Well, I guess I'm going to go first.
So I'm Don Guzman, and I'm the representative for the Kahali district.
All of you, I pretty much know who I am.
I feel very blessed to have been here in my second term.
I serve as the vice chair of the council.
I am also the chair of the Agriculture, Recreation, Energy, and Parks Department Committee.
I also chair the Committee of the Whole, which is the judiciary part of it.
I handle all the lawsuits and the settlements.
And one thing that I've really noticed about how I've been actually serving on the council
is to make sure that every decision that was made, it's about balancing the approach.
And basically looking at what our fiscal responsibility is, maintaining our fiscal responsibility,
making sure we strengthen our local economy, and making sure that we care for our community,
our social services, as well as protecting our natural limited resources.
So those are my four things that I've always started with and has always been true to me.
And I've always tried to be very honest to the people, although I've been a practicing
attorney for the last 17 years.
When I got into office, I pretty much closed that practice down and focused more on the
council because I felt like I was more or less what they would say.
There's a difference between a showboat and a work, I guess, a tugboat.
And there's a difference between what you would say a show horse and a work horse.
So I always felt that I've always continued to be that tugboat, making sure that we go
pull through these challenges as part of the administration of the council and also making
sure that I'm that work horse, making sure that we're bettering the community for the
right reasons and for our future.
So I would deeply appreciate giving me that opportunity to continue working on the council
and doing the right thing for all of us.
I really do feel that there should be a balanced approach for everything that we do, analyzing
all issues and making sure we get everyone's perspective before making a decision.
So thank you.
Aloha.
God bless.
Aloha and my name is Vanessa Madaris and I really want to thank the ladies who were
in the pink, the pink ladies back there for Maui, not the big one in the back.
I'm born and raised in Maui.
My great grandparents came here back in the mid-1880s to work in the sugar plantation
and my family has been here ever since.
So over 200 years we've been part of the fabric of our communities and our families have
moved along.
My grandparents lived in Hana for a while.
My grandfather was the mail carrier back then.
He also used to bring the mail over to the west side on the old road, the old, old, old
road.
I've been involved in my community for as long as I can remember.
Been part of the JC's, when we used to have the JC's carnival.
I've been involved with the Miss Maui and Miss Maui Filipina pageants for over 25 years
in training young women in personal development and a lot of them have grown up and I meet
them everywhere across the island.
I've been involved with the special fair for the disabled and Habitat for Humanity, actually
being on the roof and being a roofer and helping families to renovate and build homes.
So I've been around.
I've been here.
I've been there for you.
There's a lot of families that will know me because I've helped them or helped their families
out.
And that might not be unique because a lot of us are born here, but I think that I'm
well-rounded.
I've worked in government, both state and county.
I've worked in the for-profit and the non-profit industries.
I've worked in tourism at the hotels, rental cars, and visitor attractions.
So I've been around.
I've seen a lot of things.
I've seen Maui grow.
I've seen Maui change.
I might not like all the changes, but it's something that we have to work with.
And I think that as a council member, as a representative, we have to continue to protect
Maui and keep Maui Maui.
Thank you.
Thank you, Vanessa.
Okay.
First question.
It doesn't matter.
You know, you're both going to answer the question in a way, so.
Wait, wait, wait.
Junk in pool.
Oh, wait.
He don't know Junk in pool.
Oh, I tell you.
All right.
Since Don has the microphone, Don, what will you do if reelected to facilitate the
increase in the inventory of workforce housing units in Maui?
How will you work to streamline the subdivision process so as to make it less expensive and
less cumbersome for developers to satisfy Chapter 2.96 and include a number of residential
workforce housing units equivalent to at least 25% of the total number of market rate
units in their development?
Okay.
Well, first of all, I don't want to reiterate all of the comments that my colleagues have
mentioned earlier, but we do have a task force that's in place to try to formulate some reasonable
procedures to try to streamline.
One of the issues that we are facing is that there's at least 2,000 to 3,000 pending units
that have not been built and have been pending for the last, I'd say, 10, 15 years.
So these are developers that come in and say, workforce housing, workforce housing, we
need it now, urgency, urgency, so we pass, we pass the entitlements without any deadlines.
So I think one of the things that we have to first realize is that there should be deadlines
placed into our conditions of entitlement or at least passing these, granting these entitlements
so that they are placed on a timetable and these houses are going to be built.
Another factor is that we need to start collaborating more with the water department as well as
our private entities that have private water sources and making sure that the water treatment
levels are adequate enough to interchange because right now, show me the water says, show me
the water and build me a well or a water source.
But you can't go to a private water source and ask to hook up because our department,
our water department says, no, there's a percentage off, so you can't hook up and there's no collaboration
or partnership.
Things need to be changed in terms of the efficiency of the water quality so that these
houses can be built and these, I'm sorry, I can go on and on.
I apologize, sometimes I get off.
Thank you.
I'll stand up because I'm short and some people may not see me.
When I was a director of housing human concerns, our staff go through our files and the information
I had going back to 1980 was that we had over 14,000 units that were owed to the county.
Of those, only 3,000 were provided, which means that we're 11,000 short.
But what also happened and what I was surprised with is that our council, way back when, made
deals with developers in lieu of providing 50 housing units, they provided two acres
of land for a park.
Shocking, isn't it?
This is the kind of decisions that were made way, way, way, way back then.
Hopefully, this is not the kind of decisions we're making going forward.
What we need to do is we need to put everybody's head at the table and if we really want this
to happen, we can and we will make it happen.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So you're aware now, Don, of the next issue again is go, homelessness of the crisis situation.
What will you do if re-elected again to address and facilitate homeless crisis solution?
Don't start the time yet.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you for the question.
Which is a very serious matter and like the other candidates and incumbents had mentioned,
it is a crisis.
Yesterday, I had one of the chiefs, the Maui Police Department in my office as well as
the manager from Costco, Target, and Home Depot and they were complaining about abandoned
vehicles, 25 abandoned vehicles in their parking lot per month and these abandoned vehicles
served as homes for the homeless and they were coming to me asking me, what is going
on?
What do we do?
Our head corporate offices on the mainland do not know what to do.
What is the solution coming to my office?
I sat back and I said, you know what, we're going to have a bigger influx coming because
in Kanaha Park, we're going to be cleaning that area and the influx of all the homeless
will be moving around and transferring even more so to their parking lots.
So what we need to do is start from the very beginning.
How did this all start?
We need to start identifying the different classes of homelessness and attacking it at
the source.
And eventually we're going to have to figure out a master plan, a capital improvement program
or a project that is going to be placed somewhere and nobody wants it in their backyard but
we've got to start at some place and build the infrastructure to try to start addressing
the issues as well as there's a constitutional law that I need.
We'll get to you.
You know, if you want to know more, there's a case law in constitutional law that we can
address some of this homelessness about.
So in any event, I thank you very much for the question and I'm not Portuguese so I do
talk because I'm an attorney so thank you very much.
But you notice he talked with his hands too, yeah?
All right, brother, you're making it.
What is the truth about homelessness?
Do you think we can really solve it?
Some people say yes, some people say I don't know.
What I do know about homelessness is if we become successful, what's going to happen?
More will come because a lot of the people who are homeless are not from our community.
They're coming in from elsewhere.
But what we need to do is the solution to homelessness is affordable housing options.
It's not necessarily being able to own a home, it may be able to rent a home, it may be able
to look at what type of housing opportunities are out there.
Now Oahu is figuring it out.
How is it that they can figure it out and we can't?
That's what I think.
We need to look at the options.
We need to look at maybe it's not the fancy homes that has to be built but something simple
like the old Aruzumi and Hicks homes that were built back in the 60s and 70s.
Maybe that's what we need to look at.
Thank you.
All right, Don, you get to ask a Vanessa question.
And Vanessa, you get to ask Don a question and this time 25-second respond, Don.
Hello, I'll make it very easy, I've heard this question asked to you before, but are
you running against me or are you running for Medeiros?
Such a thought.
I'm warning for me, of course, I'm a positive person.
I don't believe that we should be against someone.
I think it's important that we have an option.
If nothing else, this is the greatest election year I think that we're going to have because
everyone is being opposed and that means that our families, our people are going to have
a choice and whatever choice they make, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
What it lets our incumbents know is that the people are watching and it means that we have
to be sharper at what we do because, you know what, our terms are only two years and our
memories go long past two years.
So if we don't do a good job, we may be out at the next term.
So it's for me.
But you're going to vote for me, yeah?
No, forget.
Oh.
The question I ask is, you know, you're the chairman of the, I call it the ear committee
because they're supposed to be listening.
But they just, a couple of months back, they brought out of committee the county code for
the parks and so they changed the county code from 13.04 to 13.04A.
And in the committee report out, the committee changed a portion of the code that allowed
for the county to rent out its equipment off county property.
So this means like the stage selections, the showmobile, the bleachers and all that.
My question here is that having an attorney background, why would you engage in this kind
of decision that brings more liability to our county by taking equipment off county
property?
Thank you for the question.
Yeah, I am an attorney, but what I signed up and was elected to do is to be a servant
for the people, a representative for the people.
And even though there may have greater chances of liability, provisions were made to be placed
in there so that insurance could be shown when they rent them out.
We looked at the neighbor island needs, which was Moloka'i and Lina'i.
I feel that we're all one county, Moloka'i was in need of those equipments.
We couldn't specifically target and say, Moloka'i, you get the exemption.
But we had to say, look, if it's good for Moloka'i and Moloka'i needs it, it should
be fair for everyone across the county.
So therefore, we allowed the rentals of these equipments for everybody.
And I think that was the fair thing to do.
And I'm always about the fairness, the right and the wrong.
There always has to be a win-win situation when we make these decisions.
So that's what I did.
I made that decision.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is some Kelly King and Dan Couch.
