The Maui County Council celebrated local high school wrestling champions Thursday before grappling with a contentious request for an affordable housing project refund.

Council members unanimously adopted a resolution honoring three student-athletes for winning gold medals in their respective weight classes at the 2026 Texaco Hawaiʻi High School Athletic Association State Wrestling Championship on Feb. 27-28 at the Neal Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu. The honorees included:

• Siana Boaz-Vasquez of Lahainaluna High School, who dominated the girls 140-pound weight class to conclude her career as a four-time Maui Interscholastic League champion and state placer.
• Jona Dudoit of Molokaʻi High School, who secured the boys 126-pound title to become the first male wrestler from his school to win state since 2005. He’s a two-time MIL champion and four-time state placer.
• Niko Takitani of H.P. Baldwin High School, who won in the boys 165-pound weight class with an overtime victory. He is a two-time MIL champion and three-time state placer.

“Wrestling is one of the hardest sports,” Council Member Tamara Paltin said. “It’s a team sport, but at the end of the day, it’s just you and your opponent on the mat. And it’s gonna show whether you put in those hours practicing or not because you have no one to rely on but yourself… it really did pay off for our wrestlers.

Lahainaluna coach Christian Balagso agreed, saying that “winning that state title is not an easy feat.”

He noted the Council’s annual budget review and called for county financial support of improved youth wrestling facilities in Lahaina and Molokaʻi

“Lahaina needs a bigger wrestling room for the youth program so that we can get more high schoolers to win,” he said.

The Council resolution said the “exceptional performance, dedication, and spirit of these phenomenal student-athletes have brought great pride and honor to their ‘ohana, schools, and people of the County of Maui.”

Kamalani housing refund deferred

A bill to refund $234,050 to Kamalani Ventures LLC for overpayments related to a 2015 workforce housing agreement was postponed until May 1.

The developer, represented by Keola Whittaker, sought the refund for 55 “undelivered” housing credits. The developer was required to build 115 affordable units but built 170 instead, 55 more than required, he said.

“The agreement said that  you get one transferable credit for every one you go over, the 115,” he said. “So it was 55 credits (owed the developer).”

The extra units could not be sold to income-qualified buyers, so the units were sold at market rate, he said. When the units were sold at market rate, the developer was required to pay the county 50% of the difference between the market and affordable rates, and the developer paid $676,000. But the developer was expecting to get the 55 transferable housing credits.

“The credits were never delivered because there was a disagreement over what the law said at the time,” Whittaker said.

Then it took several years of figuring out whether Kamalani was going to get the credits, but the developer never got them.

“So then they said, okay,.Instead of arguing over whether we get those transferable credits, why don’t we just resolve the issue and you just give us a refund for the 55 units that we paid? So, we calculated that, and that’s 234,050,” he said.

Whittaker said he thought “it’s kinda like going to Foodland, buying five musubi. They say, ‘Oh, we only get two.’ So, you say, you go back to the till, and you get the refund for the three you never got. It’s the same thing going on here.”

Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez asked whether the matter would be referred to committee because she had questions and wanted to see spreadsheets. “I want to see the math,” she said. “I want to see the work that they all did.”

Whittaker said he had the spreadsheets available.

“They just show what the unit was, with the affordable rate, the market rate, the difference, what was paid to the county, and then you just look at the last 55 and that’s how we calculated it,” he said.

The matter was scrutinized by the Housing Department for over a year, he said, “they put me through the wringer,” Whittaker said.

Rawlins-Fernandez asked Council Chair Alice Lee: “Can we take a turn at putting him through the wringer?”

“Spoken like a true county worker,” Lee responded, but added that it might not be necessary to send the matter to committee if only two of nine council members had questions.

Housing Director Richard Mitchell said his department spent more than 4 ½ days going through and compiling all the documents and responding on March 12 to council members’ questions with a 13- to 14-page description of all the details and background information about the refund.

“There’s probably nine or 10 attachments, including all the spreadsheets,” he said. “It’s already in your possession. There’s a lot of work that’s been done to confirm just the calculation.”

Mitchell said there are, “more importantly, the policy issues to be addressed. I think should be discussed separately, but the reimbursement is straightforward.”

“I think we should move this along just on the reimbursement issue,” he said. “It’s been kicked around since approximately 2019, and we’ve done an enormous amount of work at a very tight time of the year in order to address all the questions that the council has asked. So if there are any questions about what we’ve submitted, including all the spreadsheets, we’ll gladly answer those.”

As the back-and-forth discussion continued, Council Member Kauanoe Batangan objected to giving so much time to one public testifer, although Lee said “we’re just trying to get certain things cleared up.”

Ultimately, council members decided not to refer the matter to committee, but to postpone full council action until May 1.

Other Council action

In other action, council members passed Bill 47 on first reading, with Batangan casting the lone dissenting vote on the measure to use the number of bedrooms rather than square footage to determine the minimum number of off-street parking spaces for dwelling units used for housing.

Paltin said the bill was aimed at addressing inadequate parking for residents while addressing public safety in neighborhoods.

Batangan said he believes people park in the streets because Maui County housing is unaffordable, and more people are forced to squeeze into homes than residences are designed to accommodate.

“I worry that this bill will increase the cost of housing and reduce the availability of land for more housing and other community needs, which will exacerbate the problem rather than solve the issue of illegal street parking,” he said.

Batangan said he would rather focus on parking enforcement, the creation of public parking or paid public parking in problem areas. He said he’d also like to invest in better public transit and bike and pedestrian infrastructure in neighborhoods. 

Council members also referred eight real property tax reform bills to the Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee, including measures to establish a vacant residential classification and extend wildfire tax relief.

Council members passed on second and final reading Bill 50, reallocating $200,000 to various rural programs including the Hāna Youth Center and Maui Adult Day Care Centers; and Bill 51, providing $180,000 for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Maui on Molokaʻi.