Fundraiser Speech
August 13, 2006
Kaua`i War Memorial Convention Hall
Aloha Kakou!
I’m so happy to see all of you here. Mahalo for coming tonite.
Anyone can run for office. But without supporters, no candidate can win an election. Your support enables me to do the work that I love, and for that, I am deeply grateful.
By the same token, hopefully I and other elected officials you support are being a voice and/or vote for you on issues that affect our County.
My candidacy and my work as an elected council member depends on some pretty special people in my life. As we know, no one ever achieves anything all by him or herself.
It begins with family. (JoAnn introduces and thanks family, extended family and campaign family.)
I also want to thank my Council colleagues, Council chair Asing, Councilmembers Furfaro, Iseri-Carvalho, Kaneshiro, Rapozo and Tokioka. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, this is the best council I’ve ever worked with. I also want to thank my council staff, who are incredible, and the mayor and many others in the county who work with me.on a daily basis. It is a privilege to work with you.
I want to thank all the citizens who work with me on the various issues such as energy, drug prevention, planning and smart growth, sustainability, solid waste, vacation rentals and many other issues. It’s such a privilege to work with you.
Now I want to ask each one of you in this room to look around at the people here tonight. Some of us come from families that have been here for generations. Others, have moved here many or few years ago to make Kaua`i home. Some are young, others are older. There are many races and many beautiful mixtures. We come from different backgrounds and points of view, but I want to suggest we are united in three ways.
1.We love Kaua`i—specifically, we love living here.
2. We want the things that we love about living here to continue. We want to keep Kaua`i Kaua`i.
3. And we want our children and grandchildren to be able to live here, to be able to thrive and prosper here, if they so choose.
And maybe there’s a fourth way we are united: we are all worried that the good things won’t continue and our children will not be able to live here. Uncontrolled growth and change seem to be happening at such a rapid pace. Across the island people are saying, Enuf already!
What are we to do??
As a councilmember asking to be re-elected, I want to suggest an agenda for addressing the challenges that we are facing:
Beginning with the big picture, we need to understand sustainability and work to create a sustainable island and a sustainable earth.
We need to do good planning. There is no way around it. Not doing good planning is like trying to build a house without figuring out where the electrical, water and sewerage systems will go, or without out first figuring out at the beginning how big the house will ultimately be. It’s a recipe for disaster—and is extremely expensive.
Besides sustainability and good planning, government needs to effectively provide affordable housing, affordable transportation, affordable energy and affordable health care, and a public school system of excellence.
If we can achieve these 7 things, I believe we will have the minimum requirements to ensure that our families can remain on Kaua`I for generations and that life on Kaua`I will be sustainable, healthy and prosperous.
(You probably noticed that I mentioned two things that are not within the County’s jurisdiction: health care and public education. I had to mention these two issues because they are essential to a good future. For example, when 35% of our 9th graders do not graduate from high school, which is the statistic for Kaua`i, we are sentencing those young people to a limited life—and ourselves to a limited economy and a limited community. We cannot ignore these two issues if we want a good future for Kaua`i. That’s why I mention them here. I committed as an individual citizen and a council member to work on those issues because they are so fundamental, but that is all I will say tonight because I want to focus on the county issues tonight.)
So without the so-called state issues, what do we have: sustainability, good planning, affordable housing, energy and transportation. Let me touch on each of these.
First sustainability, and I’m going to intertwine energy with sustainability.
We need to understand sustainability. Because sustainability, as was powerfully shown last night in the film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” relates both to our survival and wellbeing. We all want to survive and be well. This will require all of us, especially our leaders, to understand what is happening to our planet, to look ahead and prepare for the future.
If you want to learn more about this issue, I would begin by going to see the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” Even if you weren’t impressed with Al Gore when he ran for president, don’t let what you know interfere with learning more. Don’t be afraid of more information. We need to keep exposing ourselves to different points of view and keep learning because there is so much at stake.
What will we do when oil hits $100 a barrel and gasoline goes past $5 or even at some point $10 a gallon? How will the airlines survive to bring visitors to Kaua`i? How will our families survive increasing gas and electric bills, freight rates and ever increasing inflation because that translate to higher food costs, higher building and housing costs, higher infrastructure costs, higher health care and government costs. These are the questions we need to be asking and addressing. Let’s not wait until oil hits $100 per barrel to figure things out because it will be too late.
I’ve been looking at these questions for a long time. In 1978, during my second term on the council, I introduced a resolution asking for an energy self-sufficiency plan for Kaua`i, and then proceeded to work with citizens to create such a plan.
That plan is outdated now, and very primitive by today’s standards. We need a current plan that sets us on a post-Sputnik like campaign to develop clean efficient, renewable energy and lays out ways we can become more energy efficient in our buildings and processes. I am very grateful that KIUC, Apollo Kaua`i, Representative Morita and Senator Hooser and the Sustainable Kaua`i Coalition are all looking at these issues, and KIUC has taken some good actions.
But “sustainability” is not just about energy. It’s about everything we do in our lives. One definition of sustainability is “increasing the quality of our lives without taking from future generations”.
Thinking about future generations and shaping one’s life on behalf of the next generation is not new. My parents and grandparents’ generation lived by the precept, “Kodomo no tame ni” Translated, it means “for the sake of the children.” This was not exclusive to the Japanese. Whatever the ethnic group---Filipino, Caucasian, Portugese, Korean, Chinese or Hawaiian—the betterment of the next generation—generally through a better education—has been the guiding principle for past generations.
But today, there’s a new twist to the precept, “Kodomo no tame ni” “for the sake of the children” because it’s no longer only about accumulating private wealth for a better future for our children, it’s about sustaining, taking care of, perpetuating the COMMON WEALTH for ourselves and our children: our clean air and water—this includes the natural systems that filter our water, the green trees and plants that produce oxygen—the fisheries and farmlands that feed us.
Doing things “for the sake of the children” means stopping global warming because we need to protect our amazing wondrous planet and its natural systems. Yet, according to sustainability expert, Dr. Brian Nattrass who has now spoken several times on Kaua`I, every single natural system on the earth (e.g. our forests, savannas, reefs wetlands) is in decline, even as our world population is increasing exponentially and our per capital consumption is rising as well.
And we on Kaua`i are being affected.
In the headlines last Sunday was the discussion of beach erosion in Hawai`i and how that is beginning to affect our resorts and homes. When we consider the rising cost of building materials and oil here on Kaua’i due to Hurricane Katrina—or, even the 40 days and nights of rain on Kaua`i last March, it is clear we are being affected.
We are also the cause—that is, we are contributing to global warming and decline of ecosystems by our personal choices and habits. Every barrel of oil we waste, by not using energy efficient light fixtures or appliances or cars or, by leaving our lights on in our public parks when no one is playing, is taking from our children and grandchildren.
This is the challenge of our generation if we want to make things better for our children. How are we going to create a sustainable planet, a sustainable island? This is KEY to the survival and wellbeing of our children and grandchildren.
How are we going to make our personal choices—about the cars we drive, the things we throw away, the products we buy—and how are we going to set up or design our communities—our solid waste, transportation, housing systems, our land use patterns, etc-- to choose life support for our planet rather than decline and death?
Yes, we all have to make individual choices and changes in our habits and lifestyle, but it is government that must take the lead in developing sustainable systems for our community. This is where good planning comes in.
Who or which department is in charge of planning for our island? It is our Planning Department, which under the charter, includes the Planning Commission and the director and staff of the Planning Department.
As a builder has plans for a house, so must the Planning Department, in collaboration with citizens and other branches of government, lay out plans for our island. These plans must address and integrate affordable housing, transportation systems and land use patterns. They must be developed with informed input from the community.
Early this year, I brought in a planning consultant from BC who made a presentation before the Sustainabilty Task Force on the Year 2050. He said that unless citizens know the consequences of their choices, the input you get from them will not be useful in creating a good plan. He also said that whenever citizens get that information showing the long term consequences of their choices (he had software that could show the air pollution levels and open space and ag land availability and governmental costs of different land use and transportation scenarios over 30 years) the citizens invariably made the right choices.
This is where the county needs to do better.
We need a Planning Dept that knows the latest in planning theory and techniques, that knows current planning law, that knows how to work with community and knows how to develop processes for meaningful citizen input and collaboration, that knows how to ask the right questions. We need a planning department that knows how to get us out of this relentless morass of permitting and work with the community to do good long range planning.
Councilmember Furfaro and I, as vice chair and chair of the council planning committee respectively, have asked the Planning Commission to address this issue. I am grateful that they appear to be open to looking at the problem, and hope that our letter will be on the Planning agenda soon. Actually we need good planning at the state level and in other county departments too, whether it’s planning re superferries, Koke`e or solid waste.
Finally re housing and transportation.
There are five main steps we need to take to achieve affordable housing:
1. We need a housing policy and ordinance that requires every developer to do a fair share of affordable housing.
2. The affordable housing that is subsidized by taxpayer money or developer requirements needs to be permanently affordable. If we allow families to sell those subsidized units on the open market after ten years, we constantly lose ground in our efforts to provide affordable housing for all the families that need it. Councilmember Iseri-Carvalho and I have been working with the administration on a bill to create an affordable housing policy for county that will include these two elements. Hopefully we will see a bill submitted soon by the administration so the council can act upon it.
3. Lastly, the county, by itself, or with nonprofit developers needs to be a developer of affordable housing—an example and model is Kalepa Village in Hanama`ulu. We will soon be starting the next phase at Kalepa and are looking at lands in Koloa, Kapa`a and Kekaha.as well.
4. When the housing market bombs, as it has at least twice in my life time, we need to hold on to the affordable units knowing that the next big housing shortage is around the corner.
5. Related to this is a real property tax system that is fair and doesn’t cause people to have to sell their homes.
As for transportation, we need to go “multimodal” --we can’t just think “more roads for more cars.” That’s how Honolulu thought, and look at where they are now—certainly not at free flowing highways. Building more roads has not solved Honolulu’s traffic problems—that’s been shown over and over again in many places across the country. Plus, now we have the problem of rising gas prices that won’t go away.
We are so lucky to have am excellent bus manager, Transportation Executive Janine Rapozo who has been expanding the Kaua`i Bus rapidly over the last year, and an administration and council that has been supporting her efforts. You will recall that we added bike racks to the buses in 2004, and this past year added holiday service, a Lihu`e shuttle, and most recently a Wailua Homesteads route. That’s the direction that we need to go in. There’s a lot of work to do.
We are finding that expanding the bus system could be a faster and more cost-effective solution to our traffic problem. For example, the County administration and DOT are embarking on $15 million in improvements to decrease the congestion at Wailua Bridge. But certain citizens have picked up on the suggestion that I made in my speech at my last fundraiser in 2004—what if we spent $20,000 to $100,000 (I’m just pulling figures out of the air here) to do a day or week of intense bus service from Kapa`a to Lih`ue—a bus coming to a stop every 10 minutes or so at least during peak hours—and see how much congestion we could reduce that way? And then find out how to sustain the program year around.
I suggested getting Willie K or the Cazimero brothers to play on the buses and offer the potential to win a free trip all expense paid trip to Las Vegas or $3,000 cash if people rode the bus during that week or day. There may be other ways to do this as well. A society that has put a man on the moon and which gets people to buy the most awful useless products for huge amounts of money should be able to figure out how to get more people to try the bus in fun, creative and positive ways. We need a new way of thinking in order to solve our problems.
So there you have it: a minimum agenda to create a sustainable, healthy and prosperous Kaua`I that lives aloha. Sustainbility, good planning, affordable energy, housing, transportation, and health care and a public school system of excellence. That is the agenda I will work on with you in the next two years—and for however long it takes to reach our goals.
The thing that keeps me going is people like you and the many people before us who taught me by example how citizens who are concerned and willing to work can make a difference.
We don’t have billboards littering our landscape because of the brave women in the Outdoor Circle who just said no.
Workers have much betters working conditions today because of the ILWU and other unions who sometimes fought literally bloody battles to make things better for their families, and this includes the sakada whose arrival a hundred years ago we are celebrating year.
The veterans for the 442nd and 100th battalion and Military Intelligence Service (MIS) also paved the way for us.
And more recently, those who stopped the 1000 condos and hotel rooms proposed at Maha`ulelpu, the conventional center and golf course above Kaupea beach, the condos and floating resuaturant proposed on Alakoko Fishpond in 1974 and stopped highrises in 1976 did more to keep Kaua`i Kaua`i than any one else.
I see the legacy continuing today in the conversion several years ago of Kauai Electric into a cooperative, the citizen-based transportation planning in Koloa-Po`ipu, the efforts of Kilauea citizens to control their future and the efforts of citizens to require good planning with respect to the superferry and Koke`e. If you ever get discouraged, think of those who went before us. If we work together, we can do it.
It would be my privilege and honor to serve you for the next two years as your councilmember. Thank you for your support and partnership.
Aloha.