I am support of the moratorium on building permits for hotels&tourist bldgs. Our water supply could be soon devastated by the permits already granted. Our oceans are already subjected to runoffs not being filtered and insufficient old sewage systems and rising water will in some cases take away some beaches and homes in the future without a plan. The water supply to our small island is already in some areas considered drought condition. Our highways and roads are over crowded.and we have an insufficient bus system that cannot withstand more tourist trying to get around the island while leaving our workers behind. Please consider our future, our residents can’t afford housing. Vacation rentals leave us with no affordable homes, Please let the planning commission come up with a approved plan and pass this Bill.
Sincerely
sandra Brissette
From: pt wrk1 <ptwrk1@outlook.com>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 5:19 PM
To: Kelly King <Kelly.King@mauicounty.us>
Subject: I agree on the moratorium of stopping tourist housing, we have a massive problem with local housing.
I can not find a place and continue to live in housing that would be condemned if inspected. I have ran across lots of scams.
From: Penny Wakida <pwakida@hawaii.rr.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 1, 2021 12:23 PM
To: Kelly King <Kelly.King@mauicounty.us>
Subject: rental car moratorium
Aloha Ms King,
We applaud your proposal for a moratorium on visitor accommodations and wish to make an additional proposal for your consideration:
A moratorium on rental cars.
We, in West Maui, are especially impacted by traffic generated by rental cars. A trip from Lahaina to Wailuku takes 35 minutes at posted speed limits. This grew during the pre-pandemic era to 1-2 hours. I envision the limiting of rental cars to be controlled by the County at the car permitting department.
Limiting rental cars may create other means of transportation such as airport shuttles (similar to those at the Honolulu airport). Uber, Lyft and other ride sharing services will prosper.
We all were appalled at the acres of rental cars in Kahului after the start of the pandemic. Please help Maui to take control of our visitor industry so that locals can maintain their quality of life.
I'm writing to express my gratitude for Chair King's proposal, an overdue and much needed action. The destruction of our local ecosystems, faltering infrastructure, negative impact on residents, and lack of enough decent-paying jobs - all are urgent factors that must be addressed. It isn’t possible to do so without a pause in new resort building. What we have seen is the degradation of the tourist experience as well as harmful impact on locals. We need quality over quantity. Many other resort islands and communities have done just that, for example focusing on eco-tourism so that visitors can learn about the culture and ecosystems, and make a positive contribution to it during their stay. These are the kinds of visitors we could welcome.
We also need the opportunity to consider other income streams than the monopolistic hold tourism has here on Maui. No banking investor in their right mind would put all their eggs in one basket. Neither should Maui.
Who would have imagined that a global pandemic would provide the opportunity for Maui to re-think and review its visitor policies and over-reliance on tourism. The pandemic has been an eye-opening experience during which our people came very close to relying on nothing but "Ketchup and M&Ms" for food. I urge all councilmembers and Mayor Victorino to support the Moratorium.
Mahalo for your consideration,
Madolin Wells, Kihei
From: Keisa Liu <keisaliu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 6:48 AM
To: CARE Committee <CARE.Committee@mauicounty.us>
Subject: Keisa Liu - Testimony in Support of CARE-50
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.
Aloha, CARE Committee members. I am a full-time, permanent resident of Kihei and a member of the HALE Hawai’i community group. I am writing to express my strong support for both of the visitor accommodations moratoriums proposed by Kelly King and Keani Rawlins-Fernandez (or some third version combining the two).
We already have MORE then enough hotel rooms and vacation condos to house the number of visitors Maui’s infrastructure can properly handle, and MORE than enough to house the number of visitors we should be permitting under the resident-visitor ratio in our current county plan. Why do the hotels need to expand, when they are not operating at full capacity now? If they really need more revenue, they can raise rates instead. As for the construction workers, if they need jobs, they can get them from building affordable housing for residents, including their own ohanas and friends, instead of additional/expanded hotels and luxury condos for rich people from the mainland. Union opposition to these bills is very short-sighted and narrow-minded.
The tourism pause necessitated by the pandemic gave us the perspective to see that we MUST diversify our economy, both to insulate it against future emergencies and to preserve residents’ quality of life, as well as Maui’s infrastructure and ecosystems. Let’s not waste the present opportunity to build on that insight with actual policy changes. Let’s not succumb to the pressure for tourism growth, when what we need is better tourism management. Let’s not build any more of what we have too much of already. Instead, let’s focus Maui’s workforce and investment resources on the things we really NEED and DON’T have: affordable housing, updated infrastructure, more local food production, and a better future for our keiki, with good-paying jobs that enable them to stay on island.
It has been reported that Mayor Victorino is threatening to veto these bills. Please don’t let that discourage you from passing them. Both of these bills reflect the overwhelming sentiment of your constituents that Maui residents deserve to be treated as MORE important than visitors, not less. We, not the visitors or the tourism industry, are the ones who will be voting in the next election. If the Mayor vetoes these bills, you can and SHOULD override him.
Thank you for your attention. - Sarah Hofstadter, Kihei resident
I am support of the moratorium on building permits for hotels&tourist bldgs. Our water supply could be soon devastated by the permits already granted. Our oceans are already subjected to runoffs not being filtered and insufficient old sewage systems and rising water will in some cases take away some beaches and homes in the future without a plan. The water supply to our small island is already in some areas considered drought condition. Our highways and roads are over crowded.and we have an insufficient bus system that cannot withstand more tourist trying to get around the island while leaving our workers behind. Please consider our future, our residents can’t afford housing. Vacation rentals leave us with no affordable homes, Please let the planning commission come up with a approved plan and pass this Bill.
Sincerely
sandra Brissette
I support a MORATORIUM ON VISITOR ACCOMMODATIONS DEVELOPMENT
From: pt wrk1 <ptwrk1@outlook.com>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 5:19 PM
To: Kelly King <Kelly.King@mauicounty.us>
Subject: I agree on the moratorium of stopping tourist housing, we have a massive problem with local housing.
I can not find a place and continue to live in housing that would be condemned if inspected. I have ran across lots of scams.
Paul Terry
PO Box 8809955
Pukalani, Hi 96788
From: Penny Wakida <pwakida@hawaii.rr.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 1, 2021 12:23 PM
To: Kelly King <Kelly.King@mauicounty.us>
Subject: rental car moratorium
Aloha Ms King,
We applaud your proposal for a moratorium on visitor accommodations and wish to make an additional proposal for your consideration:
A moratorium on rental cars.
We, in West Maui, are especially impacted by traffic generated by rental cars. A trip from Lahaina to Wailuku takes 35 minutes at posted speed limits. This grew during the pre-pandemic era to 1-2 hours. I envision the limiting of rental cars to be controlled by the County at the car permitting department.
Limiting rental cars may create other means of transportation such as airport shuttles (similar to those at the Honolulu airport). Uber, Lyft and other ride sharing services will prosper.
We all were appalled at the acres of rental cars in Kahului after the start of the pandemic. Please help Maui to take control of our visitor industry so that locals can maintain their quality of life.
Thank you for your service to Maui County,
Penny Wakida
retired teacher
Lahaina
Testimony of the Hawaii Lodging & Tourism Association - Attached
Aloha Councilmembers,
I'm writing to express my gratitude for Chair King's proposal, an overdue and much needed action. The destruction of our local ecosystems, faltering infrastructure, negative impact on residents, and lack of enough decent-paying jobs - all are urgent factors that must be addressed. It isn’t possible to do so without a pause in new resort building. What we have seen is the degradation of the tourist experience as well as harmful impact on locals. We need quality over quantity. Many other resort islands and communities have done just that, for example focusing on eco-tourism so that visitors can learn about the culture and ecosystems, and make a positive contribution to it during their stay. These are the kinds of visitors we could welcome.
We also need the opportunity to consider other income streams than the monopolistic hold tourism has here on Maui. No banking investor in their right mind would put all their eggs in one basket. Neither should Maui.
Who would have imagined that a global pandemic would provide the opportunity for Maui to re-think and review its visitor policies and over-reliance on tourism. The pandemic has been an eye-opening experience during which our people came very close to relying on nothing but "Ketchup and M&Ms" for food. I urge all councilmembers and Mayor Victorino to support the Moratorium.
Mahalo for your consideration,
Madolin Wells, Kihei
From: Keisa Liu <keisaliu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 6:48 AM
To: CARE Committee <CARE.Committee@mauicounty.us>
Subject: Keisa Liu - Testimony in Support of CARE-50
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
Aloha, CARE Committee members. I am a full-time, permanent resident of Kihei and a member of the HALE Hawai’i community group. I am writing to express my strong support for both of the visitor accommodations moratoriums proposed by Kelly King and Keani Rawlins-Fernandez (or some third version combining the two).
We already have MORE then enough hotel rooms and vacation condos to house the number of visitors Maui’s infrastructure can properly handle, and MORE than enough to house the number of visitors we should be permitting under the resident-visitor ratio in our current county plan. Why do the hotels need to expand, when they are not operating at full capacity now? If they really need more revenue, they can raise rates instead. As for the construction workers, if they need jobs, they can get them from building affordable housing for residents, including their own ohanas and friends, instead of additional/expanded hotels and luxury condos for rich people from the mainland. Union opposition to these bills is very short-sighted and narrow-minded.
The tourism pause necessitated by the pandemic gave us the perspective to see that we MUST diversify our economy, both to insulate it against future emergencies and to preserve residents’ quality of life, as well as Maui’s infrastructure and ecosystems. Let’s not waste the present opportunity to build on that insight with actual policy changes. Let’s not succumb to the pressure for tourism growth, when what we need is better tourism management. Let’s not build any more of what we have too much of already. Instead, let’s focus Maui’s workforce and investment resources on the things we really NEED and DON’T have: affordable housing, updated infrastructure, more local food production, and a better future for our keiki, with good-paying jobs that enable them to stay on island.
It has been reported that Mayor Victorino is threatening to veto these bills. Please don’t let that discourage you from passing them. Both of these bills reflect the overwhelming sentiment of your constituents that Maui residents deserve to be treated as MORE important than visitors, not less. We, not the visitors or the tourism industry, are the ones who will be voting in the next election. If the Mayor vetoes these bills, you can and SHOULD override him.
Thank you for your attention. - Sarah Hofstadter, Kihei resident