 Good morning, everybody. My name is Mark Sclawes. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. We have gone across the sea from Oahu to Maui, and we are in Maui. And the title of our program today is Maui Mokaoi, and I can tell you that's the truth. And we are in the office of the Mayor, Mayor Alan Paracala and his Chief of Staff, Lynn Araki Regan. They're both here with me today, and we're going to find out what's been going on in Maui. The Mayor has just finished his third term as Mayor, and he'll be going on leaving office, looking for other adventures, I'm sure. I'm going to ask him a little bit about that. Lynn has been Chief of Staff, and she'll be coming to the end of her program here at the office of the Mayor. And we'll find out what has happened while she was here and where we're going. Where is she going? Mayor, first, thank you so much. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the invitation. I mean, we're back in here. All right. I know you have a potential council meeting that you're going to have to go to, and so I want to ask you a few questions, and if you have to leave, then I guess you'll have to get up and leave. First of all, you're leaving the Mayor's office. Yes. And what are you looking forward to? Where are you going? What do you think the future holds? Well, there are always options, and I'll always be busy. I have a farm that I'm working on and a botanical garden that we're working on. I want to go traveling. I want to go to the beach. I want to have a life. The reality is that my job is 24 hours. Mayor? Yes, Mayor. We're working on over 100 projects at any given time, and any major emergency that may come up, we have to be able to respond to. When you're Mayor, everybody expects you to come up with the answers. There's no punning off responsibility on anybody else. If you're a governor, they don't expect you to be able to fix the puzzles. If you're President of the United States, they don't even expect you to know where your community is. As Mayor, they expect you to know everybody within the community, and how are you going to solve every challenge that comes up? So I've been doing this for a long, long, long time now, and I've been on 24-hour call pretty much most of my life, and it's going to be good to be able to sit back a little while and just have somebody else do it. I noticed that you're running for Council, Mayor, I mean for the Council of Mowry. Responsibilities don't stop, and a lot of the projects that we're working on, as I mentioned, I'm working on well over 100 projects at any given time. I'm looking to try and produce continuity for the next administration, and to be able to be in good reference if they need it. There are even thousands of meetings that I attend that nobody else attends, because there are so many different topics. So we have people with interest in the roads, they're at the road meeting, but they're not interested in the others. Okay, well, let me ask you, as you leave office, what are the biggest issues facing Mowry County? And Mowry County is more than one island, right? I mean, you've got Mowry County is Mowry, Molokai, Lanay, and Kalalavi, four islands. Kalalavi is not inhabited, but Mowry, Molokai, and Lanay are. The biggest challenge that we have is that we have a changing demographics, and that we have a very, very quickly expanding community. Our population, when I was younger, was about 30,000 today. We have over 200,000 people on the island at a given time. Almost all of our infrastructure needs to be planned out decades in advance because it takes time to be able to build it. Our harbor, for instance, is almost at capacity. We need to be able to be creating another harbor. It takes the Corps of Engineers roughly 30 years to get a project like that to completion from the time it's on the drawing board. So I've been working with them for a number of years to try and put it on the drawing board. The funding for most of the projects that we have are being adjusted as a federal government adjusts, and the state adjusts. So we have to adjust with the government's other entities. When we start dealing with our economy, we won't have to be able to look at how are we going to develop our economy when we no longer have a good agricultural base. Right. Sugar was our major agricultural stability, and we've lost Pioneer Mill, we've lost Waimuku Sugar, we've lost HCNS. But we need to be able to replace them with other entities to create. What's going to be there? I mean, because I drove up to Kula the other day, and the acreage, our tourist industry has been growing immensely, has been filling the gaps that the sugar industry is leaving. So as far as employment, we're at the lowest unemployment rate that we've had, we're a little over 2%. When we're looking at our economy, we're a double A plus. So we're very, very strong economy. Our community, our size, which is, you know, when we're looking about 160 population, and we've got about 200 with tourists, we do almost an $800 million a year budget. So we compare with the biggest and the best as far as per capita budget. And as far as the state gets there, that compares very well. We at the top of almost every category you can look at. We've been one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Our name recognition is better than New York City and better than Florida. We're right up top, as far as the popularity. So we have a lot to defend. Our social service programs, we spend over $30 million a year to supplement what the state and what the federal government does for social service programs, make sure that as the baby boomers are going through, we'll be able to provide housing for them. When we're looking at things like sea level rise, we purchased about 80% of the north and south shores or found ways to be able to put them into no build so that we don't have to worry about houses falling into the ocean or new projects falling into the ocean. You have to plan 50, 100 years, 500 years in advance for many of the things that take the long term planning, as well as with our roads. We went from patching roads and just putting asphalt on the roads to literally taking the road down to the core, replacing the core of our roads, literally creating brand new roads that will last 25 plus years that we don't have to repair them every year. As we go through and we change what we were doing, we make it much, much easier to be able to maintain and to be able to have good product. So as you welcome the next mayor into office, what advice are you going to give him? I'm going to really advise him to try and find... Thank you, Moon. That'll be a hand. I'm really going to advise him to be able to really look at getting really talented people into the director of deputy director positions. But really understand that the real work in the department happened with the personnel that are there lifetime, the civil service workers that are there really running all of the programs. They know what's happening within the departments because after administration, after administration leaves, these are the guys that are there working on all the projects, doing all the planning, having to do the day-to-day maintenance, the steady hand, the steady and controlling hand. And that's kind of where you've got your start, too, isn't it? I got my son as a janitor in the county and I worked my way up to supervisor, council, and mayor. He's done pretty good. You work hard. You put in all the time and effort that's necessary. You can accomplish almost anything. And almost anybody can do it if they're willing to put in the time and energy to do it. Hard work. The problem is that many people aren't willing to do that. So it's a lot harder. It's not just about getting a college degree. It's about applying the knowledge that you have in a common sense way to make it work. Is there anything that you wish you had more time to do? I mean, are there lots of things that you wish you had more time to do as mayor? I wish that I had more time to work on almost every project that I have to work on to be able to help this community for as long as I can to be able to make it better. However, wishes are for dreamers. And the reality is that we all have to do what we have to do. If I were to leave this office in December, there are many, many other things that can be done. I have a farm I'm trying to develop. I'm trying to do a botanical garden. I'd love to be able to go out and play bridge and to be able to go to the beach once in a while. I heard you're a champion bridge player just I'm a life master plus. So I can I can do fairly well, hold my own. But again, there are every day, every day that we're alive, there are opportunities to be able to do things that we can appreciate. If you can see the beauty, no matter where you go, and you can see the opportunities no matter what you do, life is never boring. And when one door closes, many more open up. And you have to be able to pick and choose where you want to go. I see nothing but roses and beautiful things in my future, because we're going to make it that way. And that's really where we have to go as a community. We have to see where we want to go. And we have to make it happen. Life doesn't happen by accident. And good things don't happen by accident. It really takes working diligently, day in, day out, be able to set the goals, accomplish the goals that you want to reach. Great advice, Mayor. I appreciate that. I want to ask a couple things of your chief of staff here. She's a good example that you can do. Yeah, and then I've known you as a lawyer for many years, but you're not a lawyer. What is this job you have here? Well, I still have my law practice. I am there in the evenings, some weekends. But I love this opportunity to serve the community through being the mayor's chief of staff. It's been a really great experience. I've served in this capacity for a little bit less than a year. And prior to that, I served as the county's budget director for a body year. Just because the previous budget director had left, Mayor was kind of in a bind because the budget session with the budget season was going to start in a few months. And he needed someone who was committed to helping the community through serving as a budget director. So I stepped up to the plate and volunteered. I mean, you took a job that you knew was going to end. Yes. And what was the motivation there? I mean, you knew it wasn't going to last. Yeah, and that was part of the reason why I decided to take this opportunity was because it was a short term opportunity to serve the community and apply whatever knowledge that I've gained through my legal profession, along with my other experiences that I've gained over the years to serve the community. And I love it. I also love the varied issues that come before the county. And I love sitting and talking with Mayor about policy and and long term goals and and achieving short term goals. Okay, well, let me I love tell me about some of the short term goals. I mean, what things have you seen it with your experience with the mayor here? I don't want to I don't want him to say anything because I don't want him to be talking about his achievements. I want to hear it from you. Right. So just as an example, when I came on board, a couple months after coming on board, near sat me down and said, you know what, you're going to be in charge of traffic here, which will start in two months or so. For those of you who aren't familiar with traffic here, traffic here is a military response training, where 350 military personnel came to Maui, and they're still here to provide no cost health care for nine straight days in six different locations. So things like that things may come up, you know, that that mayor needs assistance on. And as chief of staff, I either assign or take charge. And what are there's accomplishments of the mayor? Can we talk about, you know, just it would take hours for us to discuss accomplishments. But let me just a second, just to point out something. The mayor's office in any community is the highest level of government where you work on a one to one basis to solve individuals problems within the community as well as group problems. So the things come to our office can be anything from it. Can you help me find the job? I've got a pothole. Can you have somebody fix the panel? I've got a broken water pipe. So we work on many, many thousands of requests from the community to do the simple things because we control the departments that can do them. Right. And I think I saw that when I came to your office, there were folks outside. And what you know, I had a question or had some need. And so you kind of, I mean, you're dealing with people every day, right? Citizens every day, every day, businesses, nonprofits, individuals, homeless. I mean, it's a wide variety of people we serve. It's kind of a really, really an open door policy that I see here. And the satisfaction level is the highest you can attain because you get to work with people on a one to one and you get to solve their problems on a one to one. That's what makes it all worthwhile. Or they may not even be county problems. It could be maybe an immigration issue. It could be a state issue. And we work with the various partners in our community, state, governor's office, what have you can make to address these issues for them. So you're actually doing something. You're not passing it off. You're looking for ways to solve the problems. The mayor's office is the highest electric position where the public expects solutions that you can't pass it off to anybody else. It's the one office in government where people they really expect you to give them some solution to their problem. And your success or failure is going to be whether or not you can come up with the solutions. You can't pass it on to anybody else. You've got to do it. You know, you're coming to the end of this particular phase of your professional career. What's next? What are you thinking? I love this job. I mean, this could be a job that I could do for the rest of my life. I do it in a heartbeat because the varied issues that I get to address and help the community with, you know, my next career, I would love to pursue whatever passions that I have, which are many, you know, whether it be cultural passions, nonprofit sectors, serving, you know, in local government, state government, I am very passionate about these things. And I would love to have a job where it's not a job. It's something that I could be passionate about and not think that it's worth. Okay, and mayor, you know, we talked a little bit about the sugar cane fields. And I want to just to go back to that for a bit. What is the plan for those fields? I mean, is there something out there that is going to the plan evolving? We're trying to keep it in agriculture. A lot of it will depend on who wants to farm. What do they want to farm? I see. And as people step up to the plate to actually do the work, then the whole picture will complete itself. Now, again, one of the beauties of our job is it's a constantly evolving puzzle. So every day, there's a new advancement, something else, a new solution someplace else. And we have to be able to wrap all those different things that are happening into the final solution. It's one of the best challenges you can get. I just wish we had more time to be able to finish up so many projects that are in the works right now, you know, like the service center, mayor, you know, that we've been dealing with for a few years now. It's finally we're going to have a groundbreaking breaking before we leave office. And I would love the opportunity to see it complete. We'll see it complete. We'll see it complete. Yeah, a lot of the direction that we're setting will by force have to occur. So we will be able to do that. Whatever position we're at, and we can assist by being there to be able to give advice and to help out if questions are asked. One thing, you know, I mentioned cultural, and I was a group of young students from Japan or I guess, here. And what was that all about? And I know you've done more things like that, too, because I helped one of your yeah, thank you so much. By the way, we have a over a dozen sister cities, various sister cities from all over the world. And those students who were here this morning, we're from Miyako Jima, which is our only sister city in Okinawa. They're staying here for about a week, and we're enjoying having them visit us. And what did you do with the some of those kids that were affected by the tsunami? Thanks for your support, by the way, Mark, I really appreciate it. You know, we brought in about 100 people, both adults as well as youth. After the earthquake, the devastating earthquake in 2011, we brought them to Hawaii to provide them a home some time for rest of time. And they had a wonderful opportunity to really just kind of relax and forget, at least for a couple weeks, the disasters that you know, Japan faced. And you know what I liked about that? That was, you know, that was your office doing something really good, something really positive for people. And it didn't have to be Americans or it was it was somebody that we in Hawaii have a close relationship with and that's Japan. And I really, to me, that really was good. And I have to acknowledge both of you because you each played a big role. Not me, but the mayor and the community is very giving. And the community is worth fighting for. And the community is something that we can always count on. But there are many, many other instances where we work with other foreign governments as well as federal and state. A good example is the I've been working with Japan, you know, and achieve on a jump smart program, and an electric vehicle program. So the electric vehicles, we're trying to go to 100% alternative electric vehicles. We're also working with smart grid, trying to develop the technology. As island communities, we don't have any petroleum. We don't have oil that we can mine. So anything that we can develop using the energy that we have naturally, like our sun, like our wind, our ocean, we can then save that money that we would be buying and build our economy. And worldwide, all those countries that don't have petroleum base can use the same technology and it's being shared. So you see many communities now, picking up on some of the stuff that we started and incorporating within the communities. Now, internationally, you could make a difference like that. Now, thank you for telling me, thank you, me, I appreciate that. Thank you. One question here. I've been coming to Maui for many years. When I first started coming was probably before you were born. But anyway, before this was born, before it was born, very much. No homeless at that time. Things have changed. Do we, how, how is Maui dealing with the homeless? How, how is that, that's something Maui has always had people that have had problems. Yeah. We have a huge network of social services agencies that were able to absorb most of the challenges in our community. Over the late, we've been overwhelmed by a lot of people moving into the community from outside, as well as the removal of a lot of the medical facilities that we're helping those that have mental challenges, technical dependency. So we're not trying to get the state and federal government to reinstate a lot of those programs that they canceled because of the cost of medical insurance or what have you. That's why we have homeless on the street right now. We can provide houses, but you can't provide the treatment that's necessary for those people that have drug addictions, that have alcohol addictions, that have mental challenges, unless you have the continuum of care long term. The homeless that you're seeing on the street right now for the most part are the ones that cannot be put into housing because you're not capable of being in housing. And of course, newcomers coming in, fill those gaps as fast as we put people in housing. So that's our challenge right now. Or they refuse to go to housing. And you know, Maui, Maui no Kauai. Yes, right? I mean, if I wanted to live on the street, this is the place you would choose. I mean, it's a beautiful place. The beaches everything is made. It's a convincing argument. Someone from New York or the East Coast, when it's freezing winter, you go to someone almost say, here's a plane ticket, go to Maui, they've got sunshine, 260 days a year. And food is served. And people are nice. Culturally, the island of Maui, I think that goes back also to, you know, they actually give them a list of what to do when you come to Maui, but directly to the social service agency, this is what you can post off as Boston to be. They come in, they apply for all the benefits. We have the challenges in trying to be able to support for us. Okay, we have a few minutes left. I know you're both born and raised in Maui. Is there something about that has shaped your lives or that has given you the the feelings that you have about about service and Well, I mean, being born and raised here on Maui. I love here. I love Maui. I love this home, this community. And it's been such a wonderful experience being a lifelong resident of this beautiful island, the people, the aloha, everything, the services that I've been, that my family and I have been blessed to receive. So I think that's part of what's driving me to serve in whatever capacity, whether it be at the county or through nonprofits, I just want to get back and I want to share that feeling of the importance of giving back to my child, which which slowly but surely we are. So that's what drives me for me. We started off as a very small community. When I was born, when I was very little over 30,000 people, you know, you got to know people as your friends, your family and neighbors, everybody worked together, but he knew everybody. And as I've been growing up in this community, that neighborhood has expanded and people we know have expanded. But ultimately, we work with literally hundreds of people within this community, we depend on each other, we work with each other's particular specific skills. We're a family. This community is really one big family. And there's nothing that is more pleasurable or more gratifying than to be able to help people, people that you know, people that you want to get to know. And everything that you can do to help out, you can feel good about it. And at the end of the day, when I'm in the hospital and I'm ready to pass on, the major accomplishment is our life is, are we satisfied with what we're able to do to help others? And when you do that on a day to day basis, I know that I'm going to be able to answer that question, say, yeah, I fixed the road my brother was complaining about. Yeah, we fixed the pothole that my neighbor was complaining about. Yeah, we fixed the ball fields, where the teams that we play, you know, we've fixed the fences and the grass is better. So we've made the quality of life for everybody that we could much better. And that's all you can accomplish that spirit of family. Yeah, is a Molly thing that you feel you grew up with, that has imbued your your time here in office. And I think it's a very rural type. You see it all over the United States and other countries, we have smaller communities that call us because you have to. But here on Maui, you know, it's the Maui magic. Thank you both very much, Maui. I appreciate your time, Mayor, Lynn, to see you again. And look forward to seeing you some other time in law practice or wherever. But thank you both very much. Aloha. Thank you very much, Mark.