 This is Think Tech Hawaii Community Matters here. Good afternoon. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. Sorry. Good afternoon. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers Politics and Hawaii Series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. We all know, those of us who live in Hawaii, all know that we are a state of islands. And of the islands, there are, it's broken up into counties, and each county has a mayor. And that's the basic construct. Not everybody is aware of that. A lot of people say, oh, Hawaii, it's Hawaiian. They don't know the difference. I'm very excited and very proud today to introduce my guest for today's show. And that is current mayor, Bernie Carvalho, mayor of Kauai. We're going to talk about Kauai. We're going to talk about what he's been able to accomplish there. And we're going to learn a bit about him as well. And just so that you're aware, we're going to talk a bit about the Aloha Plus Challenge and what that can really mean and some things that have been done there. So thank you for joining us. And again, I introduce Mayor Bernie Carvalho. Thank you so much for joining us. Aloha. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Happy to be here. Ready to talk story. Excellent. Well, then let's talk. First of all, let's start by telling us a bit. A lot of people know who you are. A lot of people want to know who is Bernie Carvalho. So tell us a bit about you and what you've been up to, leading up to where you are right now and what you've been able to accomplish. So we'll go into the conversation. Let's start with you. You know, born and raised on Kauai, graduated from Kapa'a High School, had the opportunity to receive a full athletic scholarship to the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. Yes. And really had a great time at the university and then graduated and got drafted in the seventh round by the Miami Dolphins. So I went there for a little while and had the opportunity to, of course, take that path and then return back to California and where I met my wife Regina and we've been married for 32 years now. We have three children or adults right now. My oldest son, Bronson, is in Portland. He's married. My second son, Brennan, took that path of football. So he's in arena football right now, living in Philadelphia. Oh my. So he's been kind of doing his thing there. And then my daughter is back home, Brittany, and she's a school teacher. So education. Education. Where does she teach? She teaches Kapa'a Elementary School. Okay. And then I have two grandchildren. My granddaughter is Felina and she is eight years old, going to be eight. And my little grandson, Nahua, who is going to be three. And my wife is a registered nurse. So that kind of completes the family right there. That's amazing. Now, first of all, thank your daughter for being a teacher. Yes. For service. Teachers need much more attention. I was just in a classroom. We always help her get ready for the new school year. So, you know, mom, dad, everybody helped put up signs and all that stuff that we need to do. My point is, our teachers work very hard after hours, after hours, getting everything prepped. So, Mahala, I love all you teachers. Love the teachers. They do so much work and they work so much harder, as you just pointed out, than anybody records. Not just when the kids show up to the time they leave and then they're done. They have to prepare. And many of these teachers, as you just mentioned, out of their own pockets, provide supplies. Out of their own pockets. And I know because I'm the dad of a teacher. Yes. Exactly. Now, that's a big thing. That's a big key. We need to make sure. We, education is the difference maker. Right. We need to make sure that our educators have everything they need in the classroom. And then all the resources that they need. So anyway, that's okay. Some of my personal stuff. Okay. I love that. So, okay. So then now, moving on, right? Yes. So now, how did I become mayor? Yes. When did you become mayor? And how did that happen? Well, when I got back home, I was hired by the county of Kauai. So I worked as a civil servant for 17 years in the department. Well, I was in the department. It was division of parks and recreation. Okay. And during my tenure there, if you will, moving 17 years as civil servant and then moving into the department head for six years on the Mayor Baptiste. So it's from here to here. And with that time, we're able to gain all the experience and form the new department of parks and recreation. So we were able to form the entire department. I've already experienced that kind of thing. For the county. For the county of Kauai. We're a division on the public works, but felt that 85% of everything that we did, knowing I was, came to work as a civil servant, right? A lot of the things happened dependent on the other departments. So we formed a new department. And so I worked there for 17 years. And then like I said, Mayor Baptiste came into office and joined his team as a department head. So I leave civil service, take that risk now as a department head and the offices of community assistance and did that for six years. And then unfortunately, Mayor, our dear friend and good, good family friend as well passed away in office. Our Mayor Baptiste passed away. Two years in his second year term, second term. And from that came the opportunity. But to me, from the family, if I would consider running the last two years, so it was a special election in 2008. Now he was planning things. Love him dearly. But the family and I talked long story short, we ran in two months time, we put a whole campaign together. And which is a lot to do. It's a lot to do. It's a lot. I remember my daughter folks doing all the signs in my garage with paint and because we didn't have enough time. So the beautiful signs with flowers and all that stuff. But that was the best. And then we became Mayor in 2008 and then fulfilled the two years and then ran again in 2010 and became Mayor for four years and then 2014. And now we're kind of winding down. Winding down. So and you're termed out at 2018. I turn out 2018 and it'll be 10 years. So when I'm done with this whole service to the people of Kaua'i and Niihau, service I say in this different level. Let's highlight that service to the people of Kaua'i and Niihau. I'm a servant. Okay. And so from that point, I'm winding down for next year. So I'll be Mayor 10 years old. I have like 30, 36 years total when I'm done in this path and looking forward to another opportunity. Sure. As they come along, as they come along. And so that's the start. That's extraordinary. So thank you for so much service to the people, to the people of Kaua'i. I as I mentioned earlier, I have family. I have family on Kaua'i as well. So I've always had, I've grown a love for the island of Kaua'i myself. As I mentioned, again off air, the several times that I have visited, it's the only place, it's the only island that I go to. And I'm a city boy. Really? I'm from Chicago. It's the only island that I go to. As soon as I get off the plane, there's a peace. And there's a calm that just I think exists as an energy there. I don't know how you did that, but thank you. Well, you know, it's a place, it's a garden island. It's where the oldest island, by the way, everybody knows that right in the whole state. So, and a lot of our kupuna, a lot of our amhula, and the ancient hula and chan started on Kaua'i. So a lot of our kupuna, yeah, they come back and there's a special place, K'ahua Lak'ahe'au on the North Shore of Ireland, where a lot of our kumuhula come to just kind of reconnect before they do a performance or before they, so the cultural part is very important in all of our, the statewide is important. So we're always going to remember to recognize the culture in the past, so it makes the future more bright for everybody. Excellent. No, it's been a place in my heart ever since the first time I arrived there. Like, wow, this is a whole different, the chickens are one thing. The chickens, okay. But aside from the chickens, I mean, and I'm okay with that. Okay. But aside from the chickens, it's just always had a great feel. So it's just a wonderful, wonderful place. I highly recommend visiting the people like. It's okay. So in the ten years that you've been mayor, or about to be ten years, what will you look back on as some of your greatest achievements, we'll start there, some of your greatest achievements, or things that you've been striving to achieve? Let's look at it that way during your term. Well, I think the big thing for Kaua'i was really reaching out into the public, into the community, and being able to be, I would say we've got to listen and hear instead of tell. And you've got to be able to, I always thought like our team members, that we've got to take care of the emotional side of everything that we do upfront and foremost. So that means talk to the people, listen to them, hear what they're saying, but somebody has to make the decision, I'll make the decision. But I want to make sure that everybody, whatever it is, could be transportation, could be education, could be environment, you know, all the different key parts of our community, roads, and all of that. But we always go out, we meet, I'm always out in community meeting, small group meetings, but the bottom line is reaching out and then come back with some good solid information that we've had to done in-house and then make the decision. So that has been the path of the template that we've used till today. I think that's, I personally appreciate that template because that's you going out and reaching out to people and listening to what they have to say. And then you try to incorporate. Try. Sometimes it's difficult, but you know. So that's a leadership style, right? And that's leadership, so you've taken that, and that's how you proceed with what you do. And I think that's extraordinary. Now, from that leadership perspective, sometimes you have to deliver not bad news, but different news. Different news. I know the community wants this. So how have you, and this is maybe, this might be the toughest question I ask you, how have you encountered and worked with the communities to overcome those challenges? You know, working in government for a long time and coming in this role as mayor felt it was my responsibility to really create a solid team. Surround yourself with good people first and help them to tear down all these walls and silos. And so my point is that when you have Parks and Recreation Director working with the Planning Director and Planning Director working with Housing and Housing. I mean, everybody, we surround the project as a team. There's no, I do this, I do that. We do it together. And I'm kind of like the captain or the coach watching and say, okay, wait now, who's at the table? Who needs to do what? What resources did we need to bring to the table from wherever we need to go, whether it be from the, or who else we need to call into the table? So that was number one. And then from that, you have to come up with a vision. So in 2010, my first full four-year term, I came out with a hola hola 2020 vision. And in that it was, I identified 38 projects, 38 projects that came from my meeting with people from my and our going out into community and hearing what the people's concerns or needs were and created this hola hola vision. So that vision was to jump on board hola hola, right? And let's go. And we're going to look at each project. We even develop a brand, internal brand of the project so nobody would forget. Team members, everybody would see this logo on any document or any sheet of paper that dealt with that particular project like housing. It was a big one for me. Like we've completed kind of cool. First, um, right in Lee Hui area, right in our town core. And, but the model that I wanted to have in that particular project, which we finished, is two bedroom units. And the two bedroom units was set aside for our kupuna to age in place, but you age with your loved one. You age with your daughter, your son, your niece, your nephew, instead of having an agency come in. That was the model for this Kaneko O, um, at Rice Camp at Kaneko O. And that exists now? Yeah, we worked on that model, our housing agency, of course, and a total team effort. And we're able to, um, complete that project right in the Lee Hui area. How many, how many homes? There's a 60 units. 60 units. And so like I said, there's a mix of one bedroom to bedroom. But the model we wanted to try is, like I said, you know, having a kupuna age with a loved one. Which is, that's such an important build like that. Absolutely. Yes. Yes, it would. That's having experienced with my family, with my parents, where we've had to go through, okay, care homes or hospice care, and how long can we have them be at home? How long can we be able to maintain them? There needs to be inevitably a collaboration with their health care, the providers, end of life concerns and considerations and how you adjust that. There needs to be a collaboration. But having the ability, and this is what everybody asked for, right, having the ability to be able to do that and have it still be part of Ohama, have it still be home, right? If you can achieve that. So you've been able to do that in 60 homes for 60 families. That's, that's amazing. So, yeah, so that happened there. And then, uh, in my whole holiday life, I said, talking about transportation, every single bus stop on this island will have a bus shelter. Now it sounds so, yeah, maybe kind of small, no. It's important. A lot of our guys are standing out in the elements, right? So I made that commitment on stage in 2010. Today as we sit here, we've just went out to bid for the final last. So, you come to Kaua'i, you'll see our bus shelters up on all the, you know, bus shelter areas. That's excellent. And wait, wait, wait, and each bus shelter has LED lighting. So you have to incorporate, come on, the green movement. Yes, absolutely. And people are happy. I mean, you know, we made that commitment. It took a lot of time and effort working closely with our legislative team as well. So again, partnership is not just me, it's we. Right. And we work together. But you've got to come on with a vision. As well as the state, right? Yes. Yeah. I've got to make sure that's clear, right? And that, because that's true. And then you just make it happen. And the first shelter was done by a Filipino community group. They were for free, for love. When you start with love. Yeah. And everything else just flows. Everything happens. So that's true. That's how it started with the first one, then everything else was done through the process. Excellent. Excellent. That's amazing. We are at the break. We have to take a quick break. So it goes really quickly. So thank you. That's, congratulations. And thank you for that work. There's going to be a whole lot more we're going to talk about. We're going to come back in our next segment and we're going to talk. This is where we're going to jump into the green side. So it was a great segment to start getting into the green conversation where we talk about the Aloha Plus Challenge. So thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Welcome again to our show with Mayor Bernie Carvalho. We'll see you in one minute. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which dreams live on thinktechhoai.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC16 and Olelo 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Freedom. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At Dive Heart, we believe freedom is all of these and more regardless of your ability. Dive Heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, Dive Heart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. Dive Heart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process, help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in there. Good afternoon. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Companion. And once again, welcome to the show, Mayor Bernie Carvalho. Once again, I appreciate it. Well, hello again, Carl. Very happy to be with you. Now again, this is Mayor Bernie Carvalho from Kauai. He is mayor of Kauai and Niihau. And it's an important area, one of the oldest islands we were reminded of. So with that, one of the things and an important thing that came out of this, and what I wanted to get into that I'll jump into now, is the concept of leadership. If you'd listened to or watched that last segment, you heard what leadership sounds like in my opinion. You heard how a civil servant, someone who wants to be there for service, reaches out to the communities and listens and takes their input in and builds a team and then moves that team in the direction with a vision to achieve the goals for the community. To me, that is civil servant leadership, servant leadership, period. And I appreciate that. So what I want to do here is, once again, welcome. Very happy. Shake your hand as often as I can because your energy is wonderful. I'm happy to be here, Carl. What I want to hear from you is your take on leadership in politics in Hawaii. Where do you come from? Well, just kind of focusing on one area. And I want to talk about the Aloha Plus Challenge. Yes. Is that okay? Absolutely. And that, to me, covers the entire state. And that six areas of the challenge, we as mayors took on that challenge from different levels, right, from the governors all the way down to us. And in that six areas, I have one or two projects I wanted to touch on, because it's important. You think about clean energy, okay? You talk about local food production. You talk about green jobs and green employment, green jobs, and green education. Then you talk about natural resource management. And then you move into waste reduction. Solid waste reduction is part of that management. Think about that. And then the last one, of course, would be smart growth principles. How to incorporate a sustainable kind of thinking. So these are the six areas, right? So in clean energy, number one, we're the first county to transform all. And this is working in partnership. And nothing can happen, folks, without true, true partnership. We signed an MOU with KIUC. Done. That showed partnership. Yes. Moved forward with a lot of projects. But the most recent one was transforming all of our street lights into LED lighting. Done. So in addition to your bus. Yes. So now you do the street lights. Yeah. But we do a little piece here. You do a little piece here. And we share. Right? In the benefits for the people. That's how that should be. That's number one. That's clean energy. Clean energy. Okay. Number two, local food production. We took 75 acres of land in Kilauea and gave that, I'm going to say, we, county council and us, back to the people. We have the land. We have the infrastructure, the water and all of that. You go grow what you want to do. You manage the land. You figure out how you're going to divvy out who gets what. Community does. And we kind of understand and watch and be a resource to the people. See? Local food production. Yeah. Green jobs. The next one, right? We went out and got a grant with the labor, local labor of enforcement to our economic development office and created this internship, summer internships. Long story short, these interns came in. We placed them out in our various farms, a tropical flower farm, tariff farm, all the different businesses and we placed them in the various farms as interns, which led to our commitment and dedication, working closely with the Department of Education to bring back what? The future farmer program. We started with one school. We had only four or five kids. And now we have 36 kids to our economic development office. Proud to say, we started again. We brought it back. Now you take it and run with it. So we're building or creating new farmers of the future. Which is huge. That's huge. See, I was a future farmer, but my problem was I couldn't fit in those corduroy jackets. That's the truth. But I remember you, anyway, there's a creed. But let's move on. So that's for education, right? They were natural resource management. It's important for us to remember where we come from. We've come out with a signage program on Kauai. If you drive on our island now, you're going to see signage from each Moku. The Moku of Halalaya. The Moku of Kauau. The Moku of Puna. The Moku of Kona. The Moku of Napali and Nihau. It's all identified with the fish, the color, and the plant that represents that Moku. It's important for all of us statewide to understand where we come from. You have to, what grew in one Moku didn't grow in the other Moku. What water flowed here didn't flow here. So you got to make your decisions of today based upon the past. So the present can move and the future can flourish. So that's a natural resource environment, right? Now what I hear there also, and I just want to throw this in and get your thoughts here, is what I hear, and what I, over and over again, the history I have been given, is the way Native Hawaiians operated, the Ahupua'a, that is in many ways, The Moku first is a land division. The Ahupua'a is within the Moku. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Just car fun. It's great to get it. No, thank you. Thank you. So good. Okay. The, what I find wonderful and a little ironic is as we are looking at how to be more sustainable on these islands, we are realizing how we need to go back to these Native Hawaiian roots and methods in order to achieve these. So it is on their shoulders and it is through their spirit that we are able to. Right? And you're asking permission every step of the way. Government. Thank you. Thank you. Ask you. Okay. Yeah. So I want to finish. So the next one is waste reduction. We're the first county to come out and complete a pay as you throw program. Okay. So that means encouraging people in the home to recycle, reuse, reduce, recycle, right? Because you only have one size bin. You can pay for the bin. Smaller size, large size. And we the county of course picks up that one bin from your home and go. So it's pay as you throw. That's done. Okay. We're also the first county to come out a plastic bag then which we started back then. We'll leave that at that. Yeah. And the last one. It's now moving. Smart growth principles, right? We secured a $13.8 million tiger grant which comes from the national level, the federal funding, to transform the heart of Kaua Ilihu into walkable, bikeable, complete streets, safe routes to school, lighted crossroads, connected community. We just got roundabouts and connected and walked bike paths. So we're already moving towards the blessing of this grant that we recently got that was going to help us move and be very sustainable. So you notice under each one of those aloha plus challenge areas where I just want to identify one project that we're not thinking about we're doing it and there's many more but I'm going to do only one, right? Because of the time. Time, right. So that kind of completes that wheel overall and our commitment to the statewide vision that we, Kaua Ilihu have incorporated and took seriously and I'm moving on it. And I wanted to make sure that we had enough time to share that wheel which ties right back to the lokahi wheel. I don't have time for that. But yeah, you can come back for that one. But absolutely. So okay, that, there's too much that could be said about all that. So okay, so you took it seriously. You took this commitment seriously as an island and each community within the island took the commitment seriously and you found projects that were in alignment with each of the principles of the aloha plus challenge. Exactly. And you have pursued those if not to completion to near completion. Correct. And that is creating a model that is sustainable. And you've done that and here's one question I have. You defined as an island. I say you, I mean the island. We, the island did. What that was going to mean. You weren't told by state. You're going to do this. You said this is what we will accomplish. This is how we will accomplish. This is how we will do our part for the state. And have you, have you had, and I know that the answer is yes in some ways, but have you had mutual conversations with mayors from other islands to talk about how to even work together with shared successes and failures? Definitely. We as mayors meet once a month. We are separated by ocean, but connected all of us. So we all have our individual charm and character of our individual islands, each each county. And so we share different thoughts. And in fact, what we're doing now is having our staff, our team members meet with team members from the neighbor islands. Take this one model and share it with the next island. And that's what we're doing now. Excellent. Excellent. We are at that point. We're in our last two minutes. So we now want to transition to our last piece for this show. The Hukilao. In closing, the Hukilao. We did it live in October of last year, bottom line. Taking a cultural practice, very well practiced in the past, culturally, Hawaiian practice, which is the Hukilao. And the Hukilao is in short, simple terms. We lay the nets together, we pull the nets in together, and you share in a catch. Okay. So we actually did that in October on my team and myself. Our department has got together to prep the nets with the lao, which is the tea leaf that you tie along the net. So we prepped all that one day. The next day, and guess what? Community took the lead. We went back to our kupuna. Do you take the lead in pulling this hole? And you know what? It wasn't about catching as much fish versus the practice and teaching. We had people from New York and Chicago and California and down the street, down the road, cake it. We recreated a cultural practice that taught people how to strengthen community. Before, when you were hanging clothes that you heard in Hukilao, you run down to the beach. So we weren't that much. But overall, we did this in October. We completed it. I have it on video because I wanted to document. And I see that in the bigger picture as well. That we need to continue to bridge and connect the culture and this practice of the Hukilao. Everybody has a role. And I have that will which we share the next time. And I have my other will that I can share. They're going to overlay over the Allah plus challenge culturally. But the Hukilao is bringing community and strengthening community to a cultural practice that happened in the past. I think that's so important, especially today, when so many people are in their phones, so many people are on the internet, so many people are focused on. We've always been focused on our own lives. Always. It's so important now to have the opportunities to say, you know what? Let's remember we're a community we rely on each other. I need you, you need me. We work together, we achieve, we thrive. I love that. Right? So thank you for doing that. And thank you for sharing that. So you did that last October. October, yes. Are you going to be doing that again? Well, what we did was we documented that. And so the next piece of that, you do things and then your whole community will jump. If the community now says, man, we want to do one on this side of our island. I say, let's go. All right. You guys take the lead. We'll follow through. I want to help statewide. People inspire them to take the lead. It's not the government. We need to be there to provide the resources. The resources for the communities. I mean, there's things that we got to stand strong. You know, don't get me wrong. And I totally, when I got to make a decision, I'll do it, but it has to be vetted out. And I'd have to have a good conversation with the community first. But we need to also empower community. So by doing things like this, let them, they tell me they want to do Hukila on the west side of the island. We got all the components. We got all of this history. We'll bring the kupuna from the other side and teach. Let's do it. That's excellent. That's great. And so, yeah, let the book. Well, we are unfortunately at the end of our show. So what I'll add to that is I've had the good fortune of being a part of a Board and Stone class for this whole summer. So we've been learning and we've been carving and we've been shaping and we've been working as a family on that. So that's another thing working together through Kamehameh Schools. So the families and everyone has come together for that is an extraordinary thing. So it's not the same as you mentioned, but I'm, I have that same feeling from what you're saying from that. So it's really wonderful. Can I close you something fast? Please, close. You can take the closing words. The closing words because of the Hukulia and the connection, right? The Hukulia, the most greenest festival in the whole wide world. This is it, folks. We can't change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust ourselves to our destination. And let's look at that collectively. And I tell you, we have everything to look forward to for a beautiful Hawaii. Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Appreciate the conversation. Thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movershakers and Reformers Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Thank you to Mayor Bernie Carvalho. High five. We'll see you next time. Bye.