City Policies Sends Violators Mixed Signals

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The role of the City and County of Honolulu in the evolution of the dump at Puhawai Road can be tracked on a single printout from its new computer system. The city’s Department of Public Works issued David Souza three stockpiling permits — one in 1992, one in 1997, and another in 1998 — for the Puhawai property with the last two of these issued to David Souza. Souza has owned the property since the summer of 1996. The latter two permits were issued despite Souza owing the city several thousand dollars in fines.

Similarly, the city entered into a contract with recycling company owner George Grace in 1994 to dispose of abandoned refrigerators at the same time it was pursuing enforcement action against his daughter Sabrina Grace for operating an unpermitted business on her property.

Larry Watanabe of the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) acknowledges that the agencies issuing the permits “should do cross checks” to disclose violations, and when violations are discovered, permits should be withheld. Until last year, the city did not have an adequate system to do such cross checks. Today, such errors should be easily caught. “Before, different agencies didn’t know what the other hand was doing,” says one city official.

“Nowadays, it’s pretty impossible to issue permits to people with outstanding violations,” says John Nolan, with the DPP’s engineering section. “We have a computer system that tracks all the fingers in the pie.” That system will generate a printout of city planning and permitting documents relating to a specific property. When Nolan punches in the tax identification number of Souza’s property, his name and address appear alongside a red flag, indicating problems with property or its owner.

Nolan says that because of Souza’s violations, Souza will not receive any more permits until he restores the drainage on property. During the Grace tenure, a floodway that bisects the property had been blocked by fill, which the Graces used as a kind of land bridge to connect the front of the property to the rear. The “bridge” of fill has only grown since Souza took over. Now the city is requiring Souza to fix the drainage as part of resolving illegal grading work he did while building a rock wall at the front of his property without a permit.

Even with this new system, however, the city’s enforcement approach potentially encourages violators to chalk up their fines to the cost of doing business.

In late 1997, the city tried to attach civil fines to Souza’s driver’s license and vehicle registration. However, the Department of Finance found Souza, owner of a trucking firm, had neither a license nor any vehicles registered in his name. Two years later, the city attached to Souza’s property tax bill a portion of the fines relating to an unpermitted building on his land. The fine assessed — $4,000 — “is significantly less than $35,550, the total amount of outstanding fines,” states a letter from the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting.

In August 1999, Souza paid this reduced fine for the unpermitted building, but still owed several thousands more for a separate offense (running a trucking business on ag land). On June 21, 2000, he received another break from the department in part, because he had apparently cured his violations.

A letter from current DPP director Randall Fujiki to Souza states that an inspection on June 8, 2000 showed the trucking operation had stopped and that Souza had also demolished the unpermitted building. Fujiki notified Souza that he still owed $71,700, but added, “the primary objective of the Department of Planning and Permitting’s Civil Fine System is to obtain compliance. Since we can’t exactly determine when violations were corrected, we will accept the sum of $1,410 in full settlement of the outstanding fines.” Souza had until July 21 to pay the $1,410.

Despite the generous reduction in the fine, Souza has not paid it. Watanabe says his department will refer the case to a collection agency, but adds that even this avenue may not yield anything.

“In lot of instances,” he says, “fines are so great, it’s unrealistic we’ll collect the full amount. From maybe 50 percent [of the violators], we collect something. The other way is to attach the amount to real property tax, but it’s up to the director, and each director has a different philosophy about pursing fines.”

Going after a small percentage of a fine is actually common practice, as Watanabe reluctantly admits: “Normally, when a person corrects a violation, we go after 10 percent of the outstanding finesÉ.We make a recommendation, then it’s up to the director to decide. One of the reasons for the reduction [in Souza’s case] was that the violation may have been cleared earlier, but the response time by the inspector [came later]. He did not know exactly when it was cleared up. In this case it was a little confusing. Normally, we go out there based on a complaint that goes in.”

With regard to the earlier reduction from $35,550 to $4,000, he continues, “when violations are outstanding and the amount is quite high, normally, we don’t attach the full amount. We know they’re not going to pay. We attach a reasonable amount because, on a yearly basis, we could add on. Once we attach, we can’t remove any of the amount, but we can add.”

— Teresa Dawson

Volume 11, Number 3 September 2000

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