Aloha and welcome back to the Island Land Company Blog.  In this edition I will be glancing over the upcoming Hawaii County Mayoral Race.  To preface, I do not intend to use this blog to take any side nor do I hope to sway you into creating a particular opinion, rather I just want to encourage you to look into this election and the topics covered as they are very unique to Hawaii as a state and specifically to Hawaii County where we call home.  

I will be citing an article  that I read from the Civil Beat (frankly I chose this news outlet because it is free).  A couple of the outlined “hot topics” affecting Hawaii County are: waste water, housing, and hazardous pay.  I find the election topic relevant for many reasons.  Primarily because as property owners on the Big Island you are affected by these issues top to bottom in different ways such as physically, socially, and financially..  We deserve the right to know where our tax dollars are going, and more often than not the electoral campaigns are a great place to get an idea for where the upcoming candidates will distribute them.  The aforementioned topics have been addressed by nearly all of the candidates in the race, and I would encourage you to look into them.  Even if the candidate is not mentioned in the cited article you can find them elsewhere simply by a quick google search.  

To be honest I myself do not do the best at keeping up with the news on a day to day basis. So a fair amount of this was my first hearing of some of the items cited in the articles.

The first item of concern mentioned by the article, the wastewater, was one that I frankly was not aware of until I read about it.  The article states, “Just last month, the Hilo wastewater treatment plant discharged some 607,000 gallons of effluent that had not undergone chlorine disinfection prior to flowing into Puhi Bay,” (Dobbyn, 2024). Sidenote, I know you are all much more grammatically advanced than I am, but if you are like me, you do not know entirely how effluent could be a noun, so I  took the liberty of getting the definition. (Liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river or the sea). Not to make light of a very serious situation, but I most likely was/ would have been one of those who was in the water without a warning that the water had been contaminated.   As a frequent visitor to our beautiful oceans, I can see how some may have been dissappointed when they heard of this spill of said effluent into the bay.  

The second mentioned topic of discussion is housing, more specifically the article talks about affordable housing paired with the higher cost of living that we experience here in Hawaii.  The article states that the current mayor, Mitch Roth, “notes that homeless numbers are down 28% on the Big Island, according to the latest Point in Time Count. The count is a federally mandated census that tries to count anyone who slept outdoors, in a car, or in other areas not intended for housing on a given night in January,”  (Dobbyn, 2024).  When doing your own self analysis, keep in mind these statistics are being compared from 3.5 years ago when Mayor Roth was elected.

Lastly, the third topic is Hazard Pay for those who worked during the pandemic.  This is a significant issue because there are huge implications on tax money allocation here.  There are finite slices of the tax pie, thus making the money requested by workers a significant piece.  In turn the candidates must answer how they would distribute these funds. 

To conclude, I think that as home and property owners, or even someone whom is interested in becoming a home or property owner on the Big Island, we should look into these matters because they do just that.  These issues matter.  I am in no position to tell you how to vote or whom to vote for, but I would like you to care about who is running. With that being said, I hope this finds you well, and if you are still reading thank you.  I hope you all had a safe and fulfilling 4th  of July.  I was on a nice little trip back to my home town to see friends and family. It was very nice for me to be in their company as I was fortunate to celebrate both America’s birthday as well as my own.  Many blessings to you and your loved ones in this upcoming month.

 

 Written by Nate Konecky R-S



Dobbyn, P. (2024, July 11). Wastewater, housing and hazard pay are driving the Big Island mayor’s race. Honolulu Civil Beat. https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/07/wastewater-housing-and-hazard-pay-are-driving-the-big-island-mayors-race/