 This very special edition of Out and About, this is a show where we explore people, events and organizations that are doing good in our community and finding out more about them. So today we are especially delighted to have back as a guest in a different role Dave Watase and Dave is running for council seat number five on the Honolulu City Council. So welcome back to the show Dave. Thanks Winston. Glad to be here. Like to welcome all the viewers on think on your think tech program. Again, my name is Dave Watase. I'm running for city council district five. I decide to run because I'm concerned about the direction that our city is going recently through my activism and going to seven neighborhood boards. I kind of realized that, you know, our city is kind of like going and taking the wild and crazy route. And it bothered me to a point where I felt I needed to get involved. And I felt that the community and the residents needed a voice because there seems to be a lack of accountability and transparency in our government today. I also feel that the city council is a very important mechanism to keep our leadership in check. And you know, especially now with the COVID, you know, I think there's going to be very some very serious economic ramifications and that you have to make. So you're not a politician. You haven't run for political office before, right? I'm a civil engineer. I went to Kansas State University and I worked for a family business which specialized in building affordable housing, you know, for, for usually for the first time, homeowners. And you're your local boy. Yeah. I basically, I'm living in the home I grew up in, up on St. Louis Heights. I went to Hokelani Elementary School, Aredema Lutheran, and then St. Louis High School. Made the Little League Baseball at County White Park and used to play in Manoa Street, you know. Okay. So you're looking to represent the very area that you grew up in and with school and all of that. So up at the top of St. Louis Heights, you mentioned the seven neighborhood boards. Is that basically the area that would be council number five's district? Yeah, it includes Palolo, Lower Kameke, you know, Diamond Hill, well, not Diamond Hill, but Kapa Hulu, you know, all, everything, Malko, Dalai Canal, and it goes down to Ward Avenue and Makiki, Manoa, St. Louis Heights, Makali, and Moelili. Okay. It's a, it's a, it's pretty central, right? Just Malko of Waikiki, I guess, more or less, as opposed to some other districts which are quite spread out. So that makes campaigning maybe a little bit easier, but I don't know. You got, it's a lot of people that you'd be representing probably, what, about 200,000 or something? Oh, no, not that many, maybe 100,000? Yeah, I'm not really sure. I was told, you know, there's maybe about 80,000 registered voters. About 80,000. And 35,000 plus households. So it's a difficult era to canvas. Like I said, I've never done this before, just having to deal with the campaign spending and all the requirements, you know, was a monumental task for me. Now, well, you got started in this as a, I'm sorry to interrupt and cut you off sometimes with the Zoom, it's a little bit hard to know where to jump in, but you got started in, I would say that in a community activist role and I had termed you the accidental activist because you were just sort of thrust into it and you found out some things along the way. What got you involved in community activities? And since that time, what have you learned? What have you, what have, what are the groups of you encountered and what are, what's the message that you're hearing from those groups? Well, originally I got involved because the Alwai Canal flood mitigation project by the Army Corps of Engineers, they basically wanted to do eminent domain on property I own in Palo Alto Valley that I had purchased really to be my legacy for my children so that they could afford someday to build a home on that property so that they could live in Honolulu. And I decided that I didn't want to let it happen. I felt and I went through their draft EIS and they gave me basically two to six weeks to respond to it. There was two weeks before the final public meeting and then I could turn in comments of the extended it for 30 days. But I always thought the government was there to protect me and my rights. And I found out differently that they basically had projects in the makings that had very little community engagement. And I decided to take it to task. And I ran around the seven neighborhood boards, I got resolutions. I went house to house to hundreds of households and talked to the people. I think I did more engagement than the Army Corps did in 20 years on this project. And I did it on my own time, on my own time, and it wasn't that hard to do. And I don't understand why the government seems to be rushed about everything. And they do things with a lack, again, of transparency. And sometimes they just go out and boo those things. And once you do it, you can't replace it. So it really bothered me what's going on right now. And as you're reaching out, it seems like you've connected with other groups during that time in connection with the Alawai Project. What are some other ones that you've touched upon? And are those the same themes that you're hearing again and again, transparency, accountability? Yeah, so people started taking notice of what I was doing. And even from good almost two years ago, people were concerned that Ann Kobayashi, who's a champion for the underdog and the little guy, was going to be terminated or retiring. And just out of the blue, guys would come out to me and say, Dave, you should consider running for city council. And I just kind of laughed it off and that's the last thing on my mind. But I, too, was personally concerned that Ann Kobayashi was retiring. Because you can't, Ann, you've got to stay there. We need you. Yes. And again, over the past two years, a lot of people, neighborhood board members, people, leaders of various groups would ask me. And they saw what I was doing with the Alawai Canal project. And they offered help, and I offered to help them. I said, hey, we can work together. We will be stronger. So we teamed up together, groups like Malama Moana, Save Alamoana Beach Park, Huey. I began working with them. And we actually succeeded in getting the mayor to change his mind about building a world-class playground on Alamoana Beach Park. We got him to downsize some of his initial improvements or elements of his project. But even though we still have problems with transparency and how they do their construction, so it's a continued effort. I've also sympathized with Save Our Sherwoods. When I grew, when I was little in high school, we used to go to Sandys, Makapu, Bellows, and Sherwoods. And it was during the summer, beach day all the time. And during the weekends. So I sympathized with what was going on there. And when I saw the destruction that the bulldozers did, you really can't go back and replant the area and put it back to the way it was once it's done. And I think it's better to be on the safe side. And it wouldn't have been too difficult to halt the project or postpone it to meet and hear out what the concerns of the communities were and try to address it. And when you look at what happened, it was done all wrong. And it seems to be a recurring thing with our current administration that there's too many projects to me in my mind that are done all wrong in the wrong way with a severe lack of community engagement. It's not going to hurt us if we spend a little bit more time engaging with the community. And I think that's so, so important. In fact, I told the Army Corps that that's their job. That's the most important aspect of their job. And anybody can go award a contract, design a plan. I said, but the most important thing that they failed to do was to engage the community and the residents who are the stakeholders and who will be impacted. And that's what I thought the EIS was all about. And I was wrong. Well, you've learned a lot. And like you said, there's no shame in taking time to make considered measured good decisions with public input. And I think that people are feeling that lack of transparency and accountability rightly or wrongly around the island. And you can just sort of do a mental circle around the island. And I think you're, and even the state, but since you're not running for the state office yet, you can see that there's just issue after issue going clockwise or counterclockwise where people are feeling unheard or ignored or sidelined or whatever it is where people are standing up and willing to get arrested or hopefully everything is peaceful. But, and you don't want it to get to that point. You don't want people getting arrested. You want community engagement beforehand to listen respectfully to members so that we can do that. And that's, now you're stepping up in that role to be part of the solution on a broader scale. So I applaud you for running. And it's no small task as you've been finding out there's a ton of issues that everybody expects you to be up to speed on and have a position on and all of that. Do you have positions on everything? Do you, or how are you gonna tackle everything? What's your philosophy? Well, you know, I don't know all the issues, but I'm willing to take them on. I'm willing to study them, you know, research it and go out and engage the community on things that I think would, you know, that would concern them. I think you need somebody who can flag the inconsistencies in these projects because that's not being done right now. And if you look around and all the projects, it's not logical, it doesn't make sense. You know, I think there's definitely a need for improvement. I want to be the voice of the community. For me personally, I'm really all good. I really don't have to run for office. You know, my kids are pretty much old and get, you know, but I really thought that we need help preparing the island for the future of the next generation. What's next? And like you said, Anne has been a champion for the community in this area. A voice of reason, a voice of sanity, maturity, common sense and listens to people and has been very responsive to concerns. So, you know, it'd be big shoes to fill, but I think that it's really impressive and telling that Anne has endorsed you for her seat that she's currently occupying. Yeah, I mean, actually what happened, the way it happened was almost a year ago, she approached me and she asked me if I'd consider running for a seat. And again, like a lot of other people have asked me, I kind of brushed it off and laughed it off and thought that would be the last thing that I'd consider doing, you know, but as I got more involved in activism, as I got to learn more about what was going on at the neighborhood boards and the concerns of the community, whether it be homelessness or crime, you know, even COVID hitting our economy and our tourist industry and exposing the vulnerabilities of us not being diversified enough. I see the need for good leadership and I think I can, you know, be that on the city council. You know, I'm 61 years old, you know, I started off as a little kid over here, you know, as a child, you know, then I got married, so I've been a good husband and then I'm a good father and my kids are all through college right now and they're pretty much going to the next step. And you're a good community member because you've been active and engaged in something that's meaningful for you and a lot of other people. Exactly. That you've been able to give voice to and I, you know, it's, I think in our society, people want others to step up and to do something. Why don't they, why don't they, they should, right? And whoever they, the mythical they is, but we are the mythical they, we are the ones that need to step up. We're the ones that need to report, that need to show up, that need to testify, that need to run for office. And I think, you know, something interesting is you are a, you're a wrestling coach, that is something that you got in your background. So you have to know some strategy and you're an engineer. So you got to have, you want to engineering, engineers should come up with logical, sustainable, doable solutions that are coherent. And so I, I know you would bring that as well. Are you a PE? Just like out of curiosity. Okay. But civil engineers, your, your civil engineers, your training. Okay. I got a couple of issues. I was wondering if you'd, you'd tell me about, what do you think about, and you may not have an answer. Like you said, and I really appreciate that thought that when the issues come before you and you don't know what they will be. You, no one could have predicted COVID, but how is the city going to respond to that? All the things that come up, you're going to have those coming up too. And so having a measured response and saying, I'm just going to do my best. It seems like a really wise way to go about it from my perspective, at least. There's some things that are on people's minds. You may have some position. How about the train? Should it stop at Middle Street? Should it be rerouted up to King or Baratania? Should it stay in the flood plain? Should it go to Alamoana? Should we just kind of put it on pause for a little bit once it hits middle and see where we're at financially? Or what do you think? Well, I think we need to get more information about the project, whether or not it can be finished on time and on budget. Given COVID, the heart is depending upon the half percent GT and TAT to fund the rail and the increases to nine to $10 billion. I think every day something changes. The price goes up and it gets pushed down further down the road. It's a moving target. I just, no other project, I think, has ever been done this way. Most projects, when you think about it, you have a set of plans, you have specifications, they're detailed, you know what the scope of the work is. You put it out for bid and you build it. In this case, they don't know what the project's really gonna look like. They don't really know how they're gonna finance it. And it seems as though it just keeps on increasing and keeps on being pushed down the road. So I think a forensic audit is necessary. I think it would expose the problems that we have. There's several hundred million dollars that they don't know what happened to. And we need to lock down the price. And I think if the revenue is not there to pay for it, how are we gonna do it? Does that mean we can flow bonds for this thing? Someone's gotta pay for it somehow. Yeah, so it might be that the experts determined that, you know what, right now the revenue's not there, we cannot afford it. If that's the case, then we're gonna have to look at, maybe put it on pause, maybe really getting the plans and specifications down to a T, knowing what we're building, where we're building it and how we're gonna do it, okay? Because we've done a lot of development with the TOD plan. Alamoana, Kakaako is all building out right now with the anticipation that this rail will come through. At the same time, we might not be able to afford it. And if you're gonna burden the taxpayers and the residents, meaning of which the rail doesn't even service them, I think that's unfair too. So I think, we will have to look at it from a standpoint of, can we afford it? You also have the situation of maybe, if we don't complete it for the full length, we may have to forfeit the federal money. But Hart is working on a public-private partnership agreement that supposedly is gonna be the answer to all. So we have to see what that entails. Again, a matter of transparency and accountability. Okay, and take an open mind and looking at it and maybe a lot of different options are open for you, depending on like you just said. How about this, the idea of redoing Blaisdale or Aloha Stadium, any thoughts on those? Well, I mean, I think again, even though Aloha Stadium, when you look at some of those plans, again, it's working around the TOD, which is increasing the density and whether it be housing or condominiums around the rail stations. Yeah, our Aloha Stadium is kind of old and falling apart. It's still usable. But again, I think it all comes onto the budget and that's a state thing more than anything else and the state is gonna be hit really hard because their revenue is all based on income taxes. And versus the city, I think they're projecting $130 million shortfall this coming year. It's gonna get worse because there's gonna be that domino effect that, you know, property values, I think, are gonna fall. You know, if people, if the hotel industry doesn't recover fast enough, which I think is gonna take many years before we get back, you know, anything close to it, you know, without the higher room occupancy rates, without the higher room rates, it's gonna be hard for hotels to sustain the wage rates and the benefits that, you know, we currently have. You know, the business model is gonna change for all the hotels. All the retailers and even the cost of housing and the demand could definitely take a downturn. So we have to see what's gonna happen on the property tax revenue side. And then again, you know, I think there's gonna be a lot of hurt, you know, down the road. You know, I think- A lot of hurt down the road. Some hard choices are gonna have to be made. Do you balance your checkbook to the penny every month? No, my wife does that. Okay. And so you will rely on expert advisors for a lot of different things, which is good to hear. What do you think are the main problems facing our city and our island and keeping it livable and sustainable? Well, I think the most important issue is, you know, cost of living and most of that has to do with affordable housing. My concern is, you know, all the residents over here have conserved. You know, we use less water. We've gone solar. We've got LED light bulbs all over the place. We've got energy efficient refrigerators and washers and as we're moving in that direction, you know, there's incentives being given, you know, to do these things. But the problem I see is whenever we save on our natural resources, and I might think, gee, by using less water and protecting our aquifer for the future generations, when in reality, water water supply just turns around and sells it to the builders of these luxury condominiums. My concern is I can only conserve so much. I can only cut down my electricity usage so much. You know, we have problems regarding sewer capacity. Our infrastructure is falling apart. And when it comes time that maybe we decide to actually build more affordable units, truly affordable units, my concern is, they're gonna go like, you know what? We actually don't have enough power. We don't have enough sewer capacity. We don't have enough water. We need to put in another pump station. We need to build another power plant. And you need to pay for it. Then our affordable housing is not gonna be affordable anymore because rather than save it and conserve it for our children, we actually sold it to the highest bidder, the foreign investor, you know, coming in, buying some luxury condominiums. And I also have a problem with, you know, the TOD, they going up to 400 feet in exchange for providing some affordable housing. I really don't think it's working well. The affordable units that I've seen being presented at the neighborhood boards or 120% of the median income. And you really have to be rich to buy one of those. I think we'd be better off, you know, letting them build those things but making them pay, you know, heavily for the resources that they use. And in exchange, we maybe go further away from the prime real estate, the prime ocean views. And we go maybe down to Macaulay and more Elie Elie, closer toward King and Baratanya. You know, most of those homes and apartments there are old, dilapidated and, you know, falling apart and build affordable housing in those areas because, you know, the land values are less. And we can build bigger, you know, condominiums or apartments, you know, that are affordable, truly affordable for our children and our capuna. You know, I think we can do a lot of, you know, senior living homes. In fact, I was at a neighborhood board in Macaulay, more Elie Elie. And they have a project called Hale Makana or more Elie Elie. It's a 105-unit, you know, project for 55 in order. It's targeting 30, 50 and 60% AMI. It's right behind the more Elie Library. Seems like we're gonna need a lot more of that stuff. Yeah, and 100 times fold, yeah. 100 times fold and a lot of sane leaders in making these decisions as we're looking at infrastructure and caring capacity and what's just sane and right to do for our island. You know, I'm grateful that you're running, that your opponents are running as well, doing your part to uphold our great system that we have in this country and in this state. I applaud you for running, Dave and respect your community activism until now. Unfortunately, we are out of time. It always goes by so fast for people to get more information on your website. They can go, I can see right behind your head, davewatase.com. So please check out Dave's website, see if you got some questions, you can ask him right there. And you know, thank you for being on the show, Dave. And I wish you all the best in this election and then whatever comes next. Thank you. Okay, aloha.