 I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Community Matters. Today we are beginning a series with candidates for all the offices, the different offices across the state and from the Big Island to Kauai to and today to the jungles of Manoa. And we are going to talk to Dylan Armstrong, who is a candidate for the House of Representatives from Manoa. Aloha Dylan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it. And for being our guinea pig, our number one candidate, but that's okay, that's all right. So tell us about Dylan, who is Dylan? Well I'm an urban planner by day. I worked in conservation for a decade. I've worked with our most endangered Hawaiian wildlife species and plants. I have been a community member for my duration of time as a UH Manoa student where I was receiving a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources Management and I have continued to remain involved three years as a Manoa neighborhood board member, a member of different community groups such as Be Ready Manoa and the community chose me. People continued to open doors for me. I thought like so many of my young colleagues and friends that I was going to have to move away. I was not expecting to stay here but because people continue to give me opportunities that I never imagined, I pursued them and as such built a career here. Now it's my turn to give back because my state representative is retiring. So I'm moving from that position of community advocacy to hopefully leadership. Well now Manoa ready? Is that what you said? Be Ready Manoa. Be Ready Manoa. What is Be Ready Manoa? Be Ready Manoa is a disaster preparedness group and I'm just a volunteer one of many. But seriously what does it do? So Be Ready Manoa is in charge of natural disaster preparedness for our valley. And so we had a catastrophic flood back in 2004, October 30th that caused millions of dollars in property damage including to UH Manoa's Hamilton Library where replaceable documents were lost. But human life and property was at stake too and a lot of people did suffer property damage. Flooding and hurricanes are the most common natural disasters for a community like Manoa. We have so many other issues statewide. We have tsunami, we have wildfire, we have environmental releases. Let's say that a fuel truck spills over on H1. There are many different ways that we need to be prepared for what will happen in the event of an emergency because we can't always expect the government to be there for us especially not the federal government. Think of what happened after Iniki on Kauai. The entire south and east sides of the island were just devastated because all the utility poles went down. People were literally cut off and we have stretches of road network on this island that are analogous. Think of Kalani on the Ole Highway. If anything were to happen to that road those people in those valleys would be isolated. But Manoa has two main entry points so we also have to make sure that we're prepared to deal with natural disaster in our homes, to be safe as families and then to help each other as a community. Now, we assume of course that everybody knows where Manoa is but just in case there's somebody watching that doesn't know where Manoa is, tell us where is Manoa. Manoa is a celebrated place, O'ahu'i Pana, that is situated in a valley at the back of the Kona district of O'ahu so it's right between Makiki and Tantalus and Pololo on either side. It is just Malca of Waikiki and Mo'Ili'ili so this is the location of the flagship university, UH Manoa campus and it is where Barack Obama was born and where he spent a good part of his childhood. It is an important place in Hawai'i history including going back to the Wilcox Rebellion when revolutionaries were actually fighting in Manoa all the way over to New Uanui so Manoa has been a big part of the state's history going back to before the state when it was the kingdom. Wow, what a valley. And it's whenever we see pictures there's always the rainbows over the valley which is why the students, the teams are all the bows. Oh bows, that's right, that's right. So now tell us, tell us the issues in Manoa. The issues that you see as a candidate are most important in Manoa or well you'll be one of many, one of fifty one as a matter of fact. So what are the most important issues you see A that affects Manoa and B everybody. So what do you see? So mainly economy, education and environment are at the top of people's minds. Manoa is largely a older community now in terms of senior citizens, people who are retired and also people with disabilities so there's an element of living on fixed incomes that is really prevalent especially in the back part of Manoa. Additionally with property taxes rising due to speculative endeavors we think of Airbnb, housing, houses, things that are the more negative side of development creeping into even more settled communities like Manoa. Those things actually have a pocket book effect on people on fixed incomes. We also have students, right? We have 43% of our people are renters so whether it's student housing, whether it's private rentals we have an issue with a housing crisis. It's not as severe as some of the other communities but it manifests itself just like it does across the state. We also have environmental questions. Long term there are species on the brink of extinction in Manoa. I've worked with them. There is the question of what's going to happen with rapid ohia death. Could that devastate our watershed? We have invasive species, feral pigs, feral cats, et cetera, what is the right way to manage that and there are many different answers. But most people think of the environment in terms of development. We want to maintain Manoa as a unique, connected, special, safe place to raise a family, to know your neighbors and that's an extension of the changes that we see happening across the way. People see how much other communities have fallen in terms of that social cohesiveness and in Manoa we're very protective of that. We want to make sure that this is a place that feels a home. Additionally, education, right? So UH Manoa is located in Manoa Valley. The daytime, weekday population is over 20,000. It's bigger than cities on the neighbor islands so it's a huge amount of money that passes through in terms of research, development, the staffing for lecturers and professors and graduate assistants and the people who take care of the facilities. It's a lot of activity. And to think of UH Manoa as a community within a wider community, UH Manoa has to be a good partner for the Manoa neighborhood. It has to be an economic driver for the state. We have a declining middle class. We have rising cost of living. If we diversify our economy with UH Manoa as a third leg powered by research and development, we can continue to provide good living wages for families. My memories of UH, because I live on one side of the traffic, so at the end of the day, there it is, really big. So, you know, you plan your life around getting over there. However, all of the parking and people's lawns, oh my goodness, every day when students are there, is there something that, is there a plan for that? Is there a plan to somehow deal with all of the cars? And I mean, there's no other way to get there. Yeah, that's a good point. So, 40% of the UH Manoa population lives within two and a half miles of the campus. So they walk. And that is from a 2012 transportation demand study. So was there a plan conducted? Yes. Do we have a plan to manage? No. Okay. And we need one. We need one. The state should be thinking about parking at that broad statewide level, because Honolulu and specifically Manoa are not the only communities dealing with this. Now the state has primary jurisdiction over the freeways and the highways, but the state also has important planning and assay over pedestrian and biking and the local streets. It can provide guidance, it can provide a standard, it can provide leadership for the counties to work with, and it has done so. I experienced that as a transportation planner. I want to... You worked for the state? I worked for Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is a independent and regulatory agency which is attached to HDOT, but it is independent of it. Oh, okay. Yeah. And that's typical of MPOs across the country. They're either attached to municipal governments or state. It's very confusing for people not used to how that process works. It was confusing for me, but it's an important process, and that's how we get federal money for our roads and buses. But again, back to this planning of parking, and I'm talking about UH, and I know it happens in other places, downtown, Chinatown, and it's impossible, Waikiki, forget it, but planning parking at UH, that parking facility fills up in two, three seconds, and then there's cars all over people's lawns. Do they pay to park on those lawns? Some do. The owners of the land say, well, you can park here, but this is what it costs. Yeah. It's not unusual for private owners to allow for rental, for parking spaces, but going back to more of the nuisance aspect, which you're talking about, we get people parking all the way up past the little market place in the residential neighborhoods. So we want to manage that, and when I brought up the 40% of the UH Manoa population living within two and a half miles, what we want to do is we want to get as many of those people walking, biking, sharing rides, taking the UH Manoa shuttle, riding the bus so that they are not parking in our communities, make it easier to do the right thing than it is to do the bad thing that affects everyone else's quality of life. So the shuttle, where does it go? Can you get it on King Street or University Avenue? There is some access for the UH Manoa shuttle through those areas. It actually goes to Moe, sorry, to Makiki, and then there is a line to Moe Melee. So it's expanded since when I was a student. I would support making it more accessible. As long as there's a demand to get to campus within the certain hours of the day, then the shuttle should continue to honk. Constantly, yes. Well, right. As long as there's class, as long as there's activity that drives, you know, population to campus. Well, given the digital age, surely you could make reservations online. So that is— Just for the shuttle. Right. Say, I will be at such and such a corner at such and such a time. And the shuttle will say, well, we've got enough people there at that time. You know, they publish what time they'll be at this corner and that corner. And everybody at the university is online. At the very least, there could be an app in the future. The city, you know, the bus, has an app. And when it works, it works really well. You know, it doesn't always work great. But when it does work, it provides location, you know, for arriving and departing buses. And, you know, you can look up where your bus stop is if you're in an unfamiliar area. So when that works, that's really handy. And the UH shuttle could— Could do the same thing, yeah. And I'm just thinking that how to move all of these people without all the cars. Part of it is just making sure that people are living relatively close to campus. What about that new building at the corner of University and Kings? Yeah. That's— Is that a regular condominium, or will students be able to live there, or the prices such that students can live there? Yeah. It's very interesting to see, because it's certainly being marketed as student housing. Many people are skeptical, but the important thing is that, you know, that's one building out of several. And Pox Alley is going to be redeveloped according to, you know, everything that myself and other people in the community have heard. So what kind of housing is that going to be? Because KS— Is that going to be housing also? Well, it is currently housing. KS provides behind the, you know, all of the businesses, the first and second floor commercial. So can we redevelop that into a community where people are safe, where people can have a neighborly feel, even if it is more of an urban environment, and where they can walk to campus? Yeah. We don't want—we don't want the excesses of caca-aco repeated in most of the Ely. Right. Ah. So we have to take a break. Okay. And when we come back, let's talk about the excesses of caca-aco. Okay. Okay. We'll be right back. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green for Think Tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at three, and I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Hello. My name is Stephanie Mock, and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomai Weigert, and we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on at Thursdays at 4 p.m., and we hope we'll see you next time. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner, and this is Community Matters. We are doing a series. This is series number one with candidates that are running for office, local offices all across the state, and today we are visiting with number one candidate, Dylan Armstrong, who is running for the House of Representatives from Manoa. We were just beginning to talk about the excesses of caca-aco, unquote, but you're an urban planner, so what do you see is the excesses of caca-aco and how you don't want that transferred to Manoa? The original intention, as I understand it with HCDA, was to make sure that there was urban infill so that local families could access all the basic goods and services they need living in an urban environment where they aren't car-reliant. It's not the same as not having a car, but just not being car-reliant. So being able to potentially walk to school, being able to potentially walk to the grocery store, have that urban living experience, but we see increasingly that it's gone the way of luxury housing, and luxury housing is not going to fill the needs that we as a state have. We, including people in Manoa, are pressed by the cost of living, so when we do development, it needs to be done right. It needs to be done the way it's intended and agreed upon, and it needs to be done for the benefit of our people. So if it's not being done for the benefit of our people, why do it? It's easy to be critical or argue for any sort of development, whether it's housing, transportation. The important thing is that there's a context and a need, and the need with housing in the next decade has to be putting our people back to work and making housing that local families can access. So currently, even existing housing supply is becoming inaccessible because of Airbnb. I don't doubt that that's an issue in Kaka'ako as well. The incentive is stacked against local renters. You can make three and a half times the rental income on an Airbnb that you can on an average apartment. And that's based on research done by the Hawaii Center, Apple Seed Center for Law and Economic Progress. I always stumble over the name. But the point being that we have a system that's not quite working as well as it used to for local people. How can we change that? And when I say local people, I should just say all of our residents. So we have 43% of our households, I mentioned previously, 43% of our households are renters. In Manoa, it's kind of invisible because you might be renting a house and you're right next to a homeowner. So single family home, single family home, you go off of what your immediate impression is. But we also have lots of generations in a single family. So those don't get counted in the homeless issue, where you have three and four generations in a house. And so now we tend not to see them. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're making $10 an hour, you can't pay $1,800 a month for rent. It's just, you can't add up that many dollars, you know. So we want to pay more to our employees, but small businesses don't have that much to pay. That's true. And we have this thing that we love is medical care that the employer has to pay into. And then when he pays that, plus all the state taxes, there's not much to give the employee. That's a good point. That's not much left. Yeah, that's a good point. And so if the employer raises the cost, then you have to pay the raise. And then everybody says, oh, the prices are going up. Yeah. Yeah. And we face a similar issue of passing the burden of taxation on to working people when we talk about investment properties, right? So taxing investment properties has to be done very carefully because most of our affordable housing is actually mom and pop owners. Let's say that they have two properties. Maybe they moved out of their old property because their families aged and some have moved out. So maybe they rent their old home or vice versa, or maybe they bought an apartment building, not a big one, but maybe it was built 40 years ago. So the costs of the construction have been depreciated already. If we raise the taxes on those properties, then that will be passed off largely in the form of rent. So we want to make sure that we're going after investment properties that are the empty condos, the time shares that don't benefit anyone here. The stuff that's held by non-residents, real estate investment trust is one idea that's talked about a lot. But basically when we raise taxes or when we go after any sort of new revenue, we have to make sure that the source is the truly intended source because typically, as you're suggesting, there are ways that that will be passed off to consumers or renters. Oh, absolutely. Now let's go back to Manoa and you're an environmentalist. Manoa stream. It's so beautiful. The waterfalls that come down and into the stream, how's the health of the stream? It's not great. When I was an undergraduate, I did monitor the stream quality near faculty housing, about 50 feet down stream of it and also over at Dole Street, which was far worse. So the water quality is affected by all of the runoff. We have increasing paving of the valley. I want to work on incentives for new development, homes that are being rebuilt, homes that are being renovated, homes that are having ADUs added on to them to keep the paving as minimal as possible so that we don't have more stormwater flowing into the Manoa stream. There's all of the stuff that that picks up. Everything from cigarette butts to plastic to hydrocarbons from vehicles or other sources of petroleum, but the Manoa stream itself is half channel or canal and half semi-natural and flowing into the surrounding substrate, the soil, when you're in Manoa Valley. By the time it reaches the Alawai Canal, the water quality is terrible. The temperature is high. There's a lot of sedimentation. The flow is sluggish. It lacks turbidity. Part of that is natural, but it's a breeding ground for bacteria and the kinds of things we associate with the Alawai water quality. This is also important in terms of flooding. When those waters flood, we don't want that to be more of a health risk for people. So what can you—let's assume you're going to get elected. So how can you, with the aid of the community and everyone, work on that natural resource? Because the stream is so precious, our water quality is so precious. How can you—or what can you do? Let me put it that way, not how, but what? What can you do to save that stream? I know we don't think of it as endangered. We don't think of water as endangered, but it is. What can you do? How can you do that? Right. So we want to capture more of the rain and storm water. We want to make sure that what is flowing into the stream is being filtered by, as much as possible, some sort of vegetative surface. Is there a dam up there someplace? So there's a variety of flood mitigation infrastructure, and that's a bigger US Army Corps of Engineers project, right? But does it exist? Is there a dam? A dam, per se? A dam, up real high up the stream? There are things that impound the stream and gather water. There's also it currently being developed, some sort of floodwater spillway and retention ponds. So that's all designed to keep people safe. That's the primary purpose of the current work going on in Manoa Stream, whether it's the city and county side or DLNR. Yeah. Oh dear. Yeah. And now I'm just saying, when you split it up, well, that's not mine, that was his... You know, jurisdiction can be... Can be a bear. Yeah. But we see that with roads, we see that with utility, you know, that's not unusual. But they are doing something. Oh yeah. So the current controversy over Manoa Stream at Woodlawn Bridge is all about protecting people from flood risks. Now I understand that Hawaii is last of all the 50 states in infrastructure. What about the bridge? About Woodlawn? Yes. Oh, well, I think the bridge is okay for the time being, but... Arrested infrastructure in Manoa. The infrastructure in general means... In general. Because we are at the bottom. Yeah. According to the national statistics, Hawaii is the very bottom. So what about Manoa, the infrastructure? The worst is Nepo Street, and that is a small dead-end road off of Manoa Road in the very back of the valley. And for three years, 2015, 2015 this began with a private development at the back of the road, building over currently vacant, I should say, vegetated property. In three years, not a single home has been built. I haven't seen a foundation laid. I've seen sidewalks at the end of the road, but Nepo Street has been torn up the entire time and the residents and all of the properties before that development have been dealing with flying gravel and potholes and road that is torn up that looks like gecko skin. So it's loose patches of asphalt on top of a much sandier or dustier substrate. It is unfair that people are dealing with that all because of how a private developer is chosen to make use of public resources. And that's the kind of thing that separates me from some of the other candidates. I don't just go after whatever the big issue is, I go after the right issues. Well, tell us now, we have a minute left. Look right into the camera and tell us exactly why you should be elected and why you are different from your other candidates. Go. Okay. Well, again, my name is Dylan Armstrong and I'm running to be the state representative for Manoa Mo'ili-Ili and part of Time of Key out to 3rd Avenue. So the reason why you should vote for me is that I have the scientific and technical expertise necessary to take care of the issues that matter to you and your family. So whether it's economic issues, I am prepared to work on the state budget. I know how to monitor government spending. I did that as a transportation planner. I know how to work on infrastructure because I've worked on roads and, you know, currently as an urban planner, I work on buildings. So those are areas where we can invest in the right things and do so carefully with your money. We want to make sure that housing and homelessness gets better, not worse. I'm the only one of the five candidates who's done anything on homelessness. There is a really bad encampment at YLI Road at the H1 on ramp and people were dealing with crime. People were fearful. People were waking up in the middle of the night to, you know, hear or find that people were rooting through their rubbish. So we want to make sure that people who are needy are getting into shelters. And we want to make sure that people who have been longtime residents are safe, that Kapuna Aging in place are not going to be victimized by burglars and other forms of property crime. I'm the person to do that. I'm supportive of the Neighborhood Security Watch. I have been involved in a lot of our community issues over the last, you know, decade. And you know, I think I've also been the hardest working candidate. I've knocked on thousands of doors, thousands more than my closest competitor. So if you're looking for evidence, the proof is in the pudding. Well, let me add one thing that you didn't say. But you're not married and you don't have any children, therefore, you can give full time to the job. I'm looking to settle down. No, I'm in. But today you can give full time to—that's important, that you can give full time to the job. Now that I am a candidate, one thing that stands out to me is the toll that being a candidate takes for everyone. It makes me respect everyone who's a candidate more. It takes a big toll. That's why I'm saying, adding that you don't have to worry about what are the children on, you know, getting home on time and all that. But I'll have children. Later, but right now. And, okay, but yeah, my focus is taking care of the needs of everyone in Manoa Valley, Moeva, Ili and, you know, out to Third Avenue. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming and congratulations. Good luck. Thank you. And keep in touch and we'll talk to you after the primary. Appreciate it. All right. Aloha. Aloha.