KAILUA-KONA — Tiny homes for Kailua-Kona homeless. Tens of millions of dollars spent on parks and West Hawaii roads. And a county willingness to take over management of Honokohau Harbor. ADVERTISING KAILUA-KONA — Tiny homes for Kailua-Kona homeless. Tens of
KAILUA-KONA — Tiny homes for Kailua-Kona homeless. Tens of millions of dollars spent on parks and West Hawaii roads. And a county willingness to take over management of Honokohau Harbor.
Those were the highlights of Mayor Billy Kenoi’s last luncheon with the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce, an annual event where the mayor and his cabinet update the community on how county sweat and dollars are making lives better in West Hawaii.
Tuesday’s buffet had the notes of a wrap-up as term-limited Kenoi heads into the last months of his administration.
“Thank you very much for the honor and privilege of serving Hawaii Island,” Kenoi told the crowd at the end of his speech, which earned a standing ovation at the Sheraton Kona Resort &Spa at Keauhou Bay.
But before the heartfelt signoff, Kenoi touched on a lot of county action in West Hawaii.
Kenoi highlighted the 91 units of county workforce housing in Waikoloa where homes in the $280,000 to $290,000 range are designed to lower the hurdle to an affordable home. The last 16 units of Kamakoa Nui will likely be sold out by the end of the month, said housing administrator Susan Akiyama, who was part of a panel with whom Kenoi addressed the couple hundred people in the crowd during the two-hour event.
By October, members of Kailua-Kona’s homeless population will hopefully find a welcoming, long-term stay in 32 units to be built out of shipping containers near the Friendly Place in the Old Industrial Area, Akiyama said. The $2.4 million project, funded by county capital improvement dollars, has met resistance from business owners who worry the facility will draw more homeless people into the area.
But that won’t be the case, Akiyama said.
“We believe we will be serving the population that is there now,” she told the newspaper. “There are already homeless people in the Old Industrial Area.”
Laundry and storage facilities will be available onsite and additional parking will need to be constructed, Akiyama said. The county is also building dog kennels for people who would stay on the street if there was no place to accommodate their animals.
Following a Housing First model that has seen success around the nation, drug and alcohol treatment will not be a prerequisite to housing, Akiyama said, and there will be no time limit on how long residents can stay.
Ground was broken on the project at the end of February.
“We gotta be proactive, and not wish it away but work with the problem,” Kenoi said.
Kenoi has overseen a $150 million investment in county parks around the island during his tenure, including an ongoing $10 million renovation of Mauna Kea Park. The mayor used that park as an example of ways the local agency can be a better manager than the state despite a paternalistic control the state has historically exercised over lands and education.
When the county took over management of the park some months ago, it lacked sinks and rubbish bins and toilets were unsanitary, he said; it used to be a place where people didn’t stop. The county has repaved the parking lot and put in a playground and is in the process of renovating the cabins and installing kitchens and walking paths.
“You’re in a car with eight kids and they’re all going crazy and you’re driving along and you find a playground, it’s one puuhonua,” he said, drawing laughs in the reference to a place of refuge.
The county would also like to take over management of Honokohau Harbor, said Kenoi. He urged the public to support House Bill 2235 — legislation that would pave the way for privatization or county management of the state facility.
A succession of governors have failed to live up to their promises for the harbor, he said.
“Why are we arguing with the state over mismanagement?” he said. “It makes no sense someone in Ala Moana telling you what you can and can’t do at Honokohau Harbor.”
Hilo’s Banyan Drive, a rundown area mismanaged by the state for years, is a County Council vote away from being placed under a new county redevelopment authority, Kenoi pointed out.
“We’ll hopefully have the ability to create an authority and take (the harbor) over to the county,” Kenoi said. “We can and will manage it better than it has been in the past.”
In response to a question about what the county is doing to address future sea level increases due to global warming, Kenoi said there has been discussion and a stream of information coming in, but nothing has been initiated on a policy level.
The county is using scenario-based software that will allow it to model sea level increases during general plan updates, said planning director Duane Kanuha. When the changes in sea level can be predicted reliably, the county will be faced with policy decisions, such as potentially limiting development in areas that could be inundated, Kanuha said.
It’ll be something future administrations will have to tackle, Kenoi acknowledged.
“It will be a hard conversation coming up,” he said.
The response to the dengue outbreak, while not perfect, has helped the county grapple with how it would handle Zika, chikungunya and other tropical disease outbreaks, Kenoi said.
“We’re at a better place in April than we were back in November,” he said.
Kenoi’s talk and the question and answer session after didn’t bring up Kenoi’s legal circumstance. But Kenoi, who was indicted March 23 on theft and tampering charges in relation to alleged misuse of his county-issued purchasing card, said during his speech that one of his proudest accomplishments during his tenure is that the divide between East and West Hawaii has seemed to have gone away. It used to be, he said of the early meetings he attended, that the discussion always led to forming two counties, and that’s no longer the case.
“To bring our community together collectively,” he said of the achievement.
