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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Running late</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @Stan_Biz4Yu, who needs to work on time management.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Running late

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Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

Columnists

In the movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray wakes every morning to the same radio jingle, the same snowdrifts, the same February 2. The film came to mind on June 9, when Maui County announced a Council briefing on the rewrite of its zoning code, coming up on June 17.

 headline calls the presentation an “update.” But two paragraphs down, Planning Director Jacky Takakura calls it “the beginning of an important, multiyear effort” to create a new zoning code. An update and a beginning are different things, and the difference here is six years of public money.

Title 19 is the body of law that decides what may be built on Maui and where. The current version was written for another era, with its last overhaul in 1960. It requires the pattern of a Mainland subdivision: one house, one large lot, repeat until the land runs out. It leaves little room for gentle density — the ʻohana units, duplexes, and townhomes that let working families live near where they work.

Every year that the old code stands, housing on Maui grows scarcer and pricier. Reformers have said this 

. The County agreed. In 2018, it published an 

 that showed the code was out of date. In 2019, it hired the audit’s author — Orion Planning + Design — to rewrite the code.

The project’s website promised “an anticipated six-year timeline” with seven phases, finishing in 2026. That year is here. The final code should be done by now, with a plan to put it in place soon after.

The County hired a consulting team it advertises as among the most experienced in the country. Orion Planning + Design leads it, joined by PBR Hawaiʻi, Rundell Ernstberger Associates, and the law firm Carlsmith Ball, whose listed duties include “presentations to officials.”

 page today — the page built to hold the finished work. Under Draft Documents: coming soon. Under Draft Ordinances: coming soon. Under Adopted Ordinances: coming soon.

The old schedule has fared worse. The site’s menu no longer links to it. The page survives for anyone who kept the 

In “50 First Dates,” Drew Barrymore wakes each morning with no memory of the day before. Adam Sandler keeps a videotape and replays it for her at breakfast. The archive is our videotape. Somebody has to remember.

There are reasons for delay, and good ones too. The pandemic arrived almost as soon as the work began, and then came the fire. Zoning changes move slowly everywhere, even without disaster striking. All of this is true.

But the rest of the county worked through both disasters. County employees even collected 

 for work during the pandemic. We can forgive a delay when it comes with an accounting. But this press release offers no accounting. It offers a rebranded beginning, as if the first six years were a dream from which we are all now waking.

The release promises that “no new zoning code content will be presented at this time.” Six years of consultant work, it seems, has produced no content.

We should read this charitably. Surely no one who works for Mayor Bissen, and no member of the County Council, has seen draft code chapters and decided the public shouldn’t. That would be unthinkable.

The charitable reading is merely that six years of consultant invoices and staff hours have produced nothing fit to show. Whichever it is, the paperwork exists.

None of this requires a scandal to fix. It requires basic stewardship — the kind expected of anyone managing someone else’s money. Publish whatever drafts exist, today, on the page built for it. Set a public deadline on a website that stays put, where anyone can check it. And put a name on the project: Planning Director Takakura, or whomever the Mayor chooses. Hold them to account for meeting deadlines.

The Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee should open the June 17 meeting by asking what was spent, what was produced, and where it is.

Bill Murray does not escape February 2 by waiting. The loop breaks the morning he becomes a different man. Maui County has been waking to the same morning for six years. The radio is playing the same song: an important effort is beginning, and the community will be a partner. June 17 is Maui’s chance to wake up to February 3.

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Maui neighborhood

<title>Coming soon, for six years</title>

Maui County promised a new zoning code on a six-year timeline, notes ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa. The six years are up, the website says “coming soon,” and the County is calling for a fresh start.

Coming soon, for six years

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Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

Aloha Spirit

Shangri La, a Center for Cultures & Ideas and Museum of Islamic Art has announced its latest cohort of six Kanaka Maoli artists who will participate in Wehiwehi, its artist residency program, this month. The artist residency program is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation’s Technologies and Performing Arts initiative.

For Kealoha Ferreira, a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino and Chinese dancer living in the diaspora, it is a chance to take her work back home to Oʻahu.

Ferreira grew up in Nuʻuanu. Now, she is a dancer and educator who teaches 

, a transnational feminist contemporary dance method that combines classical Indian dance form Odissi, along with Vinyasa Yoga and the martial art form Chhau. In 2024, she was named a 

, a prestigious honor for Minnesota choreographers and dancers, that comes with a $25,000 award that “can help an artist set aside periods of time for study, reflection, experimentation and exploration,” 

artistic associate of Ananya Dance Theatre

Participants of the Wehiwehi artist residency program will participate in showcases at Bishop Museum on Friday, June 19, and Shangri La on Saturday, June 27. 

“This residency is a really special opportunity, both to connect with Kanaka Maoli artists and to sharpen and cultivate our artistic sensibilities,” Ferreira said. “But for me and other folks who maybe find themselves in diaspora, it’s an opportunity to really share who we are now — and who we are becoming — with the places that raised us and that we still are connected to. We don't always have the opportunity to show up in those ways.”

Ferreira is not able to participate in the showcase at Shangri La but she is looking forward to the one at the Bishop Museum. The mana of the design and artifacts there is “just so palpable,” she said.

“Who you're with that’s beyond human, and also who you're with that's beyond the present moment, right?” she said. “Because it's things from the past, but also these things from ʻthe past’ are still steering our imagination, still steering our future, and offering us so much inspiration with their continued existence.”

The residency runs from June 17 to June 27 and will take place at Shangri La, a former home of Doris Duke, which has iconic ocean views in Kāhala. The group has already met once via Zoom and will soon be meeting in person.

“I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to connect with this amazing group of artists who are diverse in discipline and also really rooted and really grounded in a sense of identity and purpose,” she said. “There's a lot of alignment in that sense of desire to perpetuate love and life and culture, but there's also a lot of difference and diversity in how we do that and the esthetics that we utilize.”

Ferreira is looking forward to seeing what the cohort creates together.

“Whenever there's a group of really amazing people who intentionally gather in the room to make work together, there's unexpected kinds of inspiration that always lands,” she said. “So, I'm also really looking forward to the things that happen that cannot be planned — and are unknown in this moment — but that you know is going to happen because kūpuna and ancestors and inspiration love a group of mischievous artistic people.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Here is how to attend the showcases:"}]

Wehiwehi Artist Showcase at Bishop Museum  

(Updated as of June 12, event is now sold out.)

Admission is free and includes food and beverages. 

Wehiwehi Residency Performance at Shangri La 

Tickets are $50 and includes food and beverages.

Kealoha Ferreira

<title>Dancer in diaspora brings art home to Oʻahu</title>

Wehiwehi is an artist residency program that is bringing six Kanaka Maoli artists from Hawaiʻi and the Mainland together to collaborate on hula, mele, modern dance, theater and more. These artists will share their work in showcases at Shangri La and the Bishop Museum in June. Kealoha Ferreira is one of the artists living in the diaspora, who will return to Oʻahu this month to participate in the program.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Running late

Kady Pascual

Social Media & Marketing Manager

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Running late

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media & Marketing Manager

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Hawai‘i Scene on Social meets Hawai‘i Skies

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Neighborhood weather updates

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Island vibes

Gotta catch ‘em all — at Ala Moana Center: voices from Pokémon GO’s “Wild Area: Global” event

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