On April 21, the Maui Planning Commission received the Draft Maui Island Plan from the Planning Department. The commission now has 150 days to complete its review, comment and alterations of the plan. The total time allowed under the law establishing the Maui County General Plan process is 180 days. However, commissioners voted to slice 30 days off their review in order to give the department time to prepare the plan for presentation to the Maui County Council.

While there was general agreement on the broad outlines of the plan as presented by the planning staff, at the beginning of the six-month-long process, not everyone accepted the plan at face value or agreed with the decision to limit the commission’s direct review to 150 days.

Planning Commissioner Ward Mardfin felt that the planning process was a “top down instead of a bottom up” model, which created a “forced consistency” at the community level.

“…I would have started with every community getting together new community plans and then aggregated to a Maui Island Plan and to a County Plan where there might be some inconsistencies, but every community would get sort of what they wanted,” said Mardfin. “The way this is, the communities might not get what they wanted because they have to be consistent with some overall goals.”

Newly appointed Commissioner Warren Shibuya did not agree with the decision to reduce the time set aside for the Planning Commission’s review and approval of the Maui Island Plan.

“The administration and the Long Range Planning Division needed to prepare and finalize this information for the council, and so that 30 days is now taken for administration work and not for the Maui Planning Commission’s review and approval,” Shibuya said.

To address the concern that the commission might run out of time before completing its work—which was the fate of the Maui County General Plan Advisory Council (GPAC)—commissioners agreed that if they were falling behind, they will convert some of their regular business meetings into plan review meetings in order to stay on schedule. In addition, they added a fifth week in June and a fifth week in September to their meeting schedule.

After a lunch break, the commission reconvened for a discussion and recommendations related to the Maui Island Plan’s vision and core values, which had been revised to reflect the comments of the GPAC.

The vision statement for the Maui Island Plan is also the Hawai‘i State Motto: Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Āina i ka Pono” or “The Life of the Land is Perpetuated in Righteousness.”

The statement outlining our future continues, “Maui Island is environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable with clean, safe and livable communities and small towns that will protect and perpetuate a pono lifestyle for individuals and families now and in the future.”

With no dissent, the commission unanimously adopted the language as its vision statement for the plan.

Twelve Core Values were adopted with most of the discussion focusing on preservation of rural and agricultural lands, securing infrastructure concurrently with future development, the establishment of a transportation system not based on the automobile, and addressing the issues surrounding land, ownership and entitlement issues. Eventually, after few changes, the Core Values were adopted unanimously.

The commission has scheduled a number of public meetings in various areas of the island prior to final adoption of the plan. The opportunity for public testimony is available at each meeting (See sidebar on page 19).

In addition to the community meetings, the commission will meet in the conference room of the Planning Department seven additional times between May 19 and Sept. 29. The Sept. 29 meeting will be devoted to any final cleanup on the plan, if needed.

Issues certain to surface in the commission’s discussions include housing for local residents, water and food sustainability. Commissioner and former chair Jonathan Starr noted the absence of language about the need for food sustainability in the core values statements. He also stressed the desire of residents for housing built for them, rather than off-island buyers.

Commissioner John Guard pointed to the lack of water as a core value. “It would be a core value in my book,” he said.

For more information about the Maui Island Plan, visit the Long Range Planning Division’s Website under General Plan 2030 at www.mauicounty.gov.