What happened to the Community Plan Committee meetings?

7/29/23 #kihei

You may be aware that South Maui is finally proceeding with an update of our 1998 community plan. It was the Kihei-Makena Community Plan, but is now improved as the South Maui Community Plan. After numerous months of community outreach, the process began to name the advisory committee (CPAC) with nine district volunteer residents named by the County Council, and four by the Mayor, last year. They were well vetted, appointed, completed the legal forms and had them notarized; the first meeting was Oct 19, 2022.

KCA posted reports on our website and facebook page weekly

As the group gelled in the early meetings into November, committee leadership was elected, one of the Mayor’s appointees quit and was quickly replaced, and they fell into weekly three hour meetings every Wednesday evening. The volunteers continued along, agreed to extend the meeting by 30 minutes, going from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm every week, to keep up. Challenges such as no virtual participation permitted, no Corporation Counsel (legal guidance) present and changes in the Planning Department staff were overcome by the volunteer team as they marched forward undaunted.

Then out of the blue, after many months, the volunteers were advised they had to quickly complete a financial disclosure form to continue to participate. There was no explanation why this was not required all along, just get it done quick or you cannot participate. The majority of them made the cutoff but a few did not, so the number of CPAC members dropped from 13 to 8 or 9 but quorum (the minimum votes required for decision) remained at 7. Basically this brought the process to a halt as it was nearly impossible to get enough votes to make quorum, so the meetings were cancelled after June 21.  Even when the tardy volunteers did submit the form, the committee was told it could not meet again until the Board of Ethics met in July to approve the financial disclosures. The Board of Ethics met but did not have quorum (enough members present) and so did not approve the financial disclosures, pushing their decision to their next regular meeting in August. All meetings ceased for weeks!!  Currently the County Planning Department advises that the next meeting is expected to be Aug. 23 (assuming that the Board of Ethics meets before then and has quorum), so basically two months were lost. Why?

If the volunteers were qualified for months, what changed? Who decided that this change was now required and must be accommodated within five days?  When did Corporate Counsel notify the Director of the Planning Department that the members of all committees and commissions must submit financial disclosures? If the work of the CPAC was valid from October until June, why would it no longer be valid after that without the additional requirement of financial disclosures? Given the very significant impact on the CPAC volunteers, why must they wait two months for the Board of Ethics to approve the disclosures they submitted? Our community deserves an explanation and accounting.