Maui 25 Year Retrospective kickoff- 1997 Interview with Mayor Hannibal Tavares and Airielle Pearson and Jason Schwartz
Summary & Transcript
The video features an in-depth interview with Hannibal Tavares, the former mayor of Maui County, conducted by Jason Schwartz and Airielle Pearson at the Neutral Zone. Tavares served as Maui’s mayor for 11 years and reflects on his time in office, discussing his approach to leadership, community involvement, and key initiatives that shaped Maui’s growth and development. Central themes include the importance of master planning to manage growth responsibly, the protection of public beach access, enhancing infrastructure such as water storage and fire stations, and fostering cooperation among diverse political groups. Tavares also shares insights into his background, political philosophy, and personal anecdotes, including his dedication to public safety, environmental stewardship, renewable energy, and local agriculture. The conversation touches on challenges Maui faces today, such as rapid growth, water scarcity, and economic diversification, as well as the potential for a four-year university on the island. Throughout, Tavares emphasizes collaboration, community input, and keeping the door open to all citizens. The interview closes on a personal note about the power of prayer and gratitude, underscoring his deep connection to the people of Maui.
Highlights
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[04:00] ? Tavares pioneered master planning in Maui County to ensure orderly growth and prevent haphazard development.
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[06:07] ?ﾸﾏ He helped secure public access to beaches in Wailea by negotiating beach rights-of-way owned by the county but maintained by private developers.
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[12:00] ? Addressed critical water and sewage infrastructure challenges early in his tenure, including the creation of large water reservoirs to mitigate drought.
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[15:30] ? Successfully negotiated land donations from Alexander & Baldwin for a major fire station, demonstrating his tenacity in public safety improvements.
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[20:40] ?ﾸﾏ Won mayoral election with 51% of the vote in a crowded field of 18 candidates, highlighting his strong community support and reputation.
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[27:30] ? Advocates for renewable energy development on Maui, including solar and wind projects, to reduce dependence on imported fuels.
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[39:30] ? Shared efforts to bring a four-year university to Maui to benefit local students, though the plan was ultimately delayed by institutional resistance.
Key Insights
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[04:45] ? Master Planning as a Tool for Sustainable Growth: Tavares’s foresight to implement master planning was groundbreaking for Maui and one of the first in Hawaii. This approach helped guide development to be more strategic and less fragmented, preserving the natural beauty and cultural identity of the islands. His emphasis on community input ensured that planning reflected the needs and wishes of residents, illustrating a governance style rooted in collaboration and long-term vision.
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[06:30] ?ﾸﾏ Balancing Development with Public Access: The negotiation to maintain public beach access despite private resort development is a key legacy. It shows an understanding that economic development must not come at the expense of public rights. The model of public ownership with private maintenance established a precedent for shared stewardship and access, benefiting residents and tourists alike.
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[12:30] ? Infrastructure Prioritization Amid Growth: Early in his administration, Tavares tackled urgent infrastructure problems, particularly in water and sewage systems. His proactive engagement with federal agencies (EPA) and investment in reservoirs highlight a pragmatic approach to essential services. This focus on infrastructure sustainability is critical for island communities facing natural resource limitations.
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[15:50] ? Effective Public-Private Partnerships: The story of persuading Alexander & Baldwin’s controlling shareholder to donate land for a fire station underscores Tavares’s negotiation skills and ability to leverage corporate responsibility for public good. This example demonstrates how political leadership can navigate complex relationships with large corporations to secure tangible benefits for the community.
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[27:30] ⚡ Renewable Energy Vision: Tavares’s enthusiasm for solar and wind energy projects, including past discussions on innovative approaches such as underground lines beneath golf courses, signals an early awareness of sustainability challenges. His perspective aligns with Maui’s current energy goals and highlights the importance of political will in advancing clean energy transitions.
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[39:00] ? Education as an Economic and Social Investment: The near-establishment of a four-year university on Maui reveals Tavares’s commitment to local education access and workforce development. His frustration with institutional obstacles reflects broader challenges in decentralizing higher education but underscores the potential transformative impact such institutions could have on island communities, reducing brain drain and fostering local talent.
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[41:30] ? Managing Growth Without Stifling Progress: Tavares acknowledges the tension between growth and maintaining Maui’s character. His philosophy is not to stop progress but to ensure it “walks gently on the land,” reflecting a balanced approach that respects environmental limits while supporting economic opportunities—an ongoing challenge for island policymakers.
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[50:00] ? Community, Faith, and Resilience: The heartfelt story about the power of prayer during his health crisis adds a human dimension to Tavares’s public persona. It illustrates the strong communal bonds in Maui and how spirituality and faith contribute to personal and collective well-being in the community.
Extended Analysis
Hannibal Tavares’s tenure as mayor is characterized by a pragmatic, inclusive, and forward-looking leadership style. He prioritizes a governance model that incorporates public input and cross-sector cooperation, which is evident in his championing of master planning, public access rights, and infrastructure development. His experiences negotiating with large landowners like Alexander & Baldwin demonstrate his ability to blend political acumen with community advocacy, ensuring that private interests align with public benefits.
His political philosophy downplays partisan divides, focusing instead on competence, shared values, and issue-based collaboration. This approach resonates in the local context, where party lines often blur and practical solutions take precedence. His success in winning a majority in an 18-candidate race without heavy party reliance underscores his strong personal connection with the community and reputation for service.
Tavares’s insights on renewable energy and education reveal his understanding of Maui’s long-term challenges. He foresees the need for energy independence through renewables and the importance of expanding educational opportunities locally to retain young talent and grow a diverse economy. These topics remain highly relevant as Maui grapples with climate change, housing affordability, and economic recovery.
Finally, the personal anecdotes about prayer and community support emphasize the cultural fabric of Maui, where relationships, spirituality, and mutual care play crucial roles. Tavares embodies a leadership style that is both grounded and visionary, balancing respect for tradition with an embrace of innovation.
His reflections offer valuable lessons for current and future leaders on the island, particularly the importance of listening, collaboration, and maintaining a clear vision for sustainable growth while honoring the unique character of Maui.
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[Music] aloha i’m jason schwartz your host here at the neutral zone mauineutralzone.com you may know i am the director of the maui arts and music association mama and in 1997 we did a show with hannibal tavares who had been our mayor for 11 years and Airielle and i did a nicer debut at his home uh actually shortly before his uh death and uh he was a wonderful guest and people have asked me if i would like to focus on that again and show politics in a different way and i thought what a great idea so that’s what we’re going to show
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you today thank you for joining us here at the neutral zone remember you can watch all our shows go to mauineutralzone.com and you will look there there’s a directory of shows you can look by name or to scroll through and see what you like and thank you for joining us today blessings aloha aloha this is jason schwartz of the maui arts and music association along with two people that you know and love is Airielle and our friend hannibal hannibal tavares um many of you have asked me when are you going to get an interview with uh
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former mayor hannibal tavares yay [Music] [Laughter] we got it we’re buddying up on the microphone so you’ll see us going back and forth here welcome to our show thank you very much very good i was looking forward to this oh good yeah we have for a long time wanted to have you on many people have wondered they know you had some health challenges and are back in action i imagine you’re not running any marathon this week no but we’re so happy to be here with you today thank you very much oh thank you
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very much and i and we were looking at his beautiful blanket earlier when i came in and it’s it’s really special it’s got all these wonderful wishes from many different people on it yeah what’s it from well we were doing my retirement party we had this quilt spread on the table with some indelible pencils people came along and wrote little messages all over it isn’t that wonderful uh you know i once while i read them there’s chris hart yeah i mean this is like a who’s who of maui county yeah
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yeah yeah every bunch of 1990 december and uh we filled up the hall at portugal community center and everybody came out of surprise and we were getting toward the end of the event and all kinds of speeches and in walks of governor lieutenant governor the senate the speaker of the house y’all come marching in together well as i recall i was here at the tail end of your regime but um you had 12 years as mayor yeah 11 altogether 11 years as mayor and uh you helped pass the rule so that no one can uh run multiple terms no that
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came in the charter amendments that uh earlier but they went from a um two-term limit which was a four years each when i came along it was already in place in the charter but because there was an unfinished term of three years of the priors he resigned three years ago those three years did not count against the uh eight year total so i put in 11 altogether wow well i’m sure that you reigned as king wonderful good experience the highlight of my life because you know maui has always been a very special place to me
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and the people of maui are different they’re wonderful and it was a pleasure being the head man of this county and just fulfilled my life completely and my style was to get a lot of input from people what do you want to see happen here in your county what’s important to you and during my regime that we came out very hard on long-term planning master planning zoning etc because i’ve had a feeling that we don’t do that we’re going to kind of grow hodgepodge and be chop sweet and you have all kind of mixes that
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don’t make sense so i’ve been reading about it in some other periodicals and found out that a few places had gone to master planning so i started discussing that with the council and everybody liked the ideas we really became law and uh i was back in uh i was remembering supervised 1958 i think it was where maui county became the first county in hawaii and one of the first counties in the nation to have a master plan and it brought about more orderly growth not perfect but better than not you know
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i agree you know we can always be more perfect it’s always i think a matter of intention and i think it’s maui and the the islands in general have a unique situation uh in that they were owned though most of the land is owned by just a very one particular you yeah like uh the first big experiment was over in lahaina with the ampac right and they did the counterparty development which i turned out pretty good accepting i felt that there was not enough public places for the people ordinary folks
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so when a b started wailia i was with a b at the time i was a corporate vice president of governmental affairs who owned that land and my feeling was that we better make more space available for the people right so that can get down to the beach and as a result if you go to wailea you see all these beach rights away with parking and restrooms and all we did that right thank you very much i use those walkways and it’s owned by the county owned by the county but maintained by a nb yeah i really think people can go uh
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anytime they want it’s true there’s been very few bad experiences once in a while somebody gets out of line but you can take care of those people but basically we open up the beaches to everybody and that became a very important part of the plan the other thing we tried to do is to sell the lots to the hotels and fee simple large enough so that they could do heavy landscaping so if you look at those hotels down there you see lush gardens that’s right tropical growth and flowers and trees
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that was a result of giving about 25 acres of land to go with the hotel i see and that made that that also a very important point in our planning made a big difference those were the days i guess when things were um it was i want to say a wasteland it was very keyhay and that area was very dry yeah there was nothing there they were just like clouds and brush and in fact when i first went down to take a look at it and they had hired me to help them with a plan like boy what are they going to do all
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that stuff i thought it was almost a mission impossible but you know these guys with ideas and dreams came along and ainb heights and top flight planners and they went through about four or five different plans and finally came up with the one that you see there as a master plan and it turned out very well the golf course became a very important part of it it’s all nice and green and landscaped and meticulously kept so it gives it a beautiful carpet right out front right it’s a beautiful area you know
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everything kind of blended together and that wonderful walkway that goes all the way down i walk that almost every night i love it it’s wonderful yeah it’s terrific exercise and it’s beautiful and so we put that in there voluntarily because we felt that we didn’t there was complaints when we started to develop the people saying you’re going to take all the beaches away from the people the people who are going to lose their beaches i said i don’t think so yeah that’s what
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we’re going to do i thank you i’m glad the rights of way owned by the county it’s owned by the people and that’s how it turned out i’m kind of proud of that i’m so thankful to you and you should be proud of it we worked hard on that there was a lot of disagreements and debate on it but pretty soon it began to see that’s the way you got to go well i i think the large plots of land around them as you say makes a huge amount of difference and of course it was beautiful when it
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was natural too i always loved [Music] nature’s big acupuncture because those monkey part trees are beautiful and they’re a planter where there’s room for them to spread out so if you look at the monkey part trees at dualia they’ve got room to grow it makes all the difference in the world it’s very beautiful you know i’ve traveled all over the world and there is no place like maui and the people as you said before there’s just no people like the people here there and i found it so very
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special when you reach out to people and just say uh what’s your idea what would you like to see happen you’d be surprised how many ideas you get they come in and they voice themselves have some very interesting debates and the end result usually is good and i encourage that well there’s so many brilliant people here brilliant in in their own rights and respects my staff one of the things i made made of her mind right off the beginning i was going to surround myself with people who were
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competent i didn’t pay too much attention to the politics i wanted to know what is the competence of this person if i’m going to give him an assignment is he going to be able to handle it end result was yes i brought in some very good people to be on my cabinet turn them loose you know and things began to fall into place and there was your brilliance we started getting along very good with the council at the beginning they weren’t sure about me because i was a lone republican on the block and all the
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rest republican democrat high school i’ve always been a republican going back to my parents and my uncle uncle was a senator what’s the difference between a democrat and republican not a heck of a lot anymore uh you know usually old cliche that a republican declined to be a little bit more conservative he’s a little bit tighter with his money or maybe so but it was made all dependent on the issue and in my administration there are a couple of things that made the engine go one was safety
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that’s police fire protection right uh emergency vehicles the other was uh having a first-class fire department we worked on that uh that story you told me about clean water sewage treatment although those were high priority then everything else came that was a major growth time for maui oh i thought it was a sure thing with it when i when i came in uh we had some real problems with sewers in lahaina yeah the contractor had done a bum job out there epa was breathing down my neck and uh what i did the first couple of
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weeks isn’t it amazing you become mayor and they suddenly breathe down your neck when it is we want to see you in san francisco right away you got some major problems so i got my chief engine in two of us went up and volume laid out the problems on the table concerning primarily sewage even in water right i was flabbergasted well we’re going to have to spend a lot of money on this but that became priority it had to be done well we still have challenges here though a lot of challenge i know that we talked about
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water up country here now our plan just before i left office we had hired some hydrologists and geologists and my charge to them was tell me how we can help solve the drought problem of country right so about three or four of them went to work and they came out and said they thought the answer was huge storage capacity man-made lakes and so we opted for two one was at the 4000 elevation right that’s waikamoy and that’s 100 million gallons capacity and then the second one was supposed to
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be down at about three thousand feet which would have been three hundred thousand capacity they built the first one but they hadn’t built the second one i understand they’re talking about the second one now i wanted that build right away because if you get those two huge reservoirs going i think you can hold off a uh drought for about three months and our droughts usually don’t last much longer than that thank god well what do we do in the meantime i guess we’ll just have to also maybe bottle up
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some of our work how about that we’re doing a lot of bottling of water and i use bottle out here at home because my water and the pipe is not that that clean that’s right bottled water is important yeah and so i use that all the time on i don’t know molokai in the village of kuala poo if you drive up alongside there you see this huge man-made lake that’s one and a half billion gallons capacity they’ve never filled it wow but it’s there and so when i talk to audiologists i’m jealous of that in molokai i want
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something like that too can we just get a long straw well there’s ways of doing it and they came out of the plant it’s all written somewhere it’s in somebody’s someone’s drawer but there were a lot of times there still are and i was concerned about the law and order as a former police captain that you probably know and uh crime has always been very important to me or no crime is very important to you parliament was right on top of it and i think we’ve got it down good felicia probably i like tagamore he does
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a good job so whenever they needed more equipment i’d find the money somehow i like the story that you told me about the fire station down in kahului you’ve heard of the name uh harry weinberg weinberg was the controlling owner of alexander and baldwin he about 25 percent of the stock and i wanted to build a major station at caldwell because that’s where all the big buildings were and so forth so i talked to the president of a b bobby piper the classmate of mine and as i want you guys to donate me some
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lance i can build a good fire season oh yeah i think it’s a good idea he called me back he says weinberg is against it no how come he says he he said you give him too much of the county already so the only thing we can do you got to come talk to him yourself okay so i go down there one day and i walk he’s a very rough guy and i can be too so i put on my acting shoes and i told him mrs mcsweinberg you have a lot of expensive property coming up in kahui that needs my protection i want you to you to provide it
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the county will do its part you give this the land reveal a station you looked at mr mayor but you probably don’t realize it every dollar you get from maybe 25 cents is mine as yes but you get your money’s worth and then so whose buildings are we talking about not the counties talking about your buildings and that fast is going to protect them more than anybody else we had we had quite an argument so i walked up in the house when i got back to maui my phone was ringing bobby pfeiffer was online what did you
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do the weinberg do much oh he’s all worried because you were angry i said well you give him my message and you can be as diplomat as diplomatic as you want to be but my message is very simple you say the animal says we’re going to go to hell well i can’t tell roger you do it anywhere you want half an hour later i have the land [Laughter] you know we have a nice station down there right yeah and i’m sure the people of maui appreciate it you know but it’s true there have been uh you worked for a and
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b and sometimes you know i hear people talk on occasion that you kind of lean to them but i think also what you said is true you’ve gotten from a and b a tremendous amount for the county we’ve got parks we’ve got housing areas you’ve got all kinds of things uh i we’re not ashamed to ask see you orchestrated a lot i appreciate it on that door all the time right and i would say things like well you know bobby you have a corporate responsibility well you know if you owned all the land
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on an island and you know you got it because uh there was a missionary family way back when it does seem that they would be very not only willing but some darn good presidents at a b outstanding one was uh larry pritchard along comes my classmate there bobby pfeiffer and they really did a lot of good work with and they didn’t leave the cardio in the bag either so that was good i think we should take a first break if we okay with you guys we’ll be back soon with uh hannibal tavares and Airielle and
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me on mama presents breathe a little bit stretch a little oh it has a great future no question about a lot of things still to be done and there will be done well i hope to carry the flag you know i i think so you find that people are aware of the potential i think and our people as citizens are very alert they let you know how they feel and i like that because in my office i had one policy that door stays open to everybody right especially the small guy i’m his man come and talk to me anytime
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i think that’s word cut down the line i think that’s why you were so well respected what you did you’ve always have and i just had a feeling that you take the business man he’s got the chamber of commerce unions have the union leaders but a lot of people out there have nobody i want to be that guy did you think about being mayor long ago uh no as a matter of fact i didn’t uh it’s funny how your life goes you know just sometimes being in the right place the right time i ended up i was a b i had no
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idea that i would be a vice president there and they pointed her in gave me that promotion i liked my job very much and then when kavalier resigned everybody was surprised right so i started getting calls and visitations to run for that office i really hadn’t given it much thought and as i began to talk about and talk about it finally james including well i got nothing to lose just give it away i’ll see what happens but the funny thing was when i put my name in there we ended up with 18 candidates 18. wow
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18 so i kind of made light of that there was there were eight 17 trombones in one tuba because the tuba made better solid [Laughter] wow so did they all go through primaries and got down to two for the finals it could have been that way accepting without charter if in the primary you get fifty percent of the vote you don’t have a runoff you elected outright wow so i ended up with 51 percent the first round out of 18 people about eight people wow i didn’t have to go to it too that’s amazing that is
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amazing i wasn’t surprised anybody else wow it would be very hard for a so-called company man to got that kind of a vote but i give my whole life to the public you know i was just a boy scouts and even girl scouts what did you do with the girl scouts i was on their board the help was their camp up here in piaholo right and it was pta that was a president of every pta my kids went to school right right so you know obviously you get involved and not involved with the church the the beginning of fault
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all together and people know you well um i’m glad that we had all those years here with you um i don’t want to go into some of our former mayors and all their different things going on but i know you had a hard job it was tough i put in long hours oh yeah i used to work about 16 18 hours a day really wow and quite often come home with my little satchel for homework because i try to be current every day actually happy little tuesday o’clock in the morning when i’m finishing my paper
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so that it wouldn’t stack up so you were there when um you were there when linda lingle was on council why does she and goro fight so much i don’t know they had a real clash of personality while they were both counseling both in the council they seem to disagree each other a lot or she disagrees with me too you think gorilla’s going to come around this time try to be mayor or he must be getting some pressure from lanai because they like him on lanai he’s popular yeah so whether or not they’re going to talk and
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running i don’t know but we’re interested to see if he does because he’s an old war houses yeah who’s that elected yeah that was his first year in 1956 i think it was and he was only 20 25 years old i think right and he and i served in the board of supervisors together he was very good we got along real well together well as the years went on i mean he was there in uh his term for what 15 terms or something yeah he just lived a long time i was surprised that he ran from here i didn’t think he would
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do that but i just kept finding him and linda bickering and i always wondered and it was kind of small stuff that should not have been we have another situation is going to be i don’t know about 18 people but now that linda can’t run yeah it’s like an open field now going to be a lot of candidates i i predict it’d be probably over 10. but you know to be wide open you know you want to pick anyone no [Laughter] you know between republicans and democrats and greens and independents
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it’s so it’s very hard for me to really hear what’s really different i guess we have to look at the personalities and what their uh ability to lead is i think i would say especially on a local county level yeah your party identity kind of gets lost in the shuffle do you you’re the only one i think that beat the republican rap mostly around here if you have democrat you have so many votes on the way into the the gate that’s true you have to do something wrong to lose it’s true it’s a
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difference yeah i know that on the council level uh it’s more issue oriented and you find yourself taking positions on issues and not on political party stuff at the legislature the state level maybe you do more of that but not at a local level in fact a lot of local governments they run non-partisan all over the mainland they run undone partisans so i when i got elected to the border civil i was the only republican elected but i got along fine with the democrats many voters come out six three
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you know so the republicans gave you the hope but it worked out very well i had some good democrat friends who backed me up all the time i would back them up they’d back me up any feeling about the green party well i think uh you know you ran on a green party and i think you made a good showing that people know where you are now i think i told you before that i know it’s awfully hard for a new party to get off the ground yeah it’s easier to be part of the republican or the democratic party’s
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already established i figured i’ve had offers from both democrats and republicans to iran and if that’s the case just sort of i don’t know to me i just want to help make a difference you know you never know until you try because oh you can’t do it you can’t do it that’s what they told me they said i could never be elected mayor right okay i’ll see what happens and i got lucky i would most surprise anybody else but you know you just never know so you try uh if it doesn’t work then you uh
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analyze regroup and see what you want to do the next time well you say and i’m i’m a little funny in that my interest is not finding out where we have differences but find out what we have that are the same so that we might move forward that’s important i think when i’ve waved my green flag i’ve been doing it to try to get people to see that there’s a lot of issues that we can agree on you know what what’s interested in you as a candidate what do you have to say what are you for what are your
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priorities that will attract the vote for anything else whether it’s green purple or red getting visibility yeah red is a challenge getting press visibility as a green was a challenge that was a challenge but um i know that we’ve had conversations you know off screen here about all the uh things that are happening here and all the changes that are happening do you have any area of maui that you say now there’s something we should focus on now anything that’s i think we still need a
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lot of work on water water and environmental control so that we don’t mess up what we have here we’ve got to keep the air clean and unpolluted we’ve got to do a better job with our water we need a good distribution system one of the plans for our country was a dual system where you would treat drinking water but not treat irrigation water the carrots don’t have treated water they can grow without it right so you could do the dual system it’d be expensive to begin with but once you have a dual system in
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you’ll end up saving a lot of money because you’ll be treating only the drinking water you see so i think all these challenges are there and then the in the field of recreation it’s wide open because the people are finding more time for recreation and they want the parks they want the playground which people all over what do you mean in general in general here in hawaii i keep seeing more and more people working two and three jobs trying to figure out how to stay afloat yeah i feel sorry for them who do that
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you know and um but on the other hand a lot of them do have time for recruiting well it’s nice you know we keep making more people until we stop doing that we get down to wailuku and you see so many things going soccer and baseball and so many athletic events going and people just love it charmaine we talked about this regional kihei park how’s that going anything i think it’s going to go take some time but i think it’ll come out good she’s she has some good plans here yeah so uh
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you know it’s interesting when you hear the name tavares everybody i speak to says the same thing ask hannibal if charmaine’s running and your answer is she won’t say ask charmaine you know um i have a question i know i know she’s enjoying everything harry potter she attends all the meetings she’s very conscientious she puts in we see less of her now than we did before but she’s just enjoying what she’s doing well you know i uh nothing but good things to say about show me
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when i i remember when i first came to see you i was talking to you about my idea about promoting the arts with the disc remember that yeah the cd and promote tourism and environment all these years have gone by and i’m hoping that maybe that can be rekindled things with what do they say we were too fat and happy at the time now things ahead of my time now things are a little leaner um i’ve had a real good experience at the advisory board for maui electric for our 20-year energy future any feelings for
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solar energy and how we’re going to do renewables i think the potential is there i went to uh a place in california oh what’s the name of this place they have the windmills windmill on the way to palm springs they have they also have them at livermore and on the way up to livermore labs i stopped and watched that it’s awesome and they generate a lot of electricity through the wheel now here on maui in the island of molokai right that ho’olihua is probably one of the windiest places
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in the whole state and there was a scientist who was interested in putting up windmills they never got off the ground well i heard richard cameron from uh i guess now the maui news at the time kampala told me they got involved a little bit with those guys i think potentially in solar because i have a solar heater here in this house my my hot water is all my solar and it’s fine you know quite a bit of money i am my whole plan is to uh attract it’s funny way back i think it was about 1989 or 90.
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when i spoke to uh clark champion over there in wailea yeah and we talked about running lines under the then not developed golf course to be able to put modules out on the land uh cebu owns and have power supplementing the need from all the hotels still can be done i mean i know that the ability to do some of these alternative programs where else would we think they’re doing them but right here where our utility rates are high yeah and we want to be self-sufficient it’s exciting you know i think that’s a
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whole avenue that’s wide open i think so we were just during the break talking years ago i don’t know how many years ago almost 20 years i guess well um was it when you started doing that yeah the station manager at kmbi uh dick mawson a very talented got the idea of putting on a christmas skit during the holiday season and he wrote the script and he wrote in such a way that every episode was a catastrophe uh santa claus’s uh equipment was breaking down the sled was broken the reindeer was sick
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all kinds of situations like that you know and they had a bunch of acting and i always had i was i was santa claus yeah so we had a script to read and we could continue the story and people got all wrapped up in the story because they wondered what’s going to happen next uh are those reindeer going to get well and pull that sled and all kinds of w and uh you want counsel at the time what were you doing at the time yeah i was a member of the council then i was late in the afternoon right down to the
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station we just read it once and go you know and nora cooper was in the play also and then at the end of the play about the last 15 minutes i read letters from the kids to santa this hannah i’m a good boy i want so and so i would read those letters so one day i’m at home having dinner with the family charming and the two kids were there and uh this program came on the air and shot my sister mother you know mom that sounds like that and mother how can it be right here she said yeah but congress should sound
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like that but the matter passed years later she found out that i was a guy she said that’s the first time my father ever lied to me [Laughter] and the last that’s right you did this radio thing a lot i i had a friend gabrielle olivier who went to your office you tell the story so good i love the way you tell the story well she came in one day and she said uh are you planning to say anything at christmas time do you have a christmas message this was when you were the mayor i was the mayor and
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well i would like her but i haven’t given her my thought she said well i have one for you hey he reaches into the bag and brings out this uh printed statement and it was very well done you know he’s got a gift of words and i’d rather i said gee okay let’s do it i’ll make arrangements she goes down to the station she talks to people on there next thing you know i’m down there with music in the background everything else and we put on the message and you kept doing it all the time made a big hit i
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was surprised yeah do you ever think about putting out a record oh no i had a lot of fun though well you know i i think what i remember most when you were mayor and i came to you what i appreciated so much was how down to earth you were and how realistic i mean i remember that energy i was dealing on that energy thing and there were some people in australia and then there was the people here and yeah i think you told me we have a little too much red tape here to get this thing done get over to australia which i did and in
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fact chief engineer over there passed away and so it changed the results of things which may open up this window of opportunity back here on maui again for the people of maui but um how open you were to just being down i had this attitude some days some guy will walk in there with an idea that you never dreamed of listen to him see what he has to say well i’ve always appreciated that in you anything you’d like to say to the people of maui that would that uh you know they’ve been just there anything that you want to say
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well i would say that as citizens be alert keep up what’s going on read the newspapers attend the meetings whenever possible talk to your elected officials let them know how you feel about things that are important to you because it will make a difference well spoken are you still active doing stuff at all with you yeah i talk to a lot of people and uh that won’t rings all the time [Laughter] well we obviously think i’m still the mayor i was just thinking a little story about that is that yeah
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uh do we call you mayor i said well i don’t think there’s anything written anywhere but it’s kind of an unwritten policy that if you are no longer the mayor because your term ran out you can always be called mayor but if you are defeated you’re finished you lose the title so you’re still mayor tavares i’m still mad yeah how long ago according to that policy well you have any um any plans for uh getting away and no i think i would stay in the background and help people i’m in a position to give
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advice i think based upon years of being in the firing line and i’m always willing to sit down every every election there’s some new candidates who have to come and talk to me about plans how to put your campaign together and i’ll spend the time of the day when we first sat down i guess it was maybe a handful of months ago when we had lunch with uh dr glenn olds and his wife yeah i love that and virginia in the whole gram that was uh quite exciting for me i wonder how many people here really knew how close
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you were to having that capstone university here we came very close i had uh dreams about a four-year college on maui saturday youngster could go out and get his bachelor’s degree right and glenno happened to come to the scene we met we started talking one thing leads to another he said she maybe he could have an extension of uh university of alaska come right here to manolo or in makawao where now job core is yeah our job goes we went down we took a look the potential was there and we started moving along that
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direction and then his his plan got dinged by his church i guess they felt that there would be too much uh too big yeah and taken away from the glory of their but their deal i felt bad about that because i called it the maui kids can get the two years of college at mcc and then they’re stuck right and they go to they go to the campus the manoa costs a fortune and there’s something to be said about the media television you can get a or from a distance but i know i myself couldn’t replace
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sitting in class with all those beautiful girls i don’t just want to be alone watching a television screen you get a lot more education uh hands-on oh of course yeah and then you get to know the professor he gets to know you and he’s right there to answer your questions and it’s it’s live and it’s real you know i was hoping that would happen and glenn was all for it right he’s still passionate about it he wanted to come and live over here i got i was picking up i bought that house i
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remember well you know i still think it can happen i was always lost i see relinda lingo is still very much in favor of a four-year college and i wish something happens along the line there because our our kids are getting shortchanged i thought glenn’s idea and your idea about a university that had years three and four that’s all we needed and not to try to duplicate the one and the two reinvent the wheel we got the first first two all we needed second to end i thought that was really a good idea
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he was all for it he felt it could be done well um so i guess that i’d like to see it i’ve understood would like to see it happen well i think there was there still is i’m sure meetings about the development of the university but i wonder if they’re keeping that in mind that they don’t have to develop a four-year school well every time i talk anywhere i’ve always talked about two more years all we need right good yeah junior and senior year whether they want to go to graduate work
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that’s something else sure so do you um feel that there’s anything that the people of maui need to hear that they don’t want to hear how’s that question some kind of thing i think the people are very much concerned about maui’s rapid growth and they see evidence of a lot of traffic on the highway and the certain times of the day it bothers them a lot and so you hear them remarking things maui is going too fast maui is not maui but how do you stop progress well i think that my goal is i don’t
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think we can stop progress but it’d be nice to do it in a way that walks gently on the land and yeah that’s where master planning came into trying to place really use that as a proper tool you can control a lot of growth you’ve heard about this eis thing for planning it’s an environment yeah uh you think we’re close to that maybe uh i thought we were just about there and i don’t know what happened after that it’s the money thing when chris was still there we’re ready to go you know
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wow i was all for it so they’ve been talking about it that long long time yeah wow chris was a good planner well i know that uh we there’s so many people in the community as you know who are absolutely sensitive to what we’re doing with the land i know sometimes i hope when we wish that people would come out be for the fact yeah well you know it’s very easy to criticize after the fact you say well look if we were going to do yahweh there would be no jobs your kids would finish high school
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and to try to get a job on the plantation there’d be no jobs available there so they go away you lose them chances are you lose them forever they never come back is that what you want we’re trying to stop that we’re trying to create jobs here in maui so the family can stay together if they want to well a lot of them don’t even think of that they don’t realize how true that is well you watch you’re going to see me i’m going to be active out there i can’t seem to get away from it because i keep
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thinking that we can diversify our economy create jobs developing environmental products do things here that’ll show up to the whole world get jobs here what’s happening in kauai with their uh coffee they’re going great guns right they’re producing a darn good coffee in the west end of the island and now as uh closing down you’ve got some prime lands available right of all kinds i’m a little bit chagrined that we don’t have enough maui papayas i eat a papaya every day
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i got to get mine from the big island i’d rather get one from here why do you get them from the big island those are the ones that supply us oh that’s a good reason well we just kind of grow more now i just met him the other day right uh charles burner chuck bonner with donald trump he’s got some darn good profile so i buy that at his uh farmer’s market in kahului you can keep him um farmers market in kahului as well he comes in every wednesday and so i just wrote him a letter about
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his papaya well you know i am very interested in the papaya because we have a source that’s on the mainland that will buy if we want to create them all the papayas we can create and there’s all kinds of new technology for cooling and drying and things papaya is a great target of a product that can be really valuable take care of the bugs in it talking about the radiation there’s a piece of paper this morning big island county has approved it well that’s dangerous for the future of
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all produce from these islands well they don’t have a lot of disagreement on that well i know that again maybe now isn’t the subject but this thermal acoustics the ability to use a heat to generate a sound that will create cooling and use the waste heat for steam drying and cleaning instead of a radiation i’ve been getting into working on that well you know it’s like i just uh talked to senator akaka’s office because i’ve put it out to um i don’t want to name names here but
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all of our uh senate and house state representatives and they’re so busy what’s the expression sometimes it’s difficult to remember that your original intention is to drain the swamp when you’re up to your eyes and alligators but uh i’ve told these people all this idea and now we have to take it another step this is an important technology that should be incredibly valuable yeah so you watch out we’re going to have a show about it but i think these are the kind of things that we need to have happen
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here because they find some way of getting the bugs in that papaya you can’t beat the hawaii papaya that’s right they’ve got a good papaya in mexico but they can’t compare with ours we got the best papaya papa papaya we call it yeah well you know uh some years ago a b experimented with papaya and punane and their objective was to have a large crop of papaya properly treated and sent back on the matson freighter because matson was coming and loaded and going back empty right and it just did
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not pan out but the papaya was good quality they call it princess papaya a little solo papaya as sweet as could be yeah and they powder it all under and gave it up well we can unpowder it i felt bad when they did that guy my feeding was should have given it to let some farmer do it because they had the picking equipment they had the elevated platform and all of it was done scientifically by the engineering group well maybe we can rekindle it you know there’s a growing realization that we need to be
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self-sufficient here and grow more of our crops locally for all our food they say that kihei is one of the best places in the whole state for um papaya really because the rainfall is just about right hana has too much rain and that rain kind of interferes with the tree and the roots begin to deteriorate but a place like kihei you’ve got a lot of sun all day long you have most sun in kihei than almost any place else right and they produce a beautiful papaya and mango just excellent i was hoping that
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somebody would take a couple hundred acres and do it you know well not this century well peter bowen has a lot of land available well there’s a yeah you know i’m sure that a lot of ideas hopefully will come like you say people have to be receptive yeah maybe them seeing you and me here and knowing we don’t really have disagreements i could call you green easy want to change parties you know when you come up with a product like a good papaya you put it on the market and people buy it and it tastes good
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before you know it there’s a run on it they all want it that’s what happened at kipolu you know i first tasted it i was having dinner with olds and you oh yeah the lodge oh with the sticker on i remember and they came up with this papaya and i looked at it for fire i said yeah i want half of that so i got half of it and it was so good i came back and tried to find out who the guy was and i called him and he got all excited you know he’s great for fire we can do commercials we’ll do them on
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uh abc we’ll have uh mayor tavares with uh ono papayas okay yeah you don’t go wrong yeah you won’t go wrong with that but that’s for sure i’m gonna take a quick break so we can bring Airielle in and we’ll say goodbye to everyone how does that sound we’ll be back in a moment and it’s sweet i got a sweet tooth as long as it’s tasty that’s because you’re so sweet [Laughter] well it’s been so wonderful to have you here today i know that all these wonderful people here
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have enjoyed your presence you know the thing that really uh hit home one day when i ended up in the hospital story in the paper that i’d had a slight heart attack practically every church came to my room buddhists mormons catholic partisans i couldn’t believe it they all came to pray for me wow prayer is the you know they now have scientific studies done on the power of prayer i love that i’ve always believed that yes yes it’s so effective you know like when i had my open heart surgery
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i i died on the operating table for eight seconds wow they massaged my heart and started going in and been going ever since they put a pacer in everything’s fine and i have not a doubt that all those people praying for you all those prayers began to make a difference absolutely you know i have a little story that um someone i know tells at her workshops that had happened an actual story about the power of prayer and this woman was in a car accident a pretty bad car accident and she went out of her body
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and she could see all of these cars around her she could hear what was going on in these other cars and she could hear people saying things like oh no not now i have to get to work oh this is just what i need you know all this stuff that people do when this kind of traffic jam happens and from this one car there was this incredible light radiating and she was attracted to it and she like was attracted to this light and this woman in the car was praying for her and she was so touched and and she said that
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it made the difference in her life and somehow i guess she was conscious enough to get the license plate of this woman the surgeon was telling me about you know my heart’s hopping and he said did you experience anything so i kind of put on my acting face and i said yeah as a matter of fact i did experience what was that well i found myself talking to saint peter and he brought out his big book and he was going down the list and he says tavares hannibal yes oh it says that you used to be the mayor
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of maui county i said yeah that’s right these are are you sending we’re sending you back because we don’t want any mayors up here you guys want to take over [Laughter] doctor looked at me said did he say that very powerful the outcome of this story is she healed and she went to this lady’s house through her license plate and brought her flowers and thanked her and this lady was blown away she felt that it made a big difference it reminded me every every june i sent a bouquet of flowers to my
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surgeon you know yeah and let’s just have a short note saying thanks for saving my life you wrote back to me sir the first guy who did that how wonderful we’ve enjoyed having you here with us i wish we had more time to go on and you’re a welcome guest if you’ll ever like to come back we’d love to have you in fact we would even uh make you our third host mo larry and curly i don’t know which is which well thank you everyone for being here with us with uh mayor tavares and Airielle
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and myself here on mama presents we hope to see you again aloha [Music] you
