The clock is running on the Maui County Council’s yearlong deadline to take action on the Molokai Community Plan update, which has been sitting in the council’s Planning Committee docket since May 4.

Council members have only another 12 weeks or so to review and approve the revised plan. The Lanai Community Plan revision — the last one updated by the council last year — consumed a year and seven months of council review and had been taken up first because it was seen as an “easy” one to update.

In mid-March, Mayor Alan Arakawa’s administration will submit its fiscal 2018 budget proposal, complicating time management for council members and taking large chunks of committee work away from planning and into budget review.

Until now, there’s been no rush to take up the Molokai plan. The Planning Department submitted it to the council more than eight months ago, and the council’s Planning Committee has reviewed it only once — on Feb. 2 when the panel received an overview presentation.

The next meeting is set for 9 a.m. Thursday in Council Chambers. The agenda says no legislative action will be taken. Last week, Planning Committee Chairwoman Kelly King said that she was aware of the council’s deadline for action on the Molokai plan as well as how council members were likely to get “jammed up” with budget matters in April.

“I’m in the process of trying to figure out how to get done before the end of May,” she said. “The clock was ticking before I got here.”

When King took office in early January, the Molokai plan had already sat idle in committee for seven months. The planning panel led by former Council Member Don Couch took up short-term rental and affordable housing issues, but steered clear of the potentially controversial community plan update.

King defeated Couch in November’s election, unseating him from the council’s South Maui residency seat.

King said she’d like to schedule three meetings on Molokai to “kind of get updated on where the community’s at” with the island’s long-range plan update. She said that she wants to know how much the community “supports and doesn’t support” the plan.

Although the council could give itself a deadline extension by resolution, as it did with the Lanai plan, King said she’d rather not. “My intent going forward is not to let that happen,” she said. However, “I don’t want to pass it to meet a deadline.” Rather, she’d like to see a “buy-in” from a majority of Molokai residents before council members take action.

Council Member Stacy Crivello, who holds the Molokai residency seat, urged King to set up meetings on the Friendly Isle.

“We’re working as hard as we can with what we’ve been given,” King said.

Crivello said King was working to expedite the council’s review of the Molokai plan.

“I’m crossing my fingers we’ll be able to do it in between budget,” she said. “I think we can finish it up.”

One potential stumbling block is the revised Molokai plan’s Chapter 11, which covers East End and Maunaloa policy statements. In its initial reworking of the Molokai plan, the Planning Department incorporated the policy statements into the revised plan’s community plan goals, policies and actions.

“The department felt that this was the appropriate strategy to take because portions of the East End policy statement are either outdated, conflict with and/or are duplicative of existing laws and regulations,” Planning Department Director Will Spence wrote in transmitting the draft to council members.

The East End and Maunaloa policy statements were returned as Chapter 11 in the plan during the Molokai Planning Commission’s final action on its draft of the plan in March.

The Planning Department recommends removing Chapter 11.

Crivello said she wants council members to go to Molokai “so we can have a conversation” with community members about the plan and Chapter 11.

“I believe the community’s voice must be included,” she said, although she understands the Planning Department’s concerns about the chapter being redundant with other parts of the plan.

“What I hope is that it would get resolved,” she said.

Crivello said she comes from a “very controversial community.”

“We’re not afraid to agree to disagree,” she said. “We all need to respect everybody’s perspective.”

The Lanai Community Plan was the first for the council to update in recent years. That revision was approved seven months beyond the one-year deadline set by ordinance for the council to consider community plan revisions.

In October, Mayor Alan Arakawa directed the Planning Department to suspend work on upcoming Maui island community plans and work instead on revamping the county’s long-range planning process.

Maui island has six community plans — West Maui, Kihei-Makena, Makawao-Pukalani-Kula, Paia-Haiku, Wailuku-Kahului and Hana.

Arakawa said the planning process was so slow that it would take another 20 years — based on the current plan revision pace — to update all of the county’s long-range plans.

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.