The West Maui Community Plan Advisory Committee (CPAC) met for many months in 2019, and worked very hard to update the plan to reflect the community’s desire to prioritize truly affordable housing while preventing sprawl and overdevelopment of the visitor industry. In particular, much effort was put into making the wording of the plan unambiguous and enforceable. The current draft is the result of intensive and thorough discussion, as well as compromise.
This draft Community Plan is now being reviewed by the Maui Planning Commission, which will pass its recommendations on the Maui County Council for final adoption. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the planning commission will respect the hard work of the CPAC and the wider community that put so much time and effort into this plan. Already there has been discussion of undoing the effort of the CPAC to use very specific and strong language that cannot be ignored. The use of the words, “shall,” and “require” will give the community plans the teeth – the enforceability – they need. Words like “promote” and “encourage” are exactly whatʻs wrong with the language of the community plans, and makes them difficult to enforce. If the community plans cannot be enforced, then the CPAC members and the public who participated will have wasted their time, and citizen confidence in government will be eroded even further. We need to ask the Maui Planning Commission, and then the Maui County Council, to resist those who call for the strong, enforceable language of the community plans to be weakened.
Meanwhile, the Maui County Planning Department has begun a parallel effort to update the South Maui Community Plan. The department recently met with Maui Tomorrow to discuss our work in the South Maui area and to hear our thoughts about South Maui’s future. We were happy to share information with them, and look forward to contributing to this process going forward. As with the West Maui Community Plan, your participation can and will make a huge difference!