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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 Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, candidate for Maui County Council Molokai District. The other candidate is John Pele.

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

1. Clearly, Maui County faces big issues related to the fires. What’s the primary thing Maui needs to do now to recover from the fires? 

The county’s primary focus should be community stabilization, which will enable healing from the devastation. 

Our community needs housing stability first and foremost, but they also need clear evidence that the council is listening to the voices of the people and responding accordingly, and assurances that the county is advancing initiatives to prevent a disaster of this magnitude from happening again.

After the fire, the council went to West Maui to hear directly from our community, receiving over 10 hours of testimony providing us with necessary direction. We worked with the administration and partner agencies to quickly pass legislation to incentivize immediate shelter for fire survivors through property tax relief, initiated a mortgage assistance program, and approved policy to expedite building permits for the construction of temporary and permanent housing. 

During this budget session, we increased the number of positions under the Maui Emergency Management Agency’s new leadership, and approved funding under the Fire Department for expanded positions and new fire stations. We also infused the Lahaina Community Land Trust with funding to offer capital for those seeking to rebuild or to acquire properties from sellers, with the aim of preventing land speculators from driving up housing prices.

2.  What should Maui do to encourage people to stay? What can the county do to ensure that families aren’t priced out? 

We need to overhaul a housing system that is failing the majority of our people.  

In 2019, I began redesigning our housing system through tax reform that incentivized and disincentivized uses. This involved establishing a long-term rental program, launching the Aina Kupuna dedication to preserve ancestral lands, supporting homestead development through infrastructure policy and funding, and tiering our property taxes. Tiering enabled the county to generate revenue from extractive industries, while providing resident and small business tax relief. 

This housing problem is not one we will build ourselves out of, especially without proper safeguards. We need to make our housing market less attractive to investors and reclaim our existing housing inventory. Residents seeking shelter shouldn’t be forced to compete with investors.

We have much of the housing we need, it is just housing tourists instead, or is unaffordable for those who live here due to speculation and FEMA’s assistance. Rental stabilization is needed.

Finally, we cannot keep allowing the construction of mansions that most of our people will never live in. As one proposed development blatantly states: it’s anticipated that most market-rate housing will be part-time residences that will not be rented.

3. Do you support the new state law that allows counties to regulate and even shut down short-term rentals? Why or why not?

Yes. While counties already had the authority to phase out STRs in most districts, the passage of Senate Bill 2919 enabled counties to phase out STRs in any district and correctly clarifies the county’s zoning power after a recent case was decided.

I commend Mayor Bissen for introducing the subsequent county legislation to phase out TVRs in the apartment zone, which make up about half of the TVRs in our county. The other half are in the hotel and resort zones and would not be impacted. Complexes that request continued TVR-use can apply for a change in zoning to hotel/resort district, an option that has always been available, and council would consider each application.  

Finding a balance that ensures residents have a home and tourists have accommodations is not unique to Maui; it’s a worldwide issue. Barcelona recently announced its plan to ban all short term rentals within the city. In West Maui alone, only 34% of units are used for long-term use, housing our residents, while 66% are used as vacation rentals – Maui has the most short-term rentals in Hawaii. 

Continuing to allow the erosion of what makes Hawaii so special will result in creating “just another tourist destination.” 

4. What’s your vision for Lahaina? How should it be rebuilt and who should decide? 

Generational families that have continued to protect Lahaina and traditionally stewarded the aina as our ancestors should lead, and the government should follow with the necessary support.

Central to this discussion is building back in a way that promotes the close-knit community it was before the fire, while accounting for overall safety. 

Many community members have expressed the desire to prevent fires through establishing cultural corridors, such as the restoration of Loko Mokuhinia and Mokuula, and the food forests of Ka Malu Ulu o Lele, acknowledging the wisdom of indigenous land management systems. 

Developing better evacuations routes, wider roads, and accommodating sea level rise are critical.

Guidance for the rebuild can also be found in the recently adopted 2022 West Maui Community Plan. It considers many of the mitigating factors that have been discussed since the fires and can aid us in building back a Lahaina better suited for our cherished community; one where our children grow up with one another and continue the legacy of moolelo connected to this aina.

5. What should elected officials do to restore trust in county government? 

Restoring trust and confidence in government is an ongoing, everyday effort. Accountability through consistent action. 

Elected officials should be transparent, accessible and honest. These are attributes many of us may strive for, but for those who hold public office, must be held answerable to by the public. 

Regular communication and being accessible for dialogue are important, which is why I host a monthly town hall meeting on topics that are important to our Molokai community, and attend local events.  

I strongly support the clean elections initiative and have testified at the past two legislative sessions, asking legislators to establish the program to get money out of politics. I’ve made it a point to decline campaign contributions that may give the community the impression that they are not the ones I answer to. 

As a grassroots candidate, I continue to participate in the public funding program to double the value of contributions of less than $100. The public funding program demonstrates my commitment to elevate the voices of those who have historically been disenfranchised and denied political power. We must walk the talk.

6. Do you think Maui County should do more to manage water resources? Why or why not? 

Absolutely. The county should do more to manage our water resources. We should all be mindful to conserve water and aim for a net zero impact on the streams and the aquifers, by investing in returning the amount we extract, like through watershed protection and restoration.

When we grant a property a water meter, it is a promise to provide water to that property forever. As such, I believe we should not approve more luxury developments with ultra-luxury landscaping, which will demand over 20,000 gallons per month from central Maui, when we are already stretched thin on such a precious resource.

The Grand Wailea uses over 500,000 gallons of water a day compared to a household of four, like mine, that uses about 4,000 gallons per month! To address this issue, I spearheaded creating new water rates for hotels and resorts to encourage reuse of water for landscaping and implement overall better conservation techniques. 

Another opportunity is reducing treated wastewater from being injected into the ocean. More water should be reused and treated as the valuable resource it is, rather than treated as waste. 

7. What is the first thing Maui County should do to get in front of climate change rather than just reacting to it? 

There are a lot of components to climate change. As it suggests, it’s a change in climate, global warming. We have experienced different effects as a result: rising sea levels, longer drought conditions, less water recharging the aquifer, rain bombs causing mud floods. 

The first thing the county should do is develop a plan to address the specific issues of climate change, which it did in 2022 with a group of diverse community members. It is incumbent upon the Office of Innovations to implement the recommendations of mitigation and action strategies from this plan. The strategies and actions are grouped into four categories: secure our people, secure our infrastructure, secure our natural systems, and funding and implementation.

The plan is 266 pages, so I won’t go into detail. It formats the different strategies and actions by priority, measures the equity impacts, greenhouse gas reduction potential, and level of difficulty, provides an approximate timeframe for completion or ongoing effort, and the estimated cost.

And I’m ready to approve the funding for these recommendations. 

8. Homelessness is becoming more of an issue on Maui. What do you think needs to be changed to help people get into housing, and stay housed?

It’s easier and less costly to keep people housed than it is to rehouse them. For that reason, I have always strongly supported rental and mortgage assistance programs.

The unsheltered issue is not a one-size-fits-all situation. There are a variety of reasons folks are without shelter and for each circumstance, there is a different need.

Women Helping Women and The Maui Farm have been instrumental in providing a safe place for women suffering from domestic violence and needed to escape an unsafe situation. 

For folks who experience substance abuse, Aloha House provides beds during rehabilitation. The county has provided funding to support Aloha House expansion efforts to offer more beds as needs increase.

For immediate shelter needs, Ka Hale A Ke Ola is an option. For the first time, Maui has a low-barrier shelter to just get people out of the elements. However, conventional shelters do not allow pets, and there is a much longer list than there are spots available for both shelter types. 

Maui Medic Healers Hui and other mental health providers are available to help with untreated trauma that may sometimes be the reason for substance abuse or domestic violence. 

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

The Maui Island Plan calls for tourists to not exceed 30% of the resident population, in large part because our current infrastructure was not built to accommodate the amount of people that live and visit here, as evidenced by the capacity of our roadways and ridiculous daily commute traffic. Before the fire, tourism was nearly 50% of the resident population, with over 72,000 tourists a day. During Covid, over 22,000 rental cars were removed from our roads.

We could offer shuttles to get rental cars off the road. This mode of transportation has worked to reduce traffic in other popular tourist locations. However, to be effective, many of these destinations have offered the service free of charge, to make the shuttle more appealing than renting a vehicle. This solution could be funded through the transient accommodation tax and paid for by those staying in tourism accommodations, instead of through property taxes.

Establishing more reservations in popular areas can also reduce congestion, like Haleakala sunrise reservations or slot reservations at Waianapanapa.

Work-related traffic could be reduced if organizations are able to offer their employees later starts and early release, or work from home options throughout the week.