Please have a seat right there.
We will ask each council candidate two questions in a one-minute response time.
We will allow each candidate to ask their opponent one question with a one-minute response time.
We will start with a state of why we did that already.
We will move to the county council.
The first question to each and every candidate is what makes you unique
and why should voters choose you in this election with a two-minute statement?
We will start with you first. Ladies first.
Right there. Thank you.
I feel so badly. I don't know if you can all see me, but I hope you can.
Aloha mai kakou.
Aloha mai everybody.
My name is Trinette Furtado and I currently live in the Moku of Hamakua Loa in Haiku,
but I am from Lahaina. I was born and raised basically right behind Piner Mill
just off of Lahaina Luna and Paoa Street.
What makes me unique and why you should vote for me is that I'm you.
I come from you.
I come from people that have worked the plantation, that have worked the pineapple fields.
I come from people that have built the buildings, the hotels
that we utilize, that visitors come to.
I come from people that have laid to rest here.
I come from people that are being birthed here.
And my whole platform, if we want to say, why is it that I'm running,
is that we need to bring our voices back into our governance.
And I keep saying that and I will continue to keep saying that
until I see and hear our voices in governance,
until I see and hear our full participation and transparency in our governance.
I will continue to speak for us because it is not about me, it is about we.
I have an 11-year-old daughter that is going to Kekula Kayapuni o Kalama.
She is an immersion.
And for me, Mea Hawaii, Olalo Hawaii, and things that make this place uniquely our home
are very, very special to me and very close to my heart.
And again, a part of we, if we do not honor those things,
if we do not respect those things, if we do not respect each other,
then what have we got?
We have got the kinds of systems that are broken
where we find people that are on the streets that do not belong on the streets,
where we see our kupuna losing retirement benefits
that they have earned through their lives that they should not be losing.
These are the kinds of things that I think must stop
and they must stop now because they will only get worse later.
Thanks for having me here.
It is much nicer to stand up so you can see all the faces.
Thank you all for being here.
As you know, I have been managing the Kanapali Beach Hotel for the last 30 years.
And what makes me unique is the combination of business experience,
being held accountable by bosses over the many years that I have been doing it.
And at the same time, having 11 years of experience in state government
for five years and county government for nearly six.
So I know what it feels like to be on both sides of the fence.
That is a unique position to be in.
And as residents of West Maui,
you understand the challenges of keeping the visitor industry going.
You understand the challenges that we face with transportation,
with housing, and so forth.
What I bring to the table is many years of understanding budgets,
understanding how to get things done in county and state government.
And I will continue to work very hard to make those things happen.
I also bring to this something that I have kind of become known for
is I love numbers.
I wake up early in the morning.
I do spreadsheets to make sure that I understand where the numbers fall.
And I have the ability to do the research so that I know what I'm talking about.
And that's something that a lot of people aren't comfortable with.
But with years of business experience, I'm very comfortable with numbers.
I'm very comfortable asking tough questions of the administration.
The council's job, as many of you know, is to provide the checks and balances
for the administration.
And we have a council that's very, very comfortable doing that,
as I'm sure you've seen.
And I'm very comfortable continuing to do that,
and we'll do so with significant vigor.
So thank you very much.
Thank you, Council Member White.
Okay, the question that we'll be asking, both of you will respond to it.
Of course, we're going to be talking again about the workforce housing
that we asked earlier to, I'm Council Member Cravelio.
So the question would be, what will you do, if elected,
to facilitate increasing the inventory workforce housing units on Maui?
How will you work to streamline the subdivision process
so as to make it less expensive and cumbersome for developers
to satisfy Chapter 2.96 and include a number of residential workforce housing units,
equivalent to at least 25% of the number of market rate units in their developments?
There is no doubt that we have an absolute lack of workforce housing
as well as affordable housing.
When I think of that term workforce, to me,
part of the responsibility for workforce housing lies within that particular corporation,
that particular business that is utilizing a workforce,
a substantial workforce here on Maui.
I think that we can move development of workforce housing
and affordable housing along at a little bit faster pace
by actually taking to task those businesses
that are using substantial amounts of people here in the islands,
not giving back any kind of housing for them.
I believe that we can offer incentives to people here on the island
that will partner, I don't believe, in more incentives for developers
because we have incentives already.
It's just that we need to connect more people to get that housing rolling.
I would like to have more people at the table
about workforce and affordable housing.
We have a number of challenges with workforce housing.
The first is that the workforce housing bill that was passed,
I believe in 2006 or 2008, I'm not sure which,
resulted in three affordable units being built since then.
That's it.
So when you put a 50% requirement on all housing projects,
what happens?
Housing stops.
Affordables don't get built and others don't get built.
There was a study by the University of Hawai'i Economic Research Organization
and as you all know, UH is very liberal,
but they found that this type of exclusionary zoning
results in less affordable housing being provided than more.
They evaluated that in 20 different municipalities on the mainland,
in 18 of those municipalities, it was a failure.
So we've under Stacy Guerrero's leadership,
we've made adjustments to the workforce housing law
to reduce the requirement,
and we've also been working on adjusting the,
show me the water bill to allow for more.
And we're not done, we realize we have more to do.
Thank you.
Okay, so we talked that.
Now the next question that will be for both of you to answer
is our homeless issue again.
You know, we've, as we've been stated by the governor and everybody,
that homelessness is a crisis here,
and there's been some extension by the state of special allowances,
I guess, due to emergency declaration that helps us move a little faster
without all the incumbents when there's not an emergency declaration.
So it's going to get worse before it gets better.
What can you do if elected to address our homeless crisis?
I think we need to look at more creative ideas
at what is considered home.
It's a lot of people that are here are not homeless,
this is their home, they are houseless, they are unsheltered.
I believe that we could look at tiny homes.
A lot of that has been trendy,
but we can look at integrating that with services that are currently available now
that perhaps could offer work,
could offer some rehabilitative services
so that these people need to be homeless no longer.
I believe that any kind of legislation that criminalizes homelessness
by pushing them out on the streets,
by taking away abilities to camp in areas,
does not solve the problem and only makes the problem worse
and actually pushes it off to the side for someone else to deal with.
I believe it's very critical that we look at it within this coming session
because it is not going away and more of our people are becoming homeless
as jobs get scarcer and housing get scarcer.
Thank you.
The homeless issue is a very difficult one for us.
We are making progress on it.
Ashley, the County of Maui,
spends a considerable amount more on homeless issues
than the Big Island and Kauai.
I don't remember the figures,
but we have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $16 million
over the last five or six years.
The counties of the Big Island and Kauai
have spent less than two or three million a year,
not a year, in that same time frame.
We are doing a lot more than others,
obviously not as much as Honolulu because they're a much larger place.
We will continue to address the issue.
We've got to look at it as an affordable housing issue,
first and foremost,
because a lot of the folks that are becoming homeless are there
because we have a very small and not growing inventory of rentals.
If you can't afford to rent something, you're out of luck.
We need to work on not just homelessness,
but we need to work on affordable housing.
Thank you, Mike.
Now you have the opportunity to ask Mike a question of your choice
and he'll get to respond to that.
Then he has a choice, a chance to ask you a question of his choice,
none of which no one knows what they are.
So you just, whatever you want to ask Mike to respond to,
it's your chance right now.
So please.
All right.
So my question is, given your length of time on the council,
what is the biggest mistake that you feel you made in the past
and how do you think you might rectify that
or ensure that that mistake might not be made again?
Well, I think some people might think that
my biggest mistake is not being as communicative with the mayor
as I might be.
So that's probably a mistake.
But at the same time, balancing our responsibilities,
holding the administration accountable
when you find things that are not being done quite correctly
or quite above board,
is a critical responsibility.
Budgetary and fiscal responsibility
is a major responsibility for us.
So maybe I should talk to more about the fire department issue
and the B.C.'s, the battalion sheaths.
The union agrees with me.
A number of people that work in the fire department agree with me,
not the mayor.
So, but I could be more communicative with the mayor,
but it's not that easy.
Thank you.
Okay, so my question.
We have currently about $630 million in unfunded liabilities
for the ERS and for the health fund for retirees.
Over the last four years,
our employment costs for county employees
have grown by $65 million in just four years.
We have all 14 of our union contracts
coming up this year for negotiations.
Negotiations, even though these don't expire
until the end of the year,
every single one of the units is in negotiations now.
So my question is,
we have to assume that they're not going to come in
and ask for decreases,
they're going to come in and ask for increases
to fund the unfunded liabilities
and the increased costs of these labor agreements.
Would you increase taxes or would you cut expenses?
And if you would cut expenses, where would you start?
Okay, would I cut taxes or would I decrease expenses?
Increase taxes or decrease expenses?
I'm sure that there are several areas.
I have not looked through the entire budget
and gone through it.
I am also OCD about numbers.
I have not gone through the entire budget,
but I do believe that there are some areas
that we can increase taxes in order to bring in more money
to fund these requests.
I do believe that when we're looking at people
who have investment properties here
who do not live here,
who are barely part-time residents,
I believe that taxes can be increased on those people.
If you do not live here, if you do not sleep here,
if you do not call this your home,
you should not get the same kinds of tax benefits
and incentives that people who are residents here,
that people who live here do get.
I also believe that expenses can be cut in areas,
for instance, in funding the visitor industry.
We can perhaps have the visitor industry partner
with the county in helping to pay for arbitration awards
for our lifeguards and such.
Well, thank you very much for your time,
and we appreciate that.
I bless you.
Next up is Ellie Cochran and Ernest Belenbin.
Please give Mike and Trinette.
Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you Mike.
