Candidates focusing on different issues

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Fact Box

Kahului Residency Seat

Netra Halperin

Born: May 26, 1959; Redwood City, Calif.

Residence: Kahului

Occupation: Child and family therapist, small-business owner

Education: San Francisco State University, Antioch University

Family: Single

Joe Pontanilla

Born: April 22, 1942; Puunene

Residence: Kahului

Occupation: Council member; retired GTE Hawaiian Tel Maui manager

Education: Baldwin High School, Maui Technical School, Maui Community College, West Oahu College

Family: Married, two children

* This is the fourth in a series of stories on candidates who will be on the ballot for Maui County Council and state legislative seats in Maui County. In Thursday's Maui News, the featured race will be for the Makawao-Haiku-Paia residency seat on the County Council.

WAILUKU - When the Maui County planning director ordered her to shut down her unpermitted bed-and-breakfast in Haiku, Netra Halperin was motivated to run for County Council.

She said she sees the direct effects of the county administration's decision to begin enforcing zoning laws that bar short-term rentals outside the hotel districts, charging that when vacation rentals in Upcountry and East Maui were forced to close, businesses in the region were hurt.

County Council Member Joe Pontanilla, who's being challenged for the Kahului residency seat by Halperin, agrees the council needs to act on a set of bills that would redefine standards for permitting vacation rentals.

But that's not what he sees as the priority for his constituents.

Having lived in Central Maui his entire life, he said he knows the people in his community and he sees their concerns being infrastructure, human services, youth and senior issues and affordable housing.

Where resolving the obstacles to permits for short-term rentals is a core issue for Halperin, Pontanilla said he believes the key issue for the community is to provide long-term rentals for residents and working families.

After her business shut down earlier this year, Halperin said she sold her Haiku home and moved to Kahului.

"I used the money that I got from the sale of my house to run the campaign," she said, when asked about her spending $19,000 on her campaign earlier this year. "Because I am a first-time candidate, people don't know me, so a lot of what the money was spent on was letting people know who I was."

Halperin is among the vacation rental owners who were caught in the squeeze created by the change in county policy when Council Member Charmaine Tavares defeated Mayor Alan Arakawa in the 2006 elections. Arakawa told vacation rental operators to hold off applying for permits for their operations until the County Council took action on changing the laws on short-term rentals.

After years without action by previous councils and administrations, Tavares reversed the policy when she took office, warning unpermitted vacation rental operators they should cease operating while her planning director prepared a set of bills to ease the process of permitting short-term rentals outside the hotel district.

Halperin said the effects of the county administration's decision to shut down unpermitted short-term rentals have been far-reaching. She cited statements by Paia merchants reporting eight Paia businesses closed and charging that the downturn began before the closure of ATA and Aloha Airlines.

"Many people lost their jobs," she said. "This experience did motivate me."

She said she also believes the council can do more to deal with water issues and diversified agriculture. When Maui is one of the wettest places on Earth, she said, the fact that the county is rationing water is a "water management problem."

At the same time, she said she agrees with petitions to the state Commission on Water Resource Management to restore stream flows to East Maui streams. Two groups have filed petitions to seek restoration of stream flows in Na Wai Eha - the four streams from Waihee to Waikapu - and in 27 streams in the East Maui watershed. All of the streams are being diverted by century-old plantation irrigation systems.

"I think it's important for the stream life itself," she said.

Halperin also said former Mayor Arakawa's proposal to allocate $7 million to control the surface water of the Na Wai Eha should have been approved. The proposal to purchase water intakes belonging to Wailuku Water Co. was rejected by the company. Arakawa rejected a proposal for the county to purchase all of Wailuku Water's watershed lands as too expensive and unnecessary.

Halperin said she's also co-founder of the Maui Sustainable Farming Coalition and would work on agriculture zoning that will encourage farming.

"We need to give support," she said.

One step would be to provide commercial kitchens in which farmers can process their produce, she said. She also said she would promote agri-tourism.

Halperin, 49, has a master's degree in psychology and owns Child's Play Psychotherapy in Wailuku. She said she opened the business in January after her vacation rental was shut down. She said the name "Netra" is a spiritual name she got while living in India.

Seeking his fourth term in the Kahului residency seat, Pontanilla sees the council dealing with a broad range of issues, with the national economic situation requiring next year's council to be more careful with spending.

During the past term, he was council Budget and Finance Committee chairman and said the council members in past budget sessions ensured that all county districts had an equal share of the spending for infrastructure, park requirements and human services, "rather then only one district having all the money."

Pontanilla, 66, said council members during the budget session were able to meet some requests that weren't in the mayor's proposed budget such as funding a new water tanker for West Maui as well as initial funding for the South Maui District Park.

He is pleased with being a member of the council exempting active-duty military personnel from real property taxes. He also supports the council's "Show Me the Water" bill that requires developers prove that they have a long-term source of water before they can build.

If re-elected, he said he would like to push for the planning of a new affordable housing project on 50 aces given to the county by Alexander & Baldwin to meet a requirement for another project in Kahului.

He said the 50 acres is near Pomaika'i Elementary School in the Maui Lani project district, with 40 acres to be used for affordable housing and special needs housing, 7 acres for multipurpose use such as a community and senior center, and 3 acres for a park. Pontanilla said he would like to get nonprofit organizations involved and have the affordable housing remain in perpetuity.

Other issues raised by the community that he is working on include traffic problems at Lono Avenue's intersection Papa Avenue. He is also working on developing solutions for drainage issues in low-lying areas such as Holua Drive in Kahului.

The council member also would like to put in more funding for the Maui Bus.

In dealing with the vacation rental issue, he said the council is working on the package of bills proposed by the administration, while he has generally supported applications that have come to the council for bed-and-breakfast permits as well as conditional use permits for transient vacation rentals.

He called the proposed caps for Wailuku and Kahului bed and breakfasts recommended by the council's Planning Committee "sufficient." The committee has voted to recommend limits on the number of vacation rental permits that would be allowed in various districts, setting the cap at 16 for Wailuku and Kahului. But the committee has not yet opened discussions on whether to allow "transient vacation rentals," short-term rentals on properties outside the resort districts that do not have an owner on property.

Pontanilla indicated he is approaching the issue cautiously.

"We must ensure that land use and zoning designations are not compromised," he said in responding to the issue earlier. "The function of special use permits and conditional permits allows the county remaining opportunity for oversight and control of land use and zoning, advances precaution to protecting neighborhoods, and of actions for mitigation of impacts and issues of concern."

Halperin said "it's taking too long" for the council to go through the set of bills intended to rewrite ordinances governing short-term rentals. She suggests that council members look at the "core issues and allow council services" to deal with the language in the bills. She objected to lowering the number of vacation rental permits as limiting opportunities for individuals to be in business.

"We're in an economic downturn. We need all small businesses."

* Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.