Maui County Council’s term begins with same members, new federal fire relief funding to spend, old problems to tackle

As the members of the Maui County Council prepare to take office this week — with all nine incumbents and essentially the same balance of power — top of mind for the new term will be how to direct more than $2 billion in federal funding to Lahaina and tackling projects beyond the recovery from the 2023 wildfires.

The council’s inauguration on Thursday comes after Congress voted last month to allocate $1.6 billion in disaster relief to help rebuild homes on Maui. The county will also receive another $480 million, including $350 million to build critical water infrastructure; $33 million to repair roads; at least $22 million to support economic recovery, agriculture and conservation efforts; $19 million for child care; and at least $12 million to provide loans to impacted small businesses.

Council Member Yuki Lei Sugimura, who chaired the council’s budget committee in the previous term, said the major disaster relief funding headed Maui County’s way will allow the county to direct some of its own funding toward other needs that have taken a backseat to the fire recovery. 

“The community, the council members, everyone has sort of prioritized West Maui and stood back as we understood the urgency,” she said. “But now … we soon will have an understanding of the disaster relief funds, then we can figure out how this all fits together for a healthier community.” 

Inauguration for the new Maui County Council is at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s Castle Theater. A meeting on council business will follow at 2 p.m. in Council Chambers.

This council will begin its two-year term with more certainty than it did at the start of the previous term in January 2023, when a lawsuit challenging the results of the Wailuku-Waihe‘e-Waikapū district forced Council Member-elect Alice Lee to sit out on inauguration day. 

All nine council members will be present at the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday after the Hawai‘i Supreme Court last week confirmed Tom Cook’s win over Kelly Takaya King in the closely contested South Maui race that was decided by fewer than 100 votes.

“I’m happy to be re-serving,” Cook said. “I believe I work well with all the council members. We don’t agree on everything in policy, but I respect and I get along with all of them.” 

Cook said “everybody worked together, but it was clunky” the last time only eight members were sworn in. Inauguration day is when the council elects its top leadership and sorts out which members will serve on and lead the individual committees on housing, water and other critical issues. 

Lee served as chair of the council last term and hopes to do so again for this term, “but I haven’t really spoken to anybody” about how they plan to vote. She said she was happy Cook, usually an ally of hers, was reelected, but that even if he wasn’t, she believed she would still have a good shot of being voted as chair again.

“We took over at a time when there was a global pandemic … and I think they relied on my experience to keep the ship steady and moving forward,” Lee said. “I think I did that together with them, and then we had the fire, so another major challenge which requires a certain amount of experience.” 

The balance of power on the council hinged on the South Maui race that pitted Cook against King, who fall on opposing sides of the two factions that have developed on the council. The side with Cook, Lee and council members Yuki Lei Sugimura, Tasha Kama and Nohe U’u-Hodgins, are seen as more moderate and pro-development, and they held the majority on the council over the past term. The minority includes council members Gabe Johnson, Tamara Paltin, Keani Rawlins-Fernandez and Shane Sinenci, who are seen as more progressive and pro-environment.

“I do understand it’s kind of like a pendulum swing,” Paltin said. “And so there were two terms where I was on the power side, and now there’s two terms where I was not on the power side. If the pendulum swings too far one way, then people take action.”

Paltin said she would likely support Lee for chair again because “there aren’t the votes for anyone else.” However, she pointed out that not every decision with the council has fallen on a 5-4 vote. 

“There are instances where we come together on the right thing to do because it is the right thing to do,” she said. 

Sugimura, who holds the Upcountry residency seat and served as vice chair of the council and chair of the budget committee last term, said there’s always been a split since she was elected to the council in 2016.

But like Paltin, she pointed out that council members rallied over some of the biggest issues, including the $1.26 billion budget they passed unanimously in June that prioritized funding for recovery in West Maui. 

“That took everybody working together,” Sugimura said. “So it’s not only 5-4 … I think that’s too (much) of a simplistic view because we don’t operate only on that way, right? Sometimes we vote on something and people who should be on the five are voting with the four.”

Sugimura, who at times has been in the minority on the council, said she hoped to get reelected to the same roles this term and planned to support Lee for chair again.

The split on the council could come into play on critical issues, including Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposal to phase out 7,000 short-term vacation rentals to create more housing after the fire. Council members’ stances on the issue vary, with some saying they are waiting for the results of a study on the impacts and others saying they would support it depending on the timeline and the areas where the ban will apply.

Another high-profile issue is a large-scale housing project in South Maui that council members clashed over as last term came to a close. The Honua’ula master-planned community, known as Wailea 670, has scaled back over the years from a proposed development of 1,400 units, including 700 affordable homes, to 1,150 units with 288 affordable homes after county rules changed and no longer required that half of a project’s units be affordable.

Bills on changes to the project, including the removal of a golf course and creation of a cultural facility, had passed through committee backed by the majority and were set to be heard by the full council last month until they were canceled over a procedural issue.

For Paltin and others in the minority, the project was yet another example of luxury development getting the green light while housing for residents languished.

But to Lee, the longtime project proposal was “a good example of how government has moved so slowly” that projects increase in cost and struggle to get off the ground.

Both sides agree, however, that affordable housing should be a priority and that the county needs better processes in place.

“Everybody on the council, in my opinion, wants to have obtainable, affordable homes for our local working people,” Cook said. “That’s our main priority.”

Recovery from the fire also continues to be a focal point for the council. Paltin, whose residency district is West Maui, said that some of her proposals this term will center on Lahaina’s recovery and preparing for future disasters.

For example, she’s hoping to revive the managing director charter amendment that was defeated in the 2020 general election. The proposal called for creating a position of managing director who would oversee the county’s daily operations and services. Supporters hoped it would take the politics out of county functions and ensure continuity instead of having top officials change every four years with the mayor. 

Motivated by the 2023 wildfires, Paltin said she hopes to propose a more simplified version this term. She pointed out that if the fires had happened during a transition between mayors and new department directors, the new officials would have been even less equipped to handle the disaster. She suggested a managing director with a six-year term who would overlap the four-year mayoral terms. 

“There needs to be some sort of continuity from administration to administration, because we don’t plan or dictate when catastrophes happen, and we know that they’re becoming more and more frequent,” Paltin said. 

Paltin said she also is looking into proposals that could make it easier for people to rebuild with modern fire-resistant materials in historic areas of Lahaina, as well as potentially curbing the amount of swimming pools to help preserve water in drought-prone West Maui. 

But as the recovery continues to be a priority, Sugimura said the county also needs to address other important projects, including the construction of a wastewater reclamation facility in Central Maui. This facility will benefit multiple housing projects, including the 1,500-unit Waikapū Country Town complex. She also wants to move forward with the long-awaited North-South Collector Road in Kīhei that’s been years in the making. 

Lee said priorities should include filling the hundreds of vacancies in county government, which she said has hampered critical functions including permitting for much-needed housing projects. She suggested raising salaries for jobs that have taken on more responsibility over the years, and potentially contracting out for services that the county can’t do alone. An example is the county’s hiring of the firm 4LEAF to expedite permits for the thousands of Upcountry and Lahaina residents planning to rebuild after the fire.  

Lee also wants the county to diversify its revenue base. She suggested an analysis of the grants the county is eligible for so it can leverage other sources of funding and be less reliant on Maui’s tourism-based economy, especially after the drastic decline in visitor arrivals following the pandemic and the fire.

Lee agreed with Sugimura that the fresh infusion of federal disaster relief funding will free up county resources for other needs. 

“We’re really not that far apart on many issues, but it takes time to continually work toward common ground,” Lee said of the council. “I have seen in our council that we’re going to come up with some great proposals and initiatives this year. It’s a lot easier to do that when you have funding behind you and you don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul. This is new money and we need to act on it as quickly as possible, but in a logical, reasonable way.”