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The Maui County Planning Commission is hearing Mayor Richard Bissen's plan to de-list the Minatoya properties.
This action will have the greatest effect on South Maui because nearly 5,000 of the 7,000 properties are located in Kihei.
Since the list's creation in 1989, Kihei's entire economy has grown up around servicing these affordable vacation rentals and the tourists that stay in them.
The loss of these tourist's dollars will profoundly affect the restaurants, bike, shops, surf schools, skate shops, small stores, and other small businesses in Kihei, but the large offshore-owned resorts and owners of resort zone properties yet to be developed will receive a windfall as they achieve a visitor monopoly.
This momentous decision that will affect South Maui more than any other part of the island is being heard and decided on by a volunteer board that includes no South Maui resident due to a power struggle between the mayor and the council.
Additionally, the state and county elected officials that represent South Maui have been very quiet, perhaps cowed by strident protesters and click-tavists that are not even their constituents or South Maui residents.
Whatever one's opinion on the proposed revoking of decades old STR permissions, it is simply obvious that just as it would be wrong for the people of South Maui, or Oahu, to decide how Lahaina should be restored, it is also wrong for the rest of the island to decide how Kihei should be destroyed, or at the very least, radically changed.
Mike Wildberger
Kihei