Maui County Council candidate LUCIENNE DeNAIE-2008

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with political candidates here in Maui County and we have a great candidate today I’m a little biased this is Lucienne DeNaie. Lucienne you are running for the East Maui County Council seat but everyone can vote for all the next words out of my mouth no matter where you live whether you’re on molai layi or anywhere in Maui you can vote for Lucien if you want to because we elect all nine candidates so don’t forget that I’m really glad you’re explaining that to people because that’s one of the most

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common questions I get oh Lucy I’d love to vote for you but I live in Pukalani well no problem good for you yeah and that’s the biggest thing that you’ll see flashing across the screen because it is uncanny how many races we’ve seen people still don’t understand that the fact is you have nine representatives to the council not one they all have residency seats but they all represent you so when you see someone like lucana and you say God I’d like to be able to talk to her I

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wish she was my representative I could be she is your representative anyway um I think that we should start by letting them know and I think you should know very clearly I’m Prejudice I’m very Prejudice because it was oh my goodness 15 years ago that I met Lucienne and when I met you I thought boy this lady is sharp you have always been someone that has been on top of issues and seem to really look at things in such a clear way and lay them out so clear and you’re always helpful in organizing

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things I’m so glad to see that you’re running for Council again thank you I think you were one of the people that a long time ago said why aren’t you running for console and at that time you know I felt that there were many things that I could accomplish being a citizen activist being a volunteer serving on different boards and committees and commissions and those were all good things and they have prepared me for being a good representative ative as an elected representative so I guess we all

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come to a point in our life where certain things coales and I’ve come to this point in my life I feel that the times are really crying out for people that have a proven ability to lead in their communities they’re crying out for people that have ideas that are willing to think outside the box that have that have already accomplished things and you know not to brag about myself but I am one of these people I worked very quietly but many things are better here in Maui because of people like myself

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and like many other unsung community volunteers and now some of us are deciding we’re going to run for public office we’re going to come step more into the Limelight tell you a little bit about who we are what we care about and hopefully you uh the public will go gosh I don’t really recognize that funny name d boy that’s a funny name I haven’t heard it before but I like what this lady has to say I’m going to give that Lucy a chance so that’s one of the reasons I really

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appreciate this opportunity to uh be on uh the public Airwaves and talking to more people because I care I really care and as you say Jason I’ve been out there showing I care as long and you have a real ability to keep people in Balance I mean there are a lot of personalities councel and no counsel we’ve I’ve seen meetings where you’ve been at them and your steadiness and bringing things back to the issue and putting things out has created like a a bonding where you take dissimilar people

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and get them all the look at things and agreements can be reached that is an extraordinary talent and I think it would be a tremendous plus there on Council now uh I could go on and on like this but I think we should let them hear what you think about different issues so if you don’t mind I’m just going to toss a coin and start with a subject and you can take it anywh you want great and I appreciate your kind words uh I have to say I’m a little uncomfortable about telling people how good I am because uh

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my whole interest has been in working quietly and getting things done and who cares who gets the credit the most important thing to get that’s the reason that I’m mentioning it because you work tirelessly and your your humility you know is a great strength but I guess when we’re coming here for an election people need to know how valuable you have been to our community already well my my key word in this campaign um is proven leadership for Change and The Proven part is that I’ve worked as a

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leader in the community with many different organizations I’ve been to hundreds of Council meetings I’ve been to many meetings of boards and commissions I’m serving on the general plan advisory committee now which is 25 people trying to work together harmonize their um particular passions and ideas into one vision for our future for Maui County and I see myself as a bridge just like you described I see myself as a person that can listen to all sides but I definitely really strongly stand for

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things but to stand for things doesn’t mean you can’t listen to other people in fact it’s helpful if you have strong feelings about things to listen to others because they may have part of the secret you’re missing to solve the you know uh we can’t have this and we can’t have that but maybe we could have a third thing that doesn’t yet exist so that’s one of the reasons that I am running is that I feel those bridges are so important especially this time I mean we’re kind of like at the end of one era

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and looking a new era in the face and we don’t exactly know what it is so we need people that can just jump from wave to wave and bring everybody else along with them and make them feel like there’s somebody that is uh you know on everybody’s side that’s still moving forward what would I say if I was going to say what is the passionate issue you’d like to start with that you’d say I really want to address this in this first term well people know me for my work on water issues and U I’m one of

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those quiet citizens that went up to the big corporations and working with a whole Coalition of people it’s never in my name and and I wouldn’t want it to be because it’s not about me but it’s in the name of communities and uh groups of people that are really deserve access to our Waters asking for that access I feel that our economy is going to be the issue on everybody’s mind and our economy means how can we make a living here on this beautiful Island where we live and a big part of that is having a

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fair distribution of water whether we want to build houses our people can afford whether we want to have Farms that provide these specialty crops that could actually give people uh a living uh that is above just being you know a a a common laborer or a gardener but there are many opportunities for us if we had access to the water resourc ources to grow Tero many of our families want to do this and Tero is a is a commodity that brings a great price and it’s also a chance for our communities actually to

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go back to their Roots we also have opportunities to grow specialty crops that could be used for medicinal purposes we are one of the most incredible growing climates in the whole world and yet because we have these artificial separations of how water that flows in the Stream goes back into our communities and be used by our communities we have like kind of barriers so that people have hopes and dreams of of they and their families carrying on a family TR tradition of Agriculture and they don’t have the

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means to do it so water the other side of water is wise use of water and getting uh water efficiency just being a built-in part of how we do things here getting our Wastewater being seen differently as a valuable resource and having it reuse and that helps cut down the water bills for people like condo associations and people like you know our parks department so we have a lot of different ways of connecting things better of making more efficient use of water making more efficient use of energy and frankly I think this is going

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to be the basis of a part of our new economy it’s like it’s a shift not just sort of in infrastructure but a shift shift in ideas and how we look at things and then how we do things and I think if we look at history we can see this as true 30 years ago how many of us would have thought that there would be all these careers and different computer related things I mean we thought computers belonged in universities and big rooms that when I when I was in school you know in college 40 years ago

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you went to this big room and it was full of this machine and you put a little punch card in no one knew what a boon to our economy and how many different uh jobs and opportunities would come out of the fact that computers would become very small things that everybody could use and that they would free up a whole different way of looking at so many different things from Real Estate to retail sales and yet now that that is with us so we also have a lot of opportunity to small business and near and that people here on Maui can

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use some of these resources to develop markets they may not physically be here yes and we can lighten the streets and people don’t have to travel as much and all that goes with all land yeah it’s it’s a it’s a combination we want to keep our little towns and we want to keep them having um you know really real business districts and places where where there is a main street where there is this feeling of a there there um so we’re not living in some virtual suburb that exists you know uh in a real estate

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magazine but doesn’t really exist in people’s hearts and you know what I mean you know you you’ve seen these beautiful ads have come away to this paradise place but some of these places have no community so to me Community comes first wise use of our resources uh support for the little people support for the folks that are really the backbone of our economy uh the people that are running their small shops the people who are working from their home businesses the people who are keeping things going the

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unsung heroes of our community uh I I’m the first to say it is hard to have a small business here here uh There are rules and regulations that haven’t been revised in a long time I’m sure they’re all very well-meaning but I think one thing the council could do is just set up a small task force that recommends a streamlining of the uh the codes that apply to small business and have small business members involved so that you can get their input you know here’s what was a nightmare for me and then you look

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at the code and say gee you know there are some other models of doing this and achieving the same result I bet that we could look at reforming this language and just make it less burdensome there was always a way to improve things and that is one of the reasons that I feel that people deserve a choice when it comes to your county Cil yes you have the old familiar names you have people that you feel like I know them from the rotary club or the lion club or from the school board or from wherever you may

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know this person and they’re a trusted person and that’s great but you have to ask the second question what is this person doing for you and do they have enough I want to say aptitude to be on Council to be able to deal with these issues that have so many facets you know just because they’re a good old boy or really a somebody that you know doesn’t make them uh qualified for the job and many of the people again where specifically you can freck them out are on Council but really are there because

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they have the right heart for it but don’t have the talents to really get the thing moving forward well you know one thing I’ve learned uh from being a volunteer coordinator for about the last 35 years is everyone has a talent a god-given gift for a variety of things the secret is to have people do the things that they have the real talent for and not to assign them things that are really going to be a bad fit for the skill skills and talents they have and uh I think everyone who runs for office

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is motivated by the highest interest to serve to um make it better for their community and those are my motivations I wouldn’t run uh because of some personal sort of thing I don’t have a personal agenda I have a great life I love my life I love living on my my little farm in hoo uh I have wonderful friends uh I’ve had a a rich career I I love the research and writing that I do this what I do for a living I research and write and it just I I love the the volunteer work I do to try to serve on different

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boards and commissions that help plan Maui’s future and help serve some of the you know needs in our community to you know help our kids and help our seniors and all the good stuff but I feel I actually have abilities that would be useful on the conso and I guess everybody feels this way but it’s up to the voters to say well this person abilities yeah I can see that they’ve actually gotten something done I’ll tell you a little story please uh I got just Carried Away about 15 years ago by this

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beautiful place called W it was the old dairy site down in wah town and it’s one of the most peaceful and spiritual places you’d ever want to experience and I went there with some friends they were fishing there and I went along and I went wow what a great place is this a park or something and they said oh no it’s owned by a Japanese corporation and a bunch of people you know fought to get it developed or not get it developed and now it’s just in limbo so when I started getting involved in citizen sort of

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things I talked to Mayor lingel at that time this dates me this is back in the 90s and uh I’m not alter she said that that uh oh why hey yes we want to make this a park it’s such a beautiful place for a park and we’re going to work towards that and there was articles in the newspaper and uh I tried to lead a Sierra Club hike there but I found I couldn’t get permission to go there because the company was in Japan and it was hard to get a hold of their representative and just thought gee you

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know that’s so sad here’s this place and you could go along the shoreline and walk along the rocky Shoreline but you really couldn’t go any place else so when mayor aana was elected um I got together with a group of people and we decided that uh we really needed a a third way to create like parks and and open spaces and we formed a coastal land trust and we met with mayor aana and said you know mayor there’s this great place oh yes I love one and you know it’s really a wonderful place and I went

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fishing there as a kid and I want to save it too so we worked with Marana when we had the land trust and we helped identify sources of money that would be available to purchase it and through having the administration and a citizen group working together that dream that never happened under the previous administration happened not because Linda lingle was a bad mayor she was a great mayor but there wasn’t that that secondhand out there giving the assistance to government well I as a citizen helped create that opportunity

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that could have existed it could have existed 20 years ago but it just no one had done it five individuals got together brought in 10 15 20 other individuals uh former mayor Arawa was uh involved a lot of great people in this community and because that organization was formed it has allowed now thousands of acres to be preserved that the funding was there for the owners were willing to even donate easements to preserve land but there was no vehicle there was no way and this is I tell you the story because this is what I hope to

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bring to the console is to create the new vehicles it’s not like one person’s right and one person’s wrong it’s like there’s new things we have to try and the ideas without question you are my opinion the person to do it I’ve seen like I say I’ve seen you do this you are a proven track record kind of kind of lady and um besides being a friend you are capable I I’ve been I say bugging you for a long time and um I’m so glad that you’ve decided that you want to do this cuz I

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think our voters are now there at a point where you know like you say we’re changing eras here we can see we need very capable people to be able to help us through these mocky Waters and the changes that are happening need people that are listening openly and responsibly and don’t hold a fixed position and block everyone’s testimony to the contrary I have always felt that you’re very receptive and open thank thank you great thank you and on the other hand it’s important to have a

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candidate that actually stands for something because listening to people and uh hearing the best ideas is one important part the other is to have a have information and um the values and the purpose and uh I call myself an independent uh candidate uh I have not been offered large campaign contributions from any entrenched interests in the community and I’d like to keep it that way I think that we need a new era in politics where people can uh be candidates and not um obliged to a lot of different segments

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of the community who may all have good agendas but they shouldn’t be the only agenda and uh it’s it’s it’s an era that’s been here for a long time where you get elected by you know know being close to various uh King makers you know various key people in the community or various power groups or various uh corporate entities and I’d really like to see that change uh I’d like to have an open door policy listen to everybody but be beholden to nobody and I think that that’s where you get your most

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effective legislation is if a person can truly independently evalue wait and it’s tough I have friends who are going oh but then you’re going to do this for me right I have to say God bless you you are my friend I care about you but no I have to tell you the same thing I would some big Corporation unless what they want is somehow in line with what’s right and good for the community I mean that’s not to say you’re not going to do these things it’s that you’re looking at

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what’s best for the community but it’s not based on who you know or who has uh given you a contribution it is more based on holding in your heart what is really going to be best for everybody concerned and and sometimes that means looking way into the future I mean with water issues you can make the argument and it’s been made that gee you know uh we have a sugar Plantation that needs all the water it can get it’s giving people jobs you don’t want to put those people out of jobs and I don’t but I’ve

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hyped their ditch system and I know how much water is being wasted so why can’t we find a way to more efficiently share the water that’s there why shouldn’t that discussion be on the table the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough water a lot of the time we we have more than enough water the problem is we don’t have a way to share that water and to store that water when we have extra where we all could have enough we need the new systems to make sure we all have enough not just the pointing fingers at

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one another and say you’re bad and you’re bad so have there been any look uh has anyone looking at catchment as in any way effective on the west the Wet Side there well I wonder why I don’t see any incentives toward that that is one of the things that I would very specifically like to see entered into our code I would hope if I was elected to the uh Cil that I could serve on the Water Resources uh committee perhaps even shair it if people felt that I was qualified with my long years of of

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research in water issues it is a no-brainer that we should give incentives to people in rainy areas to have catchment systems it’s like the areas that use the least water are the rainiest areas like Haiku and Olinda MH and they they use an average of about 400 gallons a day per per hookup whereas over on the west side and the south side it’s closer to 1,200 gallons a day well but when the drought’s hit who’s asked to count that cut back on water is the folks in Makow and hiu and crazy yeah now if they had

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their own catchment systems they could use the catchment water during the drought time and not lose their Gardens not have to be you know at the mercy of anything where we live in Helo many people have catchment systems and for most of the time they are reliable an extreme drought we do have to have water tanked in or share water among those who have wells and those who have catchment systems but there are whole countries like Australia where people build and there are no Public Water Systems people

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use catchment uh in the old days in McKenna everyone had a sister in the old days and and even maaa people had sisters sometimes the past is the future you know I was going say sometimes the old days you know the good old ways are a great way to to me that just says decentralization not relying on a central whether it’s power or water what great power to our community that to have things decentralized have less burden on that Central system so incentives are the way to go incentives for people to make their own power

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incentives for people to have the security of their own water supply as well as access to the public water supply and I don’t believe our public re uh uh system should be abandoned at all in fact I think that they should be well supported but uh to have redundancy is always wise especially when you’re looking at changes in climate we don’t really know what our weather is going to be like we don’t know what our rainfall levels are going to be like why not be uh wise stewards and give ourselves two

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or three chances to have the resources that we need so catchment is just kind of a no-brainer um also moving more towards a regional model of uh farming support I would love to see Regional farming support centers with each one have its own certified kitchen so people can make products there you have a lot of St are fruit make them into juice but you can’t sell it commercially unless it comes from a kitchen that meets all the health department standards how many people have these well our cafeteria

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that our schools do but I have friends in Hana that are driving here into wuku to uh use a certified kitchen at uh locah Pacific because the nearest one to them is in kipahulu which it’s a long drive backwards there is a certified Kitchen in keep Hulu that the community put together and it’s enabled folks to live in kipahulu and actually produce products that can then be legally uh consumed but you know when you have uh the East Maui tarot Festival everybody wants to make their laow their their

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chowder this and that and they’re all scrabbling to find a kitchen where they can legally produce food to sell to the public wow so you’re you’re supporting small business by by doing that and I know people up country too you know often you have an abundance of something and you could make it into Chutney you could make it into something that has value added uh you you could you could take your honey and and make it into a variety of products you could do baked goods but you need to have that

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commercial kitchen that’s legal for the health department and it’s too expensive for each individual to do so You’ really boost a lot of small businesses just by having Regional access so I’m going to a community block grant meeting later after I’m pal with you uh to see if there might be funding for some of these kitchens uh in the community block project process and then can work with some communities that you know may need them and maybe not this year but in the next year’s process uh have the funding

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and start getting this built MH can I bring up just a few different things Transportation yeah um anything things about Transportation Carters or you have any ideas about what to do to encourage people to use or mass portation or are we going to get set for the future to do things about that well the buses have really made a big step forward and it’s kind of neat about oh shoots 9 10 years ago uh I participated in a survey at the county fair about uh public attitudes about things like alternatives to Transportation

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alternatives to energy uh Generation Um water issues a variety of things and we gave people about five choices about Transportation like you know what do you think would help most uh for your transportation needs and the majority of people said an approved bus system and we talked to a lot of folks in Central Maui because it was the county fair a lot of folks coming through especially younger people many students participated we surveyed a thousand people so this was a pretty good sampling and and we broke down the

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demographics we asked each person to write just their name in their Hometown so that we would know you know that they were a real person and where they lived but the the thing that came up again and again is that uh young people and old people really need bus service because their ability to use regular you know your own private car is limited and then in between there were people who needed bus service just because of the cost of maintaining a car and the cost of gas so that is a no-brainer the bus system has

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expanded the best model I’ve ever seen was kwaii after the um hurricane in Niki is that they uh put all the little vans that were normally used to pick up people at the airport cuz no one was flying in so all the car rental vans the hotel R Vans became their bus system uh Joan yukimura who was mayor at that time and I had a neighbor who went over there to work as a carpenter and uh when he came back home you know everyone said well gosh how is it over there is it chaotic he said it is great he says I

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can take my toolbox and hop on one of these little Vans they they drive to all the different neighborhoods and pick up people and go and work on someone’s roof and then get picked up at the end of the day he said it’s a terrific system and that system actually um was kept in place for a number of years even after reconstruction began because it was so convenient and was free it cost nothing it was subsidized by the county of course the county had FEMA money to do that at that time and that’s that’s a

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consideration but I think if we could move towards a um a transport system that involves some small smaller Vehicles perhaps ones that were uh either electric or used alternative type fuel so that it were cheaper to run and you know we didn’t have to pay the almost $5 a gallon uh diesel or or gasoline price that that might be a real good way to go it would be great to have like a model program of electric vehicles that held like 15 people uh that that could be recharged you know through like solar or wind power and

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that they zoomed around around every day in the busiest neighborhoods and we’d have to kind of like have people like you know uh calling on a website about what neighborhoods Most Wanted the service there’d Have To Be A needs assessment done because you can’t just start and say well just send them out and see if anyone shows up you know you need to be logical about it but you know government has so many opportunities to do small things through pilot projects and then expand the ones that it works

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and this is true of energy Transportation but I also do believe in looking Broad BR range and setting aside Transportation corridors but short term I would love to see uh uh an expanded Fleet of small van type uh service that goes now Meo has somewhat of this that uh deals with folks that are going to medical appointments right so we already have a bit of a model we can learn Meo really has led the way on so many good ideas in this County so uh if I were elected I would sit and have lunch with Sandy boss and say tell me all you know

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about these issues and of course having glattus on the console I think would be helpful too because she has that um that uh experience from Meo about how they ran their different programs and the pitfalls the the dos and the don’ts but there there are uh there are good ways to give people more options on how to get from A to B that are convenient if you don’t make it convenient it’s like people will have to take their own car like it’s not convenient for me from hoo to ever get into town there’s one bus day that

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leaves from Hau Community Center and then comes back not too convenient I’d have to plan my whole life about around that um but if there were little things that zipped around and I just had a couple errands in town I would take them and uh you know I think we need to look long range as we have an aging population and all the all the demographics show us that we’re going to have people who already live here getting older like myself and people coming back to take care of their aged parents who have been living on the

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mainland but are going to come here and retire and take care of their aged parents and people retiring here who have reached the flower of their years and are going to be wanting to live in a beautiful place and you put that all together and you have h a very nice chunk of population that could be served by a reliable alternative system uh we also need to do the long range corridors because just the distance between the airport and the Hub of kahalui and wuku and many of our employment centers in

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West Maui and South Maui it’s just a no-brainer that it would be nice to have something that just went regularly back and forth yeah you know whether we have as many tourists as we had in the past or uh a different kind of visitor I mean we don’t really know right now visitors fly in we have people come because they’re going to spend their you know uh honeymoon or their week in Paradise we may shift in the future to people who come here as uh more long range visitors uh people who come here for health and

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healing and they’re going to spend two or three months so the higher air fars are worth it to them because they’re going to be here for a while or who are going to come here because we have great institutions of learning which is one of my dreams where we would have a a terrific Marine uh Research Center here we’d have film schools and places where people could come from all over the world like they have the East West Center in in Honolulu to see how different cultures uh do different

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things and learn from it and we would take our place as a center of knowledge in the whole Pacific Rim then when people came they wouldn’t just be in and out for a week they may come on boats instead of planes they may come in other means that we don’t have yet of Transportation because because we’re just cracking the egg of what the possibilities would be of a non-fossil fuel future but we need to prepare for that you sound like me so much I guess that’s what it is you know you we’re

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we’re reading out of the same hym book yes well I think it’s important to look far into the future and yet take the Practical steps day by day and I think we are like that way that um both are really necessary to just take the steps day by day and deal with what’s coming at you well that’s important but you still need to keep that view and be working incrementally towards those longer range visions and keep them in mind when you’re making your short-term decisions don’t close out those other

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possibilities because you know don’t burn all your trees because you don’t have any uh way to cook dinner and then later on you’ll want the fruit off of them you know well we’ve heard lots of stories about things here like that but we’re changing it it’s um nice to know I mean some people may know that you’ve been involved with uh the Sierra Club and Maui tomorrow and a lot of very Progressive groups I remember when I was running myself and I was green people got to know over time that it was

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Progressive it wasn’t radical it was like the bringing the future here now to look at the future now so that you can comfortably go there I’m going to bring up a subject that I think I want to bring up with see how it sits with you affordable housing yeah that’s another one of those long and short term any ideas There It Is Well we have an affordable housing ordinance we don’t have a lot of oversight about how it’s working um it has some good intentions but there’s some tricky Parts a lot of

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it is left to um kind of the chance and the market like for instance we are requiring Builders to offer a certain number uh percentage of houses as affordable we do do not know if those are being offered on an inside deal to the Friends of the developer we don’t know if they’re being offered in a fair uh system to everybody who really wants it we’ve heard stories uh at County Council when I’ve been there to testify of folks who’ve been in line for various affordable housing uh projects and were

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told that uh they uh didn’t qualify and then found out that someone else they knew who had a lower income than them was able to qualify and just felt that there was something funny about that we’ve had folks who were told that they had a very limited time to qualify and when they you know rushed to get all their things together they were then told oh no you were too late you missed the deadline whereas other people who applied later were given housing there there’s a lot of stories out there now I

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don’t like to go just on anecdotal evidence but um I have a friend who is a um uh an appraiser and he has passed on a number of these stories to me he’s a very ethical person they came from local families so my thought is right now we don’t have a system where there’s a a guaranteed Fairway that people will become eligible for the affordable housing and affordable housing has several components as you know because you’ve been in the mortgage industry it has the availability of something that

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is a price range of people can afford and it has the ability of the people that want this housing to actually make the payments and sometimes this is um tutoring in financial literacy so that they understand how they could shift their um uh their budgeting habits so that they actually could be land owners and homeowners uh sometimes it’s more of cleaning up past mistakes and getting it so that they now have a good employment record but they they didn’t before and sometimes it’s just allowing people to

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realize that there’s programs that could benefit them that they’re they’re not aware of out there in fact there are a number of like firsttime uh programs through native Hawaiian um organizations and I believe even uh also underserved minorities like the Filipino community and U maybe some other um uh groups here are eligible for help through institutions that have been set up and yet people may not be aware so it’s putting all these things together and then having a fair system it has been

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suggested by some and it’s something that I’d really like to look into is uh having a master list that everyone’s just on and it’s online so it’s not like one developer keeps their list and another developer keeps their list but it’s a transparent process and um if you’re on that list and housing becomes available and you’re qualified for it you know those 10 people go off the list and they get their houses and the next 10 people rise up in priority um they’re

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also in the past you know talk about the past and the future in the past what we used to do is Mom and Dad you know had a piece of property and they built little houses nearby we need to make it a little bit easier for real family subdivisions we have many families especially up country and in my district in the in the East Maui District where there’s family land but it is like so complicated for a family to go through the process to subdivide their 10 acres in into five lots for you know son and

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daughter and daughter-in-law and uh that’s the lwh hanging fruit and affordable housing if the families already have the land and the land is the big cost of housing families can afford to build a house if the land is family land and is free so you know what about leas land I mean again I’m talking about I keep thinking that there are so many situations where large lands owners could create least maybe you talked about a throwback to something that was before but some kind of co- ownership with lease land where

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over time people would be able to buy that lease in time as H value goes up but make it comfortably affordable on the front end let’s look at things in a different and unique way I’m it’s an interesting idea and actually that’s part of the model of Hawaiian homelands which is probably one of our more successful ways of people actually being uh having affordable single family houses you know I I sit on the general plan advisory committee and we hear all these projects that are proposed that

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are affordable housing but when you look in the fine print you find the majority of them are multifam so they’re either going to be condos or triplexes or you know maybe not exactly the the single family dream that people have and this may be a necessity to just conserve land to to go more um higher density higher density and then land around that people could have common Gardens and common playgrounds for the kids and so forth and so on I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but the Hawaiian homelands program

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which is least land but people never get a chance to own it it just remains in perpetuity in the public trust as least land to be generation after generation you know we have lots of issues we should jump around but aren’t you I’m just going to make a commentary here you have so much to say because it’s very clear that you’ve been involved it’s very clear that you are already doing what I like about what you’re talking about is the way I look at elections elections are like

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benchmarks M but someone like you I’m using you as an example are busy between elections oh yeah citizens don’t go away between elections that is the thing that I see that happens more than anything a lot of the people that Run come out to run and if they’re not elected you don’t really see them doing you are doing it would be a great asset to have someone that’s doing now move to the next step which would be to be on Council so I am beyond thrilled to know you’re running

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and I hope that we see the success in getting you in that seat I mean I can bring up other issues you’re not at a loss for an idea what if I said vacation rentals vacation rentals the the the big theme of our time well it’s a complex issue uh vacation rentals have a lot of good to bring and I think that we have independent Travelers that they really don’t want hotels I’m an independent traveler when I go to someplace I want to stay at a nice little bed and breakfast someplace and have a real

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authentic experience so I understand why uh vacation rentals are so popular and they are a small business and I totally support people having homebased businesses whether whether it’s you know renting out uh a room in their house to Travelers when that opportunity uh presents itself or uh having their sewing business or having a you know a computer-based business or an internet based business I think the more people that can work from home it it helps on traffic it you know it saves on infrastructure and allows people to have

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quality time with their family and and really you know have a home life so I’m all for that and I’m sure that the other issue I’m just going to Quick is someone who has this place as an investment they’re nowhere around and now their place is being rented out shortterm to people and they’re not there sort of monitoring cuz that’s a different kind of a vacation record that is a different these policies that are a blanket that don’t take into consideration the difference of

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circumstance that’s where that’s why I said it’s complicated yeah it’s complicated because you don’t have one kind of experience here and um and some Med ation rentals are you know a single room or a cottage they’re far less complex that when people have multiple rooms we really need a we need a zoning category for retreat centers they’re so needed as part of our emerging educational infrastructure you know we really need to support the world teachers and leaders that want to come

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here and bring people with them and also work with people that already live here every nonprofit organization needs a place to have their Retreat and renew and look at their broad visions and yet right now uh there’s a very long and complicated process to have a retreat center and they’re kind of like a stepchild there’s no real place for them and so what we have is kind of vacation renals being sort of jammed together to make Retreat centers and it it really deserves its own category and its own

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place of respect in our community so that’s but that’s see that’s another aspect of it this is what I mean it’s very complex the community plans each have different views like the Hana community plan has a whole definition of vacation rental and how many you could have on a lot and you know it’s all pretty laid out there the hu community plan says we should set aside some places and they should be places that the community agrees where they won’t have impact on agriculture or won’t have

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impact on this and impact on that because there are some impacts like for instance you’re a chicken farmer and someone opens a vacation rental next to you and they’re complaining about your chickens and then all of a sudden you have conflicts so you know there are reasons why this has been hashed over and over again and there are some people that are kind of Silent about their concerns they just have um they have a concern that that um neighborhoods will become commercial centers rather than

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just neighborhoods and that everything will be geared to towards how the businesses operated and I guess it wouldn’t matter to them whether it was a vacation rental or somebody that had like a you know an auto shop and all of a sudden everything was about everybody’s car being worked on all day and night uh but things have to fit I guess is what I’m trying to say things have to fit in the neighborhoods in which they’re planned and so I’m hoping that the console will go back and do a

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basic sort of process I would love to see some way that the people who have been in good faith trying to get permits over the many years because people have been told oh yeah just do this and we’ll put you in the pipeline and who have paid their taxes who have tried to be upstanding in how they conducted their business that they’re not put in the same category as people who just see it as a business opportunity it was the best thing to do and maybe they paid taxes maybe they didn’t they didn’t bother looking for

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any kind of permit it’s just like everybody was doing it so why not me that’s a little different category and I I may maybe I’m offending some people by saying that but I don’t think so I think there’s some people who have really been operating in good fi isn’t she terrific you see how thoughtful and considerate I mean I would think when you talk about people you might be offending I think they would probably be really uh appreciating that you’re open to listening to all kinds of sides well

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you’ll find that everyone has a good reason for doing what they do whether you agree with it or not but I feel that the people who’ve been trying to work with the system should be granted some sort of interim relief and be allowed to operate and uh you know the trouble is we have one law and it’s on the book and the law right now says and it’s in our general plan I came across it just the other day when I was reviewing our general plan it says you know we shall confine uh um what what’s it called it

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uh commercial uh visitor uh accommodations to areas that are zoned for Resort use that simple so you know so it’s a blanket and El that leaves out Hau that leaves out MAA that leaves out wuk you know ex if you have one little it’s decimated our economy in some of these areas like when I hear that a major wind surfing thing is going to other places because this people don’t want to stay at the hotels on the other side they all those kind of things that have been affecting us well I think that you know the mayor was well

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intentioned to try to look at the law and say okay there’s a law we should be following the law because we don’t get any place by just ignoring the laws that we’ve set in place however some of the planning this is a law that’s that’s a planning decision and in my opinion some of the planning decisions that we made 40 years ago 20 years ago 18 years ago like the general plan is 18 years old right um they they do need to be periodically Revisited um but I I would I would combine two things I would combine the

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issue of vacation rentals and the issue of looking at places that are remote and uh very uh uh very inviting to people like McKenna uh that have been uh set in in concrete 40 years ago as being major Resorts it’s like that’s not a good idea either we need to revisit that you know just like we need to revisit the idea that visitors are only going to stay on two places in the island while Leia and and kopali and well then expand a little bit to McKenna and calua I mean it’s it doesn’t make a lot

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of planning sense first of all we’re putting a lot of pressure at the end of cacs you know at the end of narrow little roads and and secondly if you just talk to our visitors and they’re voting with their feet a lot of them just want to be in a different place for a variety of reasons so we want you vot with your feet and get out there and vote I know we are um talking a long time and I know we’re going to run out of time here in just a few minutes probably let’s wrap it up why don’t I just to give you a moment to

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talk directly to our viewers if you have any specific subject you’d like to bring up I’d like you to do that and then just say goodbye here to them but before I let you do that I just really want to thank you for coming on here not everyone is brave enough to come on with me sometimes I’m perceived as um someone who will ask a question that might be sensitive you are um a great guest and that you are open and available and taking everything and dealing with issues and have a lot to say that is by

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itself it’s like you really are someone that can hit the ground running so many times I watched new Council people over these last years I’ve been here and the first couple of years we don’t even know if they want to be reelected but somehow once they’re in they get reelected sometimes by inertia because they’re suddenly there but they still don’t know what they’re doing you have been doing and I would like to think that you could be a tremendously valuable addition to

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our Council and even in many ways that systems are run I’m uh just been very happy to have known you over these years as a besides being a wonderful person now tell them what you think I just wanted to throw that in I mean not that the candidate that you’re running against is anyone I have anything against I just am a passionate uh what’s the word supporter of you I’ve seen how you’ve done and I’m I wish there could be nine of you well I appreciate your kind words and I appreciate your support

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and it takes support uh from a wide variety of people in order for a Grassroots candidate who isn’t endorsed by an incumbent and isn’t endorsed by all of the Power structure here and isn’t funded by everybody to uh step forward and actually represent the people and I am stepping forward because I care you know and that is the motivating factor here I care about what happens to Maui’s future I care about what happens to the people I care about seeing us build this bridge to a new

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economy and it’s not going to be built by people who are doing the same old same old thing even if you recognize their names you’ve got to trust that there are some folks like me who have been working behind the scenes for years and years and years to research to come up with ideas to listen to people and to find practical ways to make things happen so I would like to take this view that I have and allow it to work for you the families of Maui County uh I’d be happy to hear from you I have a website

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elect loc.org uh you can find out a little bit more about me who I am where I came from we didn’t get into this here but you know basically I grew up in an immigrant family and um I am very very uh humbly grateful that my grandparents who came here with who were illiterate peasants from Italy and worked very hard to get ahead were able to pass on their work ethic to my dad who was the first to go to college and it was passed on to me and I have high hopes for my life and my adopted daughter who’s doing very

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very well and I want to take those same values and put them to work in our Cil it’s what we all want we all want to see our families have a better life it’s why we’re all here and I’m prepared to go to work from you for you on day one I’m not going to need on the job training I’ve already worked at the county I was an assistant to council member uh Michelle Anderson who is retiring this year and uh I’m very proud of the contribution I made to getting her or office organized

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the first six months that she was there uh I had to go back to my regular job but I was very happy to get that on the job training learning how the county systems work you know working within the building there and it’s a valuable Insight that everyone should have if they’re going to consider public service so I’m caring I’m prepared and uh I am really really energized and motivated to see the kind of uh ideas that we could bring into the new future for Maui so I welcome your support I have that funny

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name Lucy Andy my friends call me Lucy I’ll be on the ballot November 4th East Maui con ccil seat and everyone can vote for East Maui everyone can vote for every Cil seat and thank you Jason this was a wonderful opportunity and uh I hope the folks at home if they have questions will go to my website elect lucy. org and you’ll get answers you know it’s also true sometimes we have these shows in their little ones half hour um I know that you’ve been watching the whole time cuz you’ve had a lot to

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say and it hasn’t just been fluff I’m really thrilled to know there are people like you that have cared so much to bring us to where we are now and can help us toward an even greater future thank you so very much for joining me here thank you and I wish you the very best and I want you guys to know that between elections I want to see all of you coming out and being supportive because Representatives that we have need to groom new people for the future and need to know that uh there’s people

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in the community that care it makes the work that much easier cuz it is work it is work it’s a lot of work a lot of work I’ve spent three years on the general plan advisory committee and uh we’re dealing with all the same issues that the council is going to be dealing with and it’s a tremendous commitment 25 people have made that commitment wow so you want someone who’s been there and done that vote November 4th so thank you all for joining us and remember no matter where you are in Maui

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County if you want to vote for Lucy and D you can do it no matter where you live thank you all for joining us we’ll see you again aloha