Group’s down-home approach to give ‘local people’ a say

The Maui News
April 28, 2003

By MARK ADAMS
Staff Writer

WAILUKU — Spend any amount of time attending public meetings in Maui County, and you’re bound to hear a common lament regarding the level of participation by residents.

It goes something along these lines: “Local” people — however you care to define that group — have an aversion to attending public forums and speaking their minds. It’s simply not their style.

“I would say local people don’t feel compelled to do things like go to the County Council and say, ‘We need better highways,’ ” said Dr. Barry Shitamoto, medical director of Clinical Laboratories at Maui Memorial Medical Center and a native Mauian. “It’s partly cultural . . . a lot of people just don’t do that.”

Kay Okamoto, who owns Okamoto Realty on Lanai, said a lot of public hearings in recent years in the county have come to focus on the negative, another factor in why more people don’t participate.

“To me, everything countywide has become a few people who do all of the talking and don’t really represent what the community wants,” she said.

Those who share those views contend that as a result, many decisions are made without the input of a “silent majority” of those who live and work in Maui County.

But change is in the wind.

Starting next week and lasting into August, there’s a new movement afoot designed to involve every single member of the community who will agree to participate. They will be asked to speak their minds in small-scale and friendly neighborhood gatherings regarding the direction they would like to see Maui County take in coming years.

The project is called “Focus Maui Nui,” named after the former large land mass that saw Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Kahoolawe linked as one before the sea began to take its toll.

The group’s slogan is “Our Islands, Our Future,” and its aim is to identify what’s really important to all of those who live here on a wide-ranging front. The fruit of the effort will be a document that sends a clear message to those who make the actual decisions on Maui County’s future in many areas.

“I’m going into this with a very open mind . . . I really believe in this process,” said Jo-Ann Ridao, managing director of Lokahi Pacific, a community development loan fund that helps with low-income housing and small-business loans.

Ridao, Shitamoto and Okamoto are just three of about two dozen volunteers who have joined a “work team” representing a cross-section of community interests and organizations now helping to spearhead the Focus Maui Nui effort.

Get ready to hear from them, because on Saturday, they could be on your doorstep.

On that day, working team members will be joined by other volunteers, area business leaders, all of Maui County’s elected leaders and members of the county administration in going out and knocking on doors, canvassing the entire county as they ask residents to take part in the Focus Maui Nui gatherings.

“This is a real grass-roots effort, with us going to the community in their own environment instead of asking them to meet with us in our environment,” Ridao said.

Residents will be asked if they are willing to host a small group meeting in their home, perhaps involving a group of neighbors or friends. Other gatherings will be held at churches or civic clubs or among members of social organizations.

A trained facilitator will run each of the sessions and help participants set priorities for the future as they formulate their vision of what Maui County should become — and what it should not.

Over on Molokai, Paul Elia said he became involved in the project because he wants to help his island.

“Molokai is watching Maui, and it’s kind of scary,” Elia said. “The sentiment here is to go slow and make sure what we do is right.”

Elia, chairman of the Molokai-Lanai Soil and Water Conservation District, said he has seen changes occurring in the county that haven’t always been for the better.

“I remember when Maui was saying it didn’t want to end up like Oahu,” he said, but in recent years big-city problems have begun cropping up on the Valley Isle.

Molokai has been paying attention. Elia said there is a realization in his community that some economic development is needed, “but at what price? If we go too fast, we’ll end up like Maui.”

He thinks the effort to involve as many people as possible in shaping Maui County’s future is a good one.

Focus Maui Nui will allow thousands of residents to participate over the four-month period the small groups will be meeting, organizers are hoping.

Okamoto said the small gatherings will allow people to discuss the future in a nonthreatening environment.

“The format lends itself to having more people participate . . . we won’t focus just on our problems, but on our strong points as well,” she said.

The new arena being created to share community ideas is also appreciated by Kahu Kealahou Alika, the minister at Keawalai Congregational Church in Makena, who welcomed the format as a break from the past.

“What I have seen in the work that has been done is that everyone comes to the table as adversaries,” he said. “It gets tiresome very quickly.”

Ideally, Focus Maui Nui participants can find a way to acknowledge that people have differences and then work to find the best solutions, he said.

“And I’m making a bold assumption that we’ll be able to get a broad section of the community to participate, because who now hears the voices of the single parents and those who are working two or three jobs?” the minister asked.

Once the process is finished, Alika is hoping that concrete results can quickly follow, to show those who participated that their work was not in vain.

As an example, he said if a priority identified is affordable housing and the county can then move quickly to make that a reality — without speculators coming in and making a profit that makes it even harder to buy a home — maybe people will see that finding solutions together can work.

“Otherwise, people will just say ‘there they go again,’ “ Alika said of the effort.

He also said that he hopes people will come to the table with solutions, not just problems.

The minister will ask members of his church to affirm the work of Focus Maui Nui by participating in the small-group sessions.

“If we can get five or 10 groups here, that will be great,” he said of his congregation.

Other work team members plan to invite people they come in contact with on a regular basis to participate.

Ridao said one of her clients at Lokahi Pacific is a Boy Scout leader, and perhaps his Scouts will help go door-to-door and spread the word or even participate in a session.

Groups as diverse as those who are now staying at the homeless resource center in Wailuku will also be asked to share their views, Ridao said.

As far as issues that will be raised, Ridao acknowledged that many of the challenges facing the county are well-known — traffic and water and housing and jobs that pay adequately — and have been discussed at length in other forums.

“But I think you’ll have people talking about more personal issues, like the drug problem on Maui, or the education problem,” she said, issues that affect people’s personal lives that they’ll feel more comfortable discussing in a small group. “You’ll hear more about social needs than infrastructure,” she predicted.

Shitamoto also addressed the fact that many of the issues and “visions” likely to be discussed have already been debated at length.

“But I don’t think this is a repeat (of past efforts),” he said, noting that many discussions in the past have focused on a single issue or have taken place before a single group with limited focus.

Not Focus Maui Nui.

“This is more broad-based,” the doctor said, with many different areas of interest represented. “It’s everybody, from every perspective and organization, from every community, including Molokai and Lanai.

“We’ll start with small groups, but in the end there will be thousands of involved citizens participating in putting the whole thing together,” he said.

Having participated in a practice session, Shitamoto said the small meetings are actually fun as participants sort through various issues and then decide what the county’s priorities should be.

“It’s like a game,” he said.

The goal is then to come up with a single “for-real” document that outlines the vision for the future that is created through the project.

It is hoped that the Focus Maui Nui project findings will then guide many future decisions in Maui County, from the updating of the county’s General Plan and its Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy to the planning and community relations efforts undertaken by private organizations and businesses.

Okamoto said a major benefit to involving as many people as possible is that they will have a sense of ownership regarding the final product and will want to see the goals that have been agreed upon become reality.

“It’s a way to get people to say, ‘Hey, I had a part in that, and I’d like to see it succeed,’ ‘’ she said.

Alika hopes that positions people have taken in the past won’t be too rigid to allow give-and-take, and that once the Focus Maui Nui vision for future is created, it has the impact it will deserve.

“When the rubber hits the road, will all these voices make a difference?” he asked, while acknowledging that responsibility for carrying out the project’s priorities will belong to everyone involved.

“If we want to hold our leaders accountable, we need to hold ourselves accountable as well,” he said. “If there is give-and-take — I’m not calling it compromise, which seems to mean to some people that they have to lose something — instead, if we can all gain something, then maybe Focus Maui Nui will represent a shift in the way the work gets done.”

 

 WHAT: Focus Maui Nui Civic Engagement Project, where Focus Maui Nui work team members, volunteers, Maui County elected officials, county administration members and community volunteers will canvass neighborhoods on Maui, Molokai and Lanai asking residents to host or attend small meetings designed to set the community’s priorities for Maui County’s future

 WHEN: Saturday, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

 WHERE: Countywide

 WHY: The goals of the Focus Maui Nui project are twofold:

1. To create one cohesive vision for Maui County’s future, based on the priorities and values of everyday residents countywide on jobs, the environment, education, housing, social issues and more.

2. To hold leaders in government, business and the community accountable to the vision that is developed, creating a tangible link between residents’ hopes and dreams and the decisions that are made that shape the future of Maui County.

 INFORMATION: For more information or to sign up to host or attend a community forum, call project manager Sandy Ryan at the Maui Economic Development Board, 875-2318.

The project is sponsored by the Maui Economic Development Board, the Maui Chamber of Commerce and the County of Maui. Other funding partners include the Alexander & Baldwin Foundation, the Fred Baldwin Memorial Foundation, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, the Hawaii Community Foundation, the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, and the Verizon Foundation.


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