Please limit tourism to less than 33%. We are loosing our precious Island to overwhelming effects of over tourism! Our home, land, sea, and environment are deteriorating at an alarming rate. Please stop this insanity now!
The moratorium we don't need more rooms for tourists we need more homes for residents we need to be better for all of u who lives here we are getting pushed out of our homes when you say affordable is it really Mahalo for letting me voice my opinion
I support this moratorium, and I ask that it be made island-wide. because the main problem we face is over-tourism. and we have exceeded our 1:3 tourist to local ratio. The current ratio is about 2.4:1. Maui has too many tourists, and it is overwhelming our infrastructure, and affecting teh local population and limited resources. Maui has more visitor accommodations than Oahu per capita. and we are suffering for it. Please make this moratorium island wide so that develpers will not simply relocate building visitor accommodation to other parts of the island. aloha, David Dorn, Kihei Maui.
I support the moratorium on Building Hotels/vacation building permits. Without proper planning our small island could see disasters of shortage of water, polluted oceans from improper sewage systems destroying our much need coral reefs and fish . Limited food supply during hurricane disasters. Much needed native plants and greenery to filter runoff. Our beaches need to be able to grow so that the up coming water levels do not affect buildings and homes and we still can have a beach. Our roads are in need to be expanded or new roads need to be built because they are already impacted by to much traffic yet more buildings are already approved to be built and yet they are still building with no one to stop but you. On the road to Hana the other day tourist were parking on the road leaving just one lane open to maneuver around without a care to the safety of us that need to work and go home. To make a turn onto north Kihei road already takes 5-10 minutes sometimes. So many things needs to be planned before building. We are in an island with limited space and once built without proper planning could lead to drought, limited food supply, polluted oceans. Please pass this moratorium. Our future lands in your hands right now. This isn’t a stop forever it’s a pause to plan and do what’s right.
Sincerely,
Sandra Brissette
Aloha Chair King, Vice Chair Sinenci, and Councilmembers,
My name is Keisa Liu and I am testifying in support of Agenda item CARE-50.
I read through some of the testimony and noticed that large businesses who are not in support of this moratorium have been citing the good they have done for the community as a way to prove that allowing them to build is a win-win situation for everyone. I do not believe that it is in the community’s best interest to accept PR campaigns as proof that large businesses care about us.
I just want to remind everyone why businesses do “good things” for the environment or a community and their investments are often drops in the bucket compared to their profits.
The sole purpose of a business is to make money. So if you see businesses engaging in seemingly unprofitable endeavors, especially very large businesses like hotel chains, there is probably a money-making reason behind it.
For instance, if you have a hotel chain executive tell you they are doing all these things to protect and respect the environment and culture, that is most likely because, if they don’t, it will cut into their profit-margin.
The reality is global public sentiment is that we need to care for our environment. Their customer-base now cares about the environment. Their customer base may be more sympathetic to the host culture issues. So business executives will make the least costly improvements to keep their base and their profits.
They may have education initiatives but that’s just to say they did it. Locally sourced food will be fresher, appease the customer, pacify the local people, and they can pass the extra expense onto the customer. They may invest, let’s say, $4 million on environmentally-friendly energy infrastructure. But they are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of the environment and making this kind of change is smart because it cuts their energy cost. The reality is they are most likely going to get tax breaks for all of these environmentally-friendly initiatives so it is as if they invested nothing.
So when we talk about having a win-win relationship with big businesses like hotel chains, we need to recognize that is the angle the executives are coming from. They are not doing these things because they want to protect the environment or because they care about the local people. They are doing those things because they want to protect their profits.
This is where you come in. It is up to you to protect our environment and our people to help ensure that we have a good quality of life. So yeah, I think there should be a moratorium on visitor accommodations development.
I would ask Council to even go a step further and look at how many planes are coming into our islands every day. Because the reality is, companies are building visitor accommodations in response to the demand. So as long as we have millions of visitors flying into our islands, the hotels are going to want to accommodate that. Profit from that. But if we can somehow slow the flow of tourists, it’s not going to make good business sense to build accommodations.
Mahalo for your time and for allowing me to voice my thoughts and suggestions on this matter.
Please stop the flood of tourism that is changing and over running our island.
Please limit tourism to less than 33%. We are loosing our precious Island to overwhelming effects of over tourism! Our home, land, sea, and environment are deteriorating at an alarming rate. Please stop this insanity now!
The moratorium we don't need more rooms for tourists we need more homes for residents we need to be better for all of u who lives here we are getting pushed out of our homes when you say affordable is it really Mahalo for letting me voice my opinion
I support this moratorium, and I ask that it be made island-wide. because the main problem we face is over-tourism. and we have exceeded our 1:3 tourist to local ratio. The current ratio is about 2.4:1. Maui has too many tourists, and it is overwhelming our infrastructure, and affecting teh local population and limited resources. Maui has more visitor accommodations than Oahu per capita. and we are suffering for it. Please make this moratorium island wide so that develpers will not simply relocate building visitor accommodation to other parts of the island. aloha, David Dorn, Kihei Maui.
I support the moratorium on Building Hotels/vacation building permits. Without proper planning our small island could see disasters of shortage of water, polluted oceans from improper sewage systems destroying our much need coral reefs and fish . Limited food supply during hurricane disasters. Much needed native plants and greenery to filter runoff. Our beaches need to be able to grow so that the up coming water levels do not affect buildings and homes and we still can have a beach. Our roads are in need to be expanded or new roads need to be built because they are already impacted by to much traffic yet more buildings are already approved to be built and yet they are still building with no one to stop but you. On the road to Hana the other day tourist were parking on the road leaving just one lane open to maneuver around without a care to the safety of us that need to work and go home. To make a turn onto north Kihei road already takes 5-10 minutes sometimes. So many things needs to be planned before building. We are in an island with limited space and once built without proper planning could lead to drought, limited food supply, polluted oceans. Please pass this moratorium. Our future lands in your hands right now. This isn’t a stop forever it’s a pause to plan and do what’s right.
Sincerely,
Sandra Brissette
Aloha Chair King, Vice Chair Sinenci, and Councilmembers,
My name is Keisa Liu and I am testifying in support of Agenda item CARE-50.
I read through some of the testimony and noticed that large businesses who are not in support of this moratorium have been citing the good they have done for the community as a way to prove that allowing them to build is a win-win situation for everyone. I do not believe that it is in the community’s best interest to accept PR campaigns as proof that large businesses care about us.
I just want to remind everyone why businesses do “good things” for the environment or a community and their investments are often drops in the bucket compared to their profits.
The sole purpose of a business is to make money. So if you see businesses engaging in seemingly unprofitable endeavors, especially very large businesses like hotel chains, there is probably a money-making reason behind it.
For instance, if you have a hotel chain executive tell you they are doing all these things to protect and respect the environment and culture, that is most likely because, if they don’t, it will cut into their profit-margin.
The reality is global public sentiment is that we need to care for our environment. Their customer-base now cares about the environment. Their customer base may be more sympathetic to the host culture issues. So business executives will make the least costly improvements to keep their base and their profits.
They may have education initiatives but that’s just to say they did it. Locally sourced food will be fresher, appease the customer, pacify the local people, and they can pass the extra expense onto the customer. They may invest, let’s say, $4 million on environmentally-friendly energy infrastructure. But they are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of the environment and making this kind of change is smart because it cuts their energy cost. The reality is they are most likely going to get tax breaks for all of these environmentally-friendly initiatives so it is as if they invested nothing.
So when we talk about having a win-win relationship with big businesses like hotel chains, we need to recognize that is the angle the executives are coming from. They are not doing these things because they want to protect the environment or because they care about the local people. They are doing those things because they want to protect their profits.
This is where you come in. It is up to you to protect our environment and our people to help ensure that we have a good quality of life. So yeah, I think there should be a moratorium on visitor accommodations development.
I would ask Council to even go a step further and look at how many planes are coming into our islands every day. Because the reality is, companies are building visitor accommodations in response to the demand. So as long as we have millions of visitors flying into our islands, the hotels are going to want to accommodate that. Profit from that. But if we can somehow slow the flow of tourists, it’s not going to make good business sense to build accommodations.
Mahalo for your time and for allowing me to voice my thoughts and suggestions on this matter.
Warmly,
Keisa Liu