State of Hawaii vs. County of Kauaʻi

Following close on the heels of the legal suit over Kauaiʻs Ordinance 960 (formerly Bill 2491), two bills have been introduced at the state level - House Bill 2506 and Senate Bill 3058 - that would have that “No law, ordinance, or resolution of any unit of local government shall be enacted that abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology, modern livestock production, and ranching practices ..."

Update: This very same language is in another piece of legislation as Senate Bill 110 and not adopted in committee (4 Feb 2014).

They might as well just have stated clearly: we don't trust counties to have the sense to have a say about how farms and ranches operate on their own islands.

Local law is already very much subject to override by state which is in turn subordinate to federal law (as I wrote about previously including the less well known legal principle called Dillonʻs rule which further limits the purvey local government to only those subjects they are explicitly empowered to legislate). That some state legislators feel compelled to specifically forbid local ordinances in the realm of agriculture can only be interpreted as a simple lack of trust.

According to a recent editorial in The Garden Island - and it may be a first for the latest Oahu-controlled incarnation of that periodical that I agree with this one - two local Kauai representatives in the state legislature are the ones introducing this legislation: Rep. Dee Morikawa (D-Koloa-Niihau) and Rep. James Tokioka (D-Koloa-Wailua). They seem to see their vital role at the state level as being about blocking our county council from bothering to get involved with things agricultural on the island.

The hubris of disempowering local government in perpetuity is astounding in itself, much less on the heels of the dramatic events on Kauai over the past several months that if anything clearly demonstrate how vital these issues are for so many folks here. Since the state level status quo - understaffed, minimal regulation and a voluntary program concocted in the eleventh hour ahead of Kauai 960 (2491) - is quite favorable to the big corporations, one has to assume that in writing off the anti-GMO crowd these representatives owe a heavy allegiance to the other side.

However, I donʻt want to underestimate the subtlety of the issues nor the intricacies of the power plays. Over at Kauai Eclectic, Joan raises some good questions about how fit Kauai is to self-govern. I would agree that the debate here - 2491 being just one prominent example - was less than statesman-like and that rational, well reasoned opinion was in very short supply.

So I would say that yes, Kauai has a lot of room for improvement, but then I would also say that at the state and federal levels - even at the UN - government could do a much better job as well. Be that as it may, local government certainly has a vital role to play here and I would need a lot better argument than “It’s a right to farm bill,” before we irrevocably disempower the counties. In the end inclusive government that respects locale must be the best system: suppressing local control always amounts to suppression of the weaker county by the more powerful state, and that just isnʻt democratic, or even moral.

I have seen it reported that these bills are not expected to get very far and the threat of passing appears small now, but that Kauai's own representatives are doing these maneuvers in the first place is unsettling, and of course, predicting the future of legislation is hardly reliable.

Kauai Internet

There are two major internet providers here on Kauai - Oceanic (Time-Warner cable) and Hawaiian Telcom. Oceanic has the fastest residential service, up to 100Mbps; Hawaiian Telcom goes up to 50Mbps; see the web site for details of all the services and bundles they have. More than one person has warned me away from Hawaiian Telcom (but I have no experience with them one way or the other myself, this is just here-say).

Both high-end service plans offer only up to 5Mbps upload which is not great but sufficient for video chat (e.g. Skype, Facetime, Hangout ... if you don't know what these are, never mind) which is where upload speed counts for most people. Also if you upload a lot of files such as to YouTube this will be a little slow. 100Mbps is probably more than we need but since this means "up to" - as opposed to "guaranteed to be at least" - it is probably worth it and I will have good cause to complain if it gets really slow. It looks like business class service is needed to get higher speeds that this.

If you think about, the idea of buying any service from an "up to" offer is audacious: they are only telling you the best it can be, not the minimum you can expect. Consider a restaurant that offers meals that may "occasionally be really delicious"; getting an oil change that sometimes finishes "in as little as thirty minutes"; or setting your house thermostat for a cold night to "to as warm as 70 degrees". Unless the service operates faster than the rated maximum they are fulfilling their promise to you.

Ultimate 100 (up to 100Mbps) Monthly Charges Service $79.99 Modem/Wi-Fi box $5.99

Total Monthly Charges $85.98

Today I ordered the fastest residential Oceanic plan today. There is a one-time $29.95 installation charge. The first available installation appointment was about five days out.

Signing up on the web, their system did not understand my address, but I would expect they have already wired the neighborhood as it is a relatively new development with a lot of houses.

If this works out well for you, refer a friend and you get a month free.... twelve friends a year would make it free!

Appliances in paradise

We bought appliances for our house and got some very good advice from the very helpful lady who took our order worth sharing with newcomers to Kauai. Much of the process of relocating here has been straightforward, but this these purchased were a good first reminder that things are a little different here. Here's what Wendy said:

It's obvious if you think about it, but modern electronics and sensitive equipment simply do not last long in this tropical environment. Between the humidity, heat, and (near the ocean) salt, circuit boards or fine mechanical instruments can very easily fail here. Furthermore, on an island the size of a small city, there often is no trained service technician here to fix things when they do fail (and they definitely do not fly in technicians to do repairs, obviously). On top of all that, ordering spare parts can be slow and expensive given the remote location. For all these reasons, it may very well pay to get extended warranties on everything purchased unless it is as simple as a hammer.

Wendy went on to explain what often happens both when you do and do not have warranty protection here.

• Under warranty, if there is a qualified technician on the island (which often is not the case), they will fix it of course.
• Under warranty, if no qualified technician (approved by the manufacturer) is on island, you normally get full replacement value refund, enough to buy a brand new appliance. The old appliance is taken out of warranty and becomes "scrap" and either goes to the dump or you may be able to keep it if you want to.
• For out of warranty there are technicians here who will take cash jobs on the side to fix things privately if they can. Use your best judgment hiring as it could be a gamble.

We shopped Costco and Home Depot for appliances: they are right next to each other in Kukui Grove (west Lihue) so it was quick to comparison shop though they had different models to choose from. Generally, Costco had lower prices but they do not deliver: the will help you load the appliance into your vehicle, then you are on your own getting it home and installed. 

Home Depot includes free home delivery (to our area at least) including set up. Our washing machine comes with hoses to hook it up (she checked for us), but some makers don't provide that in which case you can buy what you need there (but not at Costco) if needed. And they had very knowledgable staff like Wendy to help us select a model. (The Costco fellow was friendly but not an expert at all.) They also had a discount that applied as well, so the price difference was small to none if you include delivery and installation service. They even helped fill out the rebate forms for energy-efficient appliance purchase ($50) rebates from KIUC.

After checking models and prices that looked good and that fit in the spaces available in the house we went to the Lihue library where they had recent issues of Consumer Reports to see how they rated.

Vehicle Registration

This week is full of the administrivia of relocation so the blog will be bureaucratic to match. I am usually good at finding answers on the web, but some of these procedures were difficult to get good information about so I am writing this up in hopes others will find it useful.
Generally speaking, Honolulu has excellent web resources for Hawaii state procedures for citizens but Kauai, not so much.

We shipped a car from the mainland to Kauai earlier this month and today we registered it with the state of Hawaii. You have thirty days to do this -- I don't know what the penalty is, but you should just do it.

Insurance note: you may have to change insurance agents moving here. Our insurance company does not insure here so we had to switch companies. It's probably best to have the new coverage before registering the car.

Here's the process in a nutshell, then some details. (If you buy a car on the island the dealer should take care of registration: the following is for registering your own car shipped over from the mainland.)

1. Get the necessary paperwork from the shipper
2. Get insurance if necessary (our insurance company would not cover the car in Hawaii)
3. Go get a "failed" safety inspection
4. Go to the vehicle registration office
5. Go back to the safety inspection place

Step 1. When your car arrives on Kauai and you pick it up the shipper will give you a Bill of Lading and a receipt showing the date the car arrived - you will need both of these to register the car within thirty days.

Step 2. Find a gas station or auto service shop that does Hawaii state vehicle safety inspections (call ahead, some require appointments). Show them the registration and proof of insurance. Pay about $20 and they give you a "failed" inspection slip to take to get the car registered: you will have to bring that back to them later on.

You will see "Safety Inspection" signs displayed at such places. If you want to do the whole process in one day, a shop near the Lihue Civic Center is convenient as you need to go twice. You may want to use a shop near where you will be living as your regular repair service. If it is far from Lihue you can do this in two steps on separate days, but you must complete Step 4 within fifteen days of Step 2.

Step 3. Take all those documents (existing out-of-state registration, proof of insurance, "failed" inspection) as well as the vehicle title and a checkbook to the vehicle licensing office and get in line.

Kauai vehicle licensing office is in the Lihue Civic Center (4444 Rice St., Lihue, HI). There are two large buildings with various government offices, but no handy map so it's hard to find the place except by asking or trial and error. The office is on the north side of the building closest to the highway, accessed from doors between the two large buildings that comprise the civic center. GPS coordinates
21° 58.578', -159° 22.152'.

The very kind lady at the counter took everything and filled out forms and I wrote a small check and she handed us new Hawaii plates with tabs, a new vehicle title, and a new vehicle registration. The registration and proof of insurance go in the car; the title in a separate place, not in the car.

Step 4. Back at the safety inspection shop, hand them the "failed" slip along with the new registration and proof of insurance. They do their thing and give you a safety inspection sticker good for one year. You also get a document for the inspection as well that you will need to provide to an officer if stopped, so that goes along with the registration and insurance papers. They also removed our old license plates and put on the new ones (though I don't think they have to, but it helped us out because our tools are in transit with the move just now).

We drove away with shiny new Hawaii license plates. Since we had just renewed our old registration, we did not have to pay the state of Hawaii registration until that registration expires, though we did pay a fee for the change. This does have an unusual result: the safety inspection is good for one year, but the license renewal is due in about ten months. For simplicity at renewal we will probably just get the next safety inspection early so it matches the registration one year cycle. The state sends a reminder to renew registration but not the safety inspection so if they expire at different times you are on your own.

It sounds complicated and it was the first time, but we did Steps 2 and 3 and 4 all in less than an hour (using a shop just a couple miles away from the Civic Center). Everybody from the shipper to auto shop to registration lady were very helpful and patient which made it all go smoothly. Mahalo!

Arrival

Yesterday we touched down at Lihue and have finally made the jump - on the Hawaii visitor questionnaire I checked the box for "prospective new residents moving to Hawaii". No further travel plans in the immediate future: we are here permanently. (Although nothing in life is ever really permanent, is it?)

Our things are in a forty foot container somewhere between the Seattle port and Nawiliwili port, probably a week or two away. We have a place to stay the next several nights and will be looking at furniture rental to set up the empty house we have rented for the interim as well as buying appliances.

Many other miscellaneous tasks:

• safety inspection and register the car
• order internet service
• get driver licenses
• change of addresses

All in all it is not particularly hard and moving to Kauai is not really different than anywhere else.

Today we are going to try and tackle the majority of this and then I hope get a day of rest and relaxation and then finish up things until the moving truck appears.

Everything has been going smooth as can be, and I don't think writing that jinxes anything at all.

Moving in

This week the process of moving to Kauaʻi began at last. (I am catching up here as I have been without Internet service and my usual source of Wi-Fi access at the library was down yesterday at both locations I tried.) On arrival everything went remarkably smoothly. I arrived on-time (thank you, Hawaiian Airlines), got a taxi and rushed to Nawiliwili port to pick up my car.

Getting a taxi

At Lihue airport to get a taxi check if one happens to be available at the taxi pickup lot just to your right coming out of the terminal. Otherwise look for a special taxi phone at the information desk just outside baggage claim. First collect your bags and then pick up the receiver and the dispatcher answers. There is a pickup parking area just beyond the curbside loading area. Fortunately the taxi showed up in about two minutes as time was tight and not getting the car we previously shipped ahead would have made logistics complicated.

Pickup car shipped to the port

We shipped the car last month via Matson so that was my first stop. The taxi driver knew exactly where to go and we got there with under ten minutes before closing time 3pm. The process was easy and took about five minutes. You will need a photo ID to get into the port and for this shipper also the shipping number. The car had arrived safely several days before and was ready to go. I headed for the nearest gas station to fill up as it was low on gas as they request (under 1/4 tank) for shipping.

Signup for utilities

Next stop was to sign up for water and electric utilities of our rental house. Both offices for water and electricity are close together near the Kukui Grove shopping center just west of Lihue. (The water department was tricky to find, see the linked map just above.) 

• Kauai County Water Department
• Electricity (KIUC)

Both were quick and easy, took about five minutes, friendly service in both cases. The owners were kind enough to keep utilities going in their name until we moved in so the switch was quick and easy. To sign up you should bring:

• Rental contract (address, ownerʻs name)
• Check or cash (to prepay for service until regular billing is set up)
• Photo ID

Prepaying is only required for new customers and probably the amount varies but as a guideline, for me it was $200 electric and $90 for water. 

Home at last

I called and the rental house owners met me at our new house and handed me the keys: home in Kauaʻi. In a little over an hour from the time I landed I was in the house and set to go.