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.
The press release 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 for years. The County agreed. In 2018, it published an audit that showed the code was out of date.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.”
Visit the site’s Code Draft 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 old address, and at an internet archive in case it vanishes for good.
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 hazard pay 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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Author Sterling Higa can be reached at hello@sterlinghiga.com.
