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* Editor’s note – This is the first in a series of stories covering contested state legislative and Maui County seats leading up to the Nov. 4 general election.
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Mayor Alan Arakawa is trying to do what incumbents, including himself, have tried and failed to do since Mayor Linda Lingle – win a second consecutive term.
Maui County voters have been fickle in their choice of mayor since electing Lingle, who eventually became governor, to two four-year terms in 1990 and 1994. Her successor, Mayor James “Kimo” Apana, lost to Arakawa, who lost to Mayor Charmaine Tavares, who was defeated by Arakawa in the last mayoral election in 2010.
In this second go-round as mayor, Arakawa, 63, appears to be poised to end the run of one-termers. He faces opponent Tamara Paltin, who is making her first run at political office and is at a severe disadvantage in campaign funding. In the June 30 campaign spending report, Arakawa had a cash surplus of $357,807; Paltin had $1,813 on hand.
The results of the primary election also illustrated the uphill battle facing Paltin. She polled 3,405 votes, or 12 percent, compared to Arakawa’s 17,980, or 63.5 percent.
The incumbent mayor has a list of accomplishments, including negotiating the purchase of 186 acres at Launiupoko and 4 acres for a new county service center in A&B’s Maui Business Park II in Kahului that included the donation of a 30-acre parcel adjacent to Baldwin Beach Park in Paia; bringing back Halloween festivities to Front Street; “rebuilding,” as opposed to resurfacing, roads in Kahului and elsewhere around the county; signing a contract with Anaergia Services to build a plant at the Central Maui Landfill to turn trash into sources of energy; and designing a new county campus with new office buildings around the Kalana O Maui building in Wailuku.
That’s not to say that all has gone smoothly for the mayor. His relations of late with the Maui County Council have been contentious at times. He stormed out of a council committee meeting, interrupting Council Member Elle Cochran and forcing a recess. The mayor has cut off direct communications between his staff and the council, ordering that all communications be done in writing and through him or Managing Director Keith Regan.
He has tussled with County Council Budget and Finance Committee Chairman Mike White over the current budget. White trimmed back proposed property tax and fee hikes and the overall budget proposed by the mayor. In late summer, the mayor reduced trash pickup and landfill hours over a decision to hire some, but not all requested positions in the Solid Waste Division. He eventually restored services with assurances from Council Chairwoman Gladys Baisa that the issue of the positions would be revisited.
The county auditor is looking into the demolition of the Old Wailuku Post Office. The mayor conceded that he made an error in not formally amending the budget and getting council approval for the demolition. But the council, led by Council Member Riki Hokama, decided an investigation was necessary.
Arakawa clashed with the council over the price of the Launiupoko purchase and the Anaergia contract, with some worried about the loss of businesses currently involved in recycling in the county.
On the genetically modified organism ballot initiative, Arakawa says that the proposed measure as written has flaws, including references to subsections that do not exist; would affect not only large seed companies like Monsanto but ordinary residents; and requires the development of a new office to manage the law. At a campaign forum earlier this month, he said that the measure would be “almost impossible and impractical to be able to administer.”
Paltin, who has received support from anti-GMO groups, said at that forum that she supports the ballot initiative for “open-air experimental tests, which employ large amounts of chemical combinations until these procedures can be proven safe.”
While she has not run for office before, the ocean safety officer has been at the forefront of the Save Honolua Coalition, as its president. The group has been fighting for more than eight years to save Lipoa Point on the west side from development. Its efforts culminated earlier this month with landowner Maui Land & Pineapple Co. conveying the 280 acres to the state in a nearly $20 million purchase.
The race for mayor is a contrast in political experience, campaign strategies, leadership styles and generations. Both candidates sat down with The Maui News last week to talk about themselves, their leadership styles and issues important to them.
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Tamara Paltin
If elected, the challenger would begin a conversation about eliminating the job she won.
Paltin said she believes in nixing the Mayor’s Office in lieu of a professional city manager, hired by and accountable to the council. This would eliminate the transitions that occur with staffing and policy when there’s a change in mayoral administrations and provide more continuity. Elections also tend to bring major decisionmaking to a halt, which is not a positive for residents.
“Yeah, maybe (I’ll be) the last mayor,” she said.
Paltin, 36, believes she can win.
“I am a serious contender,” she said.
Knowing that she cannot match the incumbent’s fundraising ability, Paltin has taken a pledge to accept campaign contributions of only $100 or less. It’s something Paltin, who graduated from Hilo High School, recalled Big Island Mayor Harry Kim doing, though he took only $10 donations.
“Bumped it up to $100 because Maui is a little more wealthy,” she said.
The acceptance of smaller donations represents her commitment to being a candidate fighting for “equal access to all people” and “the little guys, who don’t get a say or voice.” She notes the connection between large campaign contributions and appointed officials.
“There are a lot of people out there that are disenfranchised or feel that people are being bought off,” Paltin said. “I’m not the bought candidate.”
Her strength is running a grass-roots candidacy, a role with which she is familiar having led the community fight to save Lipoa Point and Honolua Bay from development. The eight-year battle ended in success with the conveyance of the land to the state, but there were starts and stops and victories and defeats along the way.
“It was really difficult keeping Honolua Bay relevant in people’s minds as a winnable battle for eight years,” she said.
When times were frustrating, Paltin often turned to her fellows in the Ka Ipu Kukui Fellows Program; the diverse group of young Maui leaders offered support and advice. The University of Hawaii Maui College program is a yearlong effort designed to train community-identified future leaders, according to its website.
“You gotta focus on what your main objective is,” she said. “Sometimes there will be an obstacle in the way, but you gotta realize that overcoming the obstacles just makes you that much more prepared for the future.”
And now that the battle has been won, she wants to be involved in determining that future.
“Part of the reason I am running for mayor is maybe I can have a little more leverage,” she said.
While she has been involved in community activism, Paltin said she believes that Arakawa, whom she gives a “C” for his work as mayor, may have lost that connection with the common folk.
“There are things he has done well by virtue of having the years and experience. I do think that he cares about Maui County,” Paltin said, adding that she “admires” the mayor for having risen up through the ranks of the county workforce as she has.
“I just think . . . having been in politics and in higher positions for all this time that he may have lost touch with the ground floor a little bit and the families out there struggling.”
She observes that Arakawa tends to put “existing housing and existing jobs against to-be-made housing and to-be-made jobs.” She cited the Anaergia contract that may sideline current recycling businesses and the Palama Drive situation in his previous term. In that situation, a developer was allowed to put in as much as 30 feet of fill before construction. Palama Drive residents complained about blocked views, flooding and construction damage and irritants, such as noise and dust.
On development, Paltin said she’s for “smart growth,” maintaining that the development going on currently is “not what we need.” She noted the vacant commercial spaces and luxury homes for sale that she passes by as she travels from her Napili home to her station at D.T. Fleming Beach.
“How about filling those first?” she asked.
“The people know what kind of development is needed,” Paltin said. “It’s just listening to them.”
On other issues:
* She believes that West Maui has been treated as a “stepchild” in terms of county services, citing recycling options and bus stops. Paltin said she is not sure why but “maybe because West Maui has never produced a mayor.”
* Paltin took Arakawa to task for continuing the use of injection wells at the Lahaina wastewater treatment facility that has been subject of lawsuits and costly legal bills. She said she has seen the algae blooms and dead zones offshore. Using the treated water, instead of injecting it into the ground, is needed to protect the island’s visitor industry as well, she said.
* Her management style would be “to set the overall vision and overall policy,” she said, adding that she would not be a micromanager. Paltin said she would reopen the lines of communication with the council.
“I’m about collaboration. I’m about solutions. I’m about change in the status quo,” Paltin said. “Having my own young kids, it’s the present and the future that I want to make better. Learning from the past, I think Maui has a rich history you really need to respect and learn from.
“My focus is on creating a better future for all of our kids to enjoy, to grow up.”
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Alan Arakawa
Young Alan Arakawa would fall asleep in the family fields, leaving his foot dangling in the irrigation furrow.
For a time, irrigation of the fields was Arakawa’s responsibility. He learned at an early age that no one on the farm shirked their responsibilities.
“As a farmer, you don’t plant the seed, you don’t eat. If you don’t weed the field, you don’t eat. If you don’t irrigate properly, you can’t pay the water bill, you don’t eat,” the mayor explained.
It was often pitch black in the dead of night and early morning.
“A lot of times, I’d put my feet in the end of the row and fall asleep, and the water would hit my feet and wake me up,” he explained.
The boy who would be mayor was already ingenious. His upbringing on the family farm would ingrain traits and lessons that he has taken to the Mayor’s Office.
“It didn’t matter what the challenge was, if a cow was giving birth we took care of it; if an animal had a big laceration we sealed it up. . . . If it had to be done, you got into it,” Arakawa said, adding that he has been a “troubleshooter” all his life. “That’s the way we were brought up. That’s sort of the way I do things now, too.”
If experiences shape an individual, then being a caregiver for his mom and later his father-in-law – for the last three decades – has left its mark on Arakawa, too. His father died when he was 30, and a year later, his mother underwent brain surgery and deteriorated over the next decade.
His daughter currently is fighting cancer.
“There is nothing more frustrating than having your child suffer, and you can do nothing about it but be sympathetic.
“I cannot cure cancer. I cannot take away the pain of chemotherapy and the radiation therapy and the operation. . . . You can sit and commiserate. You can help your child go through it. It’s the toughest thing a parent can ever do.
“I know my wife and I, if we could be the ones to have the cancer and my daughter not to have it, we’d volunteer in an instant, but we don’t have that option. I can run a county, but I can’t fix the disease.”
They are hopeful that she will get better.
“You can’t ever believe that things are going to be bad forever, because there would be no hope,” Arakawa said. “We have every hope that the cancer will go away, and she will live a happy life.”
While being a farmer and caregiver have shaped him, there also were the four years on Wake Island, where his father was a government worker. The family went to the atoll, 2,300 miles from Oahu and the site of a historic battle during World War II, during the mayor’s 4th- to 8th-grade years.
Arakawa’s mother and dad took up the responsibility of paying off the debt of Arakawa grandparents on his mother’s side. His grandfather, a first-generation Japanese immigrant, had purchased land in Hana and Ulupalakua but was ordered off the land during World War II at a time when Japanese and Japanese-Americans were being ousted from their homes on the West Coast and sent to internment camps.
Although ordered off the land, his grandfather’s debts were not absolved. So Arakawa’s family went to Wake Island for higher-paying jobs to retire the debt.
“It was kind of like heaven,” Arakawa recalled about Wake Island. “We had the run of the island.”
There was lots of reef fish; they had post-exchange privileges and free movies. Because Wake Island was a refueling stop between the Mainland and Asia, famous entertainers on USO tours would stop by. Arakawa said he has autographs from Bob Hope and Jill St. John.
“It was an interesting life,” he said.
These diverse life experiences are part of the man who is Maui County’s mayor. He is one of the hardest working mayors, appearing at what seems like every event on Maui. Arakawa had a good role model; his father would work his full-time job at Maui Electric Co., go home to work on the farm, pack vegetables until 11 p.m., take the vegetables down to the co-op at about 1:30 a.m. and return home in time to take the children to school.
“I don’t know how he existed on the hours he did,” Arakawa said.
Responsibility was a word the mayor used many times during the interview.
“Once you take on that responsibility you don’t push it off on anybody else, you don’t expect anybody else to do it,” he said.
Being responsible also means doing the research to do the task well. The mayor will often chide opponents for not knowing or understanding an issue.
On Paltin’s criticism of his handling of the Lahaina wastewater plant injection wells, Arakawa said: “I ask Tamara how long has she been working this? How much water has she actually got into recycling. Nothing. She has never been involved in it.”
The mayor explained that the treated water once irrigated the fields of Pioneer Mill and Maui Pineapple Co. When both companies went out of business, the county was left holding the water. His administration is working on plans to use the treated water at a private sorghum biofuel venture.
“We are not the amateur; she is,” he said. “We’re professionals. We’ve been doing this for years. We’ve been trying to find solutions.”
Arakawa is not big on self-reflection.
“You make a decision. You have to live with the decision,” he said. “You cannot go back and change that decision. . . . If there are errors, you make the corrections, and you try and steer it in the right direction.”
No one makes correct decisions all the time.
“My father used to tell me when we were harvesting zucchini, ‘Cut one wrong, too bad, can’t glue it back on,'” he said. “So make the best decision you can, but if make the wrong decision don’t stay there crying about it because . . . it’s not going to self-correct. Figure out how you can do things better the next time.”
One area he said he believes needs correcting is development along the shoreline.
“If you drive to Makena today and you look at all the places we used to go to the beach, there are rows of houses that are obscuring the beach. Now that’s what I call bad planning,” Arakawa said.
The homes block off the beautiful views and access to the beach for tourists and residents alike, he said.
Arakawa said he believes that the county’s purchase of beachfront properties, like at Launiupoko and at Baldwin Beach Park, is the solution to maintaining shoreline open space. “If we don’t do that, all those areas become private,” he said.
The mayor said he believes that the island still can handle more development inland, saying, “We are nowhere near saturation.”
As he heads into what he hopes will be a victory and another four years, Arakawa reflected on the changes in the community he was reared in and the one today. Watching the ugly bullying, threats, defacing of trees and signs and cursing going on over the GMO initiative worries him.
On the farm and in the community that Arakawa grew up in, residents depended on one another and built friendships and trust.
“It really is sad. That shift is what I think will be the ruination of our community and breaking all the lines of trust that we built for generations,” the mayor said.
Arakawa said this will be his last campaign. Should he be elected and become the first mayor since Lingle to serve two consecutive terms, there is an orchard of mango and lychee trees waiting for him when he retires.
* Lee Imada can be reached at leeimada@mauinews.com.