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Two weeks after Peter Carlisle returned from Japan, he touted the benefits of “mayor-to-mayor” contact.

In an exclusive interview with Civil Beat Tuesday morning in his office, Carlisle said relationships with mayors across the Pacific allow him to ask questions about technical issues his counterparts face and burnish economic and cultural ties.

“The nuts and bolts of things getting done tends to happen at the municipal level, so our problems are the same as their problems. And they’re not political problems, they’re the functional problems of running cities. So, alternative energy, electric vehicles, disposition of garbage, all of those things are things that we can think about,” he said. “But more importantly, it’s a closer personal relationship between somebody who is in exactly the same circumstances, and rather than government-to-government or state-to-state, this is mayor-to-mayor, which is closer, in my opinion, to people-to-people.”

Carlisle was expansive about his travels, even going so far as to model a traditional coat he received as gift. But when this reporter tried to ask about issues beyond the interview request, Carlisle was mum.

Told he can be tight-lipped, the mayor explained, “For a prosecutor to be tight-lipped is critical because anything that slips out of your mouth can be used against you.” Told he’s no longer the prosecutor and he can now speak more liberally than he would in court, Carlisle joked, “I am.”

Carlisle went to Japan from Aug. 1 through Aug. 7 after quietly notifying the Honolulu City Council that Managing Director Doug Chin would be in charge for the week. Civil Beat shared the details and scope of the trip days before Carlisle departed.

He said he didn’t come back with too many fresh ideas for Honolulu government operations from this particular visit because “this visit was more designed to be dealing with them getting to know me as the new mayor and me getting to know them since we hadn’t had face-to-face meetings previously.”

Ethical Questions, Sewage Sludge and Grant Funds

In the interview, Carlisle did answer questions about Planning Commissioner Andrew Jamila, who was fined by the Ethics Commission earlier this month for failing to disclose his connection to the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill when taking votes on whether to extend the landfill’s permit. The Ethics Commission referred the matter to the mayor, who has the discretion to take further punitive measures.

Carlisle said he discussed the matter with Honolulu Ethics Commission Executive Director Chuck Totto as well as with Jamila himself, “face to face.” Carlisle said he expects to make a decision on what comes next after he talks to Jamila again, possibly this week.

“We’re going to decide what’s going to happen, or I’m going to decide what happens, and all options are on the table, but it’s not resolved yet,” he said. “I’m looking specifically at what the statements were to the Ethics Commission, I’m listening to what Totto told me, I’m listening to what Andrew told me. And I’m going to basically put all of that together in a pot and make a decision.

“I need to sit down and speak with him and we’ll discuss his future,” he said. Asked if it was appropriate for Jamila to consider serving the city in his current capacity, Carlisle said, “Obviously, since I’m considering all available options, (removing Jamila from the Planning Commission) is obviously one of them.”

Asked about the sewage trucking that started last week after a pair of public meetings held while he was in Japan, he deferred to Environmental Services Director Tim Steinberger.

“I’ve talked to Tim, but you should get it directly from him,” he said.

And asked about the federal government’s efforts to recoup $8 million in grant funds from the city because of problems at elderly-services-oriented nonprofit ORI Anuenue Hale, Carlisle said he wouldn’t address the matter yet.

Asked if he had plans to meet with U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Duncan while he’s in Honolulu this week, Carlisle said, “Yes.” Asked if he thought ORI would come up in that conversation, he said, “I don’t know. You’re asking me to speculate.” Pressed further if he’d bring the matter up, Carlisle said, “I don’t know.”

Yokohama and APEC

Carlisle’s Japan trip included stops in Nagaoka, Yokohama, Hiroshima and Matsuyama. He said Yokohama, which hosted Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings last year, was the most surprising stop.

He said Yokohama Mayor Fumiko Hayashi loves Honolulu from her time working on deals buying and selling the Ala Moana shopping center, and described her as “a delight” and “very, very easy to talk to,” with “more brains in her earlobe than I have between my ears.”

“Yokohama is basically the gateway, the port city, to Tokyo. … We are already sister cities with Tokyo. If we become sister cities with Yokohama, we have the central entire megalopolitan area of Tokyo and Yokohama affiliated with this city. That’s a really good thing,” Carlisle said.

“She wants to have an affiliation with us that’s close and personal. I can’t think of anything that would be better for us in terms of that relationship,” he said. “I can’t think of anything more exciting. I would say that was the single most exciting development that had come completely unanticipated.”

He said discussions about APEC were productive, though he wouldn’t go into detail as they focused on security-related matters.

Other Highlights

Ten years ago, a U.S. naval submarine surfaced, striking the Japanese fishery high school training ship Ehime Maru, killing nine crew members. In Matsuyama, Carlisle said the “Hawaii Day” in Ehime Prefecture — complete with hula dancers and ukulele performances — was touching.

“It was a pleasure once again to do something that has taken a bad situation and turning it into a positive. That was sort of a theme throughout everything,” he said.

The firebombing of Nagaoka is now commemorated in a two-hour fireworks display that Carlisle said has explosions that “fill up the sky like you wouldn’t believe” and entertains 400,000 attendees a night. Hiroshima, the site of the first nuclear bomb dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, hosts an annual peace ceremony that Carlisle attended. Yokohama was the site of the Japanese surrender.

“The most important thing that I came back from this is that the Japanese have known that they want to be our friends, and I’ve let them know that we want to be their friends,” Carlisle said. “And we want to do this in terms of economics, in terms of government-to-government, and in terms of cultural things that be to our advantage … which, in a global economy and a global and international city like Honolulu, is part of my job, in my opinion.”