Before you move Bill 108 forward, apply a basic planning principle already used by other governments:
Do not approve additional growth without determining whether the infrastructure necessary to support it exists, will exist, or is funded and scheduled to exist.
This is the principle behind concurrency and adequate public facilities requirements. Government establishes measurable standards for roads, water, wastewater, drainage, emergency services and other essential systems; determines existing and committed capacity; calculates additional demand; and, where capacity is insufficient, requires mitigation, infrastructure improvements, phasing or deferral.
Maui does not need to copy another jurisdiction. Maui needs an island-appropriate system. But the principle is simple:
Measure capacity. Establish standards. Identify deficiencies. Fund the infrastructure. Then allow the additional demand.
That is especially important because Bill 108 itself anticipates continued resort, commercial and residential growth while acknowledging that South Maui's major roads are already heavily used and at capacity and that future development will place severe burdens on existing infrastructure.
At the same time, this plan is intended to guide South Maui for approximately twenty years.
If you are planning twenty years of growth, you should be planning twenty years of infrastructure at the same time.
Start with a baseline capacity assessment: potable water, wastewater, drainage, roads and intersections, fire and EMS, evacuation routes, electrical and communications systems, and other critical infrastructure. Determine existing capacity, capacity already committed to approved development, remaining capacity and reasonable emergency reserve capacity.
Then answer the fundamental question:
After accounting for residents, visitors, businesses and approved development, how much capacity actually remains?
Maui is an island. Capacity cannot be measured only under normal conditions. Government should also determine what essential systems can support when a road closes, electricity fails, water service is disrupted, communications go down or outside supplies are interrupted.
Councilmembers do not have to become engineers, hydrologists or emergency planners.
Your job is to require the work to be done.
Maui County already has Planning, Water Supply, Environmental Management, Public Works, Transportation, Fire and Public Safety, emergency management, professional staff, consultants, a County budget and a Capital Improvement Program.
I am not asking you to create another government program.
I am asking you to connect the government you already have:
Community Plan → Infrastructure Capacity → Development Demand → Deficiency → Capital Project → Funding → Construction → Growth.
That creates accountability.
Before advancing Bill 108, I ask you to do three things.
First, audit the 1998 Kihei-Makena Community Plan before repealing it. Identify what was promised, completed, unfinished or abandoned; what was spent; why projects remain incomplete; and what unfinished commitments are being carried into another twenty-year plan.
Second, require a South Maui infrastructure-capacity assessment. Establish measurable existing, committed and remaining capacity, reasonable emergency reserves, and objective minimum levels of service for the systems necessary to support South Maui.
Third, establish an island-appropriate concurrency policy. When additional development would exceed an adopted capacity or level-of-service standard, require the necessary infrastructure or mitigation to be funded and scheduled before or concurrently with the additional demand, using the appropriate legal mechanism determined by Corporation Counsel.
This is not necessarily about stopping development.
It is about pacing development with infrastructure.
That matters because Bill 108 itself acknowledges that growth-related impact fees recover only a portion of government expenditures and that existing residents will continue bearing an appropriate share of those costs.
Before creating additional demand, government should know what must be built, what it costs, who pays for it and when it will actually exist.
So the question is not whether Maui County can do this.
What prevents you from starting now?
You have the departments. You have the planning process. You have the budget. You have the Capital Improvement Program. You have professional staff. And you have a twenty-year planning decision in front of you.
Require those resources to produce the information necessary to govern: determine capacity, establish standards, identify deficiencies, determine what must be built, establish its cost and funding source, and determine when it will be completed.
Before repealing the old plan and adopting another twenty-year plan, show residents what happened to the last one and demonstrate how this one will actually be implemented.
Measure first. Build what is necessary. Then grow within what Maui can actually support.
Chair and Members of the DRIP Committee:
Before you move Bill 108 forward, apply a basic planning principle already used by other governments:
Do not approve additional growth without determining whether the infrastructure necessary to support it exists, will exist, or is funded and scheduled to exist.
This is the principle behind concurrency and adequate public facilities requirements. Government establishes measurable standards for roads, water, wastewater, drainage, emergency services and other essential systems; determines existing and committed capacity; calculates additional demand; and, where capacity is insufficient, requires mitigation, infrastructure improvements, phasing or deferral.
Maui does not need to copy another jurisdiction. Maui needs an island-appropriate system. But the principle is simple:
Measure capacity. Establish standards. Identify deficiencies. Fund the infrastructure. Then allow the additional demand.
That is especially important because Bill 108 itself anticipates continued resort, commercial and residential growth while acknowledging that South Maui's major roads are already heavily used and at capacity and that future development will place severe burdens on existing infrastructure.
At the same time, this plan is intended to guide South Maui for approximately twenty years.
If you are planning twenty years of growth, you should be planning twenty years of infrastructure at the same time.
Start with a baseline capacity assessment: potable water, wastewater, drainage, roads and intersections, fire and EMS, evacuation routes, electrical and communications systems, and other critical infrastructure. Determine existing capacity, capacity already committed to approved development, remaining capacity and reasonable emergency reserve capacity.
Then answer the fundamental question:
After accounting for residents, visitors, businesses and approved development, how much capacity actually remains?
Maui is an island. Capacity cannot be measured only under normal conditions. Government should also determine what essential systems can support when a road closes, electricity fails, water service is disrupted, communications go down or outside supplies are interrupted.
Councilmembers do not have to become engineers, hydrologists or emergency planners.
Your job is to require the work to be done.
Maui County already has Planning, Water Supply, Environmental Management, Public Works, Transportation, Fire and Public Safety, emergency management, professional staff, consultants, a County budget and a Capital Improvement Program.
I am not asking you to create another government program.
I am asking you to connect the government you already have:
Community Plan → Infrastructure Capacity → Development Demand → Deficiency → Capital Project → Funding → Construction → Growth.
That creates accountability.
Before advancing Bill 108, I ask you to do three things.
First, audit the 1998 Kihei-Makena Community Plan before repealing it. Identify what was promised, completed, unfinished or abandoned; what was spent; why projects remain incomplete; and what unfinished commitments are being carried into another twenty-year plan.
Second, require a South Maui infrastructure-capacity assessment. Establish measurable existing, committed and remaining capacity, reasonable emergency reserves, and objective minimum levels of service for the systems necessary to support South Maui.
Third, establish an island-appropriate concurrency policy. When additional development would exceed an adopted capacity or level-of-service standard, require the necessary infrastructure or mitigation to be funded and scheduled before or concurrently with the additional demand, using the appropriate legal mechanism determined by Corporation Counsel.
This is not necessarily about stopping development.
It is about pacing development with infrastructure.
That matters because Bill 108 itself acknowledges that growth-related impact fees recover only a portion of government expenditures and that existing residents will continue bearing an appropriate share of those costs.
Before creating additional demand, government should know what must be built, what it costs, who pays for it and when it will actually exist.
So the question is not whether Maui County can do this.
What prevents you from starting now?
You have the departments. You have the planning process. You have the budget. You have the Capital Improvement Program. You have professional staff. And you have a twenty-year planning decision in front of you.
Require those resources to produce the information necessary to govern: determine capacity, establish standards, identify deficiencies, determine what must be built, establish its cost and funding source, and determine when it will be completed.
Before repealing the old plan and adopting another twenty-year plan, show residents what happened to the last one and demonstrate how this one will actually be implemented.
Measure first. Build what is necessary. Then grow within what Maui can actually support.
Thank you for reading.
Edward Codelia, Maui Resident