The special committee on real property tax reform met on January 20, 2026, at 9:03 AM to discuss Bill 142 (2025), which addresses the home exemption and long-term rental exemption from real property tax. The meeting focused on proposed amendments to reduce the wait time for the home exemption from up to 18 months to as little as 6 months, with significant discussion on implementation language and potential alternative mechanisms.
Well, the special committee on real property tax reform meeting of January twentieth, twenty twenty-six, please come to order. It is nine oh three in the morning. This online meeting is being conducted in accordance with the sunshine law. As a reminder, when your name is called, if you are not in the council chamber, please state your location and identify by name who, if anyone, is in the room, vehicle or workspace with you today. Non-voting members, our member members Cook, Paulton, Senance, and U Hutchins. We have one item on the agenda this morning. And it is Raptor 7, Bill 142, 2025 on the home exemption and long-term rental exemption from real property tax. Let's begin with public testimony. Uh Chair, we currently don't have any individuals signed up to testify at the beginning of the meeting. Um, there is an individual raising their hand right now. Should I proceed with calling them, Chair? Yes. That would be Tom Crowley to be followed by Michael Williams. Okay, I need to give instructions first. Yeah, well, this is the job. Testifiers wanting to provide testimony should sign up with the staff, join the online meeting via the team's link or call in to the telephone number noted on today's agenda. Written testimony is encouraged and can be submitted via the e-comment link at Maui County.us slash agendas as well. Under the sunshine law, the chair will receive oral testimony for agenda items at the beginning of the meeting and as the item is called up. For individuals wishing to testify via teams, please raise your hand by clicking on the raise your hand button. If calling in, please follow the prompts via phone. Staff will be will add names to the testifier list and the order testifiers sign up or raise their hands. For those on teams, staff will lure your hand once your name is added. Staff will then call the name you're logged in under or the last four digits of your phone number when it is your turn to testify. At that time, staff will also enable your microphone and video. Please ensure your names appear in Microsoft Teams as the names you prefer to be referred to as or as anonymous if you wish to testify anonymously. If you're in person, please notify staff that you would like to testify anonymously. Otherwise, please state your name for the record at the beginning of your testimony. Oral testimony is limited to three minutes. If you are still testifying beyond that time, I will kindly ask you to complete your testimony. Once you are done testifying, or if you do not wish to testify, you can also view the meeting on AKACU Channel 53, Facebook Live, or Maui County.us slash agendas. We will do our best to take each person up in an orderly fashion. We'll now call on testifiers wishing to testify at the beginning of the meeting, which means this will be your only time to testify because we only have one item. Staff, please call the first testifier. Chair, the first person signed up to testify is Tom Crowley, to be followed by Michael Williams. Hello, our chair, Tom Crowley. You've heard from me many times in this meeting and and in others. I am I'm very grateful for uh this um committee, and I hope that it does continue because I do believe that there are several issues that we still need to work out uh in real property tax, and uh, and I really appreciate the opportunity for the council to do this outside of budget session. So thank you for uh for creating this committee, and and again I hope that it continues. Today you're gonna work on bill 142, and it looks like there's really only one uh proposal brought forward, and I can't say that I'm in full support of it as the solution to this problem, and I think everyone understands the problem, and the problem is that the tax classification that we apply to a property can change the property tax bill by as much as 10x. It can be 10 times higher uh in one um particular um classification versus uh owner-occupied classification, and um uh that being off that much, it can last for in the current situation up to 18 months. It can be wrong for up to 18 months. What's being proposed could bring that down to as little as six months in some cases, and maybe that's the best we can do, but it it it also could be gone off for for as much as um one full year. And and I see this as more of an accounting issue than I do anything else. Um, we really need the help of of the real property tax department to say, hey, we can change this more efficiently, but right now they can't because of the way the accounting works. They have to have the numbers in by a certain date and and so forth. And I understand the problems from from their perspective, but I don't think that what is proposed today really solves the problem. And it does seem that we have put aside the issue of changing the real property tax classification for properties that uh are going to go into the long-term rental classification. I if if I understand what's being proposed and council member Paulton will explain it better, uh I I think that that we're taking that away. And again, if we want to use the lower property tax rate that is uh being provided to people providing long-term rentals, delaying that implementation of it by up to 18 months really makes that a more difficult thing for people to accept. So I I know we can solve this problem, but but we're not gonna be able to do it with just the council taking action here.