If you can decide what is important, it isn’t really that hard to find the money to fix it or make it better.
For instance, this week Honolulu saw the big dogs get together to fix Waikiki Beach. And they are doing it by raising taxes.
The mayor of Honolulu may be the mayor of many separate fiefdoms, but high on the list be being mayor of Waikiki.
Tourism in Hawaii puts $1 billion a month into the economy and the belly of that beast is Waikiki. So Mayor Kirk Caldwell may not want to be the Mayor of New Taxes, but he will make an exception and stage a news conference if the new taxes are showered on Waikiki.
According to news reports from when the proposal was first offered in the City Council last year, commercial property owners from the Ala Wai Harbor to Kaimana Beach and from the Ala Wai Canal to the ocean would be taxed 7.63 cents per $1,000 of their assessed property value. Assessments would range from tens of thousands of dollars per year for owners of large beachfront parcels to under a hundred dollars for smaller off-beach parcels.
The plan was put together with the help of Rick Egged, president of the Waikiki Improvement Association, who said this tax increase would not be that bad.
"I think all of our members generally believe that establishing this major public-private partnership is necessary," Egged said last year.
This week Egged was explaining that the new tax is a model of a 2000 plan, which created a Waikiki business improvement district.
The reason for it is simple. Waikiki Beach exists not because of nature’s waves, currents and sparkling sand deposits. It exists because we put it there for tourists to sit on, to sun worship and frolic on. Manmade beaches don’t last without a lot of care, and with global warming raising sea levels, the levels of care have also increased.
State studies of the famed beach concluded that somewhat rare winter wave conditions hastened the sand erosion. So even though that in 2012, 27,000 cubic yards of sand at a cost of $2.5 million were pumped onto the beach, the meter is still running.
Officials estimate that in the next decade, the bill will rise to $15 million to $20 million.
It may turn out as University of Hawaii researcher Chip Fletcher has warned that Hawaii will only be able to save the very best beaches and the rest will be left to slip under the rising tides.
If that is the decision, it appears the needed protection will come with a cost that business does not mind paying.
It would be interesting if other groups were also able to push their agenda with a government-authorized tax increase.
Could parents tax their way into air-conditioned schools, or could farmers tax themselves arable land?
Waikiki hotels and businesses are obviously important. So for everyone else, it all depends on having enough power to say what is important.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
