in year four of your ten year dedication also the next section kid has the right to inspect we have that in there for inspections advance notice will be necessary when the inspector would like to go onto property physically enter the property elliot's cancelation an owner can dedicate council dedication for a portion it anytime they want but it will be subject to the retroactive application of tax and penalty as set forth in section an a dedication in its entirety shall automatically council upon a determination by the director that any of the following has occurred  not utilize in accordance with the ag plan or is not insubstantial and continues our cultures for a period of twelve consecutive months the provision shall not apply to a dedicated being converted to a substitute i or culture use if you're changing and it's not an egg continue sub saharan countries are culture use that makes it's make sense it's not a consolation any land use change as defined by this chapter went over that in the definition if you condominium eyes or property fail to appear real taxes don't follow up with your change in agricultural use within thirty six months of the approval overt act which makes our culture use of any portion a dedicated area improbable  possibility for instance if you put a house in the middle of a place you dedicated to be farmland into residential units obviously cannot be used for farming at that point and failure of the dedicated area to requests for information by the director section am is the retroactive application of tax and penalty it's basically the difference between what you would have paid and what you did pay with a ten long term illness or injury suffered by the owner in the situation where the owner is the individual actively engaged in the agricultural use of the dedicated area there is no cancellation no penalty taking of the dedicated area or a portion thereof by a government entity natural disaster such as a windstorm flood disease or in fits and face the nation that destroys the crop or livestock on the dedication dedication area and the loss of adequate water so if any of these an owner there lessees their lease is terminated or can't find someone else to take over taxes or delinquent default of a mortgage on the property basically it le cancellation goes into effect you won't get the discount but you won't be subject to the waiver the retroactive application of tax and penalty during the grace period and you have some time to try and get something figured out the next section is the agricultural dedication advisory committee would be a three member panel with two alternate members no perfect answer here but the idea is you don't want a panel that's too big so it might be difficult to get quorum all the time because this is potentially a very going to be a very active committee at the start of cloud applications to review and currently it says the farm bureau shall submit a list of nine members to the mayor for nomination to the committee and then each nominee must be approved by the council so it will be ultimately council approval and finally there is a right chairman as far as comments to the proposed bill we don't have any comments at this time there is certain policy items that we can support as a relates to policy  some of things that would make it easier for the division such as means moving from a used piece system to market value as market value is something that we do want to annual basis that would be more consistent with what we know we operate other than that chairmen all the other items as far as the years of dedications and amount of this gone for fair market value as i mentioned to you before we are studious assessment division not not taxes that we don't have any comments on the policy on that decision your responsibility is more on the assessment or value and actually the reads in the taxes that come from those valuations i would ask if you could give us some general comments i requested  for visual aids to assist the community and the community so if we can have those initial things on the screen please is bad for the community members but if you just give us a sense of what each of the nine areas represent please  the existing market value which is already high suggests you should tell you the assessed value which is something that of market value because of the agricultural use the appropriate see the because of the agricultural use and then the value or the taxes associated with that value and lastly the number of parcels receiving agricultural use in indeed individual areas so as we go to the second slide the right is simply the same information except as a percentage dollars fort slide is basically the same thing from the first chart it's just a little larger for you to see for those who are somewhat visually challenged as far as gives you the acreage per person be the market value assessed value the value in savings which is d s s value and then the appropriate revenue savings but number of parcels taking advantage of the program and last of all as the  without agriculture market value of lead at three hundred sixty eight thousand and the reason why we brought this illustration up was to highlight the the point of this bill which was to address  and this is a very good illustration because across the street of each other to show that although people may feel that or perceive that the home state that receiving agriculture is being valued at market value it is a portion of market open to any questions at this time he remembers all that you are as some questions for clarification and then allow the community there are going to testify and then we're going to the nuts and bolts of each section of the five seven two acres right which you're pointing out which is the arrows that you're pointing out around and show them the home itself is one acre and it's an assisted ninety four thousand five hundred that's correct so that's what you're what we're basically trying to decide is what home site the creech and what the true value market values not so much the pastor correct yes ok thank you thank you mr curly any questions sir  cochran thank you chair thank you department and i don't know if i'm really that comfortable with the word subsidy chair just to be straightforward with you but i'm just looking at your color map breakdown of the island and then looking at west maui in particular so with all this total acres market value you're seeing fewer sixty three mill plus we only assess get that eighty seven hundred acres at forty nine mill but if we assessed that all our market we would add an additional one point seven  ok and the truth already is what the number of applications or the number of people taking advantage of the program or are currently in the program in the ag two hundred forty parcels or applicants so these are people with farm hands and they're all assess that ag because they've gone with they've been inspected and deemed as producers anyone else needs a question for clarification if not we are going to move into public testimony at this time and so the number has grown people so you know that we're at sixty and like i said there are sixty five of you don't want to give testimony at this time and we are going to give everyone an equal amount of time and time is three minutes if you have more to say the committee is hop to continue to receive your additional comments you can turn it in by e mail traditional write writing which whatever form is more convenient for you the community will continue to receive testimony from those that wish to use other we support our farmers ranchers and agriculture culture has been in the headlines over the last couple of years as he relates to sustainability the g m o controversy and now the closure of each cns it isn't be so imperative that we stand up for preserving  promoting our agriculture specially our local agriculture one of the objectives of b f seventy is to catch those who cheat on their taxes which we all can support and you those who want to use agriculture as a loophole from paying their fair share however there still may be questions about bill in its present form the inclusion of market value assessments and dedications just to name a few there are many issues that need to be addressed before moving on but mr chairman thank you for providing our historical analysis and progress of the bill to provide clarification also to corporation this will certainly be helpful out suggest maybe if we can circulate a flyer to our country's citizens up to be honest with you there's a lot of information to digest today and i think it would help ease people's fears if we see it in writing and a lot of the questions that  people have for possibly have been answered and i will fashion i like to see something in writing because i forget fast so i think certainly be helpful now while well intended there may be unintended consequences that could suit severely affect the well being of the consider their recommendations and finally mr chairman if you would please consider you on the committee members holding an evening public hearing in our country molly on this bill before any final decisions are made you could circulate that written information to people at that meeting so a lot of questions could be answered many folks who would like to testify are unable to come because of work on their ranches and farms and other occupations council member victorien our member years ago respected the wishes of our country citizens and at the time he chaired the water resources committee and you held an evening meeting on the controversy with the well so that was a very much appreciated by the community so in conclusion mr chairman getting our testimony from today as well as a potential state money to take care of me and my family but it if the stats tingles true and they don't dedicate well i don't think i can be able to afford to start up or even move on at this you know it's going to be really rough on the small guys who's just starting off and going to discourage people who's trying to get started in agriculture i really wish and hope that you all vote no on this bill thank you very much reference to the fact that it was difficult for you to raise the two thousand five hundred dollars can you tell me how many cattle you ways or what you can do with your land and why this is a good well over the decades that land was vacant and was just empty so i've been fencing and fixing and i still been doing that very a lot right now i have a total of five calls for them and even with that you can't you don't see this two thousand five hundred is a good good amount eventually maybe but deep in you know what the taxes and how much it costs me and feed and stuff it may discourage me if i can't make enough you know it will be very easy to be discouraged and i like to see like i said all my life i've worked in agriculture i put in ten years and more land in pine and then i put in twenty five years at eight c m s very soon as i mentioned twenty five thousand twenty five hundred dollars an income and you talked about expenses as applied to that income it's my understanding i'm going to double check with the departed with the corporation counsel but this is gross income so this is before any expenses is it possible that you would clear that you don't it's not clear is that that's how much you take in before to be followed by darrin strand i did at least land on his choreographer eighteen years some years i did gross from people pay me to take care of their livestock for twenty five hundred or more and then of course i would lose or not make money because the expenses are so great but my concern is valuation and so i'm going to go to what i've written ok and i have lost my land by the way i could not afford it i do not own land i have no personal benefit from being here today i are here to represent the local families the soil and the animals we hope to stop the well to do gentleman farmers from getting a tax break but inadvertently you will hurt the local families  tax bill should be focused on incentivizing soil preservation reafforestation reclamation of land planting trees pleas for increased arlan sustainability requiring animals to be kept according to the county laws and protecting the local families from losing their tax their lands this bill is designed to stop the gentleman farmers from getting a tax break let's face it the rich will find a way around meanwhile the local local families will be taxed off their lands please do not pass this go back to the drawing board and start over the current law is pretty good do not toss it out make a minor additions instead i  you for the sake of the regular joe do not pass this legislation the rich will outsmart it and the rest of us will suffer from it time that the tax office and the staff have put into working with us on this and we've all spent a lot of time on it and i'm concerned that this latest version doesn't reflect some of the changes that that we've discussed and we started in two thousand and ten after the closure of maui pineapple company and have been continuing to grow pineapple and currently we have eighty three employees we have just under fifteen years are meaning on a twenty year lease with  and it's structured i'm guessing like most leases to pass along all taxes and costs to the tenant and so you know with that in mind from two thousand and twelve to two thousand and fifteen the market value of language i proposed in b of seventy if we assumed a fifteen year dedication which would be a stretch because we'd have to negotiate a little bit with now in a pineapple the ninety percent discount rate would increase our tax liability by six hundred percent  this is assuming that our landlord would obviously be willing to cooperate with dedication and i think that's a detail that we need to take into account that that not every landlord and tenant are going to have the same perspective on on this dedication  in two thousand and eleven the market value of the same d m k jumped up to over sixteen million and in recent history has been as high as twenty seven million so again you know that would that that puts it it over you know a one thousand percent tax increase if that were to happen in any particular year you know in a business where we're trying to plan and model with as much accuracy as possible in order to plant and grow and harvest efficiently this degree of uncertainty is is just really burdensome of be a seventy maybe equity in simplicity and you know catching cheaters but i think that if the impact is going to be on legitimate agricultural operations we need to take that into any questions from this trend thank you for being here this afternoon mr falconer followed by teresa thompson the board of the hawaii coffee association and i'm the president the hawaii coffee growers association and i'm also a former member i'm here on behalf of the of agricultural p oh in the county and i want to speak to you about the importance of agriculture in our community and i cannot stress more the importance of killing this measure why of all the many issues we face and read about every day my county what is the most prevalent and explosive importance of agri more nor can you continue to go to ag to find tax revenue the timing of this measure is all the more painful the county my wish is to increase tax rates on ag land at the same time thirty six thousand acres are becoming available for diverts diversification you want to council yeah good occasion and ignore the state and county statutes even the parties that oppose each other on ag will agree that we need agriculture for anyone who wishes to farm the two most important things one needs to one needs to have is a formal water and affordable land those two things are normally out of their control unless you own land you own the water system you're at the mercy of someone else control your cost structure and this measurable result in fine arable land that is an affordable to farms due to the unfair tax liability of the burdensome county oversight and bureaucratic obstacles to anyone wanting to farm and the are countless reasons numerous for me to go into a three minute testimony but i ask you does this measure back the statement by canceling the aggies valuation does this measure support that by imposing market valu on on thirty six thousand of those acres not to mention all the already fallow it goes across the county will this help a potential farmer acquire an interest loan like and likewise would help create a successful business plan does this help us pave the road or through our food security the most important thing is if you vote in favor of this measure you cannot freely go around until people that you're a supporter of agriculture in my county because you voted to make  more cost prohibitive to the farmer it means you have given up on ag all it means is that you found a way to identify twenty million dollars in new tax revenue it's the low hanging fruit but any correct anybody can raise taxes it's too hard to provide leadership and toward building a better tax base their culture is the weakest sector and now it's economy that makes it's perceivably easy to target something with the weakest political voice without that  the ones who make these decisions and fail to listen will instead start to see signs signs in the way of dead unproductive fields broken water systems and unbalanced society of have and have not overflowing landfills from the waste of all the packaged food we had to ship here please do not defer this measure put it to rest and kill it once prove once and time on this bill in the past year i was here last march testifying on the same bill and i asked you then to defer it today i'm going to ask you to please vote no on this bill the ag working group has spent one year revising this b f seventy and we submitted our revisions and and it still needs a lot of fixing agricultural lands need to be continued to be appraised at agricultural value not market value of seventy passes we will not be able to produce enough revenue each year to pay our taxes there is also the uncertainty of the eye great changing on us each year are not guaranteed locked in at five dollars and seventy five cents per thousand dollars for more than one year it changes every budget agricultural land should continue to be charged according to the value of the crops or the livestock that it can produce the adoption of market value instead of value will be devastating to what is left of maui county agriculture many farmers and ranchers will be forced to sell their land because they will not be able to afford their real property taxes if this be a seventy passes our children will not be able to enjoy the lifestyle we know i've used value is the law current county code three point four eight point three two zero states that agricultural land value shall be used in determining the value of land switzer which are classified as agriculture and used for agriculture whether such lands are dedicated or not please don't force us to dedicate the current now we can only code is a fair code let's keep it i humbly ask you to please vote no on b f seventy today thank you about i'm sure you have a whole list and i don't want to put you on the spot but you know i know there were egg inspectors in there and you kept talking all of the ag inspector quality ag and specters to go out there and to check on if people are really farming or ranching or love to i would love to see the suggestions maybe we can incorporate that if that's if that's the case yes of course we're millet to all the council members the other question i have is you did talk about just the value valu two thousand and sixteen we might see some income for the county there that would be fair and then what was the any suggestions as to know that the ag working group had some facility and had some margaret stone who was an economic person and do some research and some data she analyzed a lot of data off of the county website and what was the ne result from that data she just showed where it was where it was more expensive and where it was cheaper and where the county could get more income from it and for those suggestions really to the to this committee the various other alternatives aside from what has been listed here and in this revised draft yes some of her findings you very much gerard thompson please and following him will be a comments very much good afternoon chair ok that's been consul my name is annette niles rancher farmer also on the aggregate group at this time i will not and cannot support we have seventy as it is i'm totally into dedication but not of market value and most of all some of the people had already paid their dues dedication many of them are too old to dedicate again also if all of you are concerned about our homeless problem this is just the beginning we will be right behind a this passes you will shut us down and create more of a homeless problem of which many ranchers and farmers have cheap rentals under property now we will be paying market value on the land will put us out some of these people are retired and live the rest of their lives in this homes we did not just come here and buy land our land are handed down from generation to generation so i hope all of you divulge to have seventy can sleep at night in your warm beds having to put these people out of their homes and properties if this bill should pass and then i would like to comment i was i had what was mean that you are not going to tell us what we grow what animal to put on the property when you have no idea what is best for our property just like this pill you have no idea what it's going to do to us so can somebody explain if it got changed or the director has the discretion to tell us that we cannot what we have to grohl what we have to put what animal bill and we gave you guys language and it's not not even in year so please please please destroy this bill and bring up another one hear your comments but let me ask you were your major concern with this bill major concern eight years yes yes my major concern is yet people don't realize they haven't even been looking at their taxes they want to i got  cannot keep my letter and you know you try to calculate the more kids value on our properties ok so your main concern is market value go back to your bills and see what the prices are it's coming up and it is the ok i got i got the picture i just wanted to know where you're being concerned thank you thank you switcher and other questions for the lady ag grow we called everybody to get their opinions we have set already i mean you know what we can't even sleep we go to work we read sometime we barely make the meeting we stay till all hours trying to trying to do this and this is what we get  know i thank you for your dedication and commitment to working with this so i follow up with all that and then my other question is you mention item g and i guess you have concerns in regards to the change of agricultural use and you farmer the county of mali the county of mali because thankfully people have asked the county when they go in for our permit they want to build a swimming pool they want to build a not explaining to them what they have to do on ag lab you know and so we need to stop putting some rules here thank you thank you ok thank you thank you choose to give their crop so we would like the old days the plantation days the tree plantation people to get fish whatever they have some orange still going on but to put a twenty four hundred dollar tax or twenty five dollars twenty five hundred dollars money on mom you would put it people out because some of we've been like this for a long time that's why people from the mainland where want to come here our lifestyle we give we trade with you know we keep this not to lose it it's not going to take when we leave this world against this bill for fear you'll lose our only we can afford to keep it we can afford to maintain it i have seen floods fire wind trees across the wire evasive specie i have saved calves to syrian myself i can continually monitor pheasants on my family property currently environmentally sustainable food production we are working to not only maintain open spaces but also planting needed trees and plants that once forested area of the island we hope to become self sustaining within our home to the state school renewable energy as well as food security and self sufficiency seven years past my family would be able to qualify for the agriculture dedication we do not presently have the required documentation even if we could qualify the requirement that mandates that we receive permission for any crop rotation annoying sustainable farming technique from the director of business in finance at their discretion  protect my family from passing the stewardship of the land and its farm operation to the next generation with the passage of b s seventy the only fiscally responsible action for us to take would be to subdivide the one in developed that is simple as that is the say just going against the values and goals of my family neighborhood community and the state as a whole thank you thank you currently two hundred sixty acre piece of property one hundred sixty cattle one hundred sheep and a thousand chickens as i sat down to read this bill it occurred to me that there's quite a number of points there which probably which are problematic from my perspective i suppose too many for me to work with that this particular three minute you might want to start the clock the it was fairly clear to me that those that had crafted the bill had not done any stakeholder in gauge meant i made a few calls and found out oh there's an agricultural advisory committee and i happen to be friends with and know the people that are on it and sure enough they had made some recommendations and none of them had showed up in the in the bill an observation i think was interesting because i didn't know that there was an advisory committee and there was actually a request for it for a stakeholder engagement it's important when you make these things to sit down with those that are going to be affected excuse me for being the atlantic on this but it's important to understand the effects directly from small in medium sized farmers in order to really be smart about how you're going to do this so beyond that comment i just like to share with you that i believe that there is an overarching demand within our culture in our society island wide state wide community wide that agriculture is a very important issue it's a very important for us to perpetuate agriculture so as a bit of an analogy if we're going to if a group of people are going to nurture something and make it grow you provide a context by which it will be successful yes and i believe from my perspective that so it becomes a rather difficult thing to do and especially if you're in a dynamic system when i'd like to make a decision that yes next month where it's primed to put in sweet potato in a certain area that i have to go into a bureaucratic organization and have them tell me whether that's ok so  thirty s this land as well as some other some of the fourteen hundred louis kahlo were wiped out by western laws that allowed the takeover of streams and why in all of not by the average hawaiian eight six pounds of oil per day one of the why it's most important valuable foods now let's fast forward to two thousand and sixteen ohana has been struggling for eleven years to bring water into our farm for  low e culture and the struggle is still going on to reclaim water resources i ask where was the county of maui for those eleven years when the water case was in progress your voices were near to be found then and it seems some council members perhaps are proposing to levy a death tax now on real farmers like us clearly i am testifying today to oppose this bill why are you designing a bill to kill farming on maui i see this is a bill nothing more than going from farming to table to taxes for county coffers of seventy has many flaws i'm not surprised that it penalizes real farmers when a bill should be clearly written instead to put an end to the false farmers so it is going up as you're going up to the wrong audience are you proposing legislation to tax at the end that it's really productive farmland and not phony real estate when you came up with your plan how many real farmers did each of you sitting here meet with certainly not our game skip to the end of my time is running out if you can't come to our farm perhaps camp should be if you can change this bill and defeat it come to my farm there you be able to set foot in eat clear your mind enjoy one of forty four varieties of poise and then go back to the table and do what is right thank you very much your bill does not support the farmers i'm only going to put us out of business i mean to mention one other thing it took us seven years to earn a profit on this farm seventeen years and i've heard several people speak about how long you know maybe a couple years i might be able to do this just not going to happen farmers spend a lot of money of their own money out of their pocket and it's a long time for comes back thank you  i think that should be reduced in texas too i know everybody ever said of the fire house that's not the be because your home children are there and it shouldn't be taxes the taxes should be taxed at the same rate as another house down the street i don't think so i own and operate the maui mountain coffee farm and i'm also a registered nurse i'm here today to oppose seventy for a spectrum of reasons but i only have time to speak on one b of seventy calls for all dedications to be cancelled and then renewed farmers and ranchers who have already fulfilled forty or fifty years of their dedications face cancellation of these dedications many of these folks are already in their sixties and seventies and cannot sign long term dedication contracts at this point in their lives b of seventy would eliminate the informal dedications that are utilized by many farms and ranches and would replace them with recorded dedications most ranches with multiple owners and coolly on a lands would not be able to utilize this form of dedication system large branches may well be  business older farmers may be forced to sell their lands lands that they have farmed and taken care of for generations worst of all it is we will lose our open spaces and upcountry maui and in other regions of the island these spaces are would be sold to meet the higher tax burden will see more development and loss of our upcountry lifestyles there's nothing wrong with the system we already have we just need inspectors who can tell a farm or ranch when they see one so that we can tax people who are not farming who are not making a profit on their farms not your two hundred twenty five hundred dollar minimum and get those properties to increase their tax revenue stream for us that's all good afternoon good afternoon my name is sidney smith my husband and i own a coffee and the president of the maui coffee association and i'm on the ag working group i'd like to ask the audience which we have a large one today to please stand if you categorically oppose this bill there's a simple way to solve your issues with property owners fraudulently claiming farm status on their excellent properties hire a qualified agone specter to be utilized by all departments i testified for this before and i don't want to sound like a broken record but it's ingle comprehensive farm plan and a qualified inspector is something you all know i've been asking for for years it would be so much more effective much more efficient and were not only save the county money it would avoid ruining our agriculture community with a harmful provisions in view of seventy and maybe finding more efficient ways to govern would be better than raising taxes because that's what b of seventy is it's a huge tax hike on the backs of our working farmers and ranchers in the past you've been presented with information from r p t and it may look like it makes sense we've had our presentations those presentations analyzed by credentialed experts in the past and in every case their information has been flawed or has been misleading  you to verify the information they give you before you make an irreversible decision that ruins the county the ag working group will provide you with irrefutable facts from professionals at the top of their respective fields it is your responsibility to do the right thing by the citizens of now a county preserving open space is a ball of and into every part of maui county code and community plans turning the agriculture community upside down to catch the cheaters is like burning down your house to get rid of the rats you get rid of the rats but you won't have a house anymore no more farms and no more ranches with the closure of age cns and the loss of those jobs now you're going to have a lot more unemployed farm and ranch workers as farms and ranches shut down countywide this will also lead to the loss of hundreds of affordable houses located on ag land when all you needed to do was hire one qualified agone specter thank you thank you i am just overjoyed and like everybody sitting over there i gave away half of my day so that i could be here  i admire every one of you as counsel people i know you're dating paid to be here but you do have the art of listening but somewhere it's getting messed up because we're back here for a third time b f seventy is  zombie every few years that comes out of its concrete crypt and it terrorizes the ranching community and it has new post jewels new pimples and it doesn't look like anything but the ag working group said might be merrily tolerable we all have to do bad and mr chair it's not my place to apologize for people who speak up there but i don't think he's here anymore and i'm sorry i apologize for my outburst telling him to shut up we are a democracy everybody gets heard but you respect the people in charge and  you do command respect this is a terrible room didn't have a conversation and word democracy even king arthur had a round table the people who got to vote have their backs to the people who are trying to give  input and ricky i know you don't think you're king arthur not by a long shot well i'm sure i'll also say that i usually don't prepare my remarks until i get to this room because it depends a lot on who's hear what i want to say sometimes i feel like i have to speak for my and that mary clientele because they're too busy working to show up this looks like my client list right here today and i'm pleased for that and that's because this is an incredibly important bill not to modify not to send back to committee but it's not a vampire it was we'd have the silver bullet ready so it says zombie and i don't know how you kill the walking dead maybe crazy i want this bill to die i understand the importance of it you know the gentleman farmers if you watch ok seriously they get a grip ok so there is some regulatory stuff goes at the inspector there's some really exciting language but i think that like one inspector is not enough i think that you know whatever the allocation is or the appropriation or something they could be introduced where you actually  body of work we can move forward from there so i just want to say you know i'm an office girl full on sort of even know that you want to do a committee and it's working or but you know you've got to get people out to the field you know there's not there's not a mind body committee that's concerns be to be damaging to our farmers and ranchers which we include but not limited to one man telling us what we can raise to g the gross income of twenty five hundred dollars to be able to dedicate land to air culture pretty sure the passage of this bill would just end up spending more tax money origin all thought behind this bill was to catch cheaters to take advantage of informal i like the idea of proverbially someone who knows and understands the true meaning of agriculture inspectors who will not be afraid to make the right decision create a negative impact on all farmers ranchers and local food source even tourism we should continue the committee meeting members how's everybody go on i got this bill late so i don't know much about the bill have an hour somebody called me about twelve to tell me about this hand written testimony so i'll try to read my own writing very concerned about this bill my name is jim  i'm voting or testifying against this bill seventy because it puts a lot of burden on the struggling small farmer and rancher they face hardships every day besides droughts  cost of you know feed vet bills it just goes up and up and it never stops for a small farmer and rancher not to mention to foreign competition we have no more sugar no more pineapple is just another this bill seems to  just another nail in the coffin for the farmer and belly it's not fair to penalize these farmers or ranchers who dedicate their lives in their family to the land and agricultural so it's mainly mom and pop businesses that you're putting out of business it's just said doesn't make sense to me let me give you a couple examples that i know about personally my mother my father my mother in law they they harvest avocados and that's what they do for a living on their land they're eighty five and eighty nine years old and i don't know if you've ever seen an eighty nine year old man on top of the extension ladder with an avocado picker but that's the only way they can make money now and they drive down and they sell the to ever they can so i mean i just don't know enough about this bill is say what's going to happen i know that you just keep putting hardships of people and it just doesn't make sense if you need more money to do that the way that they say the german farmer go out and check their way and see if they have grass and you know we just try but another one one other thing i saw really i'm sorry about this is that the past year i think will be the last year for the christmas tree farm a country that's been there for years and years and years because they can't compete anymore and they just they can't compete with the trees coming in from the mainland and all it takes to grow a dam christmas tree excuse me do not pass this bill are you know i feel such a shame of our elected officials i'm looking at they're all friends of mine that a committee for the last year or two years or three years that listens have done all your work for you and you good afternoon chair couns my family's i'm sorry my brother in our working my brother and i are are in our thirty's and have been working on our family ranch with my father since for me kids writing has been in my family's band for generations and it's all about we know we profession is professional land surveyor and i've been doing it for forty years now liason in three states i have firsthand experience as far as you know owning and operating a ranch and it's tough work every single dollar day earn comes from sweat you just don't compute just like that you can just pass a bill just like that and collect the money we cannot we have to go out there and work like  with and these people work instead of taking we need to give these people taxing the people in a community is simply wrong it's not helping  community is not helping the community and the needs of this colony as a whole the upcountry we need to know what's happening with the money to if if if the bill goes if if you're going to tax us more all this happens where's the money going to go upcountry been neglected our water roads you name it we've had it but yet if you look at the ag ag land is up country out country say let's see what you know forgot to copy and say oh there's there's problems i want to look for i want to look for solutions first i would say if you look at money the first thing we need to do is get serious the serious part is  look at the different departments in this county we need to audit every single one and we need to get checks and balances shortly after and once the people understand that our money is getting well spent and in the right places not to waste it i think i think you have more we appreciate that our money's getting put to good use not use that is flying around so with not false agriculture you can see one of the things that i when i met with some of the county officials is basically this look at the look look at the farmers when they come in and asking for something for help compliance with the guidelines for eggs properties and for the past twenty seven years it's been a labor of love and economically we would not be able to supporters cells on the farming venture alone this is a second job for my husband and myself and unfortunately we couldn't afford to own more than two acres so i don't feel i need to apologize for being a small farm or being considered a gentleman farmer i am shocked and angered that this bill is being presented as i find it a direct insult to maori farmers and ranchers and went to see it as a path as passing a death blow to agriculture in maui i find it ironic that although we hear about the importance and says diversifying now is a kind of me this bill would have the opposite outcome we grow fruit vegetables in addition to award winning coffee which is sold national aids our website where you see up country farmers markets and as an outlet for  catch cheaters or those sort of exit properties but are not engaged and activities as prescribed by the law then i would say look tears as for proper enforcement of rules and regulations already in place and not by creating new legislation that would be detrimental to maui farmers dedication of a glance would not be feasible for us since we are reaching retirement age farming venture just stay calm and farm on motto which usually sustains me is not appropriate in this case we are mad as hell and don't want to take  we hope that the council will do the right thing and kill those still today and i also want to say that i find it especially troubles that the many hours over the last year have been ignored and does not bode well for future land market value at sixty eight million dollars combine involved it was built in the sixty's and one compost built in the seventy's that is valued at two hundred sixty five thousand dollars saw when these people came out and for a record i'm sandwich i guess aloha my name is patty patton i'm testifying for myself i'm vice president of the cooler community association and i also serve as moderator of the egg working group vegetables commercially which we sell it farmers market and to value added producers we have customers all over molly i opposed seventy the egg working group was formed to provide the council with input from the egg community and last march was asked to make recommendations regarding the have seventy we spent a lot of time learning how ag use value assessment and dedication work in other parts of the united states the county had not done their homework on how this bill would affect ag land here so we did our own analysis council members have all received their results most recently in testimony last december unfortunately the latest version of b seventy does not reflect the egg working groups most important recommendations it is crucial to continue to value egg land at its egg use value which is the value the land can produce  the value of the crop or cattle the land can produce is significantly different than what happens with market values of residential real estate ranchers and farmers will lose money if land is valued at market value please refer to the analysis from dr margaret stump which shows changing to market value would not assure additional income for the county and her expert testimony that this was the cause a loss of agricultural land we must up ate the egg land we must hire qualified egg knowledgeable inspectors to make sure the egg used value and assessments and tax rates are fairly applied to properties that are currently used for ag and we must have a dedication law that does what it is meant to do which is incentive farmers to keep their land in active agriculture the way b f seven years written it will in sent land owners to get out of add and sell their land we have seventy has an income requirement timeframes are too long and the values are based on market value i know the council and our laws support agriculture but b s seventy does not please support my county farmers ranchers an  hearing you correctly you want the values of the yes we do we think that's fair they're fifty years old and we had cathy king come who's with the national agricultural statistic service and explain to us the work that she does she's already paid to do this which is keep track of egg land values in hawaii she's our hawaii person and she had she can give you the whole list of what crops are worth per acre and molly so that's information that our tax people could be using right now to update the values and if we used we did some analysis using her data and sort of aggregate all the crops to diversify crops together and we estimated that you'd get at least one point two million dollars more per year if we did this and i know that was something that you had asked us to look for should be fairly simple if somebody is already on it that's what we think ok thank you very much  members in a public forum such as this that i know the mention one thing was instead of using the market value we could increase the old ag values which was you know ha every state does it to a different degree and by a slightly different methodology whatever is most appropriate so it's something that i think our county should really be looking at but we just did and now a simple analysis on if we took just as the rate of inflation hundred sixty five and apply that and believe it or not that comes out to about one point two million dollars additional as well we all so look at the method that's used on a lot who and we look at the method that's used on the big island so that data i know it's i appreciate that you guys have a lot to read we did said and dr stomps analysis to every council person in december before our december meeting so all that data is in there and in a table in the infrastructure of these leases only to have them cancelled because they got to dedicate if you already dedicated you shouldn't have to be forced to rededicate the advisory group should be paid  director should not be the almighty have only one god everything in the air seventy is the discretion of the director if this bill is to catch big farmers we have a lot of them that don't want to farm we need to pay market i want i think the main thing is give you guys examples i think that is on everybody's seen this be at all like if they don't like it let me give you the examples i listen small piece normal people twenty five acres my tax two hundred  big parcel about thirty five hundred acres egg value is over three thirty million my tax now is five hundred two t n case my taxes going up to thirty four thousand five hundred i pay  plug these numbers into every piece i have and everyone the income from the property will be exceeded five six hundred times over but a tax so this is the bad thing if we can go to egg values running between seven and ten bucks a foot but figured out on one mile of fence in five thousand two hundred eighty feet as you initially investment no egg values i think ten years if you dedicate it protects me as the farmer i know you not can sell the lot of leases and like alan kaufman mentioned all the leases the lease see pays the tax at the egg value when you take it to market i got a pita i cannot afford to pay that and and i feel if you move in that my need percent nobody can dedicate for twenty years if you have to go with that occasion as a pool like mr vick the renos bill before which i really like ninety percent of ag value in ten years is has to be done to for the for the dedication farm planet and to you know the one person in charge saying yes or no what do you take on that when you have so you know a group that's going to be put together we're supposed to be all egg experts who will be reviewing i have cause of horses in them the only thing the same grass just in the same water why when the horse poops don't it cause peise bolts beads looked at me puzzled he said i don't know not the same it's different all over the police and i just going reiterate what everybody's been saying you know we work like hell on this damn thing and we sent th bad thing about this whole bill you like like bobby said we need to get you guys to find out what the heck but i'm i'm all in favor honestly dedication might be the tool to to to take away a lot of these bacon lands that guys just come here and buy in don't do nothing w zero unfortunately a lot of guys fight it in everything but you know i started thinking about it if i live in my house take a bath in my house watch t v in my house should be the same as you watch in your house in mike in his house so i really need to muzzle on problem with the home side as long as it's fair to everybody and you're not taking on huge deal it's like i was going mention to  lease dedication i'll give you ten years you fix it up or give you fifty dollars a month after five years somebody comes in horse on icehouse on a buy it at house there goes mr white and he's gone and that's what happened why i asked the chair about on an existing leases because we already put in the infrastructure like you put in their house and lot of leases now which is bad and i mention this to the  have cancellation clauses if these leases are on it this should be considered the same upon them dedication where they can get income from on the you will on pins and needles with a lot of land owners can tell you that because i lease ninety percent of the land that i support you on that web site i don't support market value so you support dedication on ag values values and bring the damn thing up jesus like bobby said one point two paddick he said well we've taken it out of egg so when i asked him i said what do you want on my place without asking me permission he said we don't have to we can just go i said the police need a search warrant but the taxman come in you seventy five thousand gallon tank that distributes from there to the neighborhood of about thirty seven people and we take care of the maintenance costs to make sure that we're distributed ok that's one huge the other thing that i would like to comment on is that regarding cope i believe this is where year my or the water system empties old on there is a cannot be impaired by any subsequent survey made by the government for its own purposes so i'm not here to try and see that you know my lands back or anything like that i mean with that  keogh who was an illegal was given the award and sometimes i think you like to be included in your meetings regarding water systems if you have any the water come out of people but these are this is the book and all the signatures all the leaves are all in here if you agree if you agree with the king he will sign on this attention is brought by the council members or or the committees that are granting the permits so sometimes i wonder about that and there is a thing called there to ration of r appropriate regarding agricultural lands and we have saved many we appreciate your thoughts but the specific item is not for discussion this afternoon i'm sorry sir i don't have a hole in this year and i took my hearing aid for repairs today marrying a very hard time hearing what you're saying to me i'm saying that this is not specific but i realize that i realize that but the water that these people are paying for comes from there  and again when we have a specific issue regarding those waters mistily where i get more than happy to receive additional comments from you i understand where you go with it is true but i still believe this is a very specific and other areas would be without this tax break that we haven't yet or than a third generation farmer o bill because agriculture is what a country is about and you're going to kill the goose that lays the golden age if this bill passes thank you i'm marjorie bone are i am never a gentleman farmer i wasn't always a bird but i don't pay egg taxes i don't pay eggs water i'm paying for the privilege of living the way that i want to live i probably give away well in excess of that twenty five hundred dollars worth of products a year i donate all over the place i freely give to friends acquaintances and i do a lot of growing for the maui school garden network where we're trying to teach children that all your food doesn't have to come out of the mats and container there was a time i was a real farmer not long ago and i'm really glad that i don't have to anymore we had thirty six acres outside of annapolis maryland and the local farmers thought we were nuts for having paid three thousand dollars an acre because you couldn't make money paying that kind of money for land i fatten cattle i raised my own feed and no matter what my husband says the only thing he did was drove a tractor on occasion i grew a lot of roe crops of berries everything else and he did have bees but now i don't have to go out in the rain and the heat i don't have to weed when it's ugly out i don't have to go dig holes when i am aching so hard that i can't move being a good hour is as tough a thing as there is to do and the idea of trying to find a way to balance these taxes really shouldn't even be a question this is a bill that just should die if things need to be rebalanced start from someplace that makes sense that doesn't put this kind of own us on top of a farmer who's already trying to decide what their farm plans as and what their land says i thought i was growing all kinds of wonderful things and discovered that my soils were so sandy that strawberries were the best crop i could put and it's just not something someone else can tell you and even if it's been farmed unfortunately that had been a tobacco farm just because something was there doesn't mean it still does rainfall changes climatic change especially now how do you ask a farmer to plan on what they're doing when this year they got half the rainfall they got last year i now don't water anything i can't eat which means i've got a lot of lovely tropical plants for anybody that wants to come dig them because i'm not wasting the water on them so sorry for taking up your time this just sounds like something that should just plain die any questions for the levy on the testimony members thank you so much for your comments bill bernard to be followed by patsy gets a lot of chair by background i grew up in honolulu you know you all know me is as working in conservation trying to protect so much of the special places here and it's because i grew up in honolulu you know when i was small kid do you know there was still there was no populate you know want maui to come in and the way to approach things like that is to support the things that keep me in maui when i was a kid we used to have lots of family farms farm truck would come down our mom every couple times so we go out buy fruits veggies and stuff you know we don't see those things anymore we have farmer's markets fortunately but as we all know from reading the papers we produce about fifteen me twenty percent of what we're soon here and that number is just been dropping and dropping we're seeing one farm after another go out we've lost the largest remaining agricultural single entity here and so how do we get around that now is there a problem with with gentleman farms i live in cooler two hundred as mark said we don't take a taxes  can't get enough eggs water but the the there are plenty of folks there i know at least some of them are getting the farm rates and they're not doing farming on the other hand i do i take show up on our taxes there's no place to put that down so what this bill does is is trying to address that very real problem by using an atomic bomb which is going to be hitting the small farmers  hard these people work fourteen hours a day there were conception days a week say oh i get to do just fill out some more paperwork more paperwork shows your taxes to all of this and you know it's an exhausting life and when i work with all these kids through the farm union through the other farmers groups here and see their enthusiasm that youth that want to do it they can afford land maybe they can lease but of course if they lose their lease there goes everything they put into it no equity and so i encourage you not to delay this bill i encourage you to kill it and start over with your solution is been suggested several times hire a couple of good qualified agricultural t i pay are two hundred fifty dollars a year to supply food for the our kitchen i see i can show are doing anyway telling me thank you have i guess a gentleman farm it's about a quarter of an acre of my two acres that's the ag ray i came to speak against a bill that i was kind of threw that out the window because of your comments in the beginning mr okama you take this very personal and i was really surprised for you to keep calling what is a tax rate a subsidy it's a tax rate it's not a subsidy it's a tax rate it's just like any other thing that the government assigns that's what it is it's tax rate and the other thing that you said that i was surprised was you said you said that it's been fourteen years that this is been on the plate is that right if it was that long i mean i can be talking about it if i were you that's a long time for it to not result i be a little embarrassed and so about seven years ago i got that form so we have mixed tax case on our property i got that form and i spent some money in and filled it out and had drawn up and took it in and waited and waited and i waited and finally i called and they said all we haven't decided and if you get to keep going so then i called and then i called and so then i finally made an appointment with the man whose name i forget was on the bottom of the form of the letter and i went in and saw him he said oh i'm here you get tech you get to keep it we send out like ten thousand letters and we didn't expect the response and so we don't have enough staff to cover it so the man who spoke before me i just i don't get it i just don't get it what you're trying to do is raise funds which is your job you know this when you make all those tax decisions and when rules and stuff but why don't you just hire those people and go out we all know everyone in here knows someone who is on a two million dollar house that's a gentleman farm and they're not farming so why aren't you doing that thank you for the course we're going to pick it up in my you know that was the question i'm sorry i can answer why aren't you doing that as opposed to making a tax law that's affecting all of these people here who don't have really the money to do it why aren't you doing that just hiring the staff to find the people who are cheating on this cheating so why aren't you doing that where you direct in the borough property to hire the people to go find those people we  looking at this as one of the additional tools it's been seven years and that's a long time for that letter that was out that seven years you could have been collecting millions of dollars of taxes off shooter thank you thank you for your oh good afternoon almost evening council members and chairman comma my name is mark to lend my husband and i own a small farm roland where we go coffee but man is citrus and raise chickens chickens  almost a year ago on march ninth twenty i testified before this committee urging you to defer b f seventy and seek input from the agricultural community regarding concerning the effect this bill would have upon their farms and livelihood at that time the egg working group was firmly asked by the chair to review the bill and make specific recommendations which they did but after many many hours of work and research by the egg working group here we are again talking about the exact same seventy bill that was presented almost a year ago no changes have been made to this bill despite the research and recommendation submitted by the ag working group why was the ag working group asked to review this bill if you were just going to ignore every one of their recommendations this bill would be devastating to small farmers and ranchers and now i countered the agast value is not a subsidy for farmers rather it is used to protect and preserve eggplant from the ever rising market valuation and to limit urban prawle preserving egg land is called for in section one thousand of them out i can a code and the maui island planned and not only adds to the quality of life in maui county but also allows farmers and ranchers to provide much needed local food for our community even if a farmer elects to dedicate their land to ag under b f seventy the discounts are not enough to come close to the use rates that are currently applied the passage of this bill will lead to many farms and ranches being sold as we will just not be able to afford continue to continue farming and mowing county the increase in property taxes from the passage passage of this bill will affect not only agricultural land owners but also those who lease agone land and those who work on ag land when the farms and ranches have to be sold and there will be very little land on which to work or lease farms and ranchers are some of the hardest working people i know we work seven days a week three hundred sixty five days a year to make a living and to provide food from our county the passage of b f seventy would destroy our farms and livelihood the layoffs of eight hundred workers from a cns will be nothing compared to the number of farmers and ranchers who will be unemployed and no longer able to make a living if b f seventy  passed this is an election year the voters of maui county are watching please do the right thing and oppose b f seventy please save every culture in my county  hello my name is jack that i live on crater road up rate a small fireman partnership with my wife and son i am here testify because they do not like the way that we have seventy ordinances being forced upon farmers without proper discussion by the council told today i believe it is being presented as a way to remedy the disparity between the valuation of agricultural land and other properties in the county there are important reasons for the disparities in the need to continue first there are no farmers in existence who agree with market value is a method of taxing anglais forty nine other states use a value only hawaii as portions of the state using market value agriculture is in a steep decline in hawaii it is unfair to as farmers to pay more than the land can assistance there are less police streetlights stop plates sidewalks sewers and parks and agricultural areas why make agricultural subsidize rest the county third having the finance director as surrogate say what is good or bad agriculture is ridiculous what does the finance department know about agriculture other than it costs them money ten years ago the finance director would have told maui pineapple to grow pineapple five years ago the finance director would have best used why does the county get to decide what is best for it get rid of the long term dedication requirements they will kill egret culture faster than anything else in the bill who knows what will happen in twenty years if my son gives up on agriculture and we have committed to twenty years what happens to low entering commitment for a decent break based totally on a negative non agricultural value is arbitrary and slams real farmers do i get any credit for the ten plus years already committed fifth combine the reporting farmer farmer makes for the county into one form manually what is being pretty proposed almost duplicate requirements for ag water the county please simplify the reporting requirements six the farmers bureau represents a large area of the county segre culture but they are a tiny minority of farmers form a committee of anyone the mayor points to oversee the egg or culture but the council confirm or deny them but the new committee decides if a parcel is produced enough agriculture not some arbitrary dollar value seven given the finance director pressured permission to ask for more information they want is way too broad if more is needed have them ask the council about revising reporting requirements eighth the real property tax assessors have been working hard at identify non performing egg properties keep them going eventually they will find everyone who  farmers don't have to be taxed i mean there's all this money sitting there from the tourist industry and these people are ripping this county off would not be to fair share of taxes and i don't know why does cons agricultural land and they're not doing any agriculture land you know dig a swimming pools and everything else i mean give these people a brick you know it's a shame that a county are here today to talk they say a picture they say a picture is worth a thousand words just a few hours ago just pick a few hours ago i'm barbara fernandez from why of cou cooler and  council members we certainly are appreciating what you folks are doing i have a personal story that i want to share a little bit about this is that we're three generations of farming on the land started with cattle and sudden i got in and bill i mean i didn't get our ag bill i got a regular bill so i called the tax guy this is a few years ago and i said hey you know what's up this is just a short time and he says well b realize that but you you know have this bill and i said it he says it's going to be now and then he says to me oh just take a goat on the then you can get your ag back again of course we appealed it and they realized what was going on so we got it back so my point is is that we really need a qualified tax inspector that would be  that would be a real plus and finally ricky and council members you know we barely get by whether were ranching or whether we're farmers they always say that fighting is a step ahead of the devil and sometimes that's true but you folks you know our families you know who we are i see all my neighbors here you know we are getting old but we need to have the young people you know get back in and one of do agen and ranching we never complain and we all go by the rules for generations again where the cheaters just seem to get away with it all the time so you'll always find a rancher or a farmer even on christmas day working why these other folks with they're calling them cheaters are sitting in their halls and watching their four trees growing and their goats staked out which probably have named the goat ag and so please don't defer this bill you know nothing ready let's just kill this bill because has just been going on too time to too long you folks will probably be here for dinner so enjoy the hollow thank you  and i emailed each of you i hope you have gotten it i know two people have responded but basically the difference between what i testified last year was to defer since you are talking about getting an ag working group involved in this year i'm go suggest you kill it basically why do away with ag use rates there used by forty nine other states and part of secondly consider the ag working group's recommendations for inspecting with proper qualified assessors and thirdly to repeat this kill the bill i want to do this in a short timeframe and where we should your testimony any questions for the gentleman members every now and thank you mr wilson chairman of honorable council members thanks for hearing our testimony today and testifying on the behalf of the hawaii farmers united which is a stake group of farmers ranchers fishermen gardeners food generally people who love eating we have over a thousand members statewide now five hundred of them are hosted here in maui county just about five hundred h if you strongly but respect opposes b f seventy its current form as it will make it more difficult for local farmers and agriculturalists to survive pettitt of a globalized economy i'm just quote from this because i'm representing the whole group so i get to read it  ranchers not be taxed out of business we respectfully request that you not revaluate the value of your culture lancet market rate but it is at the value of what they can produce in this day as agriculture parcels we understand reevaluat agriculture value of property within the egg district has not been done in over fifty years we respectfully also point to the county coach chapter nineteen point three zero a zero point one zero one zero part b which states the purpose  intent of the local law regulating the ag district is to mitigate rising property values of farm lands to make agriculture use more economically feasible and here's an aside i actually called my mom right before this meeting just to remind myself of what happened  our family farm and as the value of the lands rose and the taxes went up became harder and harder for us to compete with mainland imports eventually taxing us out of business and we bankrupt didn't she move to the mainland and i don't have my own farm anymore we collectively feel as the farmers union the taxing producers at market rates is diametrically opposed to that local law county coach after nineteen the one i quoted from  articulated in my county code we do strongly support dedication of agricultural lands for farming and ranching as that's what the spirit of our state constitution and land use laws intend the ag district to be used for we do support  residential portions of agriculture pro parcels to be taxed at market rates as we understand county needs revenue to serve the citizens we support the concept of ag land use dedication for periods of ten years or less we cannot support the twenty year dedication spans many of maui counties landowners in the ag district will no longer be around then after twenty years they're getting old we support enforcement of current land use ordinances and inspections by qualified farm inspectors and auditors moreover we support a grace period to be determined in order for farmers to get their affairs in order should these qualified farm inspectors and auditors start to perform those types of duties on time it's up oh i have another fifteen seconds ok i'll conclude by saying in order for agriculture district to create regional food systems and lasting food security farmers need your support by making sure is owning ordinance or forest with the within the district equally and without prejudice i'm sure it's doable and with our current one our current zoning ordinances are enforced we'll have more tax dollars in county coffers and more farmers in maui county thank you very much hi i my name is thank you all for being here all of you for taking responsibility for the future of our county  i grew up think he had and i went away to college and i came back with an intention of working the land and i'm so grateful to live on my hand i have families land right up the income all the cool the area public and we're working towards a subsistence homestead and it's something that we care very deeply about and so seeing this bill i wanted to understand you know why are we putting through this bill that's going to make it so unfeasible for the my head my family to live there and still get me off the land too and i was feeling a little bit like i shouldn't talk because i don't own the land but it does affect me and it affects the land that i live on so i saw this as a strategy they are using to increase revenues on the island and to me that points to a bigger issue which is where is our money going and why do you need so much money here this bill draws a lot of money which is great but it must mean that the money in our county is leaving our county it's not staying here and the only solution that i see and i believe in is seen ability within our our county and for us to be able to provide for ourselves so we can here grow all of our food all year round and that's something that we're working on on the land of country and we're working towards generating our own energy with the sun the wind the hydroelectric capacities that we have here is abundant with these capacities but the only way to do this is by empowering our farmers and directing our egland responsibly so i feel that if seventy actively d powers are farmers and the ag land that we have here and the open spaces and those who are fundamental to maui county's economic sustainability and sustainability of the so i with my family in public we work to practice subsistence living and sustainability on our land to see how it's possible small scale just within ourselves in order to see how it could grow potentially to the county level and even further it would be beautiful to see but we need that support from our council members to make this feasible and i feel that the of seventy will make our individual effort at bettering are island systemic issues ironically financially unfeasible think you think you question for the levy on her testimony we thank you for being here this evening members we basically have done half of our requirements so you can you can choose you i guess my question would be if you are intending to go through all of the testimony you would then recess for another meeting to your case for a discussion that is ok but i want everybody who needs chooses to give testimony to be able to present it to myspace so i think i am very comfortable with this going on to six without a break and then maybe after that if we just can't handle it and i'm willing to do the very i'm so glad you continue you decided to continue i had to bring my recruits with me that's fine  farm and we i was here before this body last year when b f seventy was we had just taken over my mom's egg farm and we're so excited to say that we made our one year anniversary and we're you know last year i told you we were planning on going all and certainly how true that we have increased our production for going down this big huge rabbit hole we love it for the kids we've added to full time positions with plans to continue to grow our drafted will have a very negative impact on our plans and other agricultural operations on mali at a time when there's such a big question of art about what's happening with h cns six hundred related jobs are being really scary time to be moving forward with something like this this is definitely an anti egg bill i've been a landowner's rep trying to place farmers on my hand as well as being a farmer trying to lease if seventy will greatly reduce the availability of of land for farmers very few of them and owners will dedicate their land for the time period the five ten fifteen twenty they're just not go do it to give you a point of reference where we have our farm it's been a month to month handshake deal for seven years before they felt comfortable enough to give us a multi year lease and even that can be cancelable within six months notice the current exemption program works we need to invest and dedicate money to have inspectors to validate the real farms and make adjustments on the properties that are farming i'm confident that this program would quickly and very easily pay for itself and i would even incentivise landowners to look for other farmers i agree one hundred percent with the intent of it i think that people need to be paying their real their program their share their property taxes and then one big point in there is that just because a property has a condo regime doesn't mean that it should automatically be disqualified our property you carol you're already ok sorry our property is condo fifteen acres there's no house on the property we farm the whole thing that's a really specific thing that needs to be visited if this moves forward you know we're investing in i we feel very strongly about it it's important for our kids for what's happening on maui we're putting our money where our mouth is and we're definitely going all  good afternoon chair and i'll come in members of the council my name is mean and i will be testifying on behalf of alexander baldwin and a small member company after over one hundred forty years of continu sugar production our world changed on january sixth while we all knew there was uncertainty associated with our green it became a reality overnight in the seemly the way we view  seventy has changed while in production of consecutive plantings of crops with limited periods a fellow these conditions were taken for granted today it is no more the definition of substantial and continuous agricultural use and the time for conversion to an alternative use is of concern in twenty ten and be designated twenty seven thousand acres of cns important agricultural land se these lands in other words it can be viewed as a super dedication to eg well there is a large uncertainty of what is to become of our lands we have a vision and the vision is eg we see biofuel crops could provide electricity or transportation fuel to support the states we normal energy goals irrigated pastors for local ranchers food crops and an evaluation of crops new to hawaii and an agricultural park open abounded a friend told me a story of how a display sugar worker provided land by the plantation grew a beautiful crop of green onions but he could not market his one acre of those lands and we looked at ginger and dry land taro and even then marketing was difficult so we know we have to be very careful we're working aggressively with other farm department of agriculture is willing to work with naz to provide a reference valuation document to the county on a timely basis unusable on suitable land for agriculture use former section three point four  for being here in the bill state county farm bureau to be the main committee in selecting members and you know vetting through this process of the agriculture dedication and any other questions for the gentleman every man thank you very much for your kids once when mccoury to be followed by william spencer eat i'm also a builder not a representative on the molokai lanai the soil and waters conservation district has as one of its sustainability fundamentals is to produce the food needed for the island from the island i think everyone knows that pineapple once was the crop on one failed so we are looking at working together with the louis community on how we can get farmers on to the land and working towards additional leases on our land we currently have six weeks notice and we're working on for more but these are on a very large lot this is  sixteen thousand acre lot so as we start looking at us and realizing that these lots are not separate lots of record and we start reading how do we encompass the majority of the acreage as the owner but how do we still at the same time give the leases to people so they have a certainty and that they could dedicate the land to what they want to grow on it and when they want to grow on it grow  work confused we cannot see clearly the way that we can explain to the lease holders are potentially sellers what this bill will mean to them so we're at the beginning of everything  everyone i've heard here is been here for generations and we're not we're trying to get that moving forward and what we can see from the bill is that the difference and what is currently paid for real property taxes and what they would pay if this bill is passed is substantial we're not sure that we can get farmers to take the risk and go in and pay that difference and have a successful farm or even to get them to start so we would ask each of you take time to provide further clarity into this bill whether you start over or you thank you for your presence and your comments william spencer to be followed by harriet again that tiny gucci mr carrol which should bring this meeting back to order to we still have a good amount of people wishing to share testimony so we can are welcome just for chairman law members my name is william spence i am speaking on my own behalf this evening but i thought i got here early enough to sign up the closer to the front but a very important subject i see the need to re evaluate some people's dedications i one time had spent some time with chair y and looked at some real property tax assessments and stuff and and i see there's a great disparity in some of the assessments i look at this bill however and you know i poke around on that website too i know there are properties i know of properties that are getting discounts that should not and so there needs to be a fairer way i recognize that feed their families you know for icebox they're not nobody's making money on this but it is genuine agriculture i think that something this bill should really look at and recognize as a valuable part of our  agricultural activity in this county specific to the bill i can't tell you a whole lot about agriculture there's plenty of people here who know lots more about it than i do but what i can tell you about is regulation and committees and what happens when you create laws that start regulating certain activities and you know being director we have a committees it gets very cumbersome and i guarantee if we start regulating this kind of activity and you've heard lots of testimony about the flexibility to grow different things and whatnot we're going to leave people behind there are small property owners i'm very concerned they're going to the taxes are not going to they're not going to be able to dedicate the taxes are going to force them to sell i think an unintended consequence of this bill is going to be we're going to see more ag divisions because families will have to sell so with that mr chairman some things i think need to be made simpler if we support you know that additional regulation just to catch the cheaters the cheaters will always be there the real farmers they need the support to get out they should have the flexibility support everything that the agricultural work group has forward to to you and i think as citizens of a community you should really take those issues that they've presented into consideration i'd like to share a little bit of personal information because i think this is very critical to your deliberations my father came from okinawa when he was fifteen years old he came to la heino worked in the sugar plantations there and then came and worked for eight c n n and he talked about there was a gentleman said that he worked for twenty five dollars i mean twenty five cents a day my dad talked about working for fifty cents a day he worked hard with my brother smyth six brothers my sister and i we work to farm we didn't have saturdays or sundays off ok we worked on the farm he was able then to purchase two eight kurz initially and then through all of our hard work he was eventually able to purchase more property if this should pass i don't know what's going to happen today again the farms because we may have to sell or somehow make do but there are two basic questions that i would like to have answered and you don't have to answer it right is if this is a state mandate to maintain agricultural law or agricultural properties then why is this man proposed the second there was an example presented on the sli about the disparity of his two properties i mean if that's the case why isn't that taken care of right away don't you have the policy and laws in place that you could take care of it so i don't quite understand you know there was examples in terms of i know you there's disparities but you have all of the tools in place to correct as disparities so again in conclusion i'd like to voice my position and a person be of seventy and really try to maintain the agricultural status of call up our family has been out there for over eighty years farming upper floor cool now we're on the l a wrote so i can i urge you to defeat this bill in that it was mentioned there is a bill council member victory no i have not seen a but everyone seems to think that that's an appropriate point so maybe that's a consideration thank you very time up here testifying and providing language for this b of seventy having said all six things the council has been supportive of the concerns we've brought forward and voted this bill down today to talk about maybe unintended consequences that this bill presents and i was prompted to come before you because this morning i attended he could see by my butts and r p meeting is going to do is take us senior citizens and make us homeless he says broke my heart you know so he says another unintended consequence of just life and difficulties he says that he has a house on his ag lot and he has adjacent property and that adjacent property he said for years that you could tell how long he said he came before the council when wayne ishi key was a council member to talk about water and agriculture and he says till this day i still do not have a water meter for that second lot so the county would like him to do eg you know agriculture but he says he has no water unless it he hauls it in so the difficulties of that but i do want to say that this might be some unintended consequences that i want you to maybe feel for people like south of the villa and other senior citizens who may be affected by this too thank you t despite your taxes for your property and that it was the cronies way of ensuring that you do not get taxed out of your home under home owners you have that annual go over that amount regarding your property taxes so please if you have a concern of the current amount and take the department then division and enquire about the circuit breaker program it is incurring existence for all homeowner property taxpayers next is jeffrey parker if you're here followed by jane grover diversified ag project on a state leased land been a member of the farm bureau for twenty five years i too think that the abusers of the ag use value system should be stopped but this bill will harm struggling small farmers and likely put many out of business as written it is a destructive bill b of seventy is in direct conflict with numerous goals and objectives of the general plan the maui island plan the county wide policy plan and the state constitution i have included a list of some of those objectives and goals at the end of my longer testimony but just two quick examples under objective number two of the county wide policy plan you are directed to support ordinances programs and policies they keep agricultural land and water available and affordable to farmers and under provision if you are to continue to support tax incentives for ongoing agricultural activities under the policy section in the maui general plan you were directed to provide incentives to help the small farmer maintain a viable farm operation and he continued to support tax incentives for ongoing agricultural activities now the dedication process it doesn't really work for me i'm getting old my property is my only asset that i have if i should get sick or need to go to assisted care living i need the equity in my property to be liquid i don't think it helps farmers at all but if you're going to have it it should be redone and made more equitable the those percentages are misleading and when you do the math you're skyrocketing i've already done the math for my own situation now there to me the real and meaningful dedication is the dedication i have shown by keeping my property an income producing agriculture since one thousand nine hundred seventy six through thick and thin never building rental units or spec houses or attempting subdivision and without the benefit of any county services we have no county water no county sewage no the police and fire can't get to the property and it doesn't make sense to texas at the same rate as those that are putting a maximum load on county services now i did come down here before and point out what i think is a real problem with the state leases in this bill and you seemed interested in took notes but nothing is changed is still in the bill can i keep going for just a second it's kind of important just if you can record up i swear i can use so the state leases its state land you're not allowed to build a house or develop it in any way or run commerce activities and it's already in agriculture and you can't change it i don't see why why our taxes should go up for the state where we were  not farmers they won't do anything to stop general farmers so finally i want to add it is the obligation of this budget committee under my view to commission a cost benefit study to discover the cost of implementing and enforcing this new proposed regime and compare those costs to the plan of other alternatives such as training and hiring skilled ag and specters to pass b f seventy without such a study first i think would be irresponsible thank you thank you any questions for the gentleman testimony i have nine copies only of the longer testimony can i give them to the clerk and sure thank you and those of you who get the mountain news will have read about my opinions on things in the viewpoint last thursday since humans first landed here in hawaii agriculture has been a central part of our life and it's embodied in our state constitution  quote the state shall conserve and protect agricultural lands promote diversified agriculture increase agricultural self sufficiency and assure the availability agriculturally suitable lands as mr parker pointed out this current bill contravenes a lot of that and that's got a lot of us concerned we really need to see retention of use about you and abandoning the idea of moving to market value it's going to have  negative impact on a lot of us and particularly our bottom line i really can't support the bill as it's currently written on the part of the ag working group we provided you a lot of alternatives and hopefully you'll take notice some of those hopefully all of them be seventy states that bona fide people can avoid some of the pain of the change to the market value assessment by dedication only the twenty year dedication at ninety eight percent reduction of market value will get us close to what we currently pay in but we would have to farm until we're eighty i just hit sixty so we would have to farm until we're eighty the demography of a lot of farmers on maui lanai and molokai is such that we're all in the same boat we're getting a little older and dedicating for twenty years could be a problem additionally b f seventy does away with the option to dedicate one kind of minimize property and my mother recently condominium ised our farm so that all the kids would have a little bit of her estate and she did that rather than the subdivision which is more expensive and time consuming but now even if we could dedicate or even that we're not allowed to dedicate with the kind of minimisation of our property nothing has changed we're still growing food for people we haven't built anything different we really need to get people out there who have the eyes to see all this and i think you need to remove that kind of immunization thing so in the thirty seconds it's left you have a really simple solution for you we've given it to you  before i really like the idea of preserving ag land making agriculture available for our young and upcoming farmers to people on sustainable agriculture they're not have a chance to farm the update the ag values people already said they're fifty years out of date updating those will give you one hundred one point two million dollars annual revenue you could hire a couple of well qualified inspectors who would get out and clear up this whole mass provide you with a lot of additional income from those people that are cheating the system but would still protect those of us that are growing food for people here right now and thank you chair i know you said don't address the crowd but i would like to apologize to all the well thought out well spoken testimonies but here goes my knee jerk reaction that i just wrote this morning i farmed coffee and lower kula for eleven years six hundred eighty degrees now that is only two of fifty seven acres i own under the same team k nonetheless this is more work than one person can do but paying helpers fifteen dollars per hour which is not a living wage on this island was more than i could afford wages for workers insurance water and taxes just to name a few make farming on mowing very difficult approximately seven years ago i was told i needed to do a proper paperwork to keep my ag water rates and my egg property tax rates approximately four years ago i was told that i need to do this every three years failing to do so my property taxes went from thirty three hundred year to eighteen thousand dollars a year i'm not worried about this happening because it's already happened per under the guise of market value asking for reassessment i went before the department of finance and was able to reduce my taxes to fourteen thousand four hundred dollars a year that's twelve hundred dollars per month this equal to the average rental units on maui so this looks to me like i have to rent the land i own from the county of m now this bill wants to raise taxes more and make farming even more difficult fair market value for ag land is comparing apples to oranges if you are going to assess for market value then my land would have to be  rezoned to be able to chop it up and developed or is this the intention of the county to begin with i don't want to see maui turn into a wahoo any more than the majority of the people here  anywhere near valuable as the buyers to buyers as developer land is please make develop all developing land taxes higher to discourage development and please reduce ag land taxes to make farming more viable i would like to thank you mr chair for allowing so many people to go past a red light and i will in my testimony think you miss a party member any questions for the gentleman and his testimony this evening we thank you for your patience and your presence miss rebecca russell if you're here you're next to be followed by lucy  good evening i was ready to go home but i felt like i had to represent my generation my name is lisa sakamoto i am a fourth generation farmer here on molly my great grandparent had a pig farming  grandparents a mango farming my parents a persimmon farm kula and i raise goats and pigs along with recently inheriting the percent in far out of the four generations my great grandparents were the only ones able to make a living off of farming alone the rest of us had to get full time jobs to support our families and do the farming when we got home after work and on weekends so why do we do it last year my father got sick i had twins we had to hire someone to help us work the man that ended up costing more than we made so why do we do it believe you me it's not for the money as we barely come out ahead it's because people enjoy our fruit and our animals a farmers will tell you it's hard work and most people aren't willing to put in long hours and back breaking work any more so on that fact alone the fact that we all need to eat we should be supporting farming to sustain getting fresh local food and any increase would hurt us when i first heard about this bill i thought it was a joke who in their right mind would hurt local farmers then i heard it was an attempt to target gentleman fire me i got a bad feeling in my gut to me it feels like a wolf disguised in sheep's clothing there are many more ways to tackle that problem than making everyone suffer for a fuse dishonesty the sad part is if this bill passes those gentlemen farmers will probably be the only ones able to afford to keep their land their go to locals the first thing my neighbor said was forget all this hard work if this passes were selling the farm and moving to a condo on oahu so i ask you this does this boil down to greed in my mind in a time when the rest of the world is seeing the important of moving forward towards self sustainability due to the poisoning and modifying of our foods uncertainty of our climate so many factors that could drastically affect the health and well being of future generations why on earth would we introduce such a preposterous bill that would only hurt our precious i  bernie slew and you know other than having served on the molly planning commission i really have not paid any attention to some of these things that have happened and i am shocked to see that there were so many people who were aware of this but there are a lot of people who are not aware of this bill and so i think that people who own agriculturally zoned land here on maui are not aware of how your new propose bill will affect them until they get their tax bill by then the bill would have been passed and the county tax department will say got your bill is so full of requirements a landowner can barely understand what is going on i know our land owner who leases the land to some farmers it started out some seventy five years ago when his father at least the land to their father everything was done on a hand this day now you are requiring among ten other things that this owner record in the east for the term of the dedication specifies the area to be designated for specific ag use provide evidence of that specific use provide evidence that the dedicated area will produce farm income show a tax return of twenty five hundred dollars submit ball approval to change to a different ag activity you will get them w your sixteen page fine print many and having lived in kula for fifty years our friends and neighbors are and were farmers and ranchers some dear friends were grub in the dirt pig farmers and vegetable farmers over the course of fifty years some of these people have died or have become too old to farm the families of these people are not wealthy people they just inherited the land  spouse who inherited the farm but isn't able to farm like her husband did the county is jacking up her assessment every year tough they said look at your neighbor they're farming intensely many of these people tell me that if they cannot afford the taxes they will have to sell sell to who being a real estate broker and i can tell you that it will be to the highest bidder mali is an international place where there is an incredible amount of wealthy people who come here yes these people come to buy they won't find on such expensive land your typical buyer will be the silicon valley retiree or the old prince of the world so yes you will be able to generate revenue with their higher taxes is it your goal to have more wealthy people buy up the land you talk about unintended consequences yes with this bill you will change the face of mali your quest to generate revenue is now aimed at those who you may consider gentleman bombers trapped in this definition of the poor local people who can barely afford to keep their land tracked to is the backyard farmer who sells a few pigs or goats on a cash basis i ask you to consider the value of the open space of these that these eggplants provide this is part of the beauty of whenever we have a large possible and to sell one of the first questions is can i say subdivided nobody says i'm going to farm it you call this an attempt at parity for agricultural use having sat on the tax review board for the last five years i call this revenue building now that the new comers have  demise of h cns you should be generating so much more taxes i ask that you consider the local people and the long term consequences of your intended action time last year at this time you asked us mr hope to review b of seventy and present our findings and you asked us not to do it on an emotional plea he said do it on facts and figures and we took that to heart we went back and we met and this is a burnout is it not we've been here for four hours the ag working group does this burnout on b f seventy every two weeks we sit there for three to four hours and discuss this bill we've read everything there is to read every code every tax law we've consulted with experts we have analyzed taxes coming out of our eyeballs or other areas if you ask them to but it's just been absolutely a burnout and yet we come and we do this and we present that to you we send it to you and we're not even asked to present our findings to this group and most of you don't even know that you got it now i understand that's a time issue for you as well but for me this whole day to day with all these hundreds of people represents thousands of dollars lost to these people not only in the tax rate but the money we lost to not working today and when you look at that it's just it's it's heartbreaking to me to see that we've done all this work is the working group to represent these people so that they didn't have to do this and spend all your time in testimony today because we did that work for you already we did that work for them and nobody even had the time to read it so i'm sorry i'm so impassioned but i feel like this is a critical issue that you guys not do your decisions on emotions even though i'm quite emotional at the moment but you do it uninformed conviction over what's right and what's fair and i mean informed because we have done the homework for you please kill this bill thank you which is about twelve fifty per year in taxes now we raise cattle and because cattle are being sent to the mainland to go to feed lot we doubt a very expensive about three weeks out each one costing me a thousand dollars thousand dollars for three but now we have two big once they're ready to go so they'll go however now if you go with what you're proposing that i have to have five thousand dollars profit per acre times eight acres means forty thousand dollars per year that is ridiculous utterly ridiculous i never saw anything like this to be i could go with the present rate that you're taxing people and if you need to have more income corrupt a bit fifty dollars maybe more per but not this five thousand dollar per acre per year that is too much so i feel this is a gross injustice and that caused people like myself to leave agriculture and to sell the property and that people build fancy houses and enjoy the beautiful property that we have in high school that's all i have to say i would vote this thing down right away thank you very much for being patient and for waiting this long and questions for the gentleman in his testimony we thank you for your testimony following her will be poor good afternoon my name is kathy king i am the state statistician for the white field office of u s d a nass i was approached last year by the ag working group to see if i could come up with a way to define a farm especially those who don't have sales so we were talking about i hear that there are really value set for pasture  livestock but diversified crops was something that they said that they thought we needed so i went back to my office and i put together numbers like us statisticians do and  that has a thousand dollars in sales or would normally have a thousand dollars in sales u s d a nass conducts a survey in june that is aerial photographs based so we go on we talk to everybody that's located in that aerial photo and if they find a farm that does not have sales the enumerator will value the commodities that they do have so for example if they have a cow cow counts for about eight hundred points which kind of feeds to amount in sales so with that idea i try unfortunately of course the survey is conducted on the mainland and they don't really do any points for hawaiian commodities of course so i put together  our acres in production and i reported fell you of production for a various hawaiian commodities for most years as long as i had a consistent  a consistent series i started from like two thousand and seven to go to two thousand and fourteen fifteen there are some commodities that we didn't have that we didn't value in previous years for example kale  recently come to the forefront as a as a pretty big commodity the value that i came up with for diversified crops was nine thousand dollars an acre if you have an ag inspector go out and someone has diversified crops but they don't have sales if they measure the land if they have four thousand square feet of agricultural production according to this value they would be classified as a farm with a thousand dollars of potential of sales so that's what i was here to present you guys have any questions risking so this is into state department of agriculture will accept yes as a matter of fact scott and right now i have spoken and he also suggested that it's possible because of the way we collect our data and the value of production  for all the commodities so we can update this you know every five or ten years to be indicate when he would be looking at his department to update the values and it would be actually us that would do it so where the federal part of the department of agriculture he has submitted i know some testimony talking about whether we can do this and that he would work with us in order to late with the state department of agriculture thank you for that clarification any other questions for the levy miss cochran thank you and thank you for being here and your report and can you define what is  floor culture floor cultures flowers and foliage anything that's basically collected on our floor culture survey so tea leaves are considered floor culture of course all the flowers  of our local tropicals and what have you yes we conduct a floor culture survey every year and so the values that i've got down are the reported values that we have for floor culture industry in the state of the survey you mentioned that is to be done in june of this year you said unfortunately will only be covering it don't know us and not only covers the forty eight states they don't do one here but i took that as a model for what i put together ok ok very good will thank you for all your hard work but ok exchange the other christians for the levy every now and we thank you for your five section two of five dash forty one does its the declaration of policy before the discussion about important ag lands were talks about that the jurisdiction shall u for as a tax and center fragments rather than market value so i just point that section out there's a there's been discussion about the twenty one thousand dollars city subsidy tax incentive you know tax rate but there's another subsidy and now we county that i just wanted to bring to the attention of people who are aware of it that's called the homeowner subsidy the homeowner subsidy goes to about twenty six thousand homes site issue that's it that's a different issue the homeowners who get a home exemption there's over twenty six thousand of them as opposed to four thousand who get a use that subsidy that homeowner subsidy point out the other thing is i am part of a working group as you know and i want to laud everyone's efforts to really address the problem of taxation on a glance obviously there's some disagreements my observation is that there's a firewall between the government and the people to use this loosely  i like the illusion of dr kaufmann to the knights of the round table where everybody collaborates in a circle and i don't know how many times in our long deliberations that eve is alluded to over the last year i had wished that we could sit down with and let me be specific with scott therea jeffrey oka chair of a comma or their representatives informally with a facilitator to help understand each other because actually very close to solving a lot of these problems but we need to do it informally and the ag working group can provide a facilitator who gets grant monies i believe from the federal government to facilitate ag issues and i believe this is qualify i asked her about it she thought it would so i offer that as a possible solution looking forward to in in you know to move forward with this discussion so thank you very much thank you mr starr are you brian whitman ryan are you here lived on a wahoo i was going back and forth ripped out an old fence line put in a new fence line i have spent over two hundred thousand dollars in equipment and fencing my property when i called up that i looked at the real property tax website and noticed a whole bunch of vacant land around me squat and so i wrote a letter to somebody in the county and said hey blah blah blah i'm doing egg can you help me and that time one of my lots was nine hundred dollars a year my neighbors are paid a hundred or something and i was what i wanted to get down to that level came out in threes my taxes to nine thousand dollars so i was taking care of my dad back and forth t h things go through the cracks through another fifty grand at the real property tax guy specter come up to my property i pointed all this stuff out to him i had a chance to use the real property tax website check out all these other properties around me lots of people are paying squat and aren't doing anything i pointed out to the guy and he was sweating so there's a lot of there's something that's not happening in the real property tax department in terms of you guys wanting to get money  there but i think there's some politically protected people that are being asked to step up to the plate and pay their share you know i don't know what to say but i'm just saying you know what i  the whole system has problems and i'm i'm i'm busting my ass all the time to make my farm work you know i have an orchard so you know talk to the water guys they say well you have twenty five hundred dollars of revenue or whatever the number was which is you know i planted an orchard it's not going to happen for five ten fifteen years you know and now all this in this new lots this is going to tell me every year oh i've got to rip that plants up and put some other tree in there so finally in fifteen years i get a tax break on the water rate but my trees don't need water at that point because already big you know i mean let's start over with something with maybe you got some in victoria as bill or i think this bill needs to  forty years this is my life work i love what i'm doing and i think my hands qualify as a farmer and my back i oppose b of seventy because it is an unworkable attempt to revel in the problem of wealthy landowners masquerading as farmers i support the recommendations of the ag working group to maintain a qualified ag and specters to determine fair ag rate to use these recommendations are in sharp contrast to the intrusive cumbersome and expensive system established by b seventy i ask the county to do a cost analysis of the implementation of this new tax regime i farm ag land leased from the state agriculture is the only permitted use compliance is monitored in effect the land is already dedicated to agriculture any increase in taxes may make the difficult work of farming impossible for us additionally we have no county services no water lou electricity no sewage no farm protection and we maintain a nearly one mile unpaved road by ourselves deeply troubling over the long term impacts of seventy agriculture on moey is on the verge of change the end of sugar is an opportunity for creative diversification of seventy pushes  other direction will h c n as a fair market value for a land no longer in active sugar production this new tax regime is an incentive to develop or sell which historically means selling to one of the perhaps unintended consequences of the dedication option is a burden on people drug linked to protect land as a cultural and family inheritance people who may not have the means or the opener to be an active ag now which is a requirement of the dedication process they may lose their land because of higher taxes additionally i would like to point out or echo what was raised before that the value of sis's since farming is not given it's a gift given consideration within this bill and we're commodifying agriculture and i suggest that there is no way to weigh or measure i know the people have spoken clearly in the many public what is your preference michelle i raise horses and i raise go on my plane and right now it's hard for me to pick up everything at one time because i only get summer almost two thousand dollars a month and that's hard for me because i have a son that i'm raising and he helps me now that i'm well sort of cripple have hard time getting around him he helps me out and i'm totally against it because it's harder for me my has been static i don't get it  all because the fact is they told me i either gotta take mine or he is because we retired from because he was from the county and i was from the state and that's hard so thank you for listening we thank you for being here this evening thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us you welcome any questions for the levy members again if  something we thank you for being very much to share your thoughts with us thank you so much we have come to the point where we have one more person and that is mr albert per is unless there's the someone else would like to share a comment please make yourself known and if you wish to submit written next is mr palmer is as always tomorrow nation i am truly inspired by much of the testimony that i've heard here today not going to repeat many many of the things that i agree with i haven't heard anybody testifying in favor of the bill by the way but i'm just going to share with you some of the things that i that i came up with as i was thinking about the problem  of gentlemen's estates fake farms cetera unfortunately i think that this bill is the wrong solution i think it's almost it's attractive in that it could be a simple solution but i think it has so many unintended consequences that it's really going to hurt and especially we've just had the the notice they've seen ass is going away not they're going away but the sugar is going away so this seems like it would really be the death knell for the rest of agriculture on maui gentlemens farms are a symptom of a lack of enforcement and i know you've heard this before but if you think about it if all you could do on ag land was agriculture the value of that land even the market value of that land would be much lower than it is and if you're someone who good luck trying to find some land that you can farm so i think we need to do everything that we can to protect agriculture it's supported in the maui island plan so many places in our laws bird is trying to support agriculture but i think this would do the  opposite even if you were to keep the ag used value on our existing situation isn't good enough because that tax benefit it only kicks in after you purchased the land so you have to be able to purchase the land first and then you can realize the tax benefit so my other thought was well if we're going to tax our gland at market rates because it's a subsidy well it depends on how you look at it because farmers and agriculture in general provide services that they don't charge us for the keep invasive species that be including especially fire we need to keep the open spaces open and that's what the tourists come to see so if we try to value those things i think that comes out to way more than we would gain by taxing the ag land at market rates especially because a lot of the farmers are just going to go away and then there won't be any revenue from those people anymore so i encourage you to kill this bill hire more inspectors and forceful and use laws and work with the egg working group there the people that understand agriculture and support agriculture in maui county it's not something that has a simple solution so thank you very much thank you  meetings they've put a lot of effort into thinking this through trying to be fair and it doesn't seem like it's registered anywhere so i think that you know that needs to have a way to happen i like mister  starr's idea of sitting around you know a few of the county folks in a few of the ed working group who kaku cause and figure out like where do we have in common what areas do we have to change also it seems like everything's trying to change at once in  it's like too much already it's hard for people to understand how much people come out and said that they don't like this part and they don't like that part so maybe take one part and try to deal with another part and try to deal with it you know i  live where there is gentleman farms and i live where there's real farms and i live where there's people who are being taxed off their land because they don't have any stream water to farm like their parents and grandparents did and they would love to farm but their hands are kind of tied you know they're just tank then you cattle just don't have any water because there's no water in the streams one thing that was mentioned briefly the coolie onna landowners and those people in in my valley you know folks have lived there for hundreds of years they have eight separate parcels some of them are like you know one tenth of an acre of one point three four acres each one is two hundred fifty dollars and then of the taxes go up it's more it's like their only choice is just to try to sell them to somebody there you just lose that whole legacy of what this family had we just need to find a bigger better way and the you know the circuit breaker isn't everything first of all circuit breaker if you own multiple pieces of property it's my understanding that now you don't qualify for circuit breaker and that's true with lots of local families because they have a partial interest in several parcels just because they've been here for so long that shouldn't be a penalty also circuit breaker there's a certain price that your house can b and some places you know their families have been here a long time so their houses are now super valuable even though they're old houses just because of you know where they are anyway we don't have a perfect system yet and this really needs some work so please don't pass this take the advice of the community and come up with something that addresses if the real problem is the gentleman farmers let's address it at the permeating end of things i tried to turn in a gentleman farmer across the street from me to the county they were interested thank you a lot thin every now and thank you very much you are free to come anyone else would like to share their thoughts before we are journey members it's been a long day for everybody including the public  so what we would do is we're going to recess this meeting and i'm going to recess this meeting to march to ten p m in this chamber then move forward the chair will state that i appreciate the comments from the public there was a lot of consistency on two points and so i'm going to make some revisions to continuation of updated values instead of market values is the to keep it for you so i got this afternoon so i think the community for your sharing and that we did hear those there was two very consistent points they were cultural a community maybe a rather use in fairness in the home state so i appreciate that very much yes yes we've heard about the inspectors