PUUNENE - After 30 years of building and maintaining a community-based program aimed at keeping litter off Maui County's roadsides and beaches, Janet "Jan" Dapitan has left Community Work Day.
"It isn't about me," Dapitan said of the anti-litter program that she kept running as a community-based agency for two decades after the Keep Hawaii Beautiful program was trimmed from the Department of Health budget.
"It's really about all the people who have worked so hard to keep Maui litter-free and beautiful," she said.
Dapitan also said she isn't retiring.
"I retired 30 years ago when I left the county and focused on this," she said Saturday at the Community Work Day offices in Puunene.
She said there still are programs and projects on which she will be working to see to completion, including an effort to revitalize the Keep Hawaii Beautiful program as a statewide effort at litter control. She will continue giving time to the Friends of Old Maui High School effort to restore the historic campus.
It's just that she won't be doing it as executive director of Community Work Day in a split that involves some differences in directions.
Community Work Day President Jim Bailey acknowledged Tuesday that the board asked Dapitan to accept retirement, adding that Dapitan herself had indicated she wanted to retire two years ago. The board earlier this year initiated a plan to have her retire, posting an advertisement for applicants for the position of executive director.
"We came up with a timeline when she would agree to the end of her employment. Then she wrote us a letter that there are several things she would like to accomplish before she leaves," Bailey said.
At a board meeting in June, he said that Dapitan was asked when she would complete the project on which she was working - involving a state task force planning to revive the statewide anti-litter program.
Bailey said Dapitan said she needed until Aug. 15 and was given the time. At the same time, the board had consulted with an attorney who recommended that the board prepare a "termination document" - a document that Dapitan was asked to sign agreeing to terms of the board on her departure.
She was presented with the document Friday, five days after her 73rd birthday.
While she wasn't sure she would sign the document, Dapitan said she would not resist the board's decision and said her departure should not interrupt or interfere with the work of the Community Work Day staff.
CWD has a new executive director, Rhiannon "Rae" Chandler, who was program director since last year. Chandler on Tuesday said the board met with the staff Monday to explain the board's position and while there may be regrets, the staff also is moving forward.
"We have to make clear how much we appreciate Jan and everything she has done," Chandler said.
Dapitan said she is confident the staff she trained will continue the work and build on what has been accomplished over the years and that community volunteers will continue to work with CWD on cleanup and beautification projects.
When Dapitan initially was involved as Maui County volunteer coordinator in 1978, Community Work Day was a statewide program run by an office in the state Department of Health linked to the national Keep America Beautiful effort.
After the state trashed its litter control office in the early '80s, Community Work Day continued as an all-volunteer group on Maui, coordinating the five-times-a-year community cleanup campaigns such as Keep Hawaii Beautiful, Litter Bugs Me and Get the Drift & Bag It.
Supported by the Outdoor Circle before it filed for its own nonprofit 501c(3) status, Community Work Day on Maui became a coordinating organization for other community groups on Oahu, Kauai and the Big Island in planning for the statewide cleanup projects.
Those are continuing, with Get the Drift & Bag It, an international campaign aimed at clearing litter from reefs and shorelines as well as from roadsides, scheduled for Sept. 13.
But with grants from Maui County, private foundations and individuals, the Maui program also became involved in recycling and cleaning up illegal dumpsites along with tree plantings and other beautification projects.
During the dengue fever outbreak on Maui in 2001, Community Work Day assisted in cleanup projects to eliminate mosquito breeding sites.
When abandoned vehicles and appliances became an epidemic in 2004, after Maui Scrap Metal was forced to shut down, Community Work Day staff and volunteers set up projects to pick up old appliances to prevent dumping.
The Puunene facility provides a site for a paint exchange, and computer and cell phone recycling. The staff continues to operate an appliance pickup project and supported a campaign against cigarette butts on the beaches. CWD staff provide educational programs in schools and at shopping centers.
There are plans to develop a program to divert household hazardous wastes from county landfills.
With the staff she has trained, and an estimated 7,000 volunteers who regularly turn out for CWD projects, Dapitan said the agency will continue to serve the community well.
"I'm not walking out of a program. I am out because the board has its plans, and I am not going to take any action as long as the board keeps the program strong and moving forward," she said.
Bailey said one of factors in the board's decision is the effort to revitalize a statewide Keep Hawaii Beautiful program and issues board members had with a statewide organization in effect taking over the Maui Community Work Day.
The state task force with which Dapitan is working had proposed to have Maui Community Work Day be the statewide organization, which would have required the Maui board members to resign to allow appointment of a new statewide board, Bailey said. He said the Maui board members believed that would have taken control of the Maui programs out of Maui.
For the board, control over the agency and its nonprofit status - able to accept contracts from Maui County for county projects, and donations from trusts and foundations for Maui projects - is a key concern, he said.
"If they took over our 501c(3) number, they, the task force in Honolulu, would be in control of everything. That's the way it would be," he said. "There was a fear of our Maui organization being swallowed by a statewide agency, although she (Dapitan) would have been running the show."
Dapitan is in favor of reviving the statewide anti-litter effort in support of the groups on other islands that she has worked with over the decades. She said it would be a benefit to Maui to have the statewide Community Work Day centered on Maui.
"I am committed to the task force, to the next phase of a statewide organization dedicated to keeping Hawaii beautiful," she said. "I think we can give a real foundation to the concept of 'laulima,' of working together."
* Edwin Tanji can be reached at citydesk@mauinews.com.
