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Incumbent council member Sugimura, challenger Hocker face off once more for Upcountry seat

Sugimura received the most votes of all county candidates in primary election

Hocker

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a continuing series on Maui County Council races leading up to the Nov. 8 general election. Today’s story focuses on the race for the Upcountry residency seat. Stories on other candidates will be published in the coming days.

After going unchallenged in the 2020 election, incumbent Council Member Yuki Lei Sugimura is defending her seat against progressive-endorsed candidate Jordan Hocker.

Sugimura was the top vote-getter among all county candidates in the primary, securing 20,464 votes, or 51.5 percent of the vote, to Hocker’s 7,564 votes (19 percent) and Renee Cruz’s 5,376 votes (13.5 percent).

Both Hocker and Sugimura support county investment in things like expanded transportation options to get cars off the roads, but differ on whether the county should get involved in managing the extensive East Maui Irrigation water system, a major issue on this year’s ballot.

JORDAN HOCKER

Sugimura

When Jordan Hocker lost her job at a retail shop in Paia during the pandemic, she started to pay more attention to local government.

Watching meetings from home, “I realized that I didn’t necessarily agree with some of the decisions that were being made by the Upcountry incumbent,” she explained. And, with an associate’s degree in sustainable science management from the University of Hawaii Maui College, “I just thought we could be doing a better job at managing some of our Upcountry issues and the island as a whole.”

So, the 33-year-old researcher decided to run for office. As someone who lost a job dependent on the tourism industry, Hocker hopes to find ways to boost the local economy in a sustainable way.

First, she says, she’d look into expanding routes for public transportation in Maui County and shifting to electric, biodiesel or another carbon-neutral fuel source. She sees it as an opportunity to create jobs while getting more cars off the road.

“It allows the county to contract more folks that are thinking in progressive ways as well as bringing the unions in to talk about how we can provide more jobs based on that sort of infrastructure,” Hocker said.

Hocker, who’s lived on Maui for 10 years, grew up as the granddaughter of farmers and cattle ranchers in Topeka, Kan. She watched her family’s success story turn into a tale of hardship as large corporate agriculture set the rates for grain and left smaller farmers struggling to pay their bills. It’s why she’s passionate about listening to the needs of local farmers and looking into more sustainable water infrastructure — such as pumped hydrostorage and strategically placed reservoirs — that will increase resilience for both Upcountry and the rest of the island in times of drought.

“It’s a combination of increasing our storage Upcountry but also looking at ways that we can reclaim the water that’s being used for agricultural purposes,” Hocker said. “We’ve also had a lot of storms in the past even five years where we have huge amounts of water that rush into the ocean. Every time that happens I can’t help but think there’s gotta be a way that we can capture that. If we can’t rely on consistent rainfall then maybe we should be prepared for the onslaught.”

She supports the proposed creation of a Maui County water authority and community board that would oversee water resources and give residents a say in the process. The charter amendment is among more than a dozen appearing on the general election ballot.

“I think that right now what’s so frustrating for me and for other people is that our water is really managed by the state, especially our surface water resources, or our water leases, and it’s very frustrating to not have control or a voice, especially when common practice is to take water from one side of the island and to pump it to the other side, and that’s not a super sustainable way to do it,” Hocker said.

While she acknowledged the concerns over cost if the county were to acquire the East Maui Irrigation system, she said that “we have one industry that I feel like isn’t tapped enough” that could help generate funding. She backs increased taxes on the tourism industry and charging visitors for things like parking at county parks.

“I think that with social media and with the Disneyland mentality, we can’t force people to care, but we can make them pay to care,” Hocker said.

YUKI LEI SUGIMURA

After a massive storm in early December knocked out water and power for Upcountry residents, Yuki Lei Sugimura’s home went without water service until nearly Christmas.

“You never know how important water and electricity are until you have none,” Sugimura said. “You can’t take a bath. It was hard to sleep. I couldn’t charge my phone. I had to go sit in my car. It made me really appreciate the basic things that we rely on with utilities.”

As an Upcountry resident and the chairperson of the Maui County Council’s Infrastructure and Transportation Committee, Sugimura knows the importance of water, power, roads and other utilities that keep the county rolling behind the scenes. She sees it as the key to addressing some of the biggest issues in Maui County, including affordable housing and growing traffic.

“Everybody talks about how affordable housing is unaffordable and unattainable, and the county needs to step up and do exactly this — we need to build the infrastructure so that it doesn’t get passed on to the developers … and the cost doesn’t get sifted down to the homebuyer,” she said. “That to me is super important. We need to do the same with water.”

She points to the example of the nearly 1,500-unit Waikapu Country Town project, whose developer recently struck a deal with the county to provide more housing in exchange for hooking up to the county’s wastewater system. Council members voted unanimously to approve the public-private partnership in April.

She also mentioned the success of other partnerships like the agreement between the county and state to swap land for a new bus hub in Kahului, a move that she and other council members voted to approve in 2018.

However, she is hesitant about the county taking on too much infrastructure, particularly when it comes to the charter amendment for the county to create a water authority, a proposal she voted against when it passed through council.

“I’m concerned that people who are making decisions about water, the use of water, got to be professionals, so because I don’t want the people in my community to not have water through lack of experience, that’s number one,” Sugimura said. “Number two is there’s more information needed about the fiscal financial responsibility. What is this going to cost us? Are we planning on buying? Sounds like they want to buy portions of EMI … You and I are going to end up paying for it.”

In addition to water, the overpopulation of deer is also a major issue Upcountry. Sugimura, who’s watched the deer come into her backyard and “eat my landscape,” chairs the Maui Axis Deer Task Force and said one of the successes so far has been the allocation of funding in the county budget, including $1.5 million available in grants of up to $30,000 for individual farmers and ranchers to compensate for losses caused by the deer.

Sugimura, who has at times voted in the minority on high-profile issues, such as opposing the proposal to place a moratorium on new hotels, defended her decisions while on the council.

“I strongly stand by decisions or votes that I make, and I know why I do it, and it’s primarily for working families, for the people who cannot make it to testify in the meeting, who are too busy working at their jobs,” she said.

“I love this job and I love working for the people. It is the most important thing I do.”

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.

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