Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen talks to a crowd at the Lahaina Community Meeting on Wednesday where officials discussed the recent approval of Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery, or CDBG-DR, funds.

There was a shift at Wednesday’s disaster recovery community meeting in Lahaina where residents were informed Maui County is gearing up to distribute more than $1 billion funds that’s been allocated to the county through the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery funds.

After almost a year of waiting, the funds were recently approved by Congress. Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen started the meeting by saying the goal of the funding is to get people back into homes in Lahaina.

“If we build a thousand homes and we don’t recognize the faces of anybody who lives in those homes, then we have not done our job,” he said. “The only way we define success is if we can get the people from the community back to the community.”

West Maui council member Tamara Paltin spoke about getting bills 103, 104 and 105 — all related to Lahaina — through the County Council.

Explaining the purposes of the bills — with some that have to deal with extended nonconformities, that may allow kitchenettes and help increase density — Paltin said these topics would need to be flushed out from a safety perspective before moving forward. She also said time is of the essence.

“We need to make these decisions quickly so that all the folks that are turning in their permits have clarity and direction about what they can and cannot do,” she said.

Lt. Col. Collin Jones with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave an update on the debris removal process and introduced the individuals who will be working on that effort moving forward. He said they have cleared 146 out of 148 commercial properties.

“So that’s 99% complete on the commercial side,” he said.

And there are about 137 out of 148 properties cleared overall as well.

Mikey Burke, the West Maui community liaison with Hawaiian Electric, said the company has restored power to more than 11,000 customers and rebuilt critical infrastructure in West Maui. Other company representatives were also present to help customers with service requests and more.

Burke said infrastructure will be reinstalled the way it was prior to the fire due to the cost and in order to ensure people can return home sooner rather than later.

“That being said, we are committed because we have heard you from day one about your desire to (have) underground electrical lines,” she said.

Burke said the company has been awarded federal funding for underground infrastructure, but the “funding is not enough.”

“So we will continue to seek federal funding to be able to carry out this long-term vision of Lahaina and the energy infrastructure that we do want to have,” she said.

Other Hawaiian Electric representatives talked about putting in street lights in West Maui and wildfire preventative infrastructure like protective mesh as well as webcams and weather stations that will provide minute-to-minute data to help monitor for any future fires.

Residents looking to request service were guided to work with a licensed electrician and submit a request online through Hawaiian Electric’s customer interconnection tool at forms.hawaiianelectric.com/login.

John Smith, the county’s new administrator for the Office of Recovery, talked about the CDBG-DR funds. He said the county is staffing up right now to handle and distribute the incoming money.

“We’ve been waiting for a long time for that money — it just passed,” he said.

Smith explained that CDBG-DR funds are run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and that all of the funding has to follow federal requirements.

He said the primary use of the fund is for housing, but it may also be used to help with infrastructure and economic revitalization projects, as well as public services and hazard mitigation projects.

He said that as the program is getting developed, he encourages residents to collect their financial documents and insurance and prepare for submission.

“We’re ready to go,” he said.

County officials are guiding residents to MauiRecovers.org/cdbgdr for more information.

Patience Kahula, CDBG-DR program manager, also spoke at the meeting. She has been preparing the county for the funding from the day of the disaster to now, Smith said.

Kahula said their team is well-versed in CDBG, which is the basis for CDBG-DR, and are looking forward to hiring more staff to assist with the process.

“People are willing to learn and want to participate in disaster recovery,” she said. “That is probably one of the most important traits in disaster recovery.”

Bissen also said that the Maui County Council gave them $750,000 a few months ago to start hiring people to assist with the effort, and they were able to fill positions for the rebuild. However, he said they have been waiting for the funds to be released to expedite the process.

“We thought we’d get these funds back in February,” he said. “Usually six to eight months, I’m told, is when funds are distributed. It’s been 16 months and we just got it.”

As part of the allocation, around $1.6 billion will go toward CDBG-DR for housing and $480 million was appropriated for economic development, small business loans and water infrastructure, among other needs.

There was a question and answer session toward the end of the meeting where attendees asked about using the funds for infrastructure and commercial rebuilding purposes, and also how the county is going to prioritize making water a public entity moving forward.

“We are going to do everything we can to take control of as much water as we can so we can build as many houses as we can,” Smith said.

Smith also said they were looking to use funding for programs to help first-time homeowners as well.

Also at the meeting, Jed Webb answered some questions from the public regarding the allocation of the funds. His background is in recovery at West Coast at Tetra Tech, a high-end consulting and engineering services company, as well as in government affairs. Webb said it would be a long process.

Krizhna Bayudan, who has been an advocate for CDBG-DR funds for Lahaina, asked in what form the funds would “end up in the community’s hands?”

“As a daughter of homeowners in Lahaina, how would the money end up in my parents’ hands?” she asked.

Webb said the intake process would be the first step to seeing how families and individuals can be best served.

Attendees also asked about the process of applying for the money, which speakers said would be prioritized for low and moderate-income families. Others asked about the long-term plans for fire prevention in West Maui. Also present at the meeting were Maui Emergency Management Agency representatives, who were advised to answer safety-related questions.

Toward the end of the meeting, Bissen said that of the additional $480 million, $300 million would be used for water-related initiatives, and that overall the money may be leveraged to gain more funding to help Lahaina.

“This is the only federal money that can be used as a match to get other federal money,” he said.

For more information about the CDBG-DR funding on Maui, visit mauirecovers.org/cdbgdr.