County Council approves Kula Ridge project

October 20, 2010

Maui County Council members voted 6-2 late Tuesday to approve the Kula Ridge project that promises to bring 59 affordable housing units for senior citizens and single families.

The action came following a 14-hour day filled with back-and-forth exchanges on the proposed affordable housing project and the conditions with which it would be approved.

Council Members Wayne Nishiki and Sol Kaho’ohalahala cast the two dissenting votes, while Council Members Danny Mateo, Mike Molina, Gladys Baisa, Jo Anne Johnson, Bill Medeiros and Joe Pontanilla voted in favor of the fast-track housing application. Council Member Mike Victorino was excused from deliberations, which started around 1:45 p.m. and ended with the vote at 11:07 p.m. Tuesday.

In the morning, about a dozen people testified for and against the project. Proponents praised the proposal for bringing affordable housing and jobs to the island, and opponents criticized Kula Ridge for being too dense and out of character for Upcountry while also questioning its water source and archaeological surveys.

The Kula Ridge project sits on 48 acres located above Holy Ghost Church and the Kula Community Center. The application calls for building a 116-lot development featuring 59 affordable senior duplexes and single-family homes.

In the last hour leading up to approval, Kula Ridge officials agreed to take out 11 affordable housing units it planned to build in the Kula Ridge subdivision and use for as a work-force housing requirement credit for the adjacent Kula Ridge Mauka development.

The fast-track state housing law allows a developer to bypass most state and county land-use requirements by promising to build affordable homes. The application came with a 45-day window for council members to take action. Maui News

Hawaii property owners who install solar power panels on their rooftops will get paid for their excess homegrown electricity under a ruling this week by state regulators.

The decision allows both homeowners and businesses to sell power to the electric utility and get paid nearly as much per kilowatt hour as residents pay to use retail energy.

Those who sign up for the program will get paid 21.8 cents per kilowatt hour of solar power fed into the electric grid, according to the ruling by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday. That compares with an average of 25.3 cents per kilowatt hour paid last month by Oahu customers of Hawaiian Electric Co.

“This is an option for people who generate more energy than they use,” said Scott Seu, vice president for energy resources at Hawaiian Electric, which serves most of the state’s power needs along with its subsidiaries, Maui Electric Co. and Hawaii Electric Light Co. “It’s for anybody who has a fair amount of open space that’s not being used.”

Hawaii, the nation’s most fossil-fuel dependent state, is one of the first regions in the country to institute this policy, known as a feed-in tariff. It guarantees renewable energy producers a fixed price for their power for 20 years.

It’s part of the state’s goal of getting 70 percent of its power from clean sources by 2030 – 40 percent from renewables and 30 percent from efficiency improvements.

“You’re going to see a lot more renewable energy projects happen a lot quicker,” said Darren Kimura, chief executive for Sopogy, a Honolulu-based concentrated solar power company.

The ruling sets rates for small and midsized renewable energy producers to sell solar, wind and hydropower. Sign-up for the program starts Oct. 27 on Oahu, and Nov. 24 on the Big Island and Maui.

It allows for electric grids on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island to add up to 5 percent to their current power output – an additional 60 megawatts on Oahu and 10 megawatts on each of the other two islands. The decision doesn’t cover Kauai, whose grid is run by Kauai Island Utility Cooperative.

Currently, electric customers statewide may reduce their power bill by providing energy to the grid. But they aren’t paid for producing more energy than they use.

Hawaii may see its solar energy production triple from its current level of about 27 megawatts statewide, said Hawaii Energy Administrator Ted Peck.

“It’s a gold rush,” Peck said. “The intent is to add new systems and new renewables.”

The decision caps project size limits at 5 megawatts for the island of Oahu and 2.72 megawatts for Maui and the Big Island.

Similar feed-in tariff systems have been created in other parts of the country, including Vermont, Oregon, parts of Wisconsin and Gainesville, Fla.

Maui News, Haleakala Solar

*?www.hawaiicleanenergyinitiative.org

* Public Utilities Commission, Docket 2008-0273: http://dms.puc.hawaii.gov/dms

A national company that tracks foreclosures reports Hawaii had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the third quarter.

There were 1,617 foreclosure filings in Hawaii last month, a 67 percent increase from September 2009, according to the Irvine, Calif.-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac. Hawaii’s all-time high of 1,629 filings was recorded in August.

In September, Hawaii’s rate amounted to one foreclosure filing for every 317 households.

Nationally, the rate of foreclosures last month was one filing per 371 households, almost unchanged from the same month last year.

Maui County had the highest foreclosure rate in Hawaii in September with one filing per 191 households based on a total of 374 filings. Kihei had most of those with 123, followed by Lahaina with 71.

The Big Island was next at one filing per 194 households based on a total of 411, followed by Kauai with one per every 246 households based on a total of 121. Oahu had 738 filings, but that worked out to the state’s lowest rate at one per every 457 households.

HTH Corp. has announced the sale of the Pagoda Hotel and Floating Restaurant in Honolulu.

According to a company news release, the 46-year-old, 359-room property was sold to developer Peter Savio, who has hired Pagoda Management Services LLC. to manage the property.

Savio said in the news release that he’s excited about the future of the hotel and the restaurant. He said the hotel is looking forward to continue hosting the thousands of Neighbor Islanders who call the Pagoda home when on Oahu.

Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed. HTH had listed the property for $15 million.

Maui News

All of us who own stocks or stock funds are moaning and groaning about the 3-year-old bear market. But there’s another group of sufferers: fixed-income investors, many of them elderly.

True, falling interest rates did push bond prices up last year. But many investors who owned bonds that matured or were called early saw their incomes plummet after they reinvested.

Today, you’re lucky to make 2 or 3 percent on bank savings. If you’re replacing a 10-year Treasury bond that just matured, your yield is dropping from 6.3 percent to 3.7 percent.

Is there a way a senior can make up the income gap?

One alternative: a reverse mortgage, a way to pull money out of your home without saddling yourself with monthly payments, as you would with a home equity loan.

While reverse mortgages are not suitable for everyone, low interest rates and rising home prices make them particularly attractive right now for those who can stomach the high up-front fees and compounding interest charges.

A 75-year-old who owns a $150,000 home could get a reverse-mortgage loan for nearly $98,000 today, compared to $84,000 when rates were 1 percentage point higher a year ago, for example.

Like an ordinary mortgage, a reverse mortgage is a loan. Instead of requiring monthly payments, the loan, plus interest, is repaid when the owner chooses – or when the property is sold during the owner’s lifetime or after his or her death.

Since there are no payments, you don’t need a job or other income to qualify for a reverse mortgage. An applicant must use the property as a primary residence and must be at least 62 years old, though older homeowners can get larger loans.

If the home is sold after you die, your heirs will receive any money that’s left once the debt, including interest, is paid. (Contrary to popular belief, the lender does not get the home.) If your heirs prefer, they can pay off the loan rather than sell the property.

Homeowners can take their loans as a lump sum, a fixed monthly income or a line of credit they can draw against whenever they wish. There is no income tax, since the money is a loan rather than income.

The longer you have the loan, the more interest you would owe. But federal regulations limit the total amount owed to the value of the property. If the property value falls or if the homeowner lives to be very old, interest charges or money received on the monthly payment plan can exceed the property’s value.

That, of course, is a risk that worries lenders. To reduce this prospect, they limit the initial loan amount, considering factors such as interest rates and the homeowner’s life expectancy. (If you have a previous loan on the property, a portion of the reverse mortgage must be used to pay that off.)

Hence, the older you are, the more money you can get. A 62-year-old with a $150,000 home might get $83,000, while an 85-year-old could get $113,000.

In the same way, lower interest rates allow homeowners to lock in much larger loan amounts than they can get when rates are high. Once this loan amount is set, it is permanent, even if interest rates rise later. So it might pay to lock in now, while rates are low.

The interest charges applied to the loan float, changing either once a month or once a year. Typically, they are based on the rate paid by one-year Treasury notes, plus a “margin” of 1.5 percent or 2.1 percent, depending on whether the borrower chooses the monthly or annual adjustment. Currently, the combined rate on monthly adjustments, chosen by most borrowers, is 2.8 percent.

Although the homeowner doesn’t make payments on the loan, low interest rates mean interest charges don’t build up as much, so there’s more money left for the homeowner or heirs after the loan is paid off.

Maui News ; Khon2