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Your County Council members have just completed deliberations for the fiscal year 2019 Maui County budget. This is a long and tedious process, which sometimes goes on until 2 a.m. on a daily basis during the process, and can last for many weeks.
As a former council member who went through this budget process many times, the council has my sympathy. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I did not point out some areas of the budget where I think they should revisit for the good of the community.
The first was cutting out $2.5 million for first phase of Project Aloha, which would have housed homeless and near-homeless individuals and families in modular homes and the necessary funding to prep vacant lands for the housing units. This proposed project on the Old Maui High School property is modeled after the Kauhale Kamaile project on Oahu, which is already at capacity with 21 adults and 37 children calling the project home.
We need this project and more like it on Maui. The council has not approved any of our homeless projects, even after Gov. David Ige issued an emergency proclamation to deal with the state's homelessness crisis in 2015. I hope the council will reconsider Project Aloha's merits.
Also, the council referred $9 million in homeless shelter expansions and affordable housing projects to the Housing, Human Services and Transportation Committee. I encourage all committee members to help our community by approving more projects.
Now, the second matter is the decision by the council not to fund the phasing out of old, petroleum-based motor vehicles with other cleaner and/or more efficient vehicles such as electric or hybrid.
In 2013, the State of Hawaii revised the law on local government's procurements of light vehicles, saying that county and state government operations need to start replacing our fleet with newer types of motor vehicles that will "reduce dependence on petroleum for transportation energy" (HRS 103D-412).
The HRS even goes on to list what types of vehicles we should replace our fleet with, and the order of priority for selecting them:
1) Electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
2) Hydrogen or fuel-cell vehicles.
3) Other alternative-fuel vehicles.
4) Hybrid electric vehicles.
5) Vehicles that are identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its annual "Fuel Economy Leaders" report as being among the top performers for fuel economy in their class.
In order to fulfill this procurement requirement set by the state, as well as to help the state reach the goal of producing 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, the County of Maui's proposed 2019 fiscal year budget had a number of requests for these sorts of electric and hybrid motor vehicles.
This is a progressive step for the county and we should be moving forward, not backward. In terms of renewable energy, Maui County is looked at as being a leader nationally and internationally.
We are producing 30 percent renewable energy, have solar panels on the rooftops of dozens of our county facilities, have the most electric vehicles and electric vehicle chargers per capita in the state, and continue to push for an independent systems operator to run our electrical utility for the community.
Reducing the county's carbon footprint on the road is the next step, and it will help with reducing maintenance costs in the long run.
Some have pointed out that the HRS to replace government vehicles with cleaner, renewable-based vehicles or more fuel efficient vehicles is not mandatory because there are no penalties listed for not following through. I don't think this should matter; we should make the change because of all the benefits it will bring, not the least of which is reducing smog.
This is a topic worth revisiting before the council passes its version of the FY 2019 budget during its first and second reading.
* "Our County," a column from Maui County Mayor Alan Arakawa, discusses county issues and activities of county government. The column usually appears on the first and third Fridays of the month.