Kaua‘i County Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura won’t be running for mayor this election year. Instead, Yukimura filed nomination papers on Friday to run for a third consecutive two-year term on the council. Her filing ended speculation by the media and longtime
Kaua‘i County Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura won’t be running for mayor this election year. Instead, Yukimura filed nomination papers on Friday to run for a third consecutive two-year term on the council.
Her filing ended speculation by the media and longtime political observers that she would run for the mayor’s office, a post she held from 1988 to 1994. She also has held council seats for a total of 12 years.
“I decided not to run for the mayor’s office for three reasons,” Yukimura said in a news interview Saturday. “One is because I didn’t want to put the island at war for a year, because that is what happens in a big mayor’s race.”
She said also decided not to run for mayor because she still has unfinished business on the council, including working on affordable housing and legislation for better planning and more property tax reform.
Another reason she isn’t running for mayor is because the position has limitations.
“It is not as if the mayor can change things overnight,” she said.
Obviously, people unite behind a single leader, such as a mayor, for answers, but people working together can produce solutions as well, she said.
“Leadership is very key, but there are more ways that leadership shows itself,” Yukimura said. “It can be in one person and other times, in many.”
Yukimura, a Democrat, said she has thought about running against incumbent Republican Mayor Bryan Baptiste because, from her point of view, he has failed to develop and implement an integrated solid waste management plan and his administration has not advanced good planning for the island.
County officials, however, have said the county has hired a consultant that is developing a trash management plan and that the county has practiced good planning to mitigate development and traffic congestion.
Yukimura said she is not making a blanket criticism of everything Baptiste has or has not done, because “he has done some good things.”
“I supported him when has done some right things, but I have questioned him when I feel he hasn’t done the right thing, and planning has been one of the areas that hasn’t been right,” Yukimura said. “I will continue to speak out when he has done things poorly.”
She said, however, she supported Baptiste in the replacement of the aging Olohena Bridge in the Kawaihau District, providing the swing vote on the council to provide matching funds for work.
She said she also supported the funding of Baptiste’s Ka Leo community outreach program.
For now, the council is her preferred venue for conducting the county’s business. It is the place where she can effectively formulate and implement solutions to the island’s affordable housing problem.
Following her unsuccessful reelection run for mayor in 1994, she stepped away from island politics to spend more time taking care of her daughter and the business of her family.
“When I first came back to Kaua‘i politics in 2002, I was one of the first ones to identify affordable housing as a problem, and one of my commitments was to put in place an affordable housing policy and law, and that hasn’t been done yet,” Yukimura said.
She wants to return to the council so she can push through what she says is an important shoreline setback bill and improve the county’s comprehensive zoning ordinance and planning laws.
“The council has yet to act on a real property task force bill, even though we put in interim measures,” she said. Those measures included a 2-percent and a 6-percent cap on property tax bill for homes Kauaians own and live in and rent.
Council members Jay Furfaro and Daryl Kaneshiro championed the 2-percent cap, and Yukimura led the charge for the 6-percent property bill cap.
The council is the counterpoint to the mayor, a rub that leads to checks and balance in the running of Kaua‘i County, Yukimura said.
“The council has many times improved or stopped actions of the mayor that weren’t right,” she said.
The administration wanted to proceed with a waste-to energy project before the process for an integrated solid waste management plan was done, Yukimura said, but the council refused to fund the design process for it.
Based on the success of waste-to-energy conversion projects in Mainland communities about the same size as Kaua‘i, the county administration voiced a preference to bringing such a project to the island.
Yukimura said, however, she wouldn’t make up her mind on whether to support that waste management technology or to consider using a combination of waste disposal technologies until a county consultant had finished a study.
Yukimura also rejected an administration proposal for the county to accept a $25,000 in lieu fee for each affordable housing unit the Kauai Lagoons Resort Company was required to build. The offer was part of the negotiations between the county and the developer.
The affordable housing requirement was tied to Kauai Lagoons work at a larger resort and residential development project on land next to the Kauai Marriott Resort and Beach Club. In all, the developer will build 82 units in Wailua and 24 units in Lihu‘e.
On the issue of development, Yukimura will always advocate for planned and controlled development “to ensure it benefits the people who live here,” she said. “The question is how do you do that?”
As the chairwoman of the council’s planning committee, she could be in a position to do just that.
“The problem is that we don’t have a planning department that is providing good leadership for a good planning process,” she said.
Planning officials have dismissed the denunciation.
On her chances of winning a seat on the council to continue, Yukimura said she doesn’t know how she will fare.
“In the democratic process, being in office is entirely dependent on the voters, and I respect that process, and I feel election time is the time to report back to the people and also a time to hear their concerns,” she said.
Yukimura said she has received many calls to run for mayor or the House District 15 seat, which incumbent Democrat Ezra Kanoho is retiring from after 20 years of service in the state Legislature. Yukimura could qualify to run for that seat because she is from Lihu‘e, part of that legislative district.
But Yukimura prefers to hold a county position on Kaua‘i because she wants to work on the island she loves.
“The main decisions affecting the island are at the county level,” she said.
• Lester Chang, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) or lchang@kauaipubco.com.
