Green sticks with Maui reopening plan as many urge delay

Gov. Josh Green reiterated his support for the phased reopening of tourism in West Maui to begin Sunday, telling the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority annual conference Tuesday that the return of visitors means more resources will be available for those who need help.

“We know we support our loved ones through what we do in tourism, through other great industries. If tourism is damaged, if we don’t rise to the occasion, which we have done repeatedly, our people are in trouble,” Green said in remarks to the roughly 500 conference attendees, mostly from Hawaii’s visitor industry.

Green’s comments came before an afternoon rally at the state Capitol rotunda where several dozen Lahaina Strong members and their supporters implored Green to delay the planned Sunday reopening of West Maui to tourism.

A delegation then carried a petition with 11,141 signatures to Green’s fifth-floor offices and delivered it to Bonnelly Pa‘uulu, Green’s director of constituent services. Pa‘uulu told the group that Green was not at the Capitol.

Moving forward is difficult for some West Maui residents who are reeling from the Aug. 8 disaster, which killed at least 98 people and destroyed about 2,200 buildings, most of them homes.

Nearly two months after the wildfire, residents are still traumatized and their lives remain unsettled, said Pa‘ele Kiakona, one of the key speakers at Tuesday’s rally.

Kiakona, who was born and raised in Lahaina, works as a bartender at Merriman’s Hawaii Restaurant in Kapalua.

“Obviously, our business benefits from the presence of tourism, having more of our visitors coming through. For myself, personally, I’m not ready to go back. I don’t want the conversation to always be, ‘Oh did you lose your home?’” Kiakona said. “So many of us are not ready. Everything in Lahaina is very disorganized, very disorganized on every level. Adding tourists coming to Lahaina is adding insult to injury.”

But advocates for the reopening note that West Maui contributes 15% of the state’s tourism revenues, and the drop in tourism there and the subsequent job losses are taking a toll on the island’s economy.

An estimated 8,773 people are still out of work on Maui, which poses a threat to housing stability, even for island residents who were not directly affected by the fire.

Green said of Sunday’s reopening, “There is no right time. There’s just time. There’s time to heal. There’s time to bring ourselves back to a place where we can get housing for one another. There’s time to start recovery.”

The governor said such lessons about time were learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the largest mistake that was made for Hawaii’s tourism economy was “indecision.”

“It really cost us; we could have done much better,” he said. “We have to be decisive.”

Plan to reopen

Emotions are running high as the resort area — stretching from the Ritz-­Carlton Maui, Kapalua, to Kahana Villa — prepares to reopen to tourists Sunday at the start of Maui Mayor Richard Bissen’s phased plan, which delays the tourism restart for other sections of West Maui.

Maui Council member Tamara Paltin,who represents West Maui and chairs the Council’s Disaster, Resilience, International Affairs, and Planning Committee, told those gathered at the state Capitol on Tuesday that “this is too soon” to reopen the area.

Paltin said some tourists are already sticking cameras in the faces of fire survivors and asking how it feels to have their homes destroyed, while others are sneaking into the burn zone and taking pictures of themselves in burned-out cars.

Many of the rally attendees who flew to Oahu wore red T-shirts emblazoned in yellow with the phrase “Lahaina Strong” and waved signs reading “Too Early for Tourism,” “Support Lahaina” and “Delay West Maui Tourism.” The group plans a similar rally on Friday at Maui’s Hanakaoo Beach Park at 4 p.m.

Of the 11,141 signatures collected by Monday, 3,517 were from the 96761 Lahaina ZIP code. By the end of Tuesday’s rally, the number of signatures exceeded 14,000 through an online petition available at bit.ly/3rDFFaB.

Gretchen Losano, who flew to Oahu as part of Lahaina Strong, expressed disappointment that Green did not greet the delegation since he made himself available to attendees at the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority Conference and for a news program.

“It’s beyond disrespectful,” Losano said, noting that Green’s earlier decision to reopen West Maui followed a private meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua, which exclusively represented select business interests.

The Office of the Governor said the decision to reopen was made “after weeks of meetings and conversations with a broad spectrum of stakeholders within the Lahaina community that included hundreds of working-class families and small businesses devastated by the wildfire.”

But Losano and others, including Paltin, maintain that displaced Maui residents have not been adequately heard.

Paltin said Green told her that she could “speak with staff going forward,” after she pushed him to time the reopening to meeting benchmarks like ensuring displaced residents have longer-term housing, children are back in school and there is adequate child care for workers.

Paltin said other Maui destinations such as Hana, Waialae-McKenna and Makawao are open for business and should be promoted to tourism instead of West Maui.

Other elected officials attending the rally included state Sens. Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Ocean Pointe- Iroquois Point), Brenton Awa (D, Kaneohe-Laie- Mokuleia) and Angus McKelvey (D, West Maui-Maalaea-South Maui), who escaped the fire but lost his home in Lahaina.

Help for survivors

McKelvey told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that fire survivors need government’s help to find long-term affordable housing, consistent schooling for their children, unemployment assistance and debt protection.

Homeowners specifically need a moratorium on their mortgages and foreclosures, he said, while post-fire rental rates are shooting up and need to be stabilized.

World champion surfer and author Zane Kekoa Schweitzer, who was born and raised in Lahaina, told those gathered at the rally that opening tourism on Sunday pits suffering residents against other survivors who need to work to keep up with bills so that they can provide for their families.

“Every day, parents, families are faced with hard choices — hard choices to leave or to stay,” Schweitzer said. “(By bringing back tourism) it only proves to us that they are not willing to take initiative to make a change to make something better, create something with better emergency preparedness, better disaster relief initiatives and preparedness. Because the sooner they go and bring things back to how it was, the more we know they don’t want to make a change.”

But Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawai‘i Hotel Alliance, said so few rooms are going into the reservation system for the first phase that “you aren’t even going to notice that it’s open.”

“Recovery, in general, is going to be very, very slow. We are only expecting about 35% to 40% guest occupancy by the festive season,” Gibson said.

Gibson said in phase one there are few timeshares, which tend to lead recoveries as they did for COVID-19 and after Hurricane Iniki. He said phase two has more timeshares, so recovery there will be better, but only slightly.

Phases

No date has been set for phase two of the tourism restart, which will follow an assessment of phase one and will cover the resort areas from Mahinahina to Maui Kaanapali Villas. The last reopening phase is for the area from the Royal Lahaina Resort to the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa, where a majority of displaced residents are sheltering.

Green said the reopening date provides an important marker; however, it’s mostly about the future.

“Because October 8th, just so you know, was not about October 8; it was about what happens come November 1st and November 15th and December 15th,” he said. “We couldn’t wait.”

Still, Green said he understands that some West Maui residents are not ready because they need more support.

“If someone is not ready, that is OK, we understand that,” he said.

Green said he plans to release $100 million in TANF (temporary assistance for needy families) funds.

“That’s for our citizens, for anybody here who needs help that is displaced. There’s 3,020 families, plus or minus two, that were displaced. They’ll get about $30,000 each.”

He said the state is working to support those who need help but don’t qualify for TANF through private funding, which has come from around the world.

“The Hawaii Community Foundation has done something extraordinary with our help and everyone’s assistance. They’ve raised over $100 million that will go to people who are undocumented or COFA or perhaps even those who were homeless, that need to find a way to get some help,” Green said.