 Aloha, I'm Kauai Lucas on Hawaii is my mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii as I am every Friday at 3 p.m. Last week I watched the mayoral debate on televised with the three leading candidates and I was so depressed afterwards. I said, you know, I know there are other candidates and with a friend's prompting I looked them up and I did a little research and I came up with my own top three and here they are. Thank you, thank you very much, thank you, appreciate that Kauai. This is Ron Hokely and Laurence Friedman and Ernest Carvallo. Thank you so much for coming down to the Think Tech studio this week and we're going to start out by, I just want you to have a few minutes to talk about, you know, why you're doing this. This is not an easy thing to do running for mayor. You were powered by something to get to this stage. So without further ado, why don't we start with you Ron? I wrote down some ideas so I don't get lose my train of thought. So I am Ron Hokely and I'm running for mayor. I've lived in Hawaii for over 50 years. I spent 25 years in finance and retired as senior vice president of Merrill Lynch. I'm also a former vice principal and teacher at St. Louis School and adjunct professor of philosophy at Chaminade University. Most of you have probably never heard of me because our current political system is designed to keep people like me out. Just like it's designed to keep people like you from having a voice in how our city is managed. Let me give you an example. People are sick and tired of sitting in traffic. I live in Ewa Beach. We asked the city leaders to spend a reasonable amount of money to reduce traffic congestion. Instead, they spend 8 to 10 billion on a rail system that was never intended to reduce the current level of traffic. As city managing director, Kurt Caldwell submitted the final environmental impact statement with the following words. Traffic congestion will be worse in the future with rail than what it is today without rail. So why are they spending billions of our tax dollars on something that clearly won't fix the problem that bothers most of us? The honest answer is that it's being built to benefit special interests that in turn benefit the professional politicians. Rail funded Mufi Hanuman's campaign for governor and now it's funding Kurt Caldwell's campaign for mayor. It's called pay to play and it's been allowed to continue far too long. I can speak out like this only because I'm not a professional politician. I'm not a member of any political party and I don't need a job. I'm here on behalf of all the local families who are tired of being taken for granted. My real hope is that together we can start a movement to take back Honolulu Holly for the people. When I got into the mayor race I realized I had a very slim chance of winning through to the from the primary election but I still thought that I would get a fair treatment by the press and I'll have my views portrayed to the public and to give a real alternative to the to the top career politicians or professional politicians. That wasn't the case and and so many of you have not heard of me but I am running because I love Hawaii and I know we can do better than we're doing right now. Thank you Ron, Ron Hokely. Okay now next we have Lawrence Friedman please. Thank you very much. Aloha my name is Lawrence Friedman and I am a candidate for mayor of the city and county of Honolulu. I am a recently retired corporate employee who is just like the people I am talking to in the camera. I'm a citizen and a taxpayer and probably like a lot of you are fed up with the political system as it is. Much like these two gentlemen to my side here we I have entered the race because trying to get a different voice for the people. That's what my saying is I am a voice for the people. To that end let me talk a little bit about that. You know we have our main issues of rail we have our main issues of homelessness and I just want to touch on those quickly and then I'm going to move into some some areas because I do feel I distinguished myself differentiate myself from some of the other gentlemen here because I do feel it now that we've got ourselves started with rail we just can't stop at Middle Street. We need to find a way to go all the way to Alamoana Center to make it to make it somewhat viable. We don't need I think it's like eight more stations between Middle Street and Alamoana Center. That's overkill for a heavy rail system so we need to find ways to mitigate that cost to bring it within a reasonable cost structure. What frustrates me is when I hear from politicians talking about how this in hyperbole how this is going to be done and how they're going to afford to do it private partner business partnership selling air rights. Well why didn't Kirk Caldwell do that already. Okay why aren't we at that but instead what we had is a tax increase to start rail a tax increase in the middle of rail and guess what I'll say it now you're going to have a tax increase to finish rail. I don't want to increase the taxes if I become your mayor I'm not running on a platform will I willing where I'm saying that I will increase a tax and I'm saying I will try not to but how can we not finish a project and just leave it half half baked. I'm also the only candidate of all the people who are running who actually went in front of the hardboard last week and read a statement calling for the hardboard to ask for the resignation of the executive director and having failed they to do that to then fire him on the spot because of his performance. He went in front of the his leadership and said hey I need $900 million more for rail knowing he needed an extra billion on top of that to finish the project. That's just one of many issues I have with with the rail but let me move on into the homeless situation because we see that as a continuing issue on the street. I don't hear of anybody talking about the children okay we talk about homeless we talk about putting them in housing we've done this with that number it only went up 1% I mean really why doesn't the mayor talk about how he's reduced to 10% and we're on a trend heading in that direction we're slowing down the growth of it well okay but that's not fixing the problem and the kids the next generation are very much suffering from this because as we I will talk about later I feel that education is a key to solving all of the problems we have here a lot of the problems that people have the uh they call it the 20 55 by 25 initiative so that people of adult age get college educations and can move them out of menial labor jobs move them more into the managerial positions within the hotel industry that we have here a very vibrant hotel industry so um those are two you know main concerns I as I take further into this the unfunded liabilities there's a lot of things that the career incumbent politicians Caldwell and uh Carlisle don't talk about which by the way as I call them incumbent lawyer politicians is it any surprise we have problems when we have lawyers who are politicians career politicians running what I feel is the two gentlemen here I'm the best candidate amongst them but I'm grateful that we are able to at least state our cases and have the people hear a different voice voice from us and so I thank you for the time right now and I'll continue discussing some of my points as we move through this thank you thank you Lawrence Ernest Carvalho please let's go all right my name is Ernest Carvalho and I'm also a candidate for mayor of the city county of Honolulu I'll have to disagree with Lawrence because I feel that I am the best candidate amongst us three here but that being said I've actually got to form a relationship with them three and these are these right here should be actually the top three not the other three that you see but I would like to discuss real just a little bit touch on real everybody's been talking about real that everybody's getting sick and tired of talking about real um we really are um do we stop at middle street or do we go I do agree that it needs to come to a complete stop at middle street for a time out eventually it has to be completed because if it does it's not completed then it becomes incomplete it becomes a rail to nowhere and who's going to get on this rail from Makaha and drive to Everplains to get on the rail to stop at middle street then get off to get on the bus again it's just it's not going to happen it really is not going to happen so eventually we do have to find a way and we have to find a way where we're not taking money from the taxpayers yeah because the taxpayers have endured too much on this rail um this rail serves nobody it really doesn't so many people are paying for this rail that they're not going to ever ride it I mean people on the windward side all the way down even in ever beach they're not going to ride it and right now you've got reports that there's sinkholes happening and sinkholes around the rail that's built in the ever northern ever beach area so I mean is this rail going to be safe so there's a lot of things to look at when you get into office to see what is the safety of this rail is it going to even be safe for the people to ride it right so that's one of the main issues there another issue is homelessness yeah the government is not attacking homelessness the way it should be it should be attacked on many different fronts um you have as Lawrence talked about the children nobody's talking about the families the families with children they need to be immediately put into homes regardless we have so many empty spaces in Kaili Loa that we can convert immediately into one or two bedrooms and get them in there because once they're in there people that are in homes feel better about themselves so that's going to make them more productive but somehow we're keeping our people down okay so there's just so many groups that are out there they're talking about so that's one group then you have the native Hawaiians why are there so many native Hawaiians on the streets this shouldn't be the case native Hawaiians should have homestead we should be building more land be building more homes or more lands so that we can get them into their homes we need to find a way to correct this problem and dress the native Hawaiians and get them in there they should be able to have their homes then you have the addicts and the drunks well we need to get our drunks off the street and I actually like the idea that San Francisco and Seattle uses it's called wet housing instead of sober housing it's wet housing when you get them into it the housing and they we know that they know they're going to drink and they're going to be allowed to have their drinks but the statistics found that actually in wet housing people say someone starts off with 24 drinks a day they've actually come down to about 10 drinks a day within a year because they have councils and everyone in there and that wet housing actually isn't a party house it's more like a cover list in home but this where we get people off of the streets which reduces our taxes because then we don't have to worry about the police tagging them or worry about them going into the hospital so the services you save about five thousand dollars per person by bringing them indoors and off the streets and cleaning your streets at the same time then we have several more groups that I would like to talk to but before I get on the subject there's a major subject that I is dear to me and that is Red Hill why is no one talking about Red Hill people that's the subject that we need to be talking about you have 20 tanks each of these tanks can hold aloha tower into them that's 20 10 by 10 side every single tank has a leak every tank has leaked and tank five leaked actually was 27,000 gallons of fuel this is a contamination that's getting ready to burst and it's going to cause a big casualty here in Honolulu 600,000 people drink out of the aquafire that is only 100 feet below these tanks so if they're telling you that there's no contamination they're lying to you because these tanks will leak so we need to really address Red Hill as much as possible thank you you are so welcome Ernest and as you know I have had a the board of water supply on two of my shows to talk about Red Hill so amen to that one okay we're going to take a little break and then come back and talk to the other three mayor candidates hi my name is erin wills you're watching think tech hawaii.com I am the host of the show rehabilitation coming soon you can catch us live on think tech hawaii.com at 11 a.m on Tuesdays I will see you there aloha I'm kirsten bomb guard turner and I'm fortunate to be able to host sustainable hawaii at think tech hawaii.com I hope you'll join in with us every Tuesday from 12 noon to 1 p.m to see the interesting people we have to share with you their information aloha hello I'm Patrick Bratton I'm the host of global connections I'm also a professor at white pacific university and my show and some of the other things that we do is show soft the collaboration that we have between think tech hawaii and white pacific university so I look forward to seeing you and talking with you about a lot of issues dealing with hawaii the United States and the world thank you very much aloha this is maria mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show viva hawaii on think tech hawaii every other Monday at 3 p.m we're here to inform motivate and entertain you join us hola soy maria mera y estoy aquí para invitaros a mi show bilingüe viva hawaii and think tech hawaii cada 2 lunes a las 3 de la tarde estamos aquí para informaros motivaros y entreteneros apuntaros welcome back to hawaii is my mainland i'm kawaii lucas and with me today are my favorite three candidates for holu mayor thank you and they got to talk about what they wanted and now i've asked them to answer a question that keeps coming up in different forms on the show because i think it's really central to what's creating the pressure in our city so um larry freedman morrence you are um going to take it first the question is uh according to the national association of realtors in their 2015 report the real estate industry accounted for 25.5 of the gross state product in 2012 so that number may change but it's just indicative of the real estate industry is huge in our economy after defense and tourism so how can mr and mrs lee afford to keep their home and where are their children going to live when foreign investors and non resident buyers who last year made up 25 percent of the sales here 25 percent of the sales to non residents well thank you for that and i i do feel there's an a and there's a b so that's the a and then there's a b they're they're tied together so i'm just gonna read them both and then you respond how you like so how can we deal with resortification that is residential real estate already in short short supply being used as vacation rentals drying up inventory and increasing rents well a couple of things i've looked at when when you submit those questions to me is uh exactly what we should be doing and i feel if you look at what they've done in new jersey they'd have what they call the mount world decision which basically viewed that if you build only expensive housing it's discriminatory in nature based upon the new jersey state constitution now quite honestly i don't know if that is how it'll play out in hawaii but i don't see that happening here okay so i feel that when you're building and and you have an administration that's just building million dollar luxury condominiums which is beyond the average pay of anybody whether it's here la chicago or new york you know they're they're excluding people in a financially discriminating way and i really feel we need to we need to stop that and look at the mount world decision which requires a zoning practice that makes you have affordable housing for people who can't afford it now um who are at the lower end economically i don't want to say that people who can't afford housing should be entitled to it but it's for people on the lower end of the economic spec spectrum so that helps keep the pricing down low we need to have our developers look to build housing that is not only million dollars in up we don't need a concierge you don't need a gym in every building you don't need a pool you don't need sub-zero appliances we need to have that tailored down a bit for the people who live here it's discriminatory in nature i think i'm not exactly sure i'd have to look at some legal opinions to just say that the people who live here should buy that but there's excuse me should be the only ones who who buy that but there should be some way to look at that so the people who are here have a first in having it the way it is now where you can buy a house quote of condo affordable housing in a year you can sell it at a profit and there goes your affordable housing one unit gone right there and that happens time after time once the values of these properties get to be the cost in the in the uh the rest of the building such as the million dollar housing so you know i'll add on to that but i'd like to give the gentleman here a little time right did you have anything to add about the resortification of bnb's yep thank you for that and i do feel that what we also need to do is put out a blanket zoning policy that you you can't rent your house okay let me be clear on that that what you have out there is rental stock now and we shouldn't we that should be grandfathered there's enough rental stock out there there's enough weekly rentals there's enough monthly rentals and i think that we need to now look at some type of way to make it purely a yearly rental okay that if a condo goes up and the city has some type of zoning control over it the minimum rental is a year in that and then after that it could be you know a month to month or a three month lease for the people who are in that and then after that person moves out it then becomes a year lease that would prevent people from coming in and renting for a short season three months or even six months you know a year lease is going to deter a lot of people and give people the ability to rent that housing at an affordable rate thank you warrants all right um uh ron are you ready to go how can mr and mrs lee afford to keep their home and where their children going to live when foreign investors and non-resident buyers 25 percent of the sales in 2015 are soaking up residential inventory and how do we deal with resortification well i'll take resortification first that's a mixed bag because some of the people who are renting out to the bnb's are doing it to just to afford to live in their house and i know some of those people myself uh so to make a blanket rule would be very difficult i know it has to be regulated there has to be taxes paid for these uh these bnb's or but uh i really don't know enough to say that you know have a particular view that there's a blanket statement on anything to that that i would regulate it and know what's going on and have that and have that information available uh to the city planners just to to be aware of it the in hawaii we have catered quite a bit to foreign investors and very wealthy individuals who want to buy in hawaii and we're building for them it's caused an inflation in the prices of materials and housing um costs for the people who live and work here we can simply pivot and put an emphasis on the people who live and work in hawaii providing permits and agreements partnerships with private firms private developers to build housing both rental housing as well as permanent housing at an affordable price i i worked out a system just from my finance background that and i consider an affordable house right now in hawaii about three hundred thousand dollars that's what i talk about if a person is earning fifteen dollars an hour uh two couples uh excuse me a couple earning fifteen dollars an hour comes out to about sixty four thousand dollars a year federal guidelines state that you should spend about thirty percent of your money on on housing so that comes out to about eighteen thousand five hundred dollars or eighteen thousand five hundred dollars a year or about fifteen hundred dollars a month if on a three hundred thousand dollar mortgage you can that's a one thousand four hundred and twenty one dollars uh a month and then now you have a possibility of home ownership and not just uh rental but there's a number of gentlemen who are doing very uh significant things here uh duane kirisu kirisu kirisu he's building out a plantation village uh which will be primarily aimed at the homeless right now uh there's stanford car who's selling federal and state uh credits and financing affordable housing and there's peter peter savio who's doing what is he called equity build rentals where people can actually rent and get an equity in their in their home so we have some of the answers for these issues that you raise uh but we have the city and county has to pivot and put an emphasis on on that part of our the ordinary person thank you ron those are some really interesting ideas okay mr carvalho all right so um i've listened to your ideas it's first time i'm hearing these questions today i didn't get a chance to look at it but it's okay um everybody's talking about affordable housing and building affordable housing so really technically there's only been 14 affordable homes or condos built since 2014 because as larry says people move into them boom six months later their salad it's no longer affordable housing but i think the question is not about building affordable housing i think the question is about how do we make it affordable for everyday people like you and me to live here in hawaii that is the question that we should be asking ourselves and some of the ways we need to do deal with this is to one completely get rid of the jones axe which is really crippling us this jones act is causing us to pay way more than we supposed to so a container that goes on max and that goes from here to thailand but it goes from los angeles to thailand and one the same container that goes from los angeles to hawaii this is the difference the one that goes to thailand is costing about eight hundred seventy dollars whereas the one that goes to hawaii is costing you eight thousand dollars same product in that so jones acts needs to go because it is destroying us another thing we need to do is we need to look at each island and each island must look at this differently on their own way but in han alulu we must now start to take care of ourselves we must be self sustainable there is no reason for han alulu to be bringing in 90 percent of our food that is ridiculous this we must do on our own we gotta stop keeping our agricultural lands agriculture and stop building so i think what needs to happen is we need to put a moratorium for the time being just for maybe a better year get everybody on the tables from the real estate to the military all involved in this because the military also plays a big part of not being able to afford in hawaii they're allowing their military people just so you know i did serve in the air force okay so but they're allowing their people to go out and buy no not buy rent homes and everything else so when they go out to rent they're only rented maybe it's only costing them but extra three hundred dollars but the military is paying for everything else so this landowner over here says well they're not paying three thousand dollars for rent you only pay fifteen hundred we're going to raise it up to three thousand how is that fair so the question is how do we make living in hawaii affordable for everyone and if we can come around and figure that out we can be able to do this but we have to do this together as a team like i said i am the people you are the people we are the people and together as a people we can make positive changes that is good for hanalu we need to get rid of those that are running now because they're not going to do nothing it's the same old voice club and if you vote for dis you or carlough because you don't like carlough then you're not doing yourself justice and nor are you doing the people from a little justice do the right thing and start thinking you've got three great candidates here start thinking about that that's it thank you mr caravallo and in our last minute here i just want to say thank you all there is another chance today for hardcore fans of my top three um to go out and listen to them join um seven other candidates um out on sand island at the um hope chapel there i forget the number but if you look it up hope chapel sand island there is going to be a forum which eventually will be broadcast on oc 16 but we're not sure when so that's tonight at six o'clock and um parting words how's it been running for mayor uh i've enjoyed this very much i want to be a voice for the people um to earn this point please look at the three of us i am of course the best candidate but if you vote for the same people who've got us in this mess in the first place uh carlile and called will both said it was going to cost five billion we're at eight okay and counting they've made a three billion dollar mistake in the private world the corporate world and i'm sure you would say that you'd be fired if you made a three billion dollar misjudgment thank you caravallo because you know what i believe that i'm the better choice i have a passion that's if you if you sit down with me and talk with me you're going to see something that you've never seen before and ron how about you uh i'm really upset with the way things are going and if you want to make a change in the future of uh the city and county upon the little i think you should you should vote for me okay we'll see you next week back here at think tech hawaii 3 p.m aloha aloha