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Editor’s note: For Hawaii’s Nov. 5 General Election, Civil Beat asked candidates to answer some questions about where they stand on various issues and what their priorities will be if elected.

The following came from Addison Bulosan, candidate for Kauai County Council. The top 14 primary vote-getters advance to the general election. The other candidates are Abe Apilado Jr., Bernard Carvalho Jr., Felicia Cowden, Sherri Cummings, Bill DeCosta, Fern Holland, Ross Kagawa, Arryl Kaneshiro, W. Butch Keahiolalo, KipuKai Kualii, Jacquelyn Nelson, Mel Rapozo and Bart Thomas.

Go to Civil Beat’s Election Guide for general information, and check out other candidates on the General Election Ballot.

1. What is the biggest issue facing Kauai County, and what would you do about it?

Although there are several crises affecting our Kauai community, I believe the holistic issue that affects them all is the cost of living. The top five burdens that challenge our way of life and our ability to continue calling Kauai home are housing, health care, transportation, food and education. 

These five issues affect our quality of life and our ability to take care of Kauai as a community. As a current council member completing my first term, I am honored to be working on several legislative initiatives to reduce the cost of living for our local, hard-working families. There are several upcoming bills aimed to reduce the barriers and cost to building local housing and reduce the time to build local housing. Additionally, in our most recent county budget, we allocated more than 5% of the entire county budget toward local workforce housing. This will expedite current and upcoming housing projects. 

Holistically, my approach to health care, transportation, food and education are to empower our local communities and strengthen our town core centers. There are several ongoing community and legislative initiatives in effort to reduce health care, transportation, food and education costs.

2. Kauai has proven vulnerable to natural disasters, especially on the island’s north shore. What would you do to improve disaster preparedness?

I believe the key piece for improving disaster preparedness is ensuring our community has the resources and education to care for themselves first and then activate themselves to help others.

Personally, Kauai is no stranger to inclement weather, and since August 13, 2023, my family and I have re-engaged ourselves in ensuring we have the necessary training and preparedness so that we can then help others to be better prepared. My father was in the National Guard team that responded to Hurricane Iniki and since then we have always prepared for challenging times.

With the tragedy of Lahaina in mind, our current council and mayor have a steadfast focus in our current budget to improve disaster preparedness. Kauai has a history of resilience and restoration through the power of our community. Our collective focus is in empowering our community with the resources and tools to create a unified response toward disasters. This includes community communications platforms, community access to disaster training, and supporting our local disasters response organizations. 

Additionally, our administration’s previous experiences have proactively pursued disaster mitigation efforts in our planning processes, communication systems and investing in our public infrastructure. 

3. There are nearly 14,000 cesspools on Kauai that must be removed by 2050. With an average cost of $15,000 to $30,000 to convert to septic, many homeowners say making the transition is not affordable. How can the county help to jump-start cesspool replacements?

The county has focused on this issue these last few years and several initiatives have begun to help our community better manage wastewater. First initiative, the county council has asked our public works division to provide the community a wastewater and sewer management plan. This will allow planners, developers, homeowners and businesses to know where our current wastewater systems exist, where the upcoming new systems will be, and how people can access our county-run sewer system. This will enable people to plan to connect to our county sewer system and build a stronger network of wastewater systems.

Second initiative, our county will be piloting a cesspool conversion program in collaboration with the Department of Health to provide grants to help convert cesspools or connect to current sewer systems. This process began in 2022 and will hopefully go online this year. 

Lastly, the county can assist in these challenges by streamlining the processes to connect to the current sewer system, incentivizing residents to connect to sewer systems, and reducing challenges to convert cesspools. This includes working with our state and federal counterparts to find accessible resources for our community so that we can improve our wastewater infrastructure.

4. Traffic is getting worse on Kauai, and different regions face different challenges. What would be your approach to improve Kauai’s transportation problems?

There are three core issues for our traffic crises:

Because most people work in or around Lihue and most residents live outside of Lihue, this requires people to commute to or through Lihue from all parts of the island.

Basic resources and services, such as medical care, are not accessible on each side of the island requiring people to travel to Lihue.

Our transportation infrastructure mostly accommodates vehicles and does not utilize other modes of transportation as a solution.

I recommend two solutions to mitigate traffic:

Strengthen town core centers so that communities have access to housing, employment and resources in the town they reside in. This includes focusing on housing development in Lihue to reduce traffic flow.

Investing in multimodal transportation within town core centers and increasing mass transportation abilities between town cores. This will reduce the need to commute between towns and increase stronger town core centers.

These two solutions can restore what our community used to be, which is spending more time living, working and playing rather than sitting in traffic to get to those things.

5. The median price for a single-family home on Kauai has topped $1 million. What would you do to help address the shortage of low-income, affordable and middle-class housing?

The core issues for our housing crises:

We donʻt build enough housing for three out of four communities to keep up with the demand. For example, there is not enough housing for low-income, affordable, and middle-class communities; however, there is enough luxury housing.

The cost to build due to regulations, building materials and labor is inflating.

My current initiatives are to address the rate in which we build homes and the cost to build homes. First and foremost, we must reduce the indirect costs that slow housing production such as county fees, redundant regulations and ineffective policies.

Specifically, my focus is to enable current homeowners who seek to build housing for their families to continue to reduce the barriers for additional dwelling units and additional rental units. Aside from reducing barriers, I am focused on incentivizing local homeowners and landowners to build units in our town core centers near our local jobs. 

Lastly, my focus is to continue to push for investment in our public infrastructure such as water and wastewater in town core centers so that local housing projects are built in a timely manner. This includes state and federal legislators to continue to support public infrastructure.

6. Kauai’s landfill in Kekaha will soon run out of capacity and there’s still no timely plan in place to build a new one. What can the county council do to address what could become a garbage crisis for the island?

Make no mistake, it is already a garbage crisis and we must move quickly on this issue. Our landfill crisis has only two obvious solutions given the fact that we have very limited space for trash and that the source of the trash comes from residents and businesses. My perspective will not be a popular one but it is an effective solution if we all can bear the burden together. 

First and foremost, we must severely reduce our trash consumption, which is the most difficult problem to solve. Asking every person on Kauai to reduce your trash output requires a whole mindset shift around our relationship to trash. Several legislative pieces to assist this will be needed, which include producer responsibility, ban on items that arenʻt reusable or recyclable, and implementing full-scale reusable and recyclable programs for residents and businesses. 

Our current system incentivizes for more trash and in order to be sustainable for our community and especially for Earth, we must reverse the dependence on trash. Once we have established a reversal in trash output, other methods of trash management become effective in addressing our global issue of trash, such as waste to energy. 

7. Overtourism can degrade the environment, threaten biodiversity, contribute to wear and tear on infrastructure, generate traffic and disrupt neighborhoods. What more can be done to better manage the island’s tourism sector?

We must continue to implement all solutions in our Kauai destination management plan established by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. The first three objectives of the plan are my primary focus.

The three objectives are to create positive contributions to the quality of life for Kauai’s residents; support the maintenance, enhancement and protection of Kauai’s natural resources; and ensure the authentic Hawaiian culture is perpetuated and accurately presented in experiences for residents and visitors in materials and marketing efforts. 

My efforts are to create county legislation that works with the visitor industry to accomplish these three objectives. Our current council recently increased the property tax rates of hotels, resorts and transient vacation rentals and allocated those funds directly to local workforce housing. This will expedite current local housing projects and allow our housing agency to pursue additional support from our state and federal counterparts. 

Lastly, an emphasis in the perpetuation and restoration of the kānaka maoli ways of being will be the primary cause for a healthy visitor industry. A thriving land, sea, culture and people are what people visit to experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

8. Should more be done to encourage agriculture and food sustainability on Kauai? What would you suggest?

Yes, we need to encourage more local agriculture and local food sustainable practices. Several key pieces that will help our agricultural industry involve access to infrastructure and processes for food production. Access to water and wastewater are the key infrastructure needs for our agriculture industry to continue to grow. 

Secondly, reducing barriers and enabling for small and community-centric agriculture is a key piece in creating sustainable food production. A healthy agriculture industry will need community gardens, urban farms, residential food production and local clearinghouses to facilitate local food production, accessibility and distribution. 

Lastly, we must incentivize local food production from small- and large-scale productions by allowing local institutions to source local food. Our biggest opportunity to strengthen local agriculture is to ensure we have a strong feedback loop that encourages local food production. When communities have access to local food, the demand increases, which then encourages farmers to maintain supply. 

9. What would you do to ensure transparency and accountability in county government?

During my first term, I learned that transparency and accountability constitute a two-way street. Our county government is transparent but in order to be accountable, our community must engage in the process for it to work properly. First off, I applaud the many people and organizations that do engage and ensure our system works.

Secondly, I have an open door policy and actively engage with our community in the many facets of our county government. The invitation is open to everyone and is only limited by the physical ability of myself and my staff. This, I would say, is ultimately our biggest barrier to being fully transparent and accountable.

I have limited time in a day and if I were to engage with every person on this island, I may only have one or two seconds for you; that is, if I donʻt eat, sleep, and do anything else. Our society has created systems of representation to counter this challenge, such as unions, professional organizations, and community organizations. But it always comes down to whether we participate or not.

Are you engaged? If so, Iʻll see you soon.