Nick Drance – The MauiMIRACLE.org

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election and you’re doing it again aren’t you you’re out there sharing your ideas and views very happy to to see that um this is a very unusual time because sharing is not in person anymore it’s uh extremely online have you found it to be very people be very receptive to what you’re doing well yeah actually as so as long as i have access to it yes they are receptive but you know i’m a people person and i miss that contact and then of course all the candidates uh people want to get to know them and get

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a feel for them and so everything’s by zoom no more community associations with big rooms of people and but you know we all have to you know make those adjustments we adopt and adapt in fact last night i saw a movie you might want to watch 2047 virtual revolution talking about more and more people getting online in the year 2047 95 of the people spend most of their time online and they’re because your heart and your mind whether you have a friend in a story that’s real or one that’s physical it reacts in the

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same in the brain so the whole world then is online i hope that’s not where it goes well no and you know online can be very deceptive they can change people’s faces and make them say other words and uh you know and then if god forbid we had a cyber attack that disabled our internet which is going to be the new form of you know warfare coming up we’d be toast yeah i know it’s crazy well um this we should probably jump in because i’m sure there’s a lot going on we’re in 2020

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and this covert thing has made all of us wear masks and and be retreating so your side to me is even more valuable than it was last time i hope everyone that’s listening will go to the maui the maui miracle.org when i look at your site besides being very beautifully done the content is so rich it’s like you don’t say anything unless you back it up which is the world should take a lesson from you what do you think are the most important things that are going on now that you want to be sure to address

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because i know we’ll talk about them all but what’s the top of your list well you know uh it was a regular election uh until i guess a few weeks ago you know we’re a small island the people that i support are grassroots people with you know they get small donations but you know the people that i support have been on the council except for the two uh and done a great job and all those things are great they they propose these seven charter amendments uh they’re adequately explained in a number

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of of places and then all of a sudden a few weeks ago i i think was a few weeks ago this other organization based in reno with david gillum is the name of the guy he’s a political guy made a super pac and dropped 120 000 into the election to vote uh to unseat most of the current council members and vote no on all seven uh amendments and you know usually when somebody has an encouragement of a number of amendments to vote one way or the other it’s like oh well we don’t like this one or we don’t like that one they don’t

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like all seven so i mean if you got that much mainland money and it’s all seven something fishy going on here does he have any local interests here i mean have we been able to discover what where this guy’s um local interest is well well it’s the same way it’s the same way actually for somebody else that we elected in maui county government who took in such vast amounts of money from both the mainland and honolulu uh and you you know you wonder where all where’s all that money

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coming from and who’s it benefiting well you know it’s so much money that somehow rather it relates to money interests here on the island that flow back to honolulu or the mainland but it’s money interest and you know if you look at the big corporations here that are into development or construction or engineering or you know all kinds of things that you know relate to that there’s a lot of money to be made here on this island so when you see people spending hundreds of thousands of

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dollars that’s because it’s about millions of dollars of profits that go to the mainland in uh honolulu yeah well um why don’t before we we could start at the charter amendment but let’s let’s take a look if you okay with that do you want to do a quick sweep i don’t think we need to deal with the national election i think that that’s another thing he’s still my heart i just i try not to think too much about that what about uh for congress though is there any federal

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election here that you have this clear picture on there you know about this guy kai kahele yeah um and yet because of his stance on 5g i’ve heard of other people you have any feeling for any of those people i i don’t you know i’m i’m almost embarrassed to say but i’m very up on national politics with policy and so forth and local and the uh house and the senate i just for maui i haven’t uh kept i just wondered if you had came upon anything specifically because it’s been this covert time has

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been very hard i don’t have any idea who these candidates really are and unless you do a tremendous amount of work it’s hard to find out who all these people are that’s why i appreciate all that you’re doing and what you do um so i’ll leave that one alone so done with state but i know that on the state level there’s a lady in kihei where i’ve come to know is just a champion tina wildeberger yeah she yeah she’s in our state house uh our south maui state house district 11

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representative uh and yeah she’s uh out there she’s on top of all kinds of issues that is not just for uh her south maui 11 district but island-wide county-wide in many instances and she works closely with some of our council members as well uh who represent uh the other two islands uh yeah she’s she’s great and angus mckelvey is the other uh person that we support right i remember you know it’s so funny having done these interviews all these years everyone starts as a newbie and then

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they grow into their roles but tina hit the ground running i don’t know she just immediately and angus i remember when angus was first starting and um you felt a little unsure now he is uh out there and more outspoken and uh i guess a lot of people have really seen he’s grown into his role very well it’s good to see it’s it’s interesting because you wonder about that sometimes because you know some of the council members were new and didn’t have political experience before which is something

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that a lot of people found very attractive about them and uh it’s stunning how quickly they boned up and became knowledgeable and if anybody watches the council meetings on zoom because it’s so easy they it’s legistar you can go sign up on it on the county website the amount of minutiae and detail that they talk about and discuss and have to be knowledgeable about is it’s breathtaking and they but they stepped up to the plate and uh they they’ve done it the new ones have done it

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these last two years have been in my memory the most extraordinary of the last 20 plus so much has happened in these last years there’s been so much work the fact that they have seven things on the ballot is just extraordinary really important things and uh a lot like you said a lot of thought and effort has gone into this and i take my hat over to these people off my hat to all the information that they’ve had to get in process and then come out i myself there’s one gal that you and i both know named kelly king

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kelly king has been the champion and um these guys really are listening it’s it’s a great thing when you go to see someone who’s who’s in a seat and you can tell they really are listening to your input they’re not like fixed in their positions and she’s you know she’s really hard working what i’ve heard other people say is that this is the hardest working council we’ve ever had and she’s the hardest working council member on the council and of course you know

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she uh she spearheaded the effort to withdraw the lahaina injection bill case from the supreme court and actually the entire council uh backed her and uh somehow you know the charter does give our legislative branch which is the uh county council the county charter does give them specific powers and authorities and without going into the complexities of all that and when that thing happened and a couple of other things uh corporation council which is the legal side of the county and the mayor’s office just shut them

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down as if the county council had no say and no power and he did it in ways which is actually common for him uh with really no conversation no negotiation no discussion uh and that lahaina injection well thing is the same thing uh so a couple of these amendments one of them related to uh who’s on a committee that reviews the charter and discussion discusses changes uh instead of that being only the mayor it’s now one of the provisions is that it’s the council and the mayor so you know you have a legislative

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branch who uh represents the people and incidentally they’ve also established term limits for themselves and the mayor i mean you can tell that they’re definitely you know dedicated to maui nui and taking care of things and they’re not career politicians behold into money because they themselves want to limit their own terms which we all you know agree with that’s another uh charter amendment proposal so uh these these charter amendments uh aren’t needed and you know the other

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thing about the county uh director we’re one of the few i can’t say few but most municipalities in the country have a managing director in this position we don’t uh and it’s it’s a improper form of government it’s it’s lopsided uh so so doesn’t the mayor have a managing director now well he has a managing director that is not required to have the level of professional skills required to manage a county and for somebody like us our budget is you know pushing a billion

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dollars a year so i mean you really have to have somebody who has the academic acumen and experience to deal with that it’s like a big company uh that’s one thing and if you hi you know the mayor doesn’t necessarily have that uh expertise we do have we do have the position however uh it’s we’re not adding a position we’re changing a position to have more authority and probably you know probably get some more pay but we already have the position it’s just that position has to be

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structured more like other municipalities i heard someone say that the um what you hear in the ads i i don’t know if i can trust it but if there was a managing director and it doesn’t pencil out to have a full staff in hana or in molokai for fire that they wouldn’t have a full staff i wouldn’t think that person was saying how would he get there to be managing director the examples they use are so obtuse and so scared well it’s like national politics people say things that are so

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unbelievable you know i mean if it sounds too good to be true or too bad to be true it probably isn’t and people say things that aren’t true but they they spin it so that i mean you can’t believe that somebody would actually say something that’s that dishonest and look you in the eye and say it happens all the time and the fact that the ad comes out that shows all the former mayors not wanting the managing director to have more power and authority i thought is a good reason to vote for it

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that way well that’s how i feel that’s how i feel about it if somebody from the mainland is willing to put out a hundred and twenty thousand dollars which vastly eclipses the you know council members budgets combined probably double or triple all that’s a lot of money so you know something’s fishy there and as far as the other mayors go well if you look at the amount of development on the island and until recently with this new council the lack of affordable housing this is due to prior administrations uh

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there is there’s big money i i don’t want to accuse anybody of doing something you know unethical but the mayors historically have been oriented towards big business more so than taking care of residents and the health of the island and i’ve seen them push this housing thing for 20 plus years they keep pushing it back pushing it back and now it’s a crisis here but i mean i have i could get very specific but i’ll stay away from it that was a phone call from ariel my partner hey ariel

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um but like when there’s no emergency housing on molokai zero and when there are people there that need help and there’s no help and uh that kind of stuff there’s no help and that you talk to people on maui to try to find help and yeah that’s a good question i mean it’s like they’re still so far behind the eight ball i don’t know how they’re gonna catch up or how we’re gonna solve some of these emergencies that are right now and i don’t know but we sure have to do something i’m

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hoping that we can be much more aggressive on the area of affordable housing well kelly king has got uh i think it’s three might be two affordable housing projects here in south maui uh one of them is almost completed uh and the other council members have done other things in other districts but the uh the county has to send people around or have zoom meetings to discuss the budget so the 2022 budget is being discussed right now and this is an opportunity for people uh to participate but the current

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certain people on the council now are very interested in residents diversifying the economy uh you know food security et cetera et cetera et cetera it’s not that they’re anti-development it’s just there’s got to be a healthy balance so it’s been so lopsided that’s what that’s what we can’t have is that lopsidedness and i uh with all that’s happening now it could be argued probably correctly that we don’t need any more of the expensive development now we really need

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to focus much much more on the affordable housing thing well there’s 144 acres uh in the planning department here in south maui 144 acres and what i what i find curious is if we build 144 acres of uh luxury homes uh the residents don’t benefit from that except for there’s some more traffic we have to pay for more infrastructure but if the many many millions of dollars are being spent there and residents basically don’t get much out of it well how can that be i mean nobody can force an

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island to self-destruct we’ve already got a water shortage up country uh also on the west side uh you know we’re in actually technically drought conditions right now with climate change who knows what’s going to happen and our little tiny island can only handle so much so the people that live here need and their needs need to be secured first well your words los angeles are more true than ever so um i want to bring that word up again i know you you talk about all that on your website

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so let’s go down just because i think we deserve to um i don’t know tom cook i’m sure he may be a beautiful guy has a lot of ideas but i personally i feel inclined to support kelly i really want to con that continuity and really feel she’s done an extraordinary job personally uh you and you and a lot of other people uh i’ve watched them on interviews and so forth and you know kelly just rattles off facts and she’s so knowledgeable about things tom had more knowledge than i expected

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he being outside of you know the political realm for some years he is a developer so that has a lot to do with what he is more knowledgeable about his development than kelly but um i i think she’s safe in this election she has done remarkable uh things for residents and i think the the i know it’s one of the charter amendments a department of agriculture i am the food security idea and all that we need to do for uh to be responsible to ourselves and not only as an island but for the world you know

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i think that is super important that it become an absolute department and it has the time and attention that it needs to be that important well the opposition says that the purpose of it is to impose more regulations and that’s not the purpose of it at all it’s to diversify our economy and support uh a proper type of farming that is not industrial farming necessarily there might be some of that but we can’t keep having development and things happening on the island and all the money goes to

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the mainland and the people that live here end up with relatively low paying jobs but one way or the other the money doesn’t stay on maui right so we’ve got to take care of our own first and the department of agriculture will help we’ve got a really healthy farming community you know bill green and and many others are really expert on sustainable farming and they uh they know what to do they need support yeah and yeah like you say there are some great people greenleaf and lucian i can go on with the list of

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people here we have a really rich community uh i don’t want to go off on a tent so that’s one who else is on council i know that um okay kayani rollins fernandez from molokai has been extremely active and she’s been also very dynamic in in the kind of leadership that she’s shown in this last couple of years you know i wondered about her because she has a very strong economic background i think uh academic i think she has an mba and she also has a uh she’s also an attorney but i didn’t see a lot of you know

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business or other experience in her resume so i really wondered how was she going to handle things and she seems to she’s just went right in there and she helped discuss some of our tax code not major changes but in ways that earned us back a triple a plus bond rating which means the county can borrow money uh you know kind of prefer she she’s uh uh vice chair of the council she’s also chair of the budget committee so she’s a good person to have been there speaking of committees kelly king is uh

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chair of the climate action and resiliency committee which is a new committee that was formed and we all know climate change all of a sudden everybody’s talking about it’s been in the maui miracle for a couple years now but you know shoreline erosion uh sea level rise uh dealing with higher ocean temperatures to harm the reefs the fact that you know sea level rise is really going to happen and so much of our coastal roads up around on the west side lonipoco area and then also north kihei and portions of south kihae

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road will will be underwater and sometimes they’re flooded now i am amazed when i saw the hilton stuff going on in north key i keep thinking they should build a boat dock there i just don’t know why they even think to put the road back in it’s like it is crazy i i don’t know i i think that people just can’t grock that it is real it just seems that we push problems off until they come and bite us is i think that happens everywhere but man it is getting real apparent i think it was into actually today’s paper

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there’s a an interesting article about the sea level rise i say interesting i don’t know it’s a major thing i mean raising roads is one thing but the properties on both sides will be underground so underwater yeah this is it’s it’s a major problem and you can’t just keep kicking the can down the road no but you know if if there’s people in county government that are beholden to big business or actually i i think they’ve never been in positions where they never dealt with

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you know 800 million dollars before and so it goes to their head and they lose their head and suddenly they start thinking like a mainlander instead of the island way and so they lose their path and all of a sudden you know all that money goes to their head and becomes a priority for them instead of looking after maui nui and his people so but these council members they’re grassroots non-career politicians who now want to pass this charter amendment to limit their terms actually so other citizens can take those

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positions when it’s time and they are into a balanced economy a balanced economic situation that takes everybody’s interests into account i’ve i’ve been really pleased myself with the kind of progress they’ve made and um let’s go down we’re going to continue through let’s go to our list i’m only doing this because i’d like the names to be out there and clearly well tamara paulton from the west side uh she’s also quite knowledgeable and uh this aloahu uh affordable housing

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thing that one of the council members which i don’t support uh voted for it but it’s on a piece of land that hawaiians never built on because they knew better and she voted for a couple of other people and the council voted for it but there’s no water there there’s no infrastructure and tamara said she made a very good point she said putting it there makes urban sprawl if you’re going to have more affordable housing or development or anything don’t put it in the middle of an open

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space land put it where the other housing and development stuff is but don’t start covering the whole island with uh development it’s not appropriate but when you say sprawl i remember i used to drive from los angeles to las vegas and remember all the incredible open spaces along the way that are now filled with houses and talk about sprawl who can imagine driving 45 minutes on a highway or an hour and a half to go to work crazy stuff it’s great and that’s why i call los angelesification

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yes because like all the development plans like this new civic center gentrification plan that the county wants for wailuku that the citizens don’t want and they know it and their own spreadsheets project one and a half million square feet of residential commercial and it’s not industrial uh building that will pay property taxes to pay off that project that’s one and a half queen centers in wailuku so you know that it’s not going to look anything like it it does now and and these people want

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that because you know money but residents don’t want it now the mayor did tell them to scale that project down but it’s almost impossible to stop them with things like that so sprawl that’s urbanization sure is so tomorrow’s tomorrow is good uh kayani uh kelly king of course uh we mentioned uh some people have different thoughts about mike molina uh the sierra club endorsed him i happen to like him i think he’s a fair and square uh guy he listens to both sides of the art it really does he listens

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yeah and processes he’s not yeah you found that different with different council people i know you’ve had uh um issues with a couple of the others that talk one way and then their vote comes out another way so i know you’ve you’ve put allegiance for example in kahului when last time tasha kama was a champion and now based on a couple of votes do you know carol lee kamakona have you spoken i do i do yeah i know her pretty well uh and i am supporting her and i have to say that one time tasha

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kama last time said nick you’re working harder on my campaign than i am and i really was it turns out that she has a different point of view about things and she tends to vote more with money interests and quote establishment uh things in ways that disappointed myself and i suppose most of the supporters that encouraged her election win uh so yes i’m supporting carol lee kamakona uh she’s a really nice person she has a lot of community experience i consider her more hawaiian than a lot of other people i won’t name names

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uh but you know culturally where her head is at where things that she’s been involved in admittedly she’s gonna have to be one of those that steps up to the plate the same way the others did and i think she can do it and with their help i think she can do it but it is another step for her uh but one thing we know is that we can trust her to look after the good of the island and residents and the island’s health so carol lee kamikona yeah for kahalui that’s a very important race another one

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is ricky hokama uh thank you after the term yeah he yeah he he’s run out of his terms now and so gabe johnson uh is the one that is really a grassroots guy he’s just such a regular guy uh somebody we got to get in there to represent people uh he’s he’s really i like i say i’ve met him you know when people run for a while you get to meet him he’s a very nice personable guy i think of him like i think of mike molina in the sense that he’s there and he’s very present and listening

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and grasps it and plays with issues in a way that um uh make me feel like he’ll do a really good job if he’d be level-headed grounded yeah and i know alberta the gently some too and i know that some people think they wonder what about a newspaper i think the newspaper was financially very challenged and uh the fact that larry ellison bought a newspaper isn’t maybe the greatest thing in the wisdom of newspapers but on an island that has no other newspaper i think it was good to keep a newspaper

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alive right and uh anyway so uh that’s lanai and molokai what about uh hana have you have you interviewed i’ve never really spoken to claire carroll claire but i know i i like shane shane is a very personable guy and he’s listening to things i’ve had real good feeling about him yeah what what was it tom carroll no um bob carroll bob uh you know nice guy yeah he he uh so that’s his daughter and she doesn’t really have a lot of political experience she has that name uh i think that she was uh

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uh took a role in the community association over there but that’s you know that’s about the extent of it but uh shane sinensi has done a remarkable job he was an educator he’s another one of those people that stepped up to the plate part of it is because he’s a hawaiian and because within the hawaiian culture they’re so close to the land that they understand uh i think agriculture water distribution you know island-wide i’ve spoken to uh even his other relatives who tell me

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what this side of the island used to be like i mean such a long history and it’s just part of a family thing so shane uh is in charge of the agricultural department excuse me committee right now that’s not the exact name for it but he’s done an excellent job and he is one of three people also that uh uh sponsored these proposals for these charter amendments he’s been working very closely with kayani kelly uh and and the whole council but he’s just he’s i can’t say enough

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about shane sinensi i’m with you uh so we’re leaving out a couple i know there are a couple of races that don’t have any uh challenges like alice lee for wailuku area and uh upcountry yuuki tsukimuram i always wonder when that happens whether it’s people don’t have a problem with them or there’s just no one deciding to run i don’t know but they’ve got a free pass this time um and some people have questioned some of the votes that they’ve made but they’re not in the mix this time well

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you know i i will say that uh ukulele sugimura uh is known for voting against the council and with the mayor and the establishment and the administration now uh you know that’s not necessarily saying anything bad about her but almost exclusively that’s the way she votes and uh it’s like it’s like somebody coming in from the mainland and saying not even one of those charter amendments is good all of them are bad and it makes you wonder if somebody always votes one way or they say

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all charter amendments are bad it’s like i don’t know about that i mean everything needs some degree of balance and actually that’s what the charter amendments are aiming to achieve but i she believes in what she does and i i know her a long time when she was in wailuku uh very heavily involved in there in the town area she’s hard working and um actually i’ve had really with her and alice lee i’ve had really good experiences when i talk to them about specific things so i never really think

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of them as adversarial and i hope we can keep that non-adversarial attitude so that we can keep moving forward on things that could be more sensitive and uh if you don’t try them we don’t get them so i’m still into really supporting the very progressive things and hope we can get support well this is people this is one of the main things about these these grassroots county council people uh now that are not career politicians they’ve made it a point to somehow find a way to work with the entire council

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including people that they disagree with and to maintain good personal relationships with those people so that they can work together to a degree that i find very surprising uh they’ve really done a great job of you know setting out to work as a team yeah that’s really something they all should really be feeling very proud of you know absolutely well i hope that ricky hokama becomes a sort of a statesman maybe he can use some of his wisdom from the outside and and come as a citizen be interesting to

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see his role when he doesn’t have power attached to it how he’ll fit into this mix now i remember when his father was running in fact i ran against his father and legal way back when i was a child here um yeah i still think he has great but he has a lot of knowledge i i’d like to see him soften a little bit he you know many people find him very hard but i think we’re gonna if we can keep this good attitude going maybe we can walk into the future and think of things locally and still use

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the wisdom of some of these like he’s had such experience with all the mayors across the country i’m sure that he can be very helpful and valuable like all the veterans that have been on that are now off council you know to be or the mayor all these guys the old mayors to be helpful because there’s a lot to be done and just because you’re in a few offices we always i’m sure you know that we look to our leaders to lead but we have to be involved otherwise we can’t expect them to do it

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without all of us constantly being involved and helping keep things on track that’s why i like to think that though our world is a participation sport not something that every couple of years you can vote and walk away it’s important to be involved like you are and like you say legistar and be able to get on there and be current with all that’s going on the council meetings are really interesting and now that it’s happening on zoom you can go to the county website and county council and

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press a button and say i want to get an email that tells me about the meetings or the agendas or something like that when you have time you look it up you see who’s meeting the committees you click on the agenda you see what they’re talking about it’s so easy and if you do it on zoom it’s so easy to give public testimony and share your thoughts about things but it’s interesting it’s not a pain in the butt uh but the maui miracle happens when enough people vote so that it’s the residents who influence

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what happens on the island instead of people on the mainland and people a small number of people who are making a great deal of money the miracle happens when it’s the residents and the voters who determine the future of maui and that is not really a miracle people just have to vote i hope that our number i keep hearing that nationally the numbers of voters off the chart i hope that continues to here in maui county and we it would be refreshing to have more and more people involved in everything we’re

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doing here um have we gone through all the council seats i don’t know we’ve pretty much covered that and uh so now when i look at this election time um i know that after the election with all the budgets changing and all the revenues changing it’s gonna be hard to know where we’re going from here do you have any kind of uh ideas about what we can do to help create more here more jobs more things that are island-centric this thank you for bringing that up you know it’s october 19th

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and the cares act funding that we got which was uh i think it was around 100 million dollars the county received and that has to be spent by december 15th and uh almost none of that money is going towards economic diversification for workers it’s going to small business or this or that and many millions remain unspent but i don’t understand that because with you know the maui uh food bank is serving 40 000 people a month right now normally it’s 10 000. right now it’s 40 000 so you know they donate to them as a

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long lines kihei baptist church went from south kihei road just about all the way to piilani highway food bank the maui economic board is not a government agency but they uh have pursued economic development and worked on uh career paths for science technology health care all kinds of different things for 15 years and they should be getting this money because they could manage it and manage auxiliary uh community organizations that are all along with along with the university uh to give employment opportunities to people

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who are going to be out of the hospitality industry or not be pigeonholed into that yeah and the county’s not doing that and i can’t you know i mean it’s free money that is to be allocated towards uh mitigating the destructive effects of covid which of course unemployment is one of the biggest ones i can’t understand why the administration has not earmarked that as a priority i don’t really understand their economic development department personally well it’s not it’s not human it’s not part of the

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county it’s economic board no i’m i’m talking about in the county oh i’ve watched now for 20 years they have an office of economic development and i i don’t know what to say i have never felt like they’re receptive and open to creative and positive ideas no they they are not and what’s interesting is that uh the council really has no oversight over what they do and they are like their own rogue entity that has tremendous uh power and it makes absolutely no sense no it doesn’t i mean it’s maui economic

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redevelopment agency is part of the government and uh they are the ones that are pushing for urbanization and and it’s economic redevelopment i don’t know about redevelopment how about development the economy diversification jobs you know not building a million and a half square feet in uh in wailuku right but they are centric like let’s talk about keep the monies here work things that can build and develop here i don’t see that all of maui county yeah yeah it really is crazy um

43:49

i’m just looking at our time we’re probably good um anything you want to say i mean i know that um we’re just sort of talking about it i i don’t want to miss anything that’s important to you any of the charter amendments you want to look at more closely or anything that specifically you’d like to give explanation to or anything well uh you know we’ve got uh term limits uh we extend the affordable housing fund we didn’t talk about that uh it allocates instead of two percent

44:23

for affordable housing three percent and that three percent of property taxes is like it’s a lot of money hundreds pushing a billion dollars so if you get you know if you add one percent more allocated towards affordable housing that’s one of the charter amendments uh and that’s based on you know property taxes and that does achieve some sort of balance to like you know the 144 acres that’s going to happen in south maui at least those guys are going to be paying an extra 1 or 1 of whatever they pay is going to go

44:59

towards affordable housing uh that i can’t see why anyone would say we can’t afford that i mean that that uh group that’s putting out their blanket we can’t afford it such a bogus group i mean i can’t get over like you say someone’s just coming in and they just want to stop everything they’re doing they’re just a mass stop that one i i don’t see any reason anyone should say no to that one you know um maui actually is considered around the around the globe a sacred place

45:38

you know there are people that come to spiritual retreats from around the world uh to pray here now whether you’re into praying and spirituality or whatever but this place does have that uh reputation they don’t call maui the demigod uh who’s known throughout polynesia millions of square miles of the pacific polynesia new zealand uh he is legendary and his name is not oahu it’s maui so and actually in the miracle there’s a history section uh that gives a lot of uh information

46:15

about that but you know this isn’t miami beach this isn’t fontana this is a very small sacred island and uh my one of my main motivations about the maui miracle was to recognize that is you can’t keep building giant shopping centers in kahului now you got these empty lows we have so much empty retail space now well why do they keep doing that on a sacred island the places are empty uh and we have infrastructure things the injection wells for example uh that water needs to be further

46:53

cleaned and used for irrigation instead of wasted uh and that you know that costs money but it’s a priority because we can’t keep polluting the uh the waters around us without going into like the things that all the things that we need to take care of but there’s a pretty good list and those things are going to come and bite us in the butt in the next you know 5 10 15 30 years and you know people complain about what it’s going to cost now well it’s like wait a minute wait till you get a load of what it’s going

47:28

to cost if we wait 20 or 30 years you think it’s bad now if we don’t do it now right and we can say that because we’ve already gone 20 years on problems and see the costs have exploded i know yeah well nick you are uh not only a terrific guest but you’re also a really wonderful guy i um i’m happy to to really call you my friend i really appreciate you yeah i thank you uh the feelings mutual and for somebody who is uh lived here for so long and such a part of the fabric of the community

48:10

uh to hear you say that you know i really it means a lot to me and i really appreciate it uh i do have a lot of flaws though and some of them i’m embarrassed about and i’ve misspoken at times and i’m so grateful uh that people are forgiving and overlook those things it not that i’ve been like that bad but yeah everybody has their good and bad points and i i think of it as enthusia you’re over enthusiastic yeah i’ve been accused of that myself hey you got a good tan though

48:44

you’d be still getting out in the sun aren’t the beaches great we got a lot more room on the beaches uh now that now after covert after getting you know uh stuck for so long uh i’m i’m looking in the camera and i’m i’m not sunburned it looks like i am there i have more color than i have seen you heard that thing about donald trump he had an orange uh tan you know i mean see the color of my hand that’s that’s more my true color i’m not as uh i just made a comparison between me

49:24

and donald trump [Laughter] that’s about all i could compare if you want to compare well i’m trying to keep as many wrinkles away as possible in my old age so you’re nowhere near old age your vitality you know i i talk like that but i’m 69 years old so i when i i can’t believe how old i am because i still feel young and vital and you know i i don’t know i just i remember seeing pictures of my aunt and uncle at 39 and they looked like old people you know it really looked old

50:07

we are so blessed to be getting healthier and healthier and living longer lives so uh god willing we’ll all be healthy and uh continue to be vital and part of our society here and uh even as we’re staying at home i know that um we really are together in our hearts and when i think of someone who is committed to making it a better world for everyone i think of you i know that when i think about in everything that i’ve seen you do you have such a loving and giving heart you’re really

50:46

here thank you thank you i’m so grateful for my blessings i you know i i count them off at night before i go to sleep not every night but a lot of times i i am so grateful appreciative because i don’t take those things for granted but you know it’s good to give back and if you believe in aloha live it yeah the maui miracle.org so all of you out there in radio television and internet land go there you find it very rich and enriching and a good guide not only for this election but just in general

51:28

a very good guide to uh really very quality i’m i’m really it’s a beautiful sight really a tremendous amount of work in putting out good information thank you thank you appreciate it nick Drance you’ve been a wonderful guest and we hope to have you again off election season just so happened it was right before election time i thought hey i should have you come on again and uh share with our audience in perfect time right before our elections good thank you i appreciate you having me

52:02

thank you jason you’re most welcome and all you out there in uh in listening land we’re happy to have you hope you will um enjoy this show again if you’d like to listen to it again and any of our other shows mauineutralzone.com up on youtube all around the world we love you and hope that you think like we do that maui is a sacred place and we want to keep it that way don’t we right blessings to you all and uh see you again okay thank you aloha you