 Politics in Hawaii, on Think Tech Hawaii, with Dennis Esaki. Today we'll be speaking with Derek Kawakami, former Kauai County Councilman, State Legislator, now the Kauai County Mayor. The Kauai Kauai family has made their mark in public service and in the business community on Kauai and in the state. Derek is the mayor in this trying time, values the business economy, safety and community relations. I remember when Derek first ran first seat on the KAUC bar in an island-wide election. It was a forum and Derek was asked a question, of course most of us didn't know much about the industry and he gave his answer and later someone else gave a different detailed comment Derek called it Derek said, you listen and it changes mine and agree. I think that being a listener is one of his good traits. Derek, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii and can you start by telling us about your entry into elective office and KAC? Thank you Sensei and if people are wondering why I call Dennis Esaki Sensei, it's because my entry into politics, one of the big stepping stones was getting elected to the KAUC Board of Directors and at the time Dennis was our board chairman and here I was coming in very young, fresh, naive and really unprepared not knowing even how to participate in these very formal meetings with Robert's rules. Luckily we had a parliamentarian Phil Tapiaan on board but I was surrounded by a group of professionals that were all well-seasoned that was excited about embracing a young person interested in participating and Dennis was one of the folks that took me under his wing and it's funny you remember that forum because me getting into that election was really sort of being pushed by Senator Inouye in his camp you know in 2004 Senator Inouye had a concern that there wasn't young voices that were emerging to be a part of government, part of our civic duty and so he recruited me to get involved and then we got involved to run this campaign here on Kauai with Lenny Reposo and when we were done with the campaign they said okay now it's your turn and it really didn't have an interest but I sort of said well if I run for KAUC will you folks leave me alone and this is just run for something so I said okay here's something where I think I might be interested in especially since we were right at that crossroads of making a determination on whether we wanted to be married to fossil fuels or if we wanted to move towards the direction of self-sustainability and renewable energies I said this is something that really interests me and that was that was the first step and I'm very thankful to the board I'm very thankful to Dennis for for helping to to get me involved yeah yeah I remember you were head of the committee and getting us into renewable remember that yeah that was the yeah that was crazy too they put me in charge of the strategic planning committee and and they were just about ready to to take a look at their strategic plan and update it and so here they are giving giving me a opportunity to to chair this committee and be a part of setting the direction that KAUC was going to move towards and you know at the time we had set some lofty goals but let me tell you right Dennis you know and I know that just amongst the KAUC framework of their existing employees we had some very forward-thinking individuals you know people like Brad Rockwell who was the engineer who pulled us up on the side and said hey you should set the renewable energy goal higher just set it higher and have us that make us make us work to get to that goal and so we set it high and I have to say I'm very honored and blessed that KAUC is is leading the way not only you know in the state but also nationally as far as being forward-thinking and and deploying renewable energy into our portfolio yeah I think we were ahead of our time and we and in the framework you talked about KAUC and you I remember you and I said no no way we're not going into KAUC yeah yeah and I'm glad that you spoke up right because at the time KAUC was very appealing when you took a look at like what the diesel and after prices were when we were talking about hey you know we're investing more in renewable energy and then the pitch was well you need some sort of firm power to make sure that the intermittent you know characteristics of some of these renewable energy that we're bringing online you know at the time KAUC was was something that was looked at and you know we just said no we don't want to invest our KAUC's future into something that we don't feel is going to be the best thing for them long term and something that doesn't fit into our culture and and the direction that we're moving in so fortunately you know Dennis you had the the foresight to be able to say not not on our watch so very good thank you you're moving on to the county and the state you worked on legislative branch in the county as well as the state can you give us a comparison gosh what can I say you know being on the council and going to the state legislatures like you know drinking water through a fire hose when you think about how much you learn in the overall structure of government and government you get a good experience as to how the different departments all work what doesn't work but you also get to see policy making at a larger and a larger stage being one of 51 representatives and then having a body like a you know 25 member senate you know and a governor to to work with as well as the various county councils and then of course at the time you know our mayor Mayor Carvalho for me it was a good it was a good experience but I don't think it's something that I would that I would do again and that's not to say that I didn't gain a lot from it or we weren't able to do a lot of good things we're able to do a lot of great things during that time at the legislature you know at that time we were able to help you know Koi recover from another weather event that had washed away a part of our highway we've been able to build a library for the elementary school and the number of other big investments but you know coming from a neighbor island and having a young family it's extremely it's extremely taxing on the family life to have to be at work on Oahu while your daughter and son is in school and your wife is at home taking care of the whole family on her own but um everything happens for a reason uh being on the county council is great to um see how that process works but I would be lying if I didn't say that the best job I've ever had is as mayor I would do it a million times over and um even though at times I feel like um COVID-19 has um put a little speed bump in in you know in our priorities um for this community I think it's easy to say that I'm glad it's me um and I feel honored to be a mayor during a big challenge and um I'll do it I'll do it a million times over I really love this job there's something about being able to to see change happen um being able to work with people close to home and being able to go home to my family and um do all the things that I love you know hunting surfing um before COVID-19 we were playing softball and just doing you know all the things that you know that you know we do on kawaii it's I got the best of I mean what more could I ask for yeah thanks Paul you do um remember you're at the right place at the right time when the opening came up in the uh legislature and uh I guess it was Neil Governor Abercrombie appointed you whose place was that uh that was uh that was um former rep Mina Marita she went to go on and chair the PUC and Governor Abercrombie called me on April Fool's Day to tell me that he was going to appoint me and I too I felt bad because I was I thought it was a April Fool's joke so I may have not been so diplomatic to him not knowing that he was serious about it no no no we we all wanted you um I remember uh when we were talking started with uh Mayor Jeremy Harris you asked him uh what is his greatest accomplishment what do you think are your your greatest accomplishments I don't feel like I mean I don't really um I don't really feel like I've accomplished anything what you would consider great um but uh I think what really drives me uh more than the than the big accomplishments which I think you know considering the footsteps I got to follow in um with all the former mayors um and not even having completed my first term I I'm really driven by just the what people would just um oftentimes overlook um and and that's being able to sort of start changing the culture of this organization um starting to formulate a team and having um a training program formalized to be able to get our workers um mobilize up the up the ladder so that they have an opportunity to move up into supervisory roles to give our managers and supervisors the tools that they need to effectively lead and to in a sense take an organization analyze where we were strong take a look at where our weaknesses are and start to build upon them and and continue to improve changing the process of the motor vehicle registration where we decentralize our operations so that people down in Princeville and Honolay can renew their registration at Foodland Princeville bringing a kiosk down to Ishihara market in the west side and um being able to do I think things that most people don't notice um right off the bat are things that really drive me the the details of the operation that can be boring but it I tell you the little details um are what add up to what could be great one day but I think I am far away from achieving anything great and I just got to continue to work hard because I think every leader and every person strives to achieve some level of um of work where you know the people are going to recognize it and appreciate it but you know what drives me is the the little victories and um just cheering people up you know if we see somebody that needs help and we're able to help them or connect them to a service that that's what really gets me up every day and then of course if um if you know if my good dad and my good husband I think that's the greatest accomplishment I could ask for thank you yeah sometimes the simple things are the greatest um however in some of the departments we have uh challenges it's been around for a long time yeah at the landfill the solid waste and sewer then we gotta find the a site for the landfill oh gosh what what a what a big big um asking us I mean I it's it's hard I mean and that's where we're trying to change the way that we handle solid waste right I mean landfills in and of itself are a very archaic way of handling solid waste especially on an island and I really think that we have made strides towards um taking a look at holistically how we manage our existence on on this island and being able to coexist with the environment but I will tell you you know just to show how challenging it is you know the prior administration had 10 years to to site a new landfill knowing that you know the end of our lifespan at Kikaw was running out and um you know they ran into road block after roadblock um and you know the the latest site that we're looking at um on Mahalo Road uh has some serious concerns being drawn up by the Department of Transportation and the landowners which is of course um the state of Hawaii on whether or not they're gonna let us utilize that that site so as we run out of time um and as we undergrow undergo our integrated solid waste management plan we're taking a look at what we've learned uh that works and doesn't work and making sure that we're able to execute a plan and get things in place so whomever it is as the next mayor uh I don't want them to worry about where the next landfill is going to be or what their solid waste program is going to look like and as far as our aging infrastructure in our top priorities coming in where it's very simple it roads infrastructure addressing deferred maintenance that hadn't been you know paid attention to and and park conditions and of course you know as we move along that all leads up to housing opportunities and of course driving our economy as well so keep it simple yeah I mean you got a big task um even on the wahoo they had the similar problem on uh landfill with the Waimanalu galt took them years and years I think they even expired the permits and finally they got it uh sewer you know we got uh a lot of them on individual wastewater systems over here as opposed to sewer systems we got uh a good thing we don't have as many water line breaks as a wahoo they got some big infrastructure problems over there but uh we gotta keep at it uh yeah absolutely and I think every mayor coming in has has to understand that our primary focus is to um to address aging infrastructure because I don't think it's going to be one administration that's going to fix it infrastructure like any facility requires ongoing maintenance and the minute that you start deferring that maintenance to um take a look at shifting towards other priorities these things have a way of rearing its ugly head uh down the line where it becomes much more expensive and this is not just a coy problem this is a a national problem that's being recognized by the federal government that's why a bulk of their federal highway monies is just going to repair and maintenance of existing infrastructure and there are very few resources for building new infrastructure and new roads and and that's a good thing because like anything else you have to take care of what you have um and make sure you can take care of it well before you start adding on to our inventory of responsibilities and that's really what we're focused on is just getting things up to par and all making sure that the you know the lights turn on the water flows you flush your toilet and it goes away yeah thanks um uh I don't want to spend too much time at COVID um it's here on the every morning anyway um even before COVID there talks about reducing tourism uh what do you say about you know reduced tourism I don't think it was reducing tourism I think it was one understanding what our carrying capacity is and having it managed in the way that there was a uh a equilibrium or a balance that could be maintained between having that sector of our economy which by the way is the driving force of our economy and not having it erode too much into our quality of life as far as the traffic issues that we have competing interests with um different forms of visitor accommodations like vacation rentals and its impact on our housing inventory and our ability to get our local men and women into housing so that they don't have to move away to the mainland and um that's still something that we are seeking to achieve I will tell you that um you know kawaii oftentimes doesn't get the credit um but we like it that way right we keep our head down and we just continue to you know plow away and get work done but you know our our planning department was light years ahead as far as regulating the vacation rental industry we were the first county to effectively regulate vacation rentals outside of the visitor destination area coming in as mayor we were able to come to an agreement with Airbnb and VRBO that they were only going to market bonafide accommodations that had a u-certificate to operate in the county of kawaii versus just allowing anybody to put their property onto the market um and we were able to um take a look at raising revenue off the visitor industry to make much needed improvements now moving forward I think what happens is a lot of people now understand the impact of the visitor industry and our quality of life because what COVID-19 did was basically slow the visitor industry down to a trickle and many people started to realize that hey the traffic evaporated overnight our ability to get to our beaches and find a parking spot and enjoy our island the way we should enjoy it has changed and I think um in a sense uh you know what the state had tasked HTA to do which is to market hwaii as a premier destination and not a budget destination is something that we're working towards one to know what we're worth make sure that we are attracting the type of visitor that we want to focus on coming to hawaii one that's going to spend money one that's going to be respectful and is going to want to integrate themselves into our culture and our community um is a type of visitor we're looking at so we are looking at one making sure that our business sector can remain healthy and continue to thrive but two to also have an understanding that there is a capacity limit on this island and quite frankly um we have uh reached that capacity and have gone over at times which is where people start getting really frustrated yeah exactly um a lot of people were getting used to the less cars on the highway and and the beaches as you mentioned uh and this talk about you know uh like you mentioned the uh hyper tourists maybe because now you know we get their spending left when the guys who spend more but when you look at the other way when we want to you know go other places the vacation and you know we're not necessarily the highest spending tourists at least I'm not well no man you know I'm traveling with like two black belts in shopping in my household so you know I think it depends you know what kind of traveler you are but like I can tell you man um yeah between Monk and Haley they got some yeah my ranking all belts yeah we yeah we got a we're stimulating the economy of other destinations they do a great job uh you know uh I mentioned a little bit about housing with the median price of housing about a million dollars an affordable housing could be five hundred thousand what do you think of the term affordable housing at the oldest talk about well the word affordable depends on what you can afford but for the people of Hawaii I mean let's face it I mean more than half of our children qualify for free or reduced lunch when you take a look at the alice report which is the asset you know asset limited income constraints but employed you know over 40 percent of our households fall you know in that poverty level so what affordable means is much less than five hundred thousand dollars and one million dollars would be absurd the way to create affordable housing and we've been moving along that track is you're not going to necessarily achieve affordable housing through policy and you're going to get affordable housing by having government take an inventory on our under utilized resources and meeting the building industry halfway to lower the cost of goods sold so that we can offer a lower price to our local people and the way that we've seen it is one the state in the county has a tremendous amount of real estate that goes under utilized and many of those parcels of property are near existing infrastructure such as water sewer and roads and Dennis you know more than anybody else is somebody who's been in the developing world developing housing opportunities one way to lower the cost of goods sold is to have a government that's going to come to the table with something such as land and infrastructure and so we created keo laula at polo ke for a houseless community and that was really a partnership with our governor deal and iron of course our legislative delegation here to transfer that state parcel over to the county of koi in which turn we had contractors build um that housing community for our houseless community members across the street we have another workforce housing project come up but once again that is on county property that had existing infrastructure and um you know I think that's going to be the model moving forward is to take a look at what properties the state and county owns that have existing infrastructure that are in part close to jobs and other housing um existing housing neighborhoods and starting to partner up with developers to get some roofs over people's heads moving forward yeah and I mentioned this a few times and I'll mention it again I think that for the middle class and I will get so many conditions that should be rectified because when government does quote low income housing they waive a lot of things they especially time and time is money in developing world and the fast track and then they can bypass other conditions on normal house for some of us they said no no you gotta be a certain shape and all that you know that you know just drives up everything I think uh stuff like that should be looked at too absolutely and you know I mean the reason why right I never wanted to get into government and then of course finally I did get involved is because one I didn't agree with government and you know I didn't have a soft spot in my heart for politicians so what better way to get in there and shape things up and try to make a change than to get in and work within the system and you know if you ask me what's driving me it's all of that private sector experience and kind of seeing things from a different lens to say hey some of these things just don't make sense you know why are these requirements being required and a lot of it has good um rational reasons why we do things but there are a number of redundancies or a number of efficient ways that we can do things and you know I think one of the things that's going to set our administration apart from others is we are one of the very few executive branches that has told our legislative branch to exercise your audit powers and start auditing our department right usually you get some resistance from the executive I'm saying hey this is a witch hunt this is all political this is the first time we made it easy and said hey come take a look and teach us where we can be better very good very good uh we just got a couple minutes left uh somebody asked me uh about the carousel money you know where bulk of it went you know it touched upon a little bit on the carousel money and how you used it that was easy it went out into the community as quickly as we could as intended you know the challenging thing about the carousel money is because of our population the only county that got their direct deposit check was the city and county of Honolulu we had about a five-week delay and that's just the way it happens it funneled through the state I know the state was trying to figure it out for us and then finally they said here you guys get it out into the community so by then we had already worked with our office of economic development who had set up the co-economic recovery strategy team to come up with some very quick turnarounds to get the carousel money into the community as quickly as possible so if a lot of it went to you know community support with supporting food drives supporting food distributions making sure that we had money to go to the boys and girls club to take care of kids that didn't have supervision at home when kids couldn't go into the classrooms you know I'd say a bulk of it went to direct community infusion right into the economy some of it went to our rise to work program and then some of it went to basic PPE to to keep people safe during COVID-19 but yeah that was the intent was to get it out to the community and that's exactly what we did very quickly thank you uh yeah so we were running out of time we got the closing statement that was a fast half hour yeah no I want to thank everybody for tuning in to think to Hawaii I want to thank Dennis Isaki and everybody for for having me on I feel very honored to to be a part of this community and I feel very humbled to to be able to provide some leadership and some direction for our community moving through some big challenges and of course some smaller challenges as well I love it thank you thank you thank you you have been watching politics in Hawaii with Dennis Isaki mahalo to Derek Kalkami and to the viewers on think tech Hawaii please log in to thinktechhawaii.com and support our hardworking crew and volunteer staff see you again in two weeks aloha mahalo and ahoyou