Please share one example of an initiative or contribution you have made to improve our community.

A recent, quiet but significant, contribution was working diligently with intergovernmental agencies, Maui councilmembers, applicants, a council resolution and the community to ensure Kauai continued our provider relationship with AMR for safe, effective and expanded ambulance service on Kauai. We could have easily lost it for replacement with an under-prepared new provider.

Who is the most influential female figure in your life who is not in your family, and why?

My brownie leader in second grade, Joan Roberts, who continues to be an active friend 55 years later. Throughout my youth of unstable circumstances in many different towns and states, she continued to offer me direct layers of support and encouragement. She is part of why I was able to thrive rather than just survive. At 62 years old, I am still continuing to pay it forward to other children and adults I encounter in my life.

What is your vision for Kauaʻi?

A resilient island that has a place and a home for the range of people who live in our community who offer love, service and respect for our remarkable home. This includes:

- Offering an addition of affordable living in ohana compounds with edible landscaping in walkable & workable communities. This reduces traffic, rubbish, life expenses and poor nutrition or hunger.

- Respect and encouragement for small businesses and localizing our economy as much as possible. Re-strategize our Real Property Tax structure to be less tied to inflationary forces that will displace our generational and working population from housing or business if we allow national and global instability to define our local taxation policy.

- Engagement of our broad range of people including those with extraordinary talents and capacity to partner with the strengths of our generational community and government to improve infrastructure that is at the heart of our difficulties in obtaining our goals.

What will be your top three policy priorities if you are elected to Kauaʻi County Council?

Increased safety through evacuation routes with inward and upward potential and improved hazard mitigation policies.

Retaining our population through improved infrastructure and creative housing strategies, reducing instability, despair sometimes leading to substance abuse and worse.

Strengthening our criminal justice system to offer better protection to victims and therapeutic pathways to contain or redirect criminal behavior.

According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, Hawaiʻi is designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area. Only 14.2% of the Mental Health Care need has been met as of September 2021 (HRSA, 2021).

What concrete steps will you take to ensure the mental health of our community is addressed? What can the County do to ensure individuals seeking substance abuse treatment are able to access the care they need?

This is a State responsibility, so the County has influence, not authority. I have stood with our Hawaii Nurses Association and support the legislative changes to remove GET from medical practices. All of health care is feeling the economic squeeze that limits recruiting and retaining medical providers. Addressing housing is part of the mental health care crisis. Our Office of Prosecuting Attorney is the layer of County government that has the most opportunity to support channeling people to drug court.

Kauaʻi and other rural areas have elevated rates of youth suicide. 16.6% of our high school students report having attempted suicide. The risk is significantly higher for LGBT teens on Kauaʻi, with 46.9% reporting suicidal thoughts (YRBS, 2021).

A key factor in youth suicide prevention is making sure that every kid has a positive relationship with a caring adult in their life. After-school programs and activities are key strategies to tackling this youth mental health crisis; however, we don’t have nearly enough after-school programs on Kauaʻi to meet the need and few safe spaces where our kids can go.

What can the County do to support the increase of after-school programs, community activities, and safe spaces for our youth?

Stopping Youth suicide is a powerful need. Simplifying life's costs and strengthening the stability of the family is one of the most effective ways to increase youth self-empowerment. Early job opportunities for teenagers increases exposure to mentors and development of responsibilities. Our current East Kauai Community Plan is emphasizing more community spaces where activities can be held. Addressing our Safety Zones for unsheltered individuals creates better separation from county park play spaces and people living in deterioration and distress. It is important to keep our focus of taxes to be spent on the long-overdue infrastructure improvements that are at the heart of our housing crisis.

In 2023, there were 488 unhoused people on Kauaʻi, many of whom (27%) are houseless families (PIT, 2023).

What action will you take to address Kauaʻi’s housing crisis for families? 

The Mayor's office through the Housing department has stretched well beyond our Chartered responsibilities to provide supportive housing. The larger problem is national in nature with the debasing of the dollar. That said, I support our County and State's efforts at buying land to build and provide housing. My additional choice, that I regularly raise is to create at least three Safety Zones of about 4 acres in the different regions of the island where people can live unsheltered with dignity following behavioral agreements, having access to quality porta-potties, outdoor showers, dumpsters and a big central tent. We are unwise to criminalize poverty and need to build stability for people in the process of developing a stronger future. Constant "sweeps" causes a cascade of disfunction and despair leading to fires, crimes, dingy, unclean environments, exhausted parks, problems at our transfer stations, crowds emergency rooms, etc. I am eager to support a humane place for our displaced people to heal.

We’ve talked about housing, childcare, and healthcare as separate topics. If we take a wider view, we can see these issues as interrelated and disproportionately impacting women and girls in our community.

How would you use your role as a community leader to address the impact of systemic injustices so women and keiki can have equal opportunities to live to their fullest potential?

Primary parents and caregivers need support and acknowledgement for their contribution to society. As a member of the National Association of Counties committee on Health Safety and Education, I regularly advocate for policies that consider a reasonable stipend to the mother/father of young children that is a majority portion of what is provided to a paid caregiver to families qualifying for subsidized care. A family with three young children can have support to raise healthy, loved children in the company of one-another rather than place the kids in childcare while they go out for a job that pays minimum wage making sandwiches; the same for elder care. This can also facilitate the ability to participate in part-time remote work. I deeply appreciate the provision of a women's shelter, but wish instead the battered parent and child could keep the house while a program provides a safe place for the abusing partner to be able to calm down, retrain and heal to potentially be able to rejoin the family. Currently, the mother and children (typically) is displaced from the home, work and life location. It is the abused family member that ends up dislocated. We need to flip the script. As the sole female on the council, the difference in policy perspectives is actively in my awareness. It takes more than one vote.