In West Maui, it’s a rematch between Paltin and Nava for County Council seat
TAMARA PALTIN — Her perspective is valuable
RICK NAVA — His experience an asset
TAMARA PALTIN — Her perspective is valuable
RICK NAVA — His experience an asset
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The Maui News has been featuring the profiles and platforms of candidates in the lead-up to Tuesday's general election. Today's story, the last in the series, focuses on the race for the County Council West Maui residency seat. A special general election issue was published Oct. 24.
In the race for the Maui County Council West Maui residency seat, incumbent Tamara Paltin faces off again Tuesday with Rick Nava, a military veteran and small business owner in Lahaina, in the general election.
They battled for the open seat in 2018 with Paltin prevailing.
Nava, president and owner of MSI Maui and Aloha Moment, said he is someone who "thinks outside of the box" when it comes to budgeting, addressing affordable housing and unemployment rates, supporting sustainable agriculture and tourism, and leading keiki to "a better future."
"I'm very passionate about making a difference in the county of Maui and helping the people," he said. "I want families to become homeowners. However, before we get into all of that we need to get people back to work, and as someone who owns a business, I have a very good idea about how to get people back working."
Paltin said she has gotten past the learning curve of being a council member, and with her background as an ocean safety officer and a degree in mathematics, she is confident in her ability to analyze issues of health and safety of visitors and residents and budgeting and funding programs.
During her first term, the Napili resident focused on transparency and accountability in the county government, affordable housing, emergency services, and ocean water quality, as well as supporting local businesses and agriculture.
"I feel that my perspective is valuable on that council," said Paltin, who is a mother with two children. "All I can do is offer my service and stand on my reputation of things that I have done."
During the primary election in the three-way race (that also included Sne Patel) for the West Maui seat, the incumbent took 48.5 percent of the votes or 21,274, while Nava had 25.2 percent or 11,050 votes.
Tamara Paltin
When incumbent Paltin first joined the council, she recalled reading all 700 pages of the Waikapu Country Town application, which was later approved to build 1,400 homes and no hotels.
"Nobody wanted to approve hotels to be a part of the plan," Paltin said. "For me, that was my first time going through an application, and I found something that nobody else noticed, so it kind of inspired me to go through all the things that I read with a fine comb and see if I can make a difference."
Being a council member takes a lot of time and commitment, and until "you've seen a couple conditional permits, until you've seen a few quarterly reports, you don't have a full enough understanding to make a really informed decision on the fly," she said.
"You really need to do your homework."
If reelected, she will continue to work on long-term projects, like making housing more affordable for residents by addressing "systemic issues" within land use laws.
"It's much more difficult than it should be," she added. "It's kind of disheartening that former councils have put forth these requirements on these developments as a condition of the change in zoning, but it doesn't look like there's good follow-through from one administration to the next, from one council to the next."
Other causes she has championed include setting money aside from liquor fines for alcohol addiction treatment, ending illegal vacation rentals and maintaining or improving infrastructure, like sewers, roads and parks.
As a former ocean safety officer for more than 20 years, she is passionate about the health and safety of residents and visitors and supporting the island's surrounding marine life. One of her first bills that passed was adding Hanakao'o Beach Park to the list of county parks that prohibited commercial activity.
Paltin said she is currently working on legislation that would ban the sale of styrofoam disposable boogie boards in Maui County. In addition, she is working on a plan through the Hawaii Hazards Awareness and Resilience Program to address ways to mitigate events like fires and stormwater runoff.
While not opposed to welcoming back visitors and the pre-travel testing plan that began Oct. 15, Paltin said she was disappointed in the "lack of a comprehensive plan statewide and clarity."
"I liked us opening up when we did, but I would have liked us to open up a lot more smoothly and have some plans in place," she said, acknowledging the benefits of Maui's tourist industry.
She is in favor of diversifying the economy, but not to the point where tourism "isn't in the equation anymore." However, allowing large industries like airlines or rental cars companies "be the main force and driver in tourism" is a mistake. Figuring out a system that boosts the local economy without exhausting Maui County resources is key, she said.
Paltin has pushed for the county to have the authority to set a cap on rental cars to relieve traffic and "increase the quality of life for our residents."
"We have limited space, we have limited parking, we have limited resources -- it's not a sustainable industry," she added. "Our product Maui is unmatched in all the world if you ask me, for sure Maui no ka oi.
"We already have a solid brand and reputation, all we have to do is just maintain the quality of this place by not allowing over-tourism."
In her first term as a council member, she chaired the Planning and Sustainable Land Use Committee.
"I'm just trying the best I can. I don't always have all the answers, but really it's just in my heart to serve the people of this community that live here and will live here for the foreseeable future," she said. "And to try and work with everybody to make it a win-win situation as much as possible."
Rick Nava
When the economy was failing after the 9/11 terroristic attacks, and through the economic downturn in 2007 and 2008, Nava was able to keep his business afloat by adjusting and adapting operations.
He said he will bring the same knowledge and gumption to the County Council.
"I was able to move and manage my company so it could survive, and yes, it's a much bigger budget (on the council), but the concept of looking at your expenses, and not continually asking the people to make up your budget, it's not the way to go," he said. "We need to look at the fundamentals of everything that we're doing to save, because I don't see us doing anything for the next year and half with the way it is right now with the pandemic."
With a focus on increasing jobs and affordable housing opportunities, and expanding public transportation for local workers, Nava believes "I can help moving forward" as a council member.
"If I am elected, I will hit the ground running," said Nava, who's a Lahainaluna High grad and longtime business owner. "I'm very familiar with budgeting. . . . We need to look at ways we can save money right now and move forward."
Maui County took a major financial hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, and he wants to work to restore tourism and support small businesses by creating more public and private partnerships.
"We need to get the people back working again," he said. "West Maui, Kahului and Wailuku, we have the worst unemployment in the nation and that's all because most of the people work in the small business or hotel industry that supports the tourist industry, so we need to get people back working."
Some of his plans include constructing a fire station in Olowalu, building transportation models for West Maui to improve congestion and bringing Mental Health Kokua to West Maui to help out "our homeless friends," he said.
He looks to improve affordable housing options by collaborating with local homebuilders and developers to invest in the infrastructure. The county needs to invest to make homes affordable.
"We're not spending money to help the developers to build a home, we're spending money so that homes will be more affordable so that the county will start receiving property taxes from these homes that are being built," he said.
When asked how the county handled the reopening of the island to tourists on Oct. 15, Nava said that he wanted Maui County to use federal CARES Act funds to produce its own branded face mask, hand sanitizer and educational pamphlet to give away to all incoming visitors as a reminder about public safety protocols and "being pono," he said.
"We need to bring back our visitors, but we need to make sure that we bring them back safely and welcome them, and make sure our workers are also safe," he said. "We need to make it so that the county is taking the lead.
"Can you imagine that instead of giving them flower lei we give them masks, just to let them know that this is Maui, 'so please wear your mask.' "
Without visitors, "our small businesses wouldn't be able to survive," Nava said. And in order to make the agriculture industry sustainable, he said Maui County needs to get restaurants and hotels back up and running.
"They are the ones that will be able to pay for the locally grown vegetables and fruits, so we need to understand that we will not survive as an economy if we think we can just do it all on farmer's markets," he said.
As a grade school tutor, father and grandfather, he hopes to build a better future for Maui County's youth. Nava co-founded the Bahay Kubo Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit that was created to restore and maintain Filipino culture and provide scholarships for the teens.
Some of his other priorities include constructing the West Maui hospital, supporting programs that would support kupuna, and improving workforce public transportation from Central Maui to Maalaea by building bus shelters, and extending the operating hours to midnight to help those who work late shifts.
"If I should be elected into council, I know that there's no time for on-the-job training," he said. "But with my experience of being in the military for 29 years, serving on the Maui Chamber of Commerce for the last seven years, chairman of the board just recently, and being involved with many other civic administrations, I feel I have the ability and the leadership to be able to help the County of Maui moving forward."
* Dakota Grossman can be reached at dgrossman@mauinews.com.
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Rick M. Nava
Age: 61
Residence: Lahaina
Current occupation: President/Owner - Media Systems Inc.
Volunteer/community organization experience: Chairman of the Board, Maui Chamber of Commerce; president/director, West Maui Taxpayers' Association; president/director, Rotary Club of Lahaina; police commissioner, Maui County
Military service: U.S. Army, August 1976 to August 1980; U.S. Army Reserve, August 1980 to October 2005
Political experience: None
Family: Married for 40 years, two adult kids and three grandchildren
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Tamara Akiko Maile Paltin
Age: 43
Residence: Napili
Current occupation: Maui County Council member
Volunteer/community organization experience: Save Honolua Coalition president, E Alu Pu member, Ka Ipu Kukui fellow, Kuleana Academy alum, former West Maui Preservation Association president, former HGEA steward, former USLA/Junior Lifeguard/CPR/Lifeguard instructor.
Military service: None
Political experience: Maui County Council, 2019-20; ran for Maui County mayor in 2014.
Family: Married with two children