Maui is a classic case of allowing rich people and corporations to become the primary economy without ever considering or applying a ounce of concern for the quality of life of the residents that work and provide everything. The residential rental price issue here is beyond out of control, not to mention the almost nonexistent supply of affordable housing (rental and for sale) for all the people that create and support the infrastructure that allows those corporations and wealthy people to come here and exploit the housing and commercial property markets, straight out of reach of the residents. There has to be some sort of control over the hospitality industry and out of state residential home buying. I hope I can still afford to life here by the time our government starts thinking about our quality of life over people that already have everything.
PLEASE DO NOT authorize a permit to build yet another tourist accomodation/hotel on Maui. Enough is enough. There are more than enough hotels and other places for visitors to stay.
We have allowed the sacrifice of the health and beauty of our community in pursuit of the almighty tourist dollar. NOW is the time to stop; for our health, for the health or our beautiful environment, and to encourage the community to find sustainable ways to support our community - i.e., diversifying into sustainable agriculture, expanding the support and education of farmers, providing for ag processing facilities, committing more aggressively to alternative energy, focusing on affordable housing, and limiting the number of visitors on an annual basis - we are overrun with tourists.
Kihei is becoming the “wrong side of the tracks” destination. Kihei is becoming the lower rung destination to Wailea. Kihei is so over crowded now, it can’t service the tourist crowds that are already here. Kihei has little support from her absentee landlords who buy without seeing, who rent without caring about whom they rent to,
and who care nothing about quality of Hawaiian of the islands or culture, who care only for the money they make. These same “investors” then complain about the cost of living that they don’t experience themselves. Kihei is becoming a company town for tourists but not for residents. Someday only tourists will stay here...the majority of the residents will have moved out.
I support the moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations because we do not have the infrastructure to support more and more tourists, for example, roads, parking lots, waste water treatment facilities, and public bathrooms. Since tourism levels returned, traffic has gotten worse and it’s difficult to find parking at the beach.
I am in full support of the moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations. The population on Maui has been increasing significantly over the last few years and this has led to increased need for housing and services which is beyond the infrastructure for this well preserved county. Increasing tourism will eventually overpopulate Maui.
We need to make sure we use sound principles to keep Maui a destination where visitors want to visit. Building hotels, and other vacation rentals without assessing what is already built and how it is occupied is not very prudent. Please extend the moratorium to give the county time to see what is in the best interest of Maui County in the long run. To understand what happens when development goes unchecked, just turn to the 6am local news any morning and see the traffic and congestion on Oahu.
There are already enough rooms and beds for a level of tourism that is excessive. We cannot sustain more visitor numbers and should be focusing on how to diversify our economy, not increase our capacity beyond the already stretched limits. This moratorium needs to be expanded to include all areas of the island, not just Kihei and West side. We are at capacity and need to turn our attention to better infrastructure and environmental protection.
Although I work in the Tourist industry, I am in full support of a moratorium on building permits for any vacation rental structures anywhere on the island of Maui.
The visitor count has been over bearing to our infrastructure and mental and emotional health for too many years now. It has been creating a stressful state in which we live in. It is not fair for the residents of this island to have to loose the quality of our own lives in order to accommodate any industry. No amount of financial gains are worth the degradation of our quality of life. Please support this bill to put a moratorium on building any more accommodations for the visitor industry and make this moratorium island wide. We need to figure out how to monitor the visitor industry first before we allow anymore accommodations to be built.
I am full time resident of Maui, public school educator and parent. I have family roots on Maui that go back to pre-colonization times. I completely support the moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations. I further strongly suggest that it is for all of Maui County, and not certain areas. We are building without foresight. We need to effectively address the long-term and very real impact of water and resources being, literally, drained away by the visitor accommodations which are currently here. Our ocean quality is dramatically affected by hotel run off. This in turn impacts our reefs and our ocean life, much of which would normally be a healthy source of food. Now, I question it. If my husband can get staph from the ocean water surrounding our island, what could happen if he ate from the sea life caught in that same ocean water? We build and build but we are not building. We're actually digging. We're digging a metaphorical grave for any chance of a healthy and sustainable life for our local community..
The Maui Council has voted to support sustainable tourism and it is time to focus on quality over quantity in Visitor accommodations. . I strongly support a moratorium on building until we can create a clear and sustainable plan. The roads will not accommodate more growth. If we lose our Small community feel, we will lose our high ticket visitors. Our economy needs to balance the social/community costs with the economic benefits. Mahalo!
Tourism on Maui has passed the point where it is serving residents and has now become the other way around. While visitor arrivals are breaking records lately, local resident sentiment about this increased tourism is at an all-time low. This is a problem that is getting worse, and the first step in solving any problem is to stop making it worse. This tourism accommodations moratorium will give us time to address the problem. Please PASS this moratorium before it's too late to undo the damage.
Council of the County of Maui
The Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation
RE: MORATORIUM ON BUILDING PERMITS FOR VISITOR ACCOMMODATIONS (IT-54)
Hearing date and time: Monday, May 17, 2021 at 9:00 a.m.
Aloha Chair Sugimura and Infrastructure and Transportation Committee Members,
I am Co-Founder of the Hawaii chapter of 350.org, the largest international organization dedicated to fighting climate change. 350Hawaii.org supports the proposed moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations. This proposed bill would amend the building code to place a moratorium on visitor accommodations development in West and South Maui, an action which would help ensure the County stays on track to implement critical plan action items relating to the visitor-industry impact on the County's environment. By doing so, this bill would help preserve the County's environment and efforts towards climate change mitigation and resilience-building.
Just last month the State Legislature followed Maui County’s lead and officially declared a Climate Emergency for Hawaii. But it is not enough to acknowledge the crisis we face, meaningful actions to address the climate crisis must be taken. This moratorium would do just that by providing the County with clear policy direction to mitigate climate change and work toward resilience.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of the proposed moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations.
Aloha, I am a South Maui employed permanent resident for 32 years and a homeowner. I pay Hawaii taxes and I support any Maui county moratorium regarding building new visitor accommodations in hotel, motel, and condominium structures including increasing size for more rooms. This moratorium would include especially the Maui Coast Hotel on South Kihei Road. Our island is home for many generations to come. Please stop thinking of the tourist job markets. There are plenty of other types of employment. We cannot keep building more structures with the backward beliefs to maintain or increase contractors and hotel workers employment. Our island is small, our infrastructure is at capacity. Space should be left for smart growth for future generations. They will look back and call these approvals greedy and selfish if not lacking intelligence. Smart up now and approve the moratorium. Mahalo.
We have got to stop building short term rentals on maui there are enough on island already. It seems to me that no one cares about the local people that live here and can't even find an affordable place for their family not to mention the island can't handle anymore people this has got to stop and tourism need to do controlled.
I am writing in favor of a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodation, we already have sufficient accommodation for visitors, and do not have the infrastructure to support the accommodations already in place, sewage, water and roads to name a few. Our sea leeks are rising, reefs and beaches and sea life are being “loved to death” by too many visitors. It is past time to begin investigating in ways to diversify our economy away from short term visitors. Our over-reliance on visitors has become even more painfully obvious during this pandemic. Pleas approve this moratorium for the sake of our future, not only of our beautiful island, but for our keiki who are our future.
Council of the County of Maui
The Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation
Councilmember Yuki Lei K. Sugimura, Committee Chair
Councilmember Tasha Kama, Committee Vice-Chair
RE: MORATORIUM ON BUILDING PERMITS FOR VISITOR ACCOMMODATIONS (IT-54)
Hearing date and time: Monday, May 17, 2021 at 9:00 a.m.
Aloha Chair Sugimura, Vice-Chair Kama and Honorable members of the Infrastructure and Transportation Committee,
Mahalo for the opportunity to provide comments on behalf of Hawaii Hotel Alliance ("HHA") regarding the County’s consideration of a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations.
Like so many industries, the pandemic was a game-changer for tourism. The COVID-19 economic recession left Hawaii’s hotels the hardest hit market in the country. For a year, most hotels throughout the county were shut down and/or at occupancy levels that have left many properties teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Despite the devastating impact this pandemic has had on our bottom line, the industry doubled down on our commitment to our island home and to the most valuable assets we have: the men and women of Hawaii who work in and around our hotels.
Throughout the pandemic, our hotels extended the health and welfare benefits for our furloughed employees and developed life-saving ‘Safe Stay’ protocols to protect our workers, our guests, and the communities we serve. Our hotels invested directly in community food drives, supported kupuna care, and engaged in countless acts of support for churches, schools, and relief programs. The legitimate visitor industry has worked tirelessly to keep kama‘aina safe and healthy while working towards the safe reopening of our hotels. Simply put: our hotel industry will continue its generational commitment to being an integral part of the health of thriving communities across Maui County and across our State because the legitimate visitor industry believes that tourism is additive to support the well-being of those of us who call Hawaii home. The same cannot be said of illegal short-term rentals.
At the heart of this matter of a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations appears to be a desire to control the negative impacts of tourism across Maui County. At HHA and throughout the legitimate visitor industry, we share this concern. We believe the conversation should focus on the causes of the negative impacts of tourism and not the parts of the visitor industry that are crucial to our health, our culture, and our way of life here in the islands.
In 2009, Hawaii had 43,000 hotel rooms which ran at high occupancy with seven million visitors to our shores. In 2019, we had the same number of hotel rooms but more than 10.2 million visitors. In the last 20 years, our total hotel room count on Maui has actually fallen, while at the same time legal and illegal short-term rentals have exploded, effectively permitting a 6,000 room hotel and a 10,000 room illegal, unhosted B&B directly into the heart of some of our most coveted neighborhoods and fragile ecosystems across the county. The vast majority of these short-term rental operators do not live in Maui County. While we have made progress in putting tougher laws on the books to deter these criminals from operating illegal hotels in our neighborhoods, our hardworking partners at the county have admitted that we still lack the resources and tools to rollout effective and critical enforcement.
In contrast to these illegal short-term rentals, our hotels consist of entire ecosystems that consider the needs of our guests and our guests’ impact on the communities in which our hotels are situated. Hotels are self-contained environments that, with tremendous input from our community members, permitting authorities, employees, and cultural advisors, are designed to minimize the cost and footprint of our visitors while maximizing visitor spend and contribution to our economy. From maintenance of the beaches our visitors use to the promotion of volun-tourism and ecotourism opportunities for our guests, hotels are actively engineering positive visitor impact for the benefit of Hawaii.
If it is the intent of the Council to align the interests of kama‘aina and the visitor industry, then a moratorium on ‘permits for visitor accommodations’ (which reads as no more hotel rooms) is, in my belief, a misinformed approach. Rather than single out hotels, which contribute to our communities in countless ways, we should focus our ire on enforcement against the literal thousands of illegal short-term rentals that are taking housing away from local families, clogging our streets, breaking the law, not contributing to our tax base, skirting environmental compliance, non-compliant with basic health and safety regulations, lacking in community contributions, and destroying neighborhoods across Maui County and throughout Hawaii.
Yes, it is time to revisit our relationship with our visitors. And on behalf of HHA and our membership, we welcome every opportunity to continue our work with the Council and our communities in developing projects that put locals to work, invest in environmental stewardship, and promote local business, schools, and non-profits while honoring our host culture. Thank you for your time and consideration of these comments.
With Aloha,
Jerry Gibson, President
Hawaii Hotel Alliance
Jerry@hawaiihotelalliance.com
Maui is a classic case of allowing rich people and corporations to become the primary economy without ever considering or applying a ounce of concern for the quality of life of the residents that work and provide everything. The residential rental price issue here is beyond out of control, not to mention the almost nonexistent supply of affordable housing (rental and for sale) for all the people that create and support the infrastructure that allows those corporations and wealthy people to come here and exploit the housing and commercial property markets, straight out of reach of the residents. There has to be some sort of control over the hospitality industry and out of state residential home buying. I hope I can still afford to life here by the time our government starts thinking about our quality of life over people that already have everything.
PLEASE DO NOT authorize a permit to build yet another tourist accomodation/hotel on Maui. Enough is enough. There are more than enough hotels and other places for visitors to stay.
We have allowed the sacrifice of the health and beauty of our community in pursuit of the almighty tourist dollar. NOW is the time to stop; for our health, for the health or our beautiful environment, and to encourage the community to find sustainable ways to support our community - i.e., diversifying into sustainable agriculture, expanding the support and education of farmers, providing for ag processing facilities, committing more aggressively to alternative energy, focusing on affordable housing, and limiting the number of visitors on an annual basis - we are overrun with tourists.
Kihei is becoming the “wrong side of the tracks” destination. Kihei is becoming the lower rung destination to Wailea. Kihei is so over crowded now, it can’t service the tourist crowds that are already here. Kihei has little support from her absentee landlords who buy without seeing, who rent without caring about whom they rent to,
and who care nothing about quality of Hawaiian of the islands or culture, who care only for the money they make. These same “investors” then complain about the cost of living that they don’t experience themselves. Kihei is becoming a company town for tourists but not for residents. Someday only tourists will stay here...the majority of the residents will have moved out.
I support the moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations because we do not have the infrastructure to support more and more tourists, for example, roads, parking lots, waste water treatment facilities, and public bathrooms. Since tourism levels returned, traffic has gotten worse and it’s difficult to find parking at the beach.
I am in full support of the moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations. The population on Maui has been increasing significantly over the last few years and this has led to increased need for housing and services which is beyond the infrastructure for this well preserved county. Increasing tourism will eventually overpopulate Maui.
We need to make sure we use sound principles to keep Maui a destination where visitors want to visit. Building hotels, and other vacation rentals without assessing what is already built and how it is occupied is not very prudent. Please extend the moratorium to give the county time to see what is in the best interest of Maui County in the long run. To understand what happens when development goes unchecked, just turn to the 6am local news any morning and see the traffic and congestion on Oahu.
There are already enough rooms and beds for a level of tourism that is excessive. We cannot sustain more visitor numbers and should be focusing on how to diversify our economy, not increase our capacity beyond the already stretched limits. This moratorium needs to be expanded to include all areas of the island, not just Kihei and West side. We are at capacity and need to turn our attention to better infrastructure and environmental protection.
Although I work in the Tourist industry, I am in full support of a moratorium on building permits for any vacation rental structures anywhere on the island of Maui.
The visitor count has been over bearing to our infrastructure and mental and emotional health for too many years now. It has been creating a stressful state in which we live in. It is not fair for the residents of this island to have to loose the quality of our own lives in order to accommodate any industry. No amount of financial gains are worth the degradation of our quality of life. Please support this bill to put a moratorium on building any more accommodations for the visitor industry and make this moratorium island wide. We need to figure out how to monitor the visitor industry first before we allow anymore accommodations to be built.
Thanks
Steven Forman
I am full time resident of Maui, public school educator and parent. I have family roots on Maui that go back to pre-colonization times. I completely support the moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations. I further strongly suggest that it is for all of Maui County, and not certain areas. We are building without foresight. We need to effectively address the long-term and very real impact of water and resources being, literally, drained away by the visitor accommodations which are currently here. Our ocean quality is dramatically affected by hotel run off. This in turn impacts our reefs and our ocean life, much of which would normally be a healthy source of food. Now, I question it. If my husband can get staph from the ocean water surrounding our island, what could happen if he ate from the sea life caught in that same ocean water? We build and build but we are not building. We're actually digging. We're digging a metaphorical grave for any chance of a healthy and sustainable life for our local community..
The Maui Council has voted to support sustainable tourism and it is time to focus on quality over quantity in Visitor accommodations. . I strongly support a moratorium on building until we can create a clear and sustainable plan. The roads will not accommodate more growth. If we lose our Small community feel, we will lose our high ticket visitors. Our economy needs to balance the social/community costs with the economic benefits. Mahalo!
Tourism on Maui has passed the point where it is serving residents and has now become the other way around. While visitor arrivals are breaking records lately, local resident sentiment about this increased tourism is at an all-time low. This is a problem that is getting worse, and the first step in solving any problem is to stop making it worse. This tourism accommodations moratorium will give us time to address the problem. Please PASS this moratorium before it's too late to undo the damage.
Council of the County of Maui
The Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation
RE: MORATORIUM ON BUILDING PERMITS FOR VISITOR ACCOMMODATIONS (IT-54)
Hearing date and time: Monday, May 17, 2021 at 9:00 a.m.
Aloha Chair Sugimura and Infrastructure and Transportation Committee Members,
I am Co-Founder of the Hawaii chapter of 350.org, the largest international organization dedicated to fighting climate change. 350Hawaii.org supports the proposed moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations. This proposed bill would amend the building code to place a moratorium on visitor accommodations development in West and South Maui, an action which would help ensure the County stays on track to implement critical plan action items relating to the visitor-industry impact on the County's environment. By doing so, this bill would help preserve the County's environment and efforts towards climate change mitigation and resilience-building.
Just last month the State Legislature followed Maui County’s lead and officially declared a Climate Emergency for Hawaii. But it is not enough to acknowledge the crisis we face, meaningful actions to address the climate crisis must be taken. This moratorium would do just that by providing the County with clear policy direction to mitigate climate change and work toward resilience.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of the proposed moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations.
Sherry Pollack, Co-Founder, 350Hawaii.org
I think supporting And not stressing Maui’s natural habitats and resources is mandatory with the climate changing
Aloha, I am a South Maui employed permanent resident for 32 years and a homeowner. I pay Hawaii taxes and I support any Maui county moratorium regarding building new visitor accommodations in hotel, motel, and condominium structures including increasing size for more rooms. This moratorium would include especially the Maui Coast Hotel on South Kihei Road. Our island is home for many generations to come. Please stop thinking of the tourist job markets. There are plenty of other types of employment. We cannot keep building more structures with the backward beliefs to maintain or increase contractors and hotel workers employment. Our island is small, our infrastructure is at capacity. Space should be left for smart growth for future generations. They will look back and call these approvals greedy and selfish if not lacking intelligence. Smart up now and approve the moratorium. Mahalo.
We have got to stop building short term rentals on maui there are enough on island already. It seems to me that no one cares about the local people that live here and can't even find an affordable place for their family not to mention the island can't handle anymore people this has got to stop and tourism need to do controlled.
To whom this may concern,
I am writing in favor of a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodation, we already have sufficient accommodation for visitors, and do not have the infrastructure to support the accommodations already in place, sewage, water and roads to name a few. Our sea leeks are rising, reefs and beaches and sea life are being “loved to death” by too many visitors. It is past time to begin investigating in ways to diversify our economy away from short term visitors. Our over-reliance on visitors has become even more painfully obvious during this pandemic. Pleas approve this moratorium for the sake of our future, not only of our beautiful island, but for our keiki who are our future.
Sincerely,
Joy Kaaz (Kihei resident)
May 14, 2021
Council of the County of Maui
The Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation
Councilmember Yuki Lei K. Sugimura, Committee Chair
Councilmember Tasha Kama, Committee Vice-Chair
RE: MORATORIUM ON BUILDING PERMITS FOR VISITOR ACCOMMODATIONS (IT-54)
Hearing date and time: Monday, May 17, 2021 at 9:00 a.m.
Aloha Chair Sugimura, Vice-Chair Kama and Honorable members of the Infrastructure and Transportation Committee,
Mahalo for the opportunity to provide comments on behalf of Hawaii Hotel Alliance ("HHA") regarding the County’s consideration of a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations.
Like so many industries, the pandemic was a game-changer for tourism. The COVID-19 economic recession left Hawaii’s hotels the hardest hit market in the country. For a year, most hotels throughout the county were shut down and/or at occupancy levels that have left many properties teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Despite the devastating impact this pandemic has had on our bottom line, the industry doubled down on our commitment to our island home and to the most valuable assets we have: the men and women of Hawaii who work in and around our hotels.
Throughout the pandemic, our hotels extended the health and welfare benefits for our furloughed employees and developed life-saving ‘Safe Stay’ protocols to protect our workers, our guests, and the communities we serve. Our hotels invested directly in community food drives, supported kupuna care, and engaged in countless acts of support for churches, schools, and relief programs. The legitimate visitor industry has worked tirelessly to keep kama‘aina safe and healthy while working towards the safe reopening of our hotels. Simply put: our hotel industry will continue its generational commitment to being an integral part of the health of thriving communities across Maui County and across our State because the legitimate visitor industry believes that tourism is additive to support the well-being of those of us who call Hawaii home. The same cannot be said of illegal short-term rentals.
At the heart of this matter of a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations appears to be a desire to control the negative impacts of tourism across Maui County. At HHA and throughout the legitimate visitor industry, we share this concern. We believe the conversation should focus on the causes of the negative impacts of tourism and not the parts of the visitor industry that are crucial to our health, our culture, and our way of life here in the islands.
In 2009, Hawaii had 43,000 hotel rooms which ran at high occupancy with seven million visitors to our shores. In 2019, we had the same number of hotel rooms but more than 10.2 million visitors. In the last 20 years, our total hotel room count on Maui has actually fallen, while at the same time legal and illegal short-term rentals have exploded, effectively permitting a 6,000 room hotel and a 10,000 room illegal, unhosted B&B directly into the heart of some of our most coveted neighborhoods and fragile ecosystems across the county. The vast majority of these short-term rental operators do not live in Maui County. While we have made progress in putting tougher laws on the books to deter these criminals from operating illegal hotels in our neighborhoods, our hardworking partners at the county have admitted that we still lack the resources and tools to rollout effective and critical enforcement.
In contrast to these illegal short-term rentals, our hotels consist of entire ecosystems that consider the needs of our guests and our guests’ impact on the communities in which our hotels are situated. Hotels are self-contained environments that, with tremendous input from our community members, permitting authorities, employees, and cultural advisors, are designed to minimize the cost and footprint of our visitors while maximizing visitor spend and contribution to our economy. From maintenance of the beaches our visitors use to the promotion of volun-tourism and ecotourism opportunities for our guests, hotels are actively engineering positive visitor impact for the benefit of Hawaii.
If it is the intent of the Council to align the interests of kama‘aina and the visitor industry, then a moratorium on ‘permits for visitor accommodations’ (which reads as no more hotel rooms) is, in my belief, a misinformed approach. Rather than single out hotels, which contribute to our communities in countless ways, we should focus our ire on enforcement against the literal thousands of illegal short-term rentals that are taking housing away from local families, clogging our streets, breaking the law, not contributing to our tax base, skirting environmental compliance, non-compliant with basic health and safety regulations, lacking in community contributions, and destroying neighborhoods across Maui County and throughout Hawaii.
Yes, it is time to revisit our relationship with our visitors. And on behalf of HHA and our membership, we welcome every opportunity to continue our work with the Council and our communities in developing projects that put locals to work, invest in environmental stewardship, and promote local business, schools, and non-profits while honoring our host culture. Thank you for your time and consideration of these comments.
With Aloha,
Jerry Gibson, President
Hawaii Hotel Alliance
Jerry@hawaiihotelalliance.com
Attached is the a Letter and memorandum from ARDA Hawaii regarding IT-54.