The South Maui Community & KCA turned out for second meeting

10/31/17 # kihei
OK, did you miss this meeting too? You gave no input on how to best spend $1.5 M in South Maui to alleviate the homelessness problem?

Last evening, decision makers heard from maybe thirty guys, certainly more than they did at the first meeting (SEE https://gokihei.org/volunteer/homelessness-meeting-this-morning-brings-out-mostly-organization-guys), If you do not offer input, your complaints about the decisions made may be ignored. The meeting was scheduled for two hours and while a few left before the conclusion, many remained after 7:30.

For KCA we had a quorum with seven directors present, as well as a few 2018 Board nominees and several general members too.

It is our understanding that this $1.5 M was collected from various south Maui developers to be used for work force housing as part of the county process to approve their developments. The funds were handed over to Ke Hale A Ke Ola (KHAKO) in 2004, and have sat here dormant for thirteen years. As one attendee stated, how much more could have been done with that amount of money thirteen years ago!  How much less now? We are extremely appreciative of South Maui’s Kelly King for discovering this “windfall,” and bringing it to our community via these public meetings. 

To be clear the KHAKO executive director Monique Yamashita has been in place less than two years, so this is not on her, but who was responsible for letting this drastically needed money earmarked for this dire South Maui need lay dormant for over a decade??

But now that it  has been uncovered, what is the best use of it in 2018? Apparently the original plan was to create a facility in South Maui similar to the KHAKO one in West Maui, but at this point that is financially impossible. But Monique explained that with approval of her organization, the developers who contributed and the county government, another somewhat related use can be put in place. She has been communicating with the developers and expects they will agree to any reasonable proposal.

Our expectation is the plan will either go towards a resource center to help the homeless community or use the $1.5 M in some way to access additional funding for this use.

Stay tuned.

South Maui Councilor Kelly King has organized these meetings