NIKHILANANDA, Green Party candidate 2014

Aloha. I’m Jason Schwartz. I imagine you know me. You may well know this guy, too. This is Nick Nikhilananda. Welcome to our show. Thank you, Jason. As always, I appreciate you making the time. Nick is running for the East M. We’re waiting for a second. Helicopters. I told him to pay his [Music] taxes. Nick is running for the Maui County Council. He actually is running in the East Maui residency seat. But whether you’re on Maui, Machai, Lai, Lahina, wherever, we vote for all nine council races. That’s a huge issue. So

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if you like Nikhilananda and you live in Machai, you vote for him. If you like him, no matter where you live and he’s on council, he’s your representative. They’re all your representatives. In fact, Nick, you’ve now been a Green Party candidate a handful of times and run for the East Maui seat and you’re running again this time. What brought you to want to run this time? Well, thank you for asking me that, Jason. I’ve been on Maui now for 28 years. I’ve lived in the district

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over 16 years, and I’ve just seen the quality of life in Maui County deteriorate. Uh the homeless population is going up, the cost of housing is going up, the accessibility to affordable housing is diminishing. Uh the market for employment jobs, if you’re working at a minimum wage job, uh there’s seems to be a growing availability to minimum wage jobs. But for good paying jobs in a place that has a high cost of living, it’s deteriorating and it’s minimizing. And I’ve just seen these things. Our water

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issue, we’ve been talking about water for how many years now. Always trying to provide enough water for people for development, for farmers up country. And yet, and out where I’m living in East Maui, we have plenty of water. It’s one of the wetest places in the world. And yet it’s like we’re on this merrygoround where the same issues every single year come up and it doesn’t seem like we’re addressing them. Whoever the Wii is, the administration, the council, I think we means we we I think we’re

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peeing on ourselves, but I don’t mean to be funny about it, but we keep electing the same people. They’re in again and again and again. And when there’s a new and bright star, they have to overcome tremendous deficit just to run. To run on three islands, they have to run and be known in every nook and cranny on all three islands. That takes a lot of time. Now, having been run a couple of times, three times, how many times? A few times you’ve run right now. Hopefully, people get to know your name. And you know what

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I get about you? You are talking the consistent same issues and you’re on the same side of the issue all the time and you don’t lose your place. What do you think about the the situation going on and why we haven’t seen progress after so many years? Well, I think we’ve seen progress in some areas and I want to give an example. In 1998, you mentioned Green Party. Well, our elections, as you know now, are nonpartisan. So whether you’re a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Green, everyone runs nonpartisan. And the last

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time that we did have partisan races was in 1998. And I actually stood for office against a um against a Republican and a Democrat. And in that race, both of them at a forum in Kihei said that we don’t need a public transportation system. Not necessary. Both of them did. One second. I think the planes have decided we are the landing today. Well, we’re sitting here at Kaha Beach close to the airport, but there’s a lot of planes running. Okay, go ahead. So, and there’s an example when I

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mentioned that. No, there’s a difference between my two opponents that yes, a bus system is something that is necessary for our community and I think people will use it and a few years later finally they started to slowly develop a transportation system. Now, I spoke to the current administration at the time who’s back at that time the administration then and now they’re back in. And at the time when I suggested that we want to really build up the bus system and put money into it, what you

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got back was, well, we’ll put money into it when we see people using it, which is really an ass backwards way to do things because public transportation is something that you need to provide um accessibility, affordability. It needs to be able to go where people want to go and then they take the bus. Well, then you’ll have more people using it. And so now you see the bus system now, I think there was over a million, it might even be two million. I really should have that figure of how many riders used it

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last year. So the bus system, there’s progress because it’s growing every year. The people of country in Kula, they were asking for a route to go to Kula. And as the community kept on asking and asking and as we put money into the bus system, we now have routes going up to Kula. And it can always be it can be improved. One thing that bothers me is that the buses are still running on fossil fuels. And if you look and see some public transportation systems uh in other parts of the country

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and around the world, they’re running on solar, they’re running on other types of fuel, electric. And so I would like to see us be a innovator and a forerunner where we’re using renewable energy to run our bus system. Now, since we’ve already in invested in all these buses, it’s going to also cost money. And that’s always a segue into every single issue that we talk about. So progress is being made on some issues, but on others, affordable housing, we’re we keep on building more and more high-end

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homes. We keep on seeing our homeless population growing. And that’s a whole issue in itself, which we’ll talk about later. And so there’s some areas and water probably is the major one that we see that we’re not making progress, you know, and so there’s some issues like you mentioned that it’s sad to be mentioning them every single election, every single election, every single election because what you see is that it feels like we’re just treading water. Now, I do want to

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put a plug in as an example. Something else that we see is we’ve seen we’re seeing more roads being paved under this administration. So, I want to give a thumbs up for that. There’s one area where people have been talking for years and the administration put in more money into paving roads and it’s a very expensive proposition. I realize that and we could talk about roads that aren’t being paved, but there’s an example of something that is expanding. There is more roads being paved. So we

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have limited resources and that opens up a whole other discussion of how we can have all the services that we need in the community and at the same time not sticking it to people that can least afford it and uh that’s that’s an area that is something that also I’ve been talking about for years. Now you have a background in political science and would I call it law public law and urban affairs. My master’s degree is from the American University in Washington DC. It’s a political science degree. You’re

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one of the few people I know that have actually used their college degrees besides engineers and computer guys. You know, I’ve always felt and I’ve known you now, I guess, since 1992. We met way back when when I was sticking my toe in and you were already very knowledgeable and you showed that you could do a lot for this county and you have been among a handful of people incredibly present whether you were on council or not expressing your opinions fine opinions I’m sure you know I agree

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with you on quite a few things if not everything except I I don’t think you know I have more hair than you but that’s just one of those things. I can’t do anything about that. But um I have always felt that when Nikilandanda was in the room that if I had to walk out of the room there would be someone there that was diligently listening and could see as procedures was setting things off left and right. And so I myself really would like to see you on council. I know that we’ve had a

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councilman there. He’s very nice man, but as far as issues, as far as someone that has been working for the people of Maui and really needs to be there, really needs to be there. It’s you. So, I don’t I don’t know if this was the forum to be endorsing me, but I want you to know I’m so thankful that you decided to run again because I get very tired. You know, I feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of Maui sometimes, but yet you’ve been able to cut through all that. And I know

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cuz I see people tell me all the time that Nicolananda, he has been there, you know, and I think you’re known and appreciate. I hope that the people that aren’t only in your district and people that may not know, take a look and see and you will see that Nickandanda has been there. He’s not single issue. It’s not just environment although you responsible stands. You really are thorough. When I looked at your website, he has a website. What’s it website? Yeah. Friendsofnicolinandanda.com and you can

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go there obviously see platform issues, qualifications. Unbelievable. I I saw so many things there addressed. You know, you guys get questions. I remember questionnaires come from all over and they ask you a few questions and that’s supposed to be given to you the public. But when you look at his website, you will see he’s really prepared because this guy could be mayor. But surely on council, you come with a wealth of foundation that I think a lot of people go to that website and see what I mean

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and you will say, “Wow, we do have a watchdog.” Maybe that watchdog hasn’t been on council, but we are thankful for nilan. I think the uh reality is anybody as Jason has talked about, I’m not the only one on Maui, there are scores and scores of people that have been active in this community for years that do appear at council meetings that go to different boards and commissions that go to community meetings that have spoken out. So, I’m not the only one that has done that. And and it’s impossible to go to

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every meeting. It’s impossible to go to every council hearing. You just can’t do it. People working. That’s part of the challenges that we have is that the council meetings happen during the day. So people that are working uh unless you have a job that doesn’t have a 9-to-f5 period and I was a teacher for many years. I taught for 14 years uh in public schools in uh I was the math teacher at JobCore. So I couldn’t go down to the council at these hearings and so they all the activity was always

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in the evenings or on the weekends and stuff. So there’s a lot of people that have been very very active. The the sadness is that again that it seems that we’re just treading water. And that’s a a an interesting little way to use that because that’s probably the number one issue that people see is water. And it’s not like we don’t have enough water. We have plenty of water. And there’s things of course that can be done now with using waste water and gray water and recycling uh water. So there’s all kinds

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of things that can be done to increase it. But the sadness is that um that we have not been building facilities, reservoirs and tapping into the areas where there is heavy rains and so that we have enough water. I mean, it just does not make sense to be putting in more and more and more developments in Kihei and South Maui and WEA where there’s no water where they’re taking all the water from the EO aquifer and we’ve been so remiss in our responsibilities that the state has designated the EO aquifer because the

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county has not been respectful of using the water correctly and they’re using too much of it. But we need water. Everybody needs water. So, this is an issue. How do we do it? And what I’ve said uh over a long period of time is that you look and see what other communities do with lack of water. This is something that Maui is not the only place that’s lacking water. The southwest of United States uh we’re an uh enclosed community. We’re an island state and so there’s only so much water,

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but uh our infrastructure is millions of dollars behind of what’s needed and we keep on passing the buck which is always interesting. We say, “Oh yeah, we just don’t have we can’t afford it now.” It’s like keeping the waste m the waste um treatment plant in a tsunami zone because it’s going to cost so much money to move it. Well, at some point we only need one tsunami or one problem. So, we really need to be planning for the future and water is one of the major one

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like roads. Uh I remember when the pilani highway was built, nobody used it. It’s like wow look at this. But it was planned because in the future and now you see that they want to build another road mala that you can’t just be keeping on building roads. So you see in Honolulu a very controversial development the uh rail system and it’s looking at in the future and and we’ve had talks on Maui for many many years about having some kind of fixed rail system but um I I think that uh you know

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there’s a lot of people that have been speaking about uh all of these issues and the issues aren’t going to decrease. they’re only going to to grow as we get more and more and more people uh moving here. Um but what we’re seeing is that the quality of life is really taking a hit that people are uh we had this huge foreclosure situation where people lost their homes. You know, I hope I hope at one time we get to talk a little bit about the homeless issue because it’s not just a black and white issue. The

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people that are homeless, some of them have come here from other places. There are people that have lost their homes. There are people that are working and they’re living on the beach or they’re living in their car. Now, people are living in their car. It’s illegal to live in your car. It’s a very minor issue, but why do we make people criminals who can’t afford to uh to uh rent a place because the rentals are so high? So, we we do have so many issues. That’s a really big one. And I I’ve

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heard that that’s because they don’t want people living in their cars because of tourism. I think that’s a lame excuse unless we find some answers. Well, I don’t want to I don’t want to pick on why it was like the anti-hitchhiking legislation. I was here from the 60s till January of 99. And I know about that very strongly because I used to travel uh hitchhiking around. I always had a vehicle, but sometimes you hitchhike to save gas or just uh for the fun of it. I traveled the world. I’ve

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been all over the world, 50 countries. I’ve been to all 50 states. And I remember when um when I used to go to the council and testify and they just ignored me. And then someone I knew got onto the council and said, “Oh, I’ll bring it up.” And because he was sitting on the council, everybody listened to him and they took out the two lines in the ordinance that said you cannot solicit a ride. So people, if you’ve been here for a long time, you remember you used to just stand on the side of

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the road. But the point is that that that was something that was passed. And you can see in the newspaper clippings of the 60s, it was uh this anti- movement. That’s the reason why they passed the legislation. He didn’t want people to come here and then hitchhike around because they felt that they were a certain type of person. So again, why a piece of legislation is passed, why ordinance are passed is not always as significant as what’s going on currently. And so it’s a minor thing except if you

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happen to be living in a car. And I happen to know some people that live in their cars and work. They have full-time job, but they can’t afford the high rent and they can’t figure out where to park at night. Well, again, uh that’s a whole other thing we can I mean that brings into the the homeless situation, too. We to look at it much more creatively. Uh we don’t have and it’s funny that we’re sitting here at Kaha Beach because it’s one of the few areas that you can legally go camping and why can’t we

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provide a couple of areas where people could park a vehicle uh designated area even here for camping? Correct. And you could do that. Now, I mean, that brings up another one where you hear people saying, “Well, yeah, uh but then you have to provide uh toilet facilities and yet our parks, we lock them up at 7:00 at night.” And so, if people need to use a bathroom and there’s nowhere to go, what are they going to do? So, there are some communities that provide either portaotties or very simple toilet

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facilities so people have a place to go. And you know, then you’d have other people that might be talking about and saying, “Well, that might be a crime situation, whatever.” And it’s the legislation is always passed and people always act because of the 10% that might do something that’s not right. And so again, if you don’t have a toilet facility, you need to use it. Or people don’t have a place to live or inexpensive. That’s the reason why you saw the growth of bed and breakfast on

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Maui because people want an alternative. You see the newspapers, they talk about how Maui has the most expensive room rates and it keeps on going up, like that’s a good thing, but $400 or $500 a night for a bedroom, who can afford that? So, what we’re doing is it’s like you see more and more Escalades and Lexuses, uh, SUVs on Maui. And then there’s also this stratification of our community where other people are having and they have for a long time having to work two or three jobs but they can’t

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because of the salaries are still kept low. Incredible. So we have these challenges. No one is saying that they’re easy but um and and there’s something that I want to say too is that when I seek the count county council, it’s not to necessarily run against anybody. That’s why I don’t talk about any opponent because uh it’s a community and there’s very few people that aren’t in government service. You might disagree with a position that they hold, but don’t disagree with the human being.

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And so I never it’s not I’m seeking uh office because that is a place where legislation comes and those are the people that make the decisions and I’ve seen in the past that the decisions that are made do not seem conducive for the community as a whole. whatever they they might be. We’ve talked about housing, we talked about water, uh parks. I mean, look at for example in in Wuku, the state wants to put in a park and the county wants to put in a park and they want to put in a sports complex. And so

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there’s some people, you saw the debate between people saying, “No, no, we want this uh facilities. We want park facilities.” And the people that were speaking against the park facilities, they weren’t saying they don’t want park facilities. They’re saying, “We’re not sure if this is the appropriate place to put this huge sports complex near a residential community.” So, how do you balance that out? And this is something like to me, I never talk about compromise because I think compromise is

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not a good thing. Compromise is saying that everybody loses loses. You give something up, you give something up, but you’re not getting what you want. But a different way to look at it, and I got this when I was a mediator. I was a a courtroom mediator here for a couple of years. I was with mediation services in Maui for 20 years. Is you look for a win-win situation. You look at what really could work. Now, you’re not always going to get that. I realize that some people are going to say, “I want

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this to be black and someone wants white.” And if you don’t want to come to a meeting ground, you’re not going to. But there’s things. Let’s look at how we can provide sufficient parks, sufficient access. Sports complex I think is wonderful if it fits into the scheme of the community and if we can here always the segue into can we afford it is it appropriate how can we use it how do we raise do we raise uh uh bonds do we need to look and I hope we get a chance to talk about property taxes because that’s

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another oh let’s check let’s talk about them as we go because I this you don’t just have a list and have a few words you have actually thoughts on these things you’ve given it real serious thought property tax what property tax. That’s something I I have been a broken record on for years. And I’ve gone to the I go to the budget hearings. I go to the council hearings. I go to the administration hearings. And recently I called the mayor’s he has a radio show and I made this comment

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something that I’ve been saying for the same thing for years and I’ve testified for years in front of him and his administration about our property taxes. Why don’t we have a tiered system where a house, not the property, but a house, if a house is worth $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000 up to a certain point, then the um assessment is I’m going to just make up a number. Let’s say it’s $7 per,000 of assessed value. But if you have a house that’s $500,000 to a million dollars, the house, not the

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property. Because again, the property that I own out in Huo, the property is worth five times I’m almost I think it’s actually four times if I think about it and I used to teach math so I should know it right away. The property is four times the value of the home. The home is just a small home. But so why are we taxing the houses in gated communities in uh high-end residency at the same rate as we’re taxing houses in in town uh in urban areas? I mean that brings up a whole other area of these uh gentleman

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estates and these agricultural subdivisions. But again, if you have then say uh the rate is maybe from $500 to a million dollars, $500,000 to a million dollars, it’s it’s uh $7.50 per thousand. And a million to 2 million, it would be $8 per thousand. Now, the people with those houses, they’re going to be screaming. Yet, in a community, and that’s what we’ve got. We’ve got a community of 150,000 people in the county. We need to share the necessity of running the community and

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people who have a little bit more need to put in a little bit more and we need to help people that are struggling a little bit. Um it’s one of the arguments and in the prison debate is that and people that have addiction problems, alcohol or drug addictions, if you if you take care of that problem and you treat the individual and you provide the support services, those people then they can find employment and if they can be have again support services, they become then taxpaying members of the community. So

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instead of us spending money to house them in prison or a drug rehab situation or whatever is that you make them part of the community. Now we realize and I know it’s a segue back to this issue is homeless is that you have homeless that have addiction problems. You have homeless that have mental challenges. We need to look at the whole homeless situation and we’re not the only community. We’re not going to just solve it here, but we can make huge inroads. And one of them is an organization that

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is dealing with homeless that said the most important thing is to provide housing. And I think the organization is called housing first. And they’ve provided around the country 100,000 houses and 85% of the people are still in the house. You get them in a house. You provide them with the uh the mental support that they need if they happen to have a uh mental health issue. You provide the alcohol and drug addiction. If you if they need help again, and I’m not a professional in any of these, but if you talk to

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people, which is again I keep on talking about these segways. You talk to people in the field like in homeless. You make sure that there’s a homeless coordinator that and it ties in all of the social service agencies. That’s always a that’s a major one. There needs to be someone to tie in all these different agencies. I spoke to a very fine gentleman this morning from adult protection services and when he needs to find a place for someone with special need or for foster home, they have to go out to different

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services. It seems like it’s not really coordinated together. It’s and I think that’s so that’s takes a huge focused effort and that’s of course something that the administration uh has to deal with but however the legislation is provided by the council and so this is something to look at. We don’t have to always reinvent the wheel. We can look at what’s going on in other communities. It’s like I was a teacher for years and every couple of years there’s a new

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federal program saying no child left behind or a new curriculum or we’re going to do this or that. Instead of looking at the greater picture and one of the growth that you see, we have an incredibly wonderful charter school here. And there’s benefits and detriments to charter schools. But in education, you the beauty of charter schools is they experiment. They try different things. And why are our private schools on the in the uh on the island in the community have the funding that our public schools don’t? But I

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don’t want to talk too much more about education because education in a is a state issue here. So we can do support service with it. But even though I was a teacher for many many years, it’s we have a we’re the only state that has a state board of education solely that we don’t have community. And that’s just to put a plug in. I would like to see the board of education broken up into each county having and maybe in places like the big island having two boards but possibly one board of educa each county

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has their own board. Now the thing I do want to say about uh and it ties in with our parks is the fact that for example upount King Kik has fields and has tennis courts and the gates are locked and you can’t use them. When I grew up in New Jersey and in Washington DC or Maryland, the schools were opened so you could use the sports facilities. So up country would provide you would have even more sports facilities for the people up country. You know, I’ve been trying to get tennis courts for years uh

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built in the fourth marine park in Haiku. And I know it rains there, but it doesn’t rain all the time. You see how beautiful it is here today, Kaha Beach, and and many many days it’s like this. But there are no just because I happen to be a tennis player. There’s no courts there. So there you you’re working together the state and the county and I’ve heard the administration talking about that. You want to coordinate and that’s something to look at. Uh what what why are they locked and they say oh

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because they might get ruined or they might get abused or something you know whatever the issue might be. But again we keep on denying ourselves things that would assist the community. So, as far as uh the Department of Education, that’s basically, you know, it’s an issue that uh the county council doesn’t really deal with. You know, when I sit and talk with you, I often forget um how how much I agree with you. When when I hear you talk, like I say, um we need more people to be listening. Would you

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do me a favor because I know it’s on your website. There’s lot. You should go to friends of Nikquila Ananda. N I K H I L Da. FriendsofNikhilananda.com. When I looked at your platform, I was overwhelmed. It’s almost like I had to pick my favorite issue. You you are really not a single issue guy. You’ve been working at this so many years. you really uh can contribute a lot whether you’re on council all these years you should have been hired into some administrative position. I’m sort

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of surprised although I I’m not somehow I keep believing that this stuff about business as usual uh is you know a little bit I don’t know how to say this on TV. A lot of people here uh do what’s comfortable and convenient and they know they have a two-year cycle and they’re going to do it again and and I just don’t see the responsiveness that someone who’s on the issues like you could be there. I really the one thing I do want to say and I I know there’s a couple of things that you

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just brought up that are quite significant and one of them is this idea of people on the council and like I said the one story I shared is that I would go to the council and testify I got my three minutes with one minute extra and in those days they didn’t give you the one minute extra and I was ignored over and over again for many many years but when someone who was elected to the council proposed it everyone listened to him and it got passed passed unanimously and uh our former governor, our former

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mayor, Linda Lingal was the mayor at the time. She signed it and that got rid of the anti-hitchhiking ordinance and you see people all over Maui County, you know, hitchhiking. We now have a bus system, so in some places it’s not as necessary. Out where I am, there’s no buses, so people use it to get into town or get closer to one of the bus stops, so people use that or if you’re working on a vehicle, you know, trying to repair it. But um anyway, so yeah, and and the other thing that Jason said about one

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issue, one of the questions I was asked on two different questionnaires, what’s the single most important issue? And last night I was listening to the mayor’s debate and one of the candidates answered, it was almost like they were taking the words out of my mouth, the quality of life, because they’re all interconnected. Uh my dad was a triple ampute from World War II. So I’m very sensitive to uh ADA access uh Americans with Disability Act. And there’s so many places you go down uh where there’s no

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sidewalks or the it’s rough where it is or you can’t get up the steps, you know, and some people say, “Oh, well, we can’t. It’s going to be more expensive.” But if you happen to be in a wheelchair, and we have many, many people in this community that are, they can’t access things that able-bodied people are used to. So, it’s one of my pet peeves is that we need to make sure that every single um building or any structure or anything that the county is responsible for. It

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would be nice if it was all private businesses, too. They meet accessibility, ADA, uh accessibility. Now, that’s not going to happen overnight, but you can see in town where they have been taking sidewalks and then making it where someone with a wheelchair can get up, and it makes it so much easier. when I do talk to some of my friends that are in wheelchairs, um they tell they mention it because they’re sensitive to that. Uh you know, and and I think so I think that’s uh um you know, it’s just

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one of those many issues. Now, like you said on the website, there’s so many issues. One of the things I haven’t heard anyone talk about anybody and I so I’m tooting my horn a little bit is our community associations. I would like to say see them have the status of the neighborhood boards in Honolulu. Now, the neighborhood boards in Honolulu on Aahu are elected, and I’m not sure if we want to go that far, but maybe at some time we do. However, that the reason I say that is look at the general plan.

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The people on the general p plan, 25 people spent years and we’re way behind and that’s again another issue to talk about. And then it goes in front of the administration and it gets chopped to pieces. And the general plan is to be looked at, if you read our ordinances, it’s to be looked on as law. And so it’s really important. And these people work really, really diligently, really hard all over the community, balance of people, and then it gets chopped apart. And you see that with community

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associations, whether it’s Kihei or Kula or Pukalani or Haiku or Hana that because it’s grassroots. It’s that people in the areas know what’s important. And I really want to see our government be much more responsive to the needs of the communities. And we have that. For example, Machaia and Lai have their own planning uh uh planning board commission. And so that’s being sensitive to the people in that area much more aware. Now again, like I say, these all they play off each other

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because like the commissions Jason was really kind to mention. I did serve on two county commissions. I was on the uh mayor’s task force on higher education and I was also on the Maui County Board of Variances and Appeals. I served for 5 years on that board. When I left that board for the last 14 years, every year I turn in my application and I don’t get ever appointed to a board. I don’t feel oh poor me. But what we do see on the planning commission on the board of variance you see some people serve for

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five years then go off to another board then go back on the same board for another 5 years. We have a community of 150,000 people. I would like to see where if you serve on a county commission that you don’t serve on it again or some amount of time say 10 years uh that you don’t serve and have somebody else there have some fresh faces. the more people that serve on these county commissions, the more people that serve on these boards, the more that they understand. It was very enlightening for me to serve on this

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board. Now, that brings up another issue that I really want to get out before you ask another question, and that’s our term limits on the council. And Jason asked me earlier why I’m running. Now, I’m stealing from some other people because I like the phrase. We have term pauses. We don’t have term limits. We have someone on the council now that’s been there for 14 years, served 10 years, was off for a couple of years, ran again, back on the council. We have two other former council members that

35:17

are running for reelection. The person in my district, this would be the end of his 10-year cycle, but it was not consecutive. Three uh two-year terms, off for a couple of years, and then two two-year terms. people in our community need to run or be given positions, especially on board. Well, since we’re talking about the council and I’m running for the council, we have two council seats that are unopposed. Machai and Lai. Now, of course, I’ve been an advocate. I’ve been speaking about this

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for 20 years and that is district voting. It makes no sense that a community and I understand the people on Machai want to have someone from Machai. the people uh in Lai want to have someone in Lai, but why should the community of Kahalui with 30,000 people living there or Kihei with 30,000 people living there have one representative and Lai have one representative for 3,500 people? It’s undemocratic. It should be unconstitutional. and having this atlarge voting like Jason mentioned earlier this or in the interview. I’ve

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gotten about a dozen questions from people send me emails or on Facebook saying, you know, good luck on your race. I can’t vote for you because it makes no sense for people in Kahalooi to be voting for the person in East Maui, for the person in Nai voting for the person in Kihei. Unless we vote for all of them because they all representative like if I lived in Machai, but we have three people. We have three. We have three islands and it’s too expensive. You see the amount of money people

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raise. There’s no reason why. Now, our you mentioned uh uh state representative and he’s actually my state rep state senator and my state representative in the district I’m in. It covers three islands. That’s just the nature of having three island having a county with three islands. The mayor runs on three islands. Our representative in Congress covers eight islands. And I imagine the coun the congressperson represents the uninhabited islands too. So but for the council we need to and what I’ve been

37:25

advocating it’s one of the issues I have of course as you mentioned on my platform to expand our council you know Kauaii has seven Aahu and big island have nine. There’s nothing in the uh that sanctu that you have to have nine. So for me, I would like to see us have a charter uh and that’s and I want to speak about the charter commission a little bit uh in a in a moment because people approach the charter commission. They’ve done studies to find that over either uh over half of the

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community or a large plurality of the community support some type of district only district voting. And the charter commission in 2000200 when I went just ignored it. Let it go on the ballot. Let people choose. let the arguments for like what Jason was just talking about why he thinks that somebody in one area have their own representative but everyone v represents everybody but we don’t really do that. Last night they had a forum in South Maui for only the South Maui candidates. Ridiculous. And

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yet I need to know since I live in the Northshore and I get to vote. I want to know who they are. And not everybody has access like we’re watching this on TV. Not everybody has access to uh the internet. So, there’s a lot of different things that obviously need to be spoken about, but what I’ve been advocating with district voting is that, and I know I go off sometimes, is that having 11 seats with 11 seats in 150,000 community, you’ve got about 11 12,000 people in each district, 13,000 in each

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district. And so, that gets close uh it it in a way the complaint that’s using Machai as an example because it’s around 7,500 people. Now, Lai, I realize anyone watching from Lai may disagree with me, though the irony is I’ve spoken to a number of people on Lai and they don’t feel represented even though they have somebody who lives in Lai. And if you look at the voting, usually they don’t vote for that person who’s living in Lai. The person from Lai and I don’t mean to be picking again on one

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individual, but the one in Lai and the one in Machai, they’re unopposed. And so, um, yeah, so there’s different things to look at. Now, we we raise the awareness of people. We argue what is positive and negative about having a district system. What would be positive negative having this atlarge system and we could do that. Kawaii has an atlarge system. Everyone runs from everywhere. You don’t represent a district and the top seven people get on their council. That’s a different way to do it. But in

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Aahu and the Big Island where they have districts, it allows people to run in one district, represent them, and really get to know everybody. And again, one of the things we’re talking about is the high cost of running for office. It is just to really reach out when you see all of these signs on the side of the road, all of the uh commercials you see on TV advertisements or on the radio. This takes a lot of money. And one of the things I was just talking to the people at the uh campaign of uh campaign

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spending commission. Um they have a pilot program on the big island. The people who run on the big island, they get state money. So, I would like to see it’s one of been my uh passions for years is to have campaign finance reform, have elections, you know, that little box on your back on your uh taxes where you check off and I would like to see that uh either altered the way they do it now because some people don’t check it off because they’re afraid it’s going to raise their taxes and you have a fund so

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everybody’s running with the same amount of money. Now, just to add to that, if you’re running from a district and if you look at the campaign spending qualifications of money, it’s different in every district because some are really huge, some are rural. Where I live is a very rural district. It spreads out for almost 2hour drive from the far west where I live all the way around to just past Newton. That’s the whole East Maui district. It’s about a 2-hour drive and that’s if you’re

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driving really fast, you know. So uh whereas some other districts, Kahalui, Wuku, they’re urban. They have different issues that are affecting them. And so yeah. Hi. You can see we changed backgrounds. We went away and took care of an important task that came up and then they took our table. So we’re here. We’re still in Kaha and I’m still with Nikquila. You are a trooper. Thank you for uh letting me take that delay. You know, we could talk a long time and there’s so many issues. I’m going to

41:51

bring up a few more things if you don’t mind, just because I I want to cover them. Um, recycling, I want to hear what you have to say. I’ve watched the state and the county get involved and I’ve seen people go out of business when they didn’t get paid back from the state and I’ve seen very little go off island that’s recycling. What’s your hit on recycling? Well, the irony is that in 1995 the mayor at the time who eventually became governor of the state proposed curbside

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recycling and it got blocked and 20 years later we still don’t have curbside recycling. If you go all over the country, there’s literally thousands of communities have recycling. We have these dropboxes and anytime I go and I happen to have and there’s a lot of different areas with recycling, but I happen to have a shed where I can store my recycling. And so when I go and bring things to the Haiku recycling, there’s the newspapers and there’s a big sign that says no phone books. And you look

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inside there, there’s phone books, there’s garbage, there’s plastic. Uh you look at the plastic area and you see cardboard in there. You know, Dropbox and they’re packed. They’re overflowing. They’re overflowing, which means that to me, the community is saying, those of you out there are saying, you want to have recycling, but it’s got to be convenient. It can’t be where it’s where if you’re living in an apartment or condo, you have no space to save things.

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you’re not going to drive every single day or once a week to store your stuff because it can get contaminated. So, you need to have um an a way of making it easy for people and there’s different ways to do it around the country. So, we just need to choose let’s do this. And when we have this pilot program that’s been going on for years in South Maui and other people you see letters to the editor every once in a while someone say we need to do recycling. We need to do recycling. Well, we have a current administration

43:55

who’s against recycling. He’s not into recycling. He wants to set up a uh a burn uh energy, burn the garbage to create energy. And so, and then we’re going to plant a thousand acres over in West Maui. We’re going to use prime agricultural land to grow uh stuff just to go burn in our for this energy program. Just do a little research. You can see it’s just not feasible. It’s not uh the way to go. And the community has been demanding curbside recycling for years. And just really quickly, and I

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don’t want to go any more on this, you can have a place where you separate your cans and bottles and plastic containers, or you have just one big container. But as long as we now allow people to have five 32galon or two 95gallon containers, it just isn’t feasible. And out where I am, where people do have land where they could store their recycles, and they drive past the haiku recycling, they still just throw things in the in the garbage. And so we need to set up a material reclamation facility. That’s

45:01

also too when someone has a chair and they don’t want it anymore uh but uh it’s not really worth selling it or put it on Craigslist or having people come to your house or tools or pieces of wood. I mean there’s all kinds of thing a little bit the way um uh Habitat Habitat for Humanity has their recycling store and we can have that so people can go because whenever you go to the landfill you see people dumping things that someone else can use whatever it might be. I don’t want to say this one

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person’s trash another person’s treasure but that’s why I could never run a recycling yard because I would be taking too many stuff. So yes, we’re way past this is the 21st century. We’re way past doing a pilot project. We need to make the commitment to establish recycling. What about stuff that shouldn’t come in like um styrofoam? Someone’s been reading someone’s been reading my uh platform and I appreciate Jason giving a thumbs up to that. That’s more and more communities. And I want to

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commend any you out there that have a food business or restaurant. When you get leftovers, you see more and more places are using all kinds of things. Corn, uh, all kinds of recyclable material that will then can go into recycling or into landfill or into compost or whatever. Um, and I’m glad I just mentioned compost because that’s a whole other area as far as recycling that we should take green waste and create compost. They’re doing it out in New York City. They’re doing it in

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communities, city areas. You remember compost? the rec what was it? Campaign recycle Maui been doing composting, right? Well, there are composting things down at the uh but imagine if we had a weird experience here on Maui these last two decades. Yeah. So, yeah, we need someone that is committed. Look at the areas you just covered. Such a wide area just in recycling, right? Well, that’s a champion, right? Well, we have businesses, for example, everyone is so proud, including me, who’s known them

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for years, setting up our own cottage industry that’s now known around the world, if not just around the country, and that is uh Pacific Biodiesel. Taking something that would have gone into the landfill and would have cost the uh restaurant money, they’re taking it for free, turning into a fuel. This is the 21st century. I can’t keep up with, and I’m not an engineer, I’m not a scientist. There’s so much going on now that we could establish when people talk about making Maui no koi. We really

47:29

could do that. Now, styrofoam is a good example, but there are communities that have outlawed it and it’s we’re past the time now. We were a trends setter. Like I said, when Jason mentioned earlier, we’ve made progress. The uh plastic bag ban, what a great thing. And look around now. You see on the side of the road all these blue bags from a certain box store everywhere, but you only see a few of them. you know, you don’t see these thousands of plastic bags that get blown into the trees and into the ocean. So,

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we have made progress on some areas, but we’re so far behind on others and unless we get on top of it. So, I’m glad you brought up styrofoam. Again, it’s a good segue into recycling. There’s things that we can do and I want to commend all of the businesses that do use these um recyclable containers and we should just outlaw it like we did with the uh cigarettes on the beaches and with uh alcohol on the beaches and with um with the plastic bags. You got me excited there. Well, what I

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can tell is you read the paper, you are on top of issues, you know. I mean, the one thing that I uh often get upset about about people running election time, they come out for elections, they talk about their issues, whether it’s one issue, a lot of issues, they don’t win, you don’t see them for two years, and then they come out again, and then they do it again. That’s not what I want to help represent me. Right. Well, I appreciate when Jason, when you spoke earlier, that’s why I said I’m not the

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only one. There are hundreds if not thousands of people on this island that go to hearings that go to testify. You happen to have a a name that I remember. Yeah, it’s a it’s a name. That’s why it’s beneficial now because those of you I’ve seen that be whether they’re conservative or they’re liberal. What I’ve seen is the things that you bring up and talk about are right on the money. Right. Well, they’re not really can’t when I hear about politics in the mainland or

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wherever and parties and there are lots of differences. You seem to uh come up with things. I’m really I’m super proud of you for holding your ground and being a very independent voice and coming out all these years. You know, I didn’t run again and again because I didn’t think I wanted to do that. I wanted to do these interviews and I and I appreciate it. Without people like Jason, I’ll give a plug to Jason. Without Jason making the time and the commitment to get these uh interviews on uh Akaku and on the

50:05

internet, it allows candidates to be able to be seen. Now, if you’re hearing me now, obviously you’re watching this. And that’s one of been my pet peeves also is that I think the all the media needs to cover these races more. uh especially since we’ve been talking about we have at large voting so people need to see all the candidates and yeah some people do have a ability to be able to go out and it’s a grind anyone that’s run for office and I’m not saying it’s not easy cuz I choose to do that and

50:35

other candidates choose to do it it’s got its other side standing on the road or making the time or spending 25 hours eight days a week doing this but if you’re passionate and you’re right and these are just issues that I mean I grew up in Washington DC. I have a master’s degree in public law and urban affairs. Like we said, trained mediator. By the way, some of you, if you’re watching this on Akaku, this will be on the internet. Remember my TV show that I had, Maui Talks TV? I had that for over

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nine years. And I still get people all over the island as I’m out campaigning, people coming up to me and say, “Hey, what happened to your TV show?” And it was a wonderful opportunity for people to call in and talk about these issues. So they’re not just my issues, they’re all of our issues because we live in a community. And so I just am able to articulate them, to bring them out, to have the passion to be able to talk about these things and appreciate that you make the uh effort and the time to

51:27

allow us to share this. I mean, I do this for everyone, but I do it for me. I I find it sickening that I don’t know who these people are and they’re asking me to vote and I just have to figure who’s got the best food and who do I remember waving a sign. It’s really hard. Well, that’s why we need again, you know, and I’m repeating myself, but the media to cover the forums and then to be put on local public access TV to have the newspaper cover uh so that people see all the candidates. You know,

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I’ve been a pet peeve recently. We see we’re having a governor’s race in the state and we’re having a US Senate race and you see they have uh the top two of one of the political parties but actually that political party has three candidates for governor, three candidates for United States Senate and you don’t see the third person and the third person may be not a qualified but they might be overqualified and it’s it’s really incumbent on the community and the media to provide all the

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candidates that are running and standing for office and then people can make a choice. And and I hope you don’t mind, but it’s good to segue into something else that I’ve talked about a lot and that is our electoral system. You know, I’ve been advocating an instant runoff rank choice voting for years. And the reason for that is is that some people don’t want to vote for someone because they’re afraid if they vote for that person then the person that they dislike the most might get in. But if you have

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rank choice voting, you choose the person that you like the best and then you choose the person you like second best and third best. And I don’t want to go into it for the amount of time that we have, but the one who gets the least votes, you take away their votes and those people that voted for them, you take then their second choice person and you give those votes votes to them. So what happens is the person that wins was was was the person preferred by a majority of the people, not maybe their first

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choice, but their second choice. like we talked about earlier about an integration. Now, if you do this, you save a lot of money because you can do away with the primary election and just have a general election. Now, this will take a lot of time to educate people. It’s done in communities in San Francisco and Syracuse, New York. It’s done in places in actuality, and I only learn recently learned this a few months ago, that’s how they choose the movie of the year in the Academy Awards. It’s

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rank choice voting. So that’s how they do it. It’s done. And we could save when we talk about money and property taxes and how do we do all these services and whenever the budget uh hearings come up, you see all these nonprofits coming and please fund me, please fund me, please fund me. And they’re all worthwhile and yet there’s only so much money. So we’ve got to be creative in finding access to other funds to be able to provide everything that we need in this community. And yeah, one of my passions

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for years has been with recycling and electoral change. And so if I don’t see other people talking about them, then I’m sort of moved to where I have to speak about them. And uh there’s something small kind of poopy dog parks. Not if you’re on a dog. And Jason knows that I have a 16-year-old dog. I’m now a full-time caretaker to my dog Micaia, uh, who’s getting on in years and having trouble with some of her senses. And I really appreciate that we finally are starting to develop dog parks, one in

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uh, Kahalui uh, here at the uh, Kopuluani Park. And I would like to see them more and more. You know, I volunteered for one up in Makawa a couple of years ago. Uh, I believe it was almost two years ago already. I went there with my chainsaw and we cleared some land and it’s next to Kalama Park behind Col Kalama School, sorry, and the recycling area there because people now I live on a couple of acres and I’m surrounded by jungle and you know it just reminds me there’s one other issue

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before we close this off I want to get to and that’s the water in the streams. But I have land so my dog which has trouble walking now doesn’t need an area to run but a lot of people do and dogs parks I’m really glad to see that. So again that’s one of the positive things that we’ve seen government do and provide for the community. Now if you don’t own a dog you know it’s not something that’s important to you but a lot of people finding places to live well that’s why take your dog if you’re

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a renter that’s why I mean look at it. How many people do I know? Uh, and it’s sad. They bring their animals to the Humane Society. The Humane Society, I would like to see it become a nokill. It’s done around the country. We need to put effort into that and financing and funding to look at how it’s done in other places. But we can’t keep on just killing dogs and cats and other animals because people can’t find a place to live and they have to abandon their animals. We have a huge problem with

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feral cats uh that we have to deal with. So, um, so yeah, the there’s so many different things that need to be handled. And I know I saw at one of the hearings talking about the humane society just for a moment. They have required contractual agreements with the county of what they have to do, but they also provide uh enforcement when animals, dog bites or uh neighbor neighbor problems. And so they’re two different issues. And people have been talking about maybe separating those two issues because one is a feel-good thing.

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They come and take care of animals, but then they have to kill them and or put them down or deal with people when people get bit by dogs. And there was a horrendous dog bite in uh on the Northshore about a year or so ago. So yeah, these are things that um you know obviously need to be looked at. We don’t hear discussion about these things. When Jason asked why I run, that’s the reason I run because a lot of these issues just do not get talked about. And we need a champion. We need someone who can

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articulate these issues. And that’s, you know, well, and we need someone who’s a champion who’s on counsel. As much as I like a lot of the guys on council, I don’t feel like I can bring in an issue and they’re going to stand up for me. I really feel sadly that uh the money that’s spent in politics um has its influence right and we and we’ve seen that and I think uh I’m going to take a liberty right now to talk about and this might be our last issue we’ve spent a

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long time and I thank you for the time you’ve made Jason and that’s as I mentioned I live on two and a half acres out in Huo and I have Moku Papa stream behind me a totally bone dry stream because 20t from my property line is an EMI dam which diverts all the water from that uh stream and we have destroyed the ecology of a lot of streams in East Maui and West Maui and we don’t have the state uh uh commission on water resource management. We don’t have the water board being sensitive and taking care of

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and defending water which in our state constitution says it’s a public trust. So to me, one of my passion issues is to find some way to wrestle away the water that is now controlled by a private corporation which sells the water back to us. If people wonder why our rates are so high, it’s a private corporation selling water back to us, diverting water from the streams. And for example, like I said, I live on a stream that is dry over 300 days out of the year. Yet on the other side of the dam, 247, 365

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days a year, it’s it’s flowing. So, we really need to look at that. How do we do that? Eminent domain, making some kind of um uh contractual agreements or whatever. But it’s we’re way past the time where we go to beg to the Commission on Water Resource Management and saying we need more water. And I was really glad to see the courts say no to the agreement that was made in West Maui because even though they let more water in, it’s not sufficient. And so again, that’s one of the issues and it segus

59:19

into something we talked maybe one of the first issues we talked about and that is water. Because obviously I’m not against taking water from streams. They they build dams all over the place, but not to destroy the uh streams and creeks as a result of doing that. And we need to balance that off. And you can see the people in the district where I’m from, subsistence farming and tourism. Those are the two big areas that are for economic growth there. And you see people that have lived there for

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generations that can’t get enough water to sustain their farms and and loey and tarot fields. And to me, this is criminal. And it segus back to what you say because there’s so much money by these multinational corporations that are not little mom and pop little corporations like they used to be in the old days, but they’re for-profit international corporations that just look at water and land here. They land bank the lands here so that they can then turn into development. So there’s a

01:00:13

lot of issues and all of that is tied with the funding of candidates and our whole political system. So again, nothing stands by itself. I’m telling all of you again, no matter where you live in the four islands of Maui County, and if you’re on K, you shouldn’t be there. The three with But vote for me anyway. If you like this guy, you can vote for him. No matter where you live, I am a strong believer in a system that has people that are wellinformed. That’s why I’m doing this, so you can be

01:00:47

informed. But as far as having someone on council, it’s rare that I endorse someone openly in my shows. But you pull it out of me because I’ve watched you. You know, if it wasn’t me there, I want you there. Thank you, Jason. Nikhilananda Council, East Maui District. If you like Nicolan, no matter where you are, it’s time to vote Nikhilananda onto our Maui County Council. Saturday, August 9th, is the primary. You can also vote absentee. I’m one of those people that likes going to the polls, so I

01:01:30

always vote that day. But we have absentee voting where you can vote early and you have walk-in voting. And in the future, I you know, like Jason said, there’s always another thing I want to say, but in 2016, thumbs up to the legislature, you can go during absentee voting and same day registration. And in 2018, you can go on the day of the general election and register. And this is another issue that I’ve talked about for 22 years that I’ve been active here on Maui and with politics. And so again,

01:02:04

Jason, I want to thank you. I want to thank you that are watching this show. And don’t forget to vote. Thank you for joining us. We’ll see you again. Aloha.