Honolulu Council District 9 Candidates on the Issues
After eight years of being represented by Nestor Garcia, residents of Honolulu City Council District 9 will have a new man at the Hale come January.
Garcia, term-limited and not running for any office this year, has just been punished by the Ethics Commission as part of an ignominious end to his time on the council that saw him briefly ascend to the chairmanship. Who will pick up where he leaves off?
Four candidates with varying levels of experience are vying for the seat representing parts of central and west Oahu: Sy Cullen, Ron Menor, Inam Rahman and Vai Sua.
Menor is the most experienced of the bunch, having served in the Hawaii state Senate, but he’s lost the last two races he was in. Cullen, just 26, has never run for office before. Neither Vai Sua nor Rahman, who has lost by wide margins in each of the last four elections for everything from City Council to state House to Congress, completed their questionnaires.
Voters need to know where the candidates stand on the key issues. Today you can find Cullen’s and Menor’s questionnaire responses. They agree on many issues. You can find links to their full responses at the bottom of this article.
Plastic Bag Ban
Cullen said he thinks the ban on plastic checkout bags will “help lessen our environmental footprint,” but said some people will continue to litter and misuse the bags. He declined to directly answer whether the city should tweak the ban, set to take effect in July 2015.
Menor said there is no “magic bullet” that will create a sustainable lifestyle, but said he would move up the implementation date:
I would have hoped the city would have chosen an earlier implementation date, while still giving businesses sufficient time to prepare for the new law. I believe two years would have provided sufficient notice (July 2014).
Long-Term Challenges
Menor said he sees fiscal prudence, responsibility and accountability as the key to meeting all of the city’s long-term challenges, and said one of his first actions as a council member would be conduct a thorough budget analysis.
Cullen identified growth management as the key challenge for the city:
Concerns over inadequate infrastructure, traffic congestion, and affordable housing are tied into government’s ability to keep up with economic growth. As your councilmember, I will make it my highest priority to work with county officials to purposefully directed growth toward the agricultural lands in Central and West Oahu through the use of the City’s General Plan and its Development and Sustainable Communities plans in order to “Keep the Country, Country”, preserve Windward Oahu and relieve pressure on urban Honolulu.
Rail
Both Cullen and Menor said they support the rail project, and both touted the impacts to quality of life and the economic benefits of the system.
Menor wrote:
In the absence of an effective alternative, I believe rail will help to alleviate congestion on the road, reduce the hours and money lost to traffic, and improve our quality of life over the long term. I view rail as part of a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional transportation system that will be used in conjunction with the bus system and other traffic management initiatives to address our traffic problems on Oahu.
Cullen wrote:
It will help us on a transportation level and also change our livelihood for the better in transforming neighborhoods and how we live. Rail allows Oahu to be more rural friendly in their development. It allows us to “Keep the Country, Country and allowing developers to focus in our urban areas. Rail will relieve pressure on urban Honolulu and give it the opportunity to rebuild and revitalize our urban core with improved infrastructure where most people work.
Menor, though, did have some criticism of the rail system. Asked to identify a city decision of the last two years he would change, he wrote that “decisions on the implementation of rail were handled poorly and with insufficient transparency, public input and public education.”
Cullen declined to identify a change he’d make, saying, “The power of making a right choice lies in the present.”
Read the full candidate responses here:
