It is the responsibility of a local newspaper to write the first draft of a community’s history. It is too bad that the editors of The Maui News did not take the time to read that first draft before they chose to make up the “facts” to back up the June 25 editorial “Least is best for government.”
According to the paper’s history, when Maui Scrap Metal closed down, Maui County did not come to its owners’ aid, did not try to get a new vendor online, but instead chose to go into this service on its own.If the editors chose to read their own stories, they would have learned that Maui Scrap Metal shut itself down because it was being dogged by state regulators because they lacked permits, had numerous environmental violations and outstanding state tax indebtedness (March 17, 2005 – “Only scrap yard on Maui to shut down”).
If they read those pages, they would have followed the county’s long, torturous saga as it entered into a service – scrap metal management – with which it had never been previously associated, after the private long-standing service had melted down (Letters, June 5, 2005, “Appliance recycling day showed island’s ’can-do’ attitude to tackling problem”). You would have read how those of us in county government recruited, intervened and stood on our heads on behalf of any reputable vendor who wanted to try to provide this service.
Because we lacked any land properly zoned M-2, heavy industrial, to store the thousands of cars that were stacking up on the highways, we had to beg for a special emergency proclamation from the governor herself to just be allowed a temporary storage yard (The Maui News, Aug. 2, 2005, “Lingle steps in to stem junk cars”).
Maui County did not write the state laws that created this mess; we just had to work through the absurdity that they created. That absurdity said that we had to go through a two-year process just to have a piece of land – in this case a former WWII fighter base that had been abused by segments of the community since the end of the war – to store junk cars. In that sense, I agree with your comments. We do have too many rules and regulations that gum up any pretext of governmental efficiency. The Arakawa administration’s unofficial motto was “bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of government.”
But then your editorial goes off the tracks again. The logical place to zone M-2 heavy industrial space that may be needed again in the future is the 15 acres at the old Puunene Airport that is being proposed. This land is part of a project district which calls for 125 acres of M-2 land.
But instead of finishing that job now, your editorial proposes sending the question to be studied again ad infinitum by the General Plan Advisory Committee, the Maui Planning Commission and the County Council. Five or 10 years from now it may again see the light of day. The question is sitting before the council’s Land Use Committee right now.
The council should learn from the painful history we have just been through and just pass it. The Tavares administration will be showing great leadership in completing this project. All of the heavy lifting has been done for them. All they have to do is say OK.
And by the way, the junk car mess was a nuisance, not an emergency. When a true emergency happened and we lost the land connection to Kipahulu last year, our county Public Works engineers saw to the replacement of the Paihi bridge in a month’s time. That is what can happen when the gloves are off and our guys can work in real time. I don’t remember any editorial commenting on that.
Don Couch was the deputy director of planning in the Alan Arakawa administration. He is currently the information technology manager for Levin & Hu, LLP.
