Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles profiling the candidates for Kaua‘i County Council. One will run each day until all candidates have been profiled. For County Council candidate Ron Kouchi, maintaining a certain quality of
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles profiling the candidates for Kaua‘i County Council. One will run each day until all candidates have been profiled.
For County Council candidate Ron Kouchi, maintaining a certain quality of life is the most important issue facing Kauaians today.
How that will come into fruition involves several issues, including increasing the amount of affordable housing, solving traffic problems and reducing solid waste, he said.
Kouchi stands for open government, but he will not critique the current council, defending its need to keep mum over certain issues because of what he cites as an unfortunately “litigious” society.
“During the (past) four years we had had quite a few inquiries or challenges of citizen advocates about executive sessions,” said the former councilmember. “During that period, I worked with the Office of Information Practices and it turned out the OIP felt the public should be given more detail in the notices (of executive session).”
In light of that, the County Council began to open itself up more, he said. “In the (past) four years we changed a lot of what we had been doing to ensure there was more information available.”
Those efforts included getting funding to have meetings broadcast sooner rather than later on Ho‘ike, he said.
The insurance salesman who went to Waimea High School and Drake University said as far as what needs to change, it’s all about addressing the needs of the future now.
“Simply put, my sons are about to graduate from high school and the most important thing to me is that the kind of Kaua‘i we have is the one they and their friends would choose to make their home,” he said. “You’d have to have adequate roads and homes they can afford to live in and get to.”
Kouchi, a 20-year former councilmember and one-time chairman, said the scope of key issues to address also includes development.
Doing that will take contracting developers who know how to provide function while offering positive benefits for the community, he said.
Such benefits are keeping trails open to the public so locals can enjoy them as well as tourists, and keeping
affordable housing a top priority, he said.
Current zoning doesn’t require developers to build affordable housing units, however, offering developers incentives might encourage them to do so, he said.
Development is familiar territory for Kouchi, who has worked with Kaua‘i Lagoons in the past.
“At Kaua‘i Lagoons, initially, we were required to build 113 affordable rental units and at the end of 10 years those rental units would go to market price units and we started building 82 of them in the Wailua area.”
That plan was tweaked to ensure the affordability wouldn’t have a sunset, he said.
“We asked the county for some additional land to have the project built on a better site plan, deciding the remaining 31 units would be given over to the county so they’d have permanent affordability.”
Enhancing upon Kaua‘i’s access to its healthy and scenic outlets is a way Kouchi said residents can be active, something he also envisions in the county’s future.
“We’ve had several hundred people who park their cars at the golf parking lot and do their exercise — walking, jogging — who’ve talked about wanting to continue to have an interior walking access up in the interior lagoon walking paths,” he said.
The 38 acres of lagoons on the properties are beautiful and the perfect place for wellness, he said, noting it doesn’t have to be about the people visiting here, but for those who live in Kaua‘i.
As for Kaua‘i’s future 10 years from now, that’s where the problem of traffic will really come to a head if nothing is done now, he said, and one way to address that issue ahead of time is behavioral.
“We need to have more people moving or living closer to where they work,” he said, noting in addition to helping traffic, it could help the economy.
“With price of fuel, obviously you’d help empower employees to keep more money in their pocket and less in their gas tanks.”
Solid waste is another issue that needs to be tackled head-on now, he said, hoping to accomplish that with 20 percent renewable energy.
Right now, Kaua‘i is at less than 5 percent.
Kouchi is a member of the solid waste advisory task force, and has been since its onset, earlier this year.
“I’m hopeful Kaua‘i would have an integrated solid waste master plan working and will be diverting as much trash through reuse and recycling.”
• Amanda C. Gregg, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or agregg@kauaipubco.com.
