King for Mayor

[Music] good morning everyone Aloha it’s 23rd September 2024 can you believe it aloh my name is Jason Schwartz host here at the neutral zone we are on K kuu 88.5 FM the voice of Maui and simal cast on Maui Community TV which is really Maui Community media akaku Channel 55 you can also find us up on YouTube you can find if you put in neutral zone Maui Jason any of that stuff you’ll be able to find our couple of channels with hundreds of shows and you might check see good things there I have a really fun guest a wonderful

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guest a friend of mine we don’t get together much because she’s busier than three I was going to say a paper hanger but a three paper hangers uh Kelly King is my guest many of you know Kelly King not only is she a a beautiful and wonderful woman of our community she has served us on the County Council for how many three terms three terms yes my goodness and before that I kept hearing this name there’s this woman on the board of education and and then she was in the she was really just something and

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and then I saw as the community sort of talk about Grassroots movement I always felt like you were lifted up some people run because they want to run and like me I’m a champion for some cause and I’m going to bring these ideas and I’m sure I’ll be able to change everything into my way and then there are people that come out of the you were involved with education because you had a child I bet exactly I had two kids um so you know I was a PTA mom and I was working of course if you know back

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in the 1980s uh back when the the school board the State Board of Education was an elected body it’s a it’s an appointed body now uh but back then we were fighting for kii school for air conditioning we were in a community that was the fastest growing community in the state of Hawaii for uh probably the 80s and 90s and everywhere there was construction there was dust and because it’s windy the dust comes in there was noise everywhere and so it was a big goal to try to get air conditioning so

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the teachers at kii school could actually close their windows and not be stifled um you know because it’s hot in that Community yeah and uh that’s where a lot of the activism a lot of activists came out of that period I think but uh I remember being involved in uh besides that you know looking around and seeing that there are really no playgrounds on the island back back then and so I got together with some other moms and got some volunteers together worked with the county and built the Island’s first

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super playground which was the playground at col Park which is still there today um and we did you know it took us a year we did meetings in the community to get input on what components people would like to see for the playground we got Comm it was all um volunteer labor that put that in and uh and we worked with the county to help us fund it we did fundraisers and then they match our our funding um and that kind of brought together a lot of PE like like-minded people to realize hey you know we don’t have to sit around begging

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our public officials to do stuff we can get stuff done by ourselves or with using them as partners um and that’s where some of my initial activism came from but I was asked after that project got done and I was so proud of it but then we actually a year later we moved up to Kula U with our kids because kii school was just so crowded they were actually holding classrooms in the bathrooms back then and so we moved up to Kola because the elementary school was a lot less crowded um was much more

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comfortable up there and then because I was up there dick Mayer called me up you know stanch Kola um Community Association president and he said can you come and do the same thing over here at the new park we have next to the school so I spent another year of my life getting that playground together working with the community up there and you know just it it was really inspiring but then that was it was during that time when some of the people I was working with turned to me and said you need to run for the Board of Education

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we have to get some changes and one of the great things about that particular period is school Community Based management was coming into play right around then so they we needed a champion to say hey we should be able to manage some you know where the funds go for our own school and we weren’t able to actually change the whole system which is I’d like to see decentralized education so that we have local school boards um and I actually worked with Linda lingo when she was governor to try

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to help get that done um but we were not successful it’s a very it became a very political thing uh but the school Community Based management was is a tool that exists in all the schools all the school complexes and it’s a way to bring together a committee of parents teachers community members to talk about each school’s budget and whether we should use money for you know this field trip for those books for you know the things that that uh School budgets get used for so it’s a way of having some input at

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least at a local level um and that I was a big champion of that system which um was interesting because I um you know as a big push for to decentralize I was hoping that this would you know take the place it has not because ultimately most things get decided in Honolulu and when you look at the State Board of Education there are 10 board members from aahu and only three from the neighbor Islands so you know we were always outvoted but uh that was a time when you know I never thought I’d be running for

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public office and I just had people I kind of went you know kicking and screaming and they said no you need to do this because we need uh representation and I was a young parent back then running against somebody who was you know retired in his 70s and not very responsive to the community uh so you know I was happy to do that for four years and I actually told my husband after you know I stepped down after my term because my daughter turned 13 and I thought I have to be home you got to be home for your young teenagers now you

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have to see your kids while they’re young yeah you can’t be flying back and forth to aahu while they’re in school and um I told my husband if I ever decide to run for anything else just slap me upside the head and O s into me but you know here back in 2016 the big issue in keii was the Mega Mall and our community was was staunchly against it and our community our council member was supportive of it so I got talked into it I mean I literally had people on their knees begging me to run

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for the County Council yeah yeah I can appreciate that and then you were on Council what year were you on Council what then uh I was 26 16 when I Ran So my first year was 2017 and then I was in there for three two-year terms so you were in there as and organized one thing that I don’t see now in Council I wonder is there was an economic and environmental climate committee I don’t have the name right well that was my committee that I created it was called climate action resilience and environment committee

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sure seems like a top it was a great committee acronymous care C and uh we got so much done in that committee for Environmental Protection we started working on economic diversity which is resilience we I was able to um to create a couple of really interesting projects one was the um the legislative uh video that we did to um that’s out there now in the ethos is uh you can get a copy of it through the County Council Office of council services but it was a video designed to explain the different types of levels of

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government to the general public you know what what is the difference between County the County Council the administration uh versus the legislature the state legislature and the federal government our our our um United States uh Congressional and Senate um delegation and what do each of these levels of government do and how can you participate that we had we have sections on there and how to testify how to get involved in the Council on on local issues and it was just a great way for because there’s not a lot of civics

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classes in our high schools you know there’s one or two I’ve spoken at both of them uh that um that try to teach this to the kids but they you know the students don’t really in fact a lot of adults don’t really understand the difference between government they don’t understand that what the administration does at the county level versus the policymaking body which is the council so that was one project that I was able to um to get done um in those terms and then the other one that I’m

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just really proud of and I was so disappointed when I left the council and and that project ended along with the care committee yeah is the youth Council that was such a wonderful project and I had set it up so that it could be an annual um an annual program but what we did was I had Axel beers working for me and my staff who was a journalist and teacher he was working on his master’s and uh he came to work for me full-time and I asked him about this project because he was young he was 30 years old

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when he joined my office so he could really relate to these high school students so we we we identified we put out applications we identified a cohort of I think it was around 30 students um from 14 to 18 years old high school students and then we had a program for I think it was about nine or 10 months where we trained them and we we um trained them in how to ident identify the big issues we brought in guest speakers uh Axel worked with them on communication how to research their issues how to propose and write uh

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resolutions for solutions to some of the problems great and how to deliberate you know they were they had practice sessions on how to deliberate and then at the end of this period we sat them in the chambers this is my my favorite part we we identified nine of them one from each district and then we put them in the chambers in our seats they chose their chair and their Vice chair and they went through each one of them had a resolution that they proposed and deliberated with their the other council

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members the youth council members on and then they voted and all the resolutions that passed out of the youth Council went on to the full Council one of them was an issue um the the young man from uh laayi uh his proposal was to fund a youth center for the night his Island and he made some very compelling arguments it was a lot of money but you know he that passed the youth Council it went on to the full Council and I think it was within a month or two that we passed the budget for that so he got to see his proposal

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in real time that’s great make it through but I remember walking into on that the day that we actually held the council for them I walked in around 10:00 and they were all there in their seats because they were they were practicing for 2 hours we weren’t going to start till 1:30 but I I walked past them not a single one of them looked nervous they were so prepared and they were so well educated and I really credit um Axel for for um taking this project on and being able to relate to the students and knowing what it took

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because he had worked in my office in research researching legislation um but but uh when we went through the the actual um exercise of of of introducing the council and having them go through their deliberations at the end of that I asked them how many of you would be interested in running for office now and all the hands went up and it was just oh my it was so joyful for me to see that we could start lifting up our next Generation educating them as to what we’re doing on the council and working on our Replacements because why

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did that not continue I I can only assume it was because I wasn’t there to yes they needed a champion so I I would like to continue that again if I get back on the council because we need our next Generation to be leaders we’re making decisions for them uh for their future and we’re making some very tortured decisions you know I I I I was going to ask you after hearing what you’re saying there are people that are running for councel uh everywhere but here um how prepared are they to and how

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many of them understand what you were teaching there yeah not a lot I mean they get get on to the a lot of people get on to the council they’re not yeah and they have to learn on the job shell shock yeah I remember that way back Allan Arawa told me that when he first got on Council years ago he was all blur eyed I said what he said I’m up reading and learning because there’s such a gigantic curve to knowing how to be effective in the SE right right and you know it’s it’s if you’re in the

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community and you’re already work and that’s one of the reasons why I said I would run for because I was in the community I was working on these issues the climate change the traffic the you know what was happening in our community as far as development and education a lot of these big big items I mean I knew a lot more about climate change than most of my peers and so I knew I could do the job I just didn’t really want to um but I got talked into running and I think I think that was one of the reason

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the things that made me the most effective is I didn’t want to be there as a career I didn’t see that position as a as a title grab you know and I really didn’t care about the title I just wanted to get things done and so um my staff and I were just driven to get things done um in within three terms because I had already predetermined to the people who asked me to run that I probably wasn’t going to stay on the council more than three terms and in my mind I thought of it as sort of like

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jury duty you know you take one for the team you’re doing your civic duty you’re getting things to happen happen you’re listening to people you’re working on Solutions with um individuals and NOS you know the nonprofit organizations around here that worry about our land issues that worry about our environment that worry about our biodiversity and then try to take care of these things so I was working with a lot of those um nonprofits and actually getting you know we passed the Wetland Bill we passed the

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chemical sunscreen ban we we got the um alter lighting bill passed to protect the seabirds and the turtle the turtle hatchlings um but we got so much done in and just even the last 3 years um after I created that committee and was able to chair it that sometimes I look back and I just think you know I don’t know how we did all that but I but really it was we never Ste back after we did something and padded ourselves on the back and took time to celebrate we just went on to the next thing because there was so

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much that had to get done and there still is so um that’s what’s kind of um inspiring me to run again because I’m not I’m seeing a lot of things get dropped and there’s some movement to go backwards a little bit you know the the the council this week is proposing to repeal the pesticide ban we we passed a pesticide ban um for County facilities and now they want to repeal that so that the golf course can now start using pesticides again um because they’re having issue with weeds and you know I

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understand that issue but the golf our golf course our municip ipal Golf Course is right next to the ocean and so where does all that pesticide go that runoff goes right into the ocean it contributes to the detriment of our coral reef and when you kill the coral reef that’s what that’s the barrier that stands between the beach erosion and the ocean waves you know it slows down the the heavy waves and it slows the erosion from sea level rise so we’ve done a lot of harm to our Reef over the last 20 30 years

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that needs to be um you know it needs to be reversed you know I can’t believe that in N when I got here in 1988 and just those first couple of years as I was starting to get acclimated place we looked in the United States Department of energy guide and on page three there it talked about fertilizers and destruction of the reef and then it wasn’t 6 months later that they put a 200,000 th000 study at the state level to study and they come up with the same answers they already knew conclusions we know know what wrong

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start what is that is that someone pushing the problems down the road yeah I think so that’s part of it not wanting to make a decision maybe it was an election year when the decision came before them but you know my greatest Ally and when I wrote that bill the the ban on chemical sunscreens was Department of land and natural resource uh Jeff Bagshaw who used to stand out as as often as he could during the week in his ranger outfit at a heu um you know in the on the uh South End of kii uh our

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most pristine area for snorkeling they call it the Fishbowl because it’s so beautiful and so pristine and he would stand out there under a 10×10 tent handing out flyers to tourists explaining how bad their sunscreens were because of the chemicals and he had a 55 gallon drum next to him so he would that was his visual telling tourists this is how much chemical goes into the ocean around Maui every day because of your sunscreen because of your sunscreen so when we when when I was working with

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office of council services and writing the Bill uh you know a lot of the a lot of other municipalities and we were looking at the country of palao palao uh which is very environmental they had a bill that an ordinance that had a list of 10 chemicals that were banned and I actually had two different pharmacists testify at my committee saying you know if you just ban a list of chemicals those are trademark names so all it takes is you know for someone to take one of those names tweak it a little bit call it something else and

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you it’s legal because it’s not on the list oh so the list is uh you know 10 trademark names of chemicals that cannot be used and it doesn’t mean you can’t still use the same chemical but tweak it a little bit so um so I worked with Council Services I said let’s just ban all chemicals and they were like that’s going to be really hard but it’s it’s the only way to go if you really want to protect your your our biodiversity in our coral reef and the Marine ecosystem

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um so it was we had so much support from the community from the nonprofits from dlnr from people who understood what was going on with the and and and people who like to dive and snorkel and enjoy the reef um you have to go you know if you’ve done it lately you have to go further out to see a reef everything around the shore is dying so that was really the inspiration and I was proud of our Council for passing that that bill and for um getting that out there now and then I worked with uh one of my

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colleagues on the big island Council and we got it passed over there too um which is one of my big frustrations is it it’s almost impossible to pass that kind of legislation at the state level you know there’s so much lobbying going on and so much um you know people Deep Pockets influencing our lawmakers at the state level that and that’s why I like being on the council because we’re we’re with the people you know our friends and neighbors can see what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it and

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everything’s out in the open we’re subject to Sunshine Law which the state legislature is not and so we don’t we don’t go behind closed doors and decide the fate of a bill before we bring it to the public which is often times I think what happens at the state legislature you know have you ever testified at a a State Legislative hearing and you feel like they’ve already made up their minds by the time you get there yeah I went over there with Mark shien may he rest in peace love Mark yeah

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um you’re uh me I almost don’t know what subjects to think about I you know because someone has been on Council you get to see up close like you just said that all your dreams of what you can do you realize you’re dealing with a system that blocks you on the left and on the right from just being able to go straight at something um any pet issues now I mean my pet issue is housing I’m I can’t get over the fact how shy we are of the adequate housing we need and how the federal government’s help in

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coming in with big money has made the housing problem even more challenging it’s it’s challenging but you know we’re not looking in the right direction and I felt this way before when I when I first ran for office and being in office um my theory what I proved my theory correct which is this has nothing to do with the permit issues this has nothing to do with um the the institutional administrative um implementation that they’re supposed to be doing the the thing that gets affordable

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housing done and I’ve done it in South Maui uh when I first came in when I first ran for office uh I was I remember specifically being up the West Maui taxpayers Association forum and people were holding up signs saying we need affordable rentals now because most people who are at the lower end can’t afford to buy a house and you know we when we were young we all rented for a while and we were able to save money because it was reasonable and then you know eventually you could buy something

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the rents these days are so astronomical you cannot save a penny uh so I took that to heart and one of the things that I had suspected was that this has this is not a permanent issue it’s an issue of communication of getting developers to design housing housing developments that we want and then talking to us in the community and saying here’s what I’d like to do do you haveen see any issues with this so the first year within the first few months I got on the council I identified um a developer Doug bigley

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who’s um who’s now done I think four or five um projects on Maui uh but I brought him in for the first project and um he was looking at buying the affordable House housing project at the top of kahini uh Street oh yeah um that had gone bankrupt oh I see the guy went bankrupt so he was going to come in and buy it and turn it into rentals and I asked him could you come and meet with me when you come to Maui so we had a meeting and I said this is exactly what we need he was talking about about 120

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units uh affordable for the 60% Ami area median income and lower so these are people making 25 $30,000 a year that need a place to live that they could afford and these were these rentals um the way he was explaining you know they’re going to start at less than $600 a month for an apartment um and I asked him when I looked at his project I said okay the the way you’re to get this done quickly Doug is you need to go meet with the Ki Community Association you need to meet with the South Mau advisory

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committee which I had set up uh you need to meet with the neighbors and it’s going to take you three four five months to get through all of those meetings and get the input but you’re going to shave two to five years off the project time trust me so he did all that and he made some changes he had originally one two and three bedrooms and the kii Community asked him could you make it just two and three bedrooms because you can house more people that way and if we’re talking about families we need at least

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two bedrooms uh they he was going to do it in two phases they said we would rather you do it in one phase and that’s less disruptive to the neighborhood and it’ll get done faster but there were a couple of little things like that and he changed his project all of a sudden he had nothing but support from our community and every time he came to the council for another permit or any kind of issue they were there testify ing in favor of it he got that project done from the time he was able to buy it from

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the developer uh to move in was It was supposed to be two years uh they had that fire in August of 2019 and he ended up having to replace a bunch of um drywall and Roofing on the side that faced the fire even though it didn’t catch on fire it had some smoke damage um so it took two and a half years to move people in and he said to me wow it takes a really long time to get stuff done on Maui and I said Doug that’s break neck speed for Maui go look at while 670 they still have not even Broken Ground and it’s been over 30

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years now so because they didn’t come to the community and give us something that we wanted that we could get behind and so they’ve been fighting the community for 30 years and in the beginning when they first got their permit way before my time on the council there were a list of conditions and they had to do with invasive species and um the natural habitat species that were living there and the plants and the insects and animals and uh doing water testing and things like that um uh reporting all the

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cultural sites none of that ever got done and so the community just kept fighting it and lodging lawsuits and intervening you got you got to work with the community that’s still going on with Bo it’s still going on but that’s what I’m saying there’s an issue coming up about their wanting to uh you know not have to do this and let’s delay that let’s still do it no and and and what we really should have what what the council should have been doing back then which we started doing when I was on the

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council I think in my second term is putting limits on it you know if you have conditions you have what five years to get these done otherwise your permit expires and you got to start all over again I mean spent 30 years and we’re still talking about the original conditions for w 670 so you know my I was ecstatic because I I proved my own Theory uh he went and did a second project up above the golf course which was a exact same same model of about 120 units affordable rentals and these are these are in affordability the deed

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restriction is 65 years that was not even something I had to ask him to do he that was in the model that’s great so you know 65 years it’s going to be in affordability uh people were able to move in in two and a half years we housed some um unsheltered people some houseless people um because we have a lot of people that are houseless on this island that are working who have jobs they just can’t find a place affordable place to rent so they’re living in their cars so you know these kinds of projects

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we can get people off the street we can get them a good night’s sleep their kids can have a good night’s sleep and go to school um but it it just it goes back to how the community works together and not this you know and I what I’ve seen in the last year and a half that is a little bit disturbing is just this propensity to support developers you know rubber stamp developments um because you’re getting a little tiny you know you get 80% luxury homes and maybe 20% um afford I mean we’ve got one

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project the lead cor project in in WEA that’s 900 luxury homes and 100 affordable homes so and I don’t even know what the afford is so you know I can’t even I don’t even know if you could call that so that’s 10% because they buy credits which allow them to not have to do as much affordable housing but you know we I keep hearing we have limited Water Resources we have all this traffic if we’re going to use our limited Water Resources it should be 100% for affordable housing that’s why

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I’m not luxur surprised to hear that who’s I’m sorry yeah and these are things that go back that were that got their permits and their entitlements you know 10 20 years ago and now they’re coming up at a really bad time you know we really don’t need this kind of you know when people are struggling and we’ve had covid and we’ve had the wild they can hang on to entitlements and all kinds of promises for so long yes and that’s the problem is that we really we really need um we need uh Sunset dates

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on these entitlements and sunset dates on if you aren’t if you haven’t done your conditions sorry your permit’s gone you got to start all over again now now um but we’ve just it’s the the County Council for decades has been so development friendly and the planning department of the Administration has been so development friendly you know they they go to lunch with these guys they they help them out they meet with their consultants and sometimes the Consultants actually write the reports

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for the planning department so it’s really there’s this symbiotic relationship that has formed and the community doesn’t get as much attention there you know when we come out and we say in our community plan meetings that’s way too much development you’ve put in here then the developer comes and says you know we need this and this and this and this is where the map should be the next meeting we go to the maps changed to what the developer wanted so that’s yeah those are the

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really frustrating things and it it takes um you know I kind of feel like I got a lot of stuff done and if I’m able to and I have a few more you know good terms iny I I think I need to step back up now that you haven’t been on for a couple of years can you do another five terms God forbid I know I can’t do five terms because of the term limits which was my proposal so I’m going to honor them but you know when I when I propose the term limits um it was you know I bring these things up so you can say

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what you just said well you know it was a matter of one word because in our Charter for both the mayor and the council members is said you cannot serve more than five consecutive terms for counsel and two consecutive terms for the mayor and so what they do and alen Arawa did this he served one term as mayor he he was he was beaten then he came back for two more two consecutive terms this um we’ve had three or four council members who served five terms they sit out a term they come back for five more terms because you know you’ve

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only served five consecutives I I keep thinking Alice Lee never ages but when I first got here and she was on Council that’s 30 years ago so she did her 10 years then stepped out and then she came back um after she sat out for a period of years and you know she was trying to be retired but you know the the so when I when I got that passed when I got that bill uh that that proposal um passed by the council to go on the ballot uh we we just all we did was he took out the word consecutive so now there’s a total of five terms that

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you could serve but we we couldn’t make it retroactive because we had three people on the council who were doing that who who if we made it retroactive they would have been done and they wouldn’t have voted for it to put it on the ballot and you need you need and then there were you know couple of sympathizers with them but you need um six votes of the council to get something on the ballot a charter Amendment on the ballot so I had to make it start that year I couldn’t go back I said well what if we just go back to the

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beginning of my terms and we just couldn’t get the support so we started it in 2020 I believe so every council member starting in 2020 can only serve for five terms that’s good I and you would think but again their youth idea it sure needs seems to be that we need to keep creating training program so that when someone is of age they have enough uh understanding of the system get the ground running and and understanding too uh where how this affects uh the lives of their peers when I was in 2019 when I was chairing the

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council and I um negotiated the settlement agreement for the Lina injection well lawsuit because when I was watching it from the outside I was thinking why don’t they just work on the solution why are they putting millions of dollars into fighting the Hawaii Wildlife Fund that this is a problem we’re going to have to fix it at some point why are we fighting it in court and when I got on the council my first two years I was in the minority and I was trying to talk to my my colleagues on the council and say let’s just go

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meet with them and I’m I know the Sierra Club I know the Surf Rider I know Hawaii Wildlife Fund they’re all my friends I know what they want they don’t want to cost the county a lot of money they want solutions they want the leef to stop dying from our injection Wells and I was told oh you don’t understand about this U lawsuit if we lose it it’s going to cost cost us $300 million and I said that’s highly doubtful so when I got the opportunity as chair I worked with Earth

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Justice to come up with a settlement agreement and they were just asking us to put a few million dollars into it to start uh which we already had done we already had it in the budget um but but oh my goodness getting people to vote for that settlement agreement on the council it was like pulling teeth and we had we had groups classrooms of students you know from from middle school to high school come and testify and beg the council to please settle and please protect the reef and so you know I’m

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looking at my peers going what more do you need we’re talking about the future of these students environment and here’s what they’re telling us so you know that was that that’s kind of where I got inspired for the Youth council is I just realized we’re not even listening to these people we barely got um thanks to Mike Molina we barely got a majority to pass the settlement so we got it through the council and then the mayor wouldn’t sign it so you know it’s just like it’s

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like you said you know there’s there’s there’s the fight on on both sides of you as they’re trying to to move down but it but it I think that alone gave um the people of Maui some confidence in what could happen on the council and that the council could do the right thing if we had a majority of people who thought that way are we close right now uh we we’re close u i mean when I stepped down I was the fifth person and the council flipped and it became much more conservative most of the people on

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there are funded by big development you know money and a lot of that money comes from off Island and so you know you think that they’re affected by that I mean oh absolutely I mean you have to look at the decisions that are being made you know and who’s influencing those I just thought I’d ask if I didn’t I probably wouldn’t be running for office again but I see it so clearly and you know and I think I think we need we we went through a period where we were listening to people uh sometimes we

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would change our vote because of testifiers you know an extraordinary number of testifiers because of covid and this is the best thing that came out of covid we started doing the remote testimony I mean people were on the beach in their backyard wherever testifying from their phones and so you know it makes for a really long meeting because sometimes we’d be meeting our meetings went till midnight but so many people felt so empowered to come out and give their opinion and talk about their experiences

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and they got a lot of times they got the council to move in their direction to do the preserv land preservation or whatever it was they were fighting for uh so I I mean it was just an amazing thing to watch that transformation and then and now you know I’ve been involved in testifying before this particular Council and I’ve been you know with a couple dozen people from my community and they’ll vote the the other way because you know I mean we we we all came out for the person we wanted

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to represent us on the Planning Commission and they found somebody who was a developer contractor and they put him on the none of us had heard of him and we’re in keii so those are the kinds of things that you see you know it’s almost like a slap in the face that we’re not being represented well you know from don’t uh when you talk to your husband and said hit me smack me I said you did not do it Bob and now you’re sitting there with the passion for it I I know that uh I mean anything

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that when I think about the council period that you went on it is very productive it was very productive and you know I you know what’s really interesting Jason was when you know it was a lot of work I mean I I worked and my I worked my staff really hard they they they used to joke if we don’t have at least 20 things on our plate at one time it’s a slow day but uh the the really funny thing was that when when I got elected and I knew it was going to be a lot of work because I saw because

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this happened to me when I was a board of when I when I ran for the Board of Education when I got on I went oh now I have to do this for four years and I was I was the only one who had my number in the phone book because we didn’t have cell phones back then um I would spend hours on the phone talking to parents and teachers and people who had concerns um I got a little agoraphobic because every I couldn’t even go if I went to Costco it would take me four hours to to get out of there cuz everybody wants to

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talk about their kid and their educational experience um but I worked really hard and I got the things done that I wanted to get done and um and so when I got elected to the council um I look back and it was it was almost funny just looking back at the immediate few months after the election because people would come up to me and and say congratulations and I’d say For What and they go well cuz you got elected to the council and in my mind I’m thinking okay this is going to be a lot more work I was just thinking about

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the work I wasn’t thinking about the title or the race I mean the race was over it was done now it’s time to work and so sometimes I’d have to have people remind me that that’s why they were congratulating me because I it really wasn’t on my mind that now I’m a council member it was on my mind that now I’ve got a lot of work to do well I I was going to say whether you’re on Counsel or not you have a lot of work yes I do that’s that is true because the who you are is still Who You

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Are are and your commitment to all these things has just been unquestioned and um to see you like you say Alice Lee was in and out of council and she sort of still maybe has changed some things over time I’m sure she supported some of my bills so I’m grateful for that but I know that I’ve seen you in and out of office your commitment I was looking at an old flyer of mine from 1994 and and uh I was running for council at the time and mayor and then anyway that was the year I was elected

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to the State Board of Education so we were running at the same time for different things well I lost but I my I look at that flyer and I swear the issues of the same as today and we’ve progressed on some of them but a lot of them we haven’t but I am so thankful that there’s I feel like I’m looking into a mirror cuz I don’t really hear anything out of your lips that I don’t agree with and as a citizen it’s very rewarding to to hear someone you you come very genuine you’re not you know

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putting on any uh what do they call it Eminence Front those days of the well I I you know to me there’s so much that needs to be done and I always you it’s funny because I always talk to people you know who who at one time thought that they might run for office and I my response is always great great because you can be my exit strategy and I said that to somebody when I ran for my first term and so at the end of that term I checked in with him just to see how he was doing he goes oh I could never do

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the work that you’re doing you know you I said well you know sometimes you got to take one for the team but you know just because um part of my background is I’m the oldest of four girls and so I grew up taking care of other people and always looking out for my younger sisters um I I when you grow up in a big family and then my you know my dad was the youngest of eight kids so you you know you you end up being around a lot of people and having to channel that energy sometimes into something

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productive um so I think a lot of it came from uh being the oldest girl I had a an older brother who’s I have an older brother who’s a couple years older than me but when my when my parents would go out you know when I was 13 they’d always leave me in charge and you know it’s that whole thing about girls are usually mature faster um but I think I think a lot of my um my propensity for taking care of other people and looking out for the underdog comes from that from the familial you know the the place you are

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in your family um because it’s just it it it when you grow up that way it’s breed into you you know you just have that in you that you want to make sure everybody else is okay yeah before I forget it I’m just curious I’ve seen and heard for many years alternative housing programs and alternative communities and cluster housing with centralized kitchen and centralized this with living things uh is there room I thought I remembered things in the charter where there is room for alternative things to be

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proposed there’s actually an ordinance called um experimental and demonstration um housing and it I was try I tried with several groups to get that funding because there there was at one time a million dollars in that fund and nobody had ever and you know um availed themselves of it uh but it’s you know I mean that when you’re talking about the what you’re talking about you know million dollars is only part of it you need the land and everything but I’ll tell you where that what you’re talking

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about actually exists right now and I went to see it it’s in Sand Island on aahu they have a community and they’ve taken container home containers you know like shipping containers and 20 foot and 40 foot ones and they turned them into tiny homes they’re um basically bedrooms with a desk and they’ve put them and the and the 40ft containers will have two different units in them but they um they’re for one to two people and they they’ve put them in a sort of a a little village setting uh and the two two

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containers will have an area in between them with shade uh connecting them and then a picnic table in there place where people can hang out and then they have a central kitchen area that’s sort of like an outdoor kitchen uh where they provide um I think when I was there they were providing breakfast and lunch and uh and there’s a there was a really low fee to live there so it wasn’t rentree but it was something that everybody could afford and a lot of those folks were working so they would they had bicycles

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and they would ride their bikes to work the bicycles were provided um they had common areas where they could have meetings and then they had the the kitchen kind of living room area where they had a TV that you know people could sit and watch TV together so it’s kind of what you’re saying it’s still there that’s one example of but I all through the years I have seen I remember we used to talk about harvesting the field and turning it into building materials uh I’m bringing it up

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specifically cuz this was 1990 two and three I mean so over the years things have improved so much it sounds like Woodstock well it sounds like well that’s early but what the reason I’m even thinking of it there are so many Alternatives there are people building things using clay the guy named Cobb there’s so many opportunities i’ like to see an example that we can show the world and they can do it all I’m concerned about these huge numbers of people that are now houseless we you know we do have two I think there

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are two hemp homes on the island and that’s one area um there there I don’t know how many bamboo homes are but there’s you know bamboo is another local material the problem with the bamboo is it you know it gets imported from Southeast Asia so there I’ve talked to um I’ve talked to one of the bamboo um companies that is trying to bring it to Hawaii to actually grow the bamboo because it’s a specific type of bamboo for construction but when I was on the council the last couple of years I got a

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position funded for the administration in the climate office that um the the sole purpose of that position was to um put out rfis requests for information request for proposals to start to jumpstart a local construction material industry and that could be hemp it could be bamboo it could be uh recycled Lumber there’s a lot of things you could other things you could use and um that position got funded the person got hired under the previous administration and then they put that they put it to work doing something else

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and the intent of it didn’t get done so um that still needs to get done but that was a response to um after covid when materials went Skyhigh shipping went up it was so expensive to build anything right after covid can you believe I’m talking about something that was sugar cane take sugar cane and and use it process in the field and build housing materials that’s three decades ago and there’s plenty of things about the this and the other things that I always wonder like I hear the EPA comes in and

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they say we do it this way and there are alternative answers that are so many out there in the world that because it’s not approved by the EPA be going with an old method that we know isn’t working or or well hemp hemp actually is hemp and bamboo are too um I’m not saying no to those I’m just saying that there’s there’s many things and so many Alternatives I just like to think Maui is going to take some of that County owned land and see what we can do we’ll put our own water on it we’ll cre we’ll

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build our own building materials and create them right there we’ll grow our own food we’ll be completely self-contained I would love to know that’s one of the things I would I want to do in the in the next term is to really is to to make sure that that part happens the part where the that position I put in there was to start bring because I talked to a lot of developers too and they all supported that they were tired of of paying you know I think a sheet of plywood was two or three times as much after covid and then you

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had to pay twice as much to get it shipped here so you know a lot of the one of the affordable housing projects I I started working on before covid um when they got into construction after covid they sent me a picture of a pallet of lumber and they said this pallet before covid would have been a million dollars now it’s three so they had to change their their um pricing and raise their pricing on their affordable rental or their affordable housing um but we can do this here and you know it’s interesting because we are you know

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my husband and I are doing the sunflower fields uh the material in the sunflower uh stem stock is very similar to The Hemp stock so you could actually do the same thing out of sunflower material build you know make like hemp herd you could make a herd out of um you know those little pieces out of sunflower and build build a similar type of house so I just would love us to everyone to think about self- sustainability I don’t know why that isn’t built into these decisions and why we’re stuck with Rules

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and Things coming at us I mean is it because of the money is it Josh Green say yes because you only get the money if you go by their plan no it’s it’s it is about the money but it’s not that it’s there’s a lot of money uh there’s a lot of big money um developers and shippers and people who make money off the model that we currently have that do a lot of lobbying with our state legislature so we need to and that’s why I went I started talking to developers like would you support if we could get a

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local hemp industry and start building out of hemp or bamboo or something that we could grow here and all of them said yes we’d support it but you have to start there you have to start with the people who are actually developing homes otherwise you’re fighting them listen how wise you are you guys here what this is what we call an experienced woman who has gone through this I see that to me that’s Grassroots that’s what a Grassroots movement really means that’s exactly you know and it’s um interesting that it

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we’re talking about Gra Grassroots and hemp but you know there’s there those possibilities exist and there are people who would put good money into them as well well I’m excited about that and I haven’t talked about my ideas about art and music and environment the whole thing that I talk about that stuff a lot and I’ll probably talk to you offline well that’s important too because you know part of what we need to do going forward is diversify our economy and art and music and the film industry are part

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of that so that we’re building an economy for our people and not everything is for tourism uh tourism jobs the the the biggest problem with tourism jobs is that they’re so low paying and you know you have to work three four jobs to make ends meet if you’re making $12 an hour especially if the renters went through the SE exactly and you know when I worked in the tourism industry it was um I was at one point I was um starting up uh activity centers because I was at the Forefront of that um industry and um working for

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uh in hotels for Fantasy Island no no these are the the local tours like the boat trips setting up the little kiosks everywhere well I I I would set one up and run it and then you know sell the tourists the um the louts and the dinner shoes and those kinds of things Fantasy Island used to have a bunch of booths throughout well you know and it was an interesting um industry to to start up and I I was like I’ve always been really meticulous so I made sure that anything I booked I knew it was a quality trip I

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had been on it already I I knew firsthand what it was but when I was doing that um I um that was you know those kinds of jobs are a little bit higher paying but then I you know a lot of my peers were working a $35 uh shift boat trip and they’d have to do that you know they’d have to work three or four jobs just to make ends meet that was when rent was cheaper you know that’s back in the 80s and 90s now um with the rents the way they are you you can’t even do that and and make a living and

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save money so we we are missing we we talk a lot about affordable housing being the problem why our kids leave and don’t come back but we send our kids off to college to get degrees in you know in the Arts or technology or the sciences and they come back here and they have no career moves to make so then they go back to the mainland so we need to start building up those types of Industries and one I’m really excited about is the Maui Ocean Center Marine Institute because that’s going to be um a place

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where I’ve talked to a lot of a lot of folks who have gone to the mainland younger folks who get a degree in Marine Biology because they’re so inspired by living on Maui they come back here and they go well I guess I could go work at Sea Life Park well what else is there for me to do so the Maui Ocean Center is now building this Marine Institute one whole floor is going to be a turtle um Hospital wow because they’re already doing some turtle repair um one whole floor is going to be a coral Nursery so

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they can propagate Coral to replenish our coral reef faster um there’s going to be a floor that’s a dormatory for visiting scientists so that we can bring high level expertise in here and have them work with our people here but that’s the kind of thing we need to do more of so that when our kids come back they can see a family wage earning job you know a career move not just a series of three or four part-time jobs I would love to have you back here again and we’ll talk about more of this stuff I’m

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looking and we have done it I didn’t realize we have two minutes left wow isn’t that amazing and I have so many things I’d love to ask you and I’m sure you’d like to say things yeah any subjects or things that you’d like to say I want to give you a bit of a floor well I I think agriculture is is a really important thing and I hope and you know we we did a lot of support for agriculture in my last two terms and I hope people will start getting more and more involved even if you’re just

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supporting a farmer or if you want to farm yourself or if you just want to grow a garden uh it’s a huge food security issue and this is one thing that we’ve been working on through the sunflower Farm Music Festival so I I want to encourage folks to uh support a farmer be a gardener I was just going to say I saw Phyllis Robinson she’s got 71 New farmers and I you know I’ve spoken at some of her graduations because I was telling her farmers espe especially if you own your own land you’ve got to

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think of yourself as an entrepreneur because you are you have to have that same passion and commitment so I I go and speak at her graduation sometimes and just relay my experience as an entrepreneur and as somebody who’s involved in farming now well I want to thank you first of all for coming here to um our show and for being so open with the people of the Maui I hope it goes well with you through this political season I don’t think this is a political interview I think of as a social we’re a social experiment we

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happen to agree and yeah and these things you know these are things that are going to be issues whether or not I win and and for me going forward so thank you so much for having me on Mahalo to your listeners oh yeah we’re happy to have you keep the faith everybody it is getting better and it’s going to get better and better we want everyone to uh out there we’ll see you next week but make sure you register and vote Yes and we will see you next week and next time Kelly thank you again all

56:29

right hello blessings everyone aloha aloha