A yearly process that gives Kaua‘i residents the chance to redefine the responsibilities of their local government is underway, with a citizens commission reviewing a half-dozen proposals to alter the county charter.

Altogether, a preliminary set of six reforms would prohibit or limit the development of gated communities, add oversight to the County Council budget and increase qualifications for the county’s chief accountant.

The seven-member Kaua‘i Charter Review Commission is soliciting more ideas through February to improve the legal document that defines the county government’s structure, powers and functions. After considering public feedback over the next several weeks, commission members will vote by June on proposals and translate the winning reforms into a digestible collection of charter amendment questions for the November ballot.

One of the proposals seeks to outlaw the development of gated neighborhood subdivisions. Kaua‘i would be the first county in the state to adopt such a policy. 

The proposal intends to preserve public access to mountains, beaches and shorelines and “affirm that Kaua‘i is one community and one people.”

Jan TenBruggencate, a longtime commission member, said he thinks gated communities are “a scourge of the neighborhood” because they divide the island into enclaves, but he isn’t sure whether the charter is the best vehicle to regulate zoning issues.

A cost-savings measure would let the County Attorney’s office skip reviewing low-risk, boilerplate county contracts or those that would cost more in attorney fees to review than the purchase price of the item or service. As it stands now, county attorneys must review every contract the county enters into.

“There’s a lot of small print when you buy a piece of software, for example,” TenBruggencate said. “It may be a cheap piece of software but asking county attorneys to review the contract associated with it isn’t going to be cheap. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to review and you can’t change it anyway.” 

The county Cost Control Commission is lobbying for an amendment that would give it limited oversight of the County Council budget by allowing the body to review the council’s proposed spending plan and make recommendations to the mayor. 

The measure makes note of the fact that the council oversees the mayor’s budget but there is no oversight of the council budget. In fact, no other county in Hawai‘i requires council budget oversight.

Another proposal would require the finance director — the county’s chief accounting, fiscal and budget officer — to be a certified public accountant or have at least five years of experience in fiscal management or accounting, as well as three years of experience in preparing or auditing financial statements. 

The county’s current finance director, Chelsie Sakai, meets these qualifications, TenBruggencate said, but some previous directors did not.

Mayor Derek Kawakami testified at the commission’s November meeting against stiffening the job’s requirements, noting how challenging it is to find, recruit and retain a finance director. The position, appointed by the mayor, is temporary, a considerable discouragement. 

With more than 1,200 employees and 31 different financial funds, Kaua‘i County has a $350 million operating budget and a nearly $100 million capital improvement projects budget. 

The mayor said that while a county financial director should have an accounting background, there are other valuable qualities, such as integrity, loyalty, being a team player, customer service skills and a track record of holding employees accountable. 

Former county Finance Director Ken Shimonishi said he does not consider the proposed qualifications as difficult to meet, especially for the appointment of someone expected to lead a large department with several divisions, including the Department of Motor Vehicles and the purchasing, real property and information technology divisions. 

A relatively inconsequential proposal would do away with the county Zoning Board of Appeals, which has never been seated. Hearing appeals can be a lengthy process and, for years, the county has had no luck finding volunteers willing to commit to the task. Instead, the county relies on an attorney dedicated to handling zoning appeals. The proposal would eliminate references in the charter to a body that does not exist.

Newspaper’s Decline Drives Amendment

Considering the financial distress of Hawaii’s local news industry, there is a proposal that would allow the county to publicize charter amendment proposals on social media or an online news publication that covers Kaua‘i. The charter currently requires the county to publish charter amendment proposals and other important notices in a print newspaper circulated in the community. 

The proposal is born of concern that there may not be a local newspaper on Kaua‘i in the future. Without this change, the county may potentially be required to publish future charter amendment proposals in a national newspaper at a significant increase in cost.

Maui County is also weighing whether to remove a mandate to publish legal notices in newspapers. The county’s current code requires public hearing notices to appear in a print newspaper that publishes at least twice a week.

A year after The Maui News slashed its print edition to once weekly, the county Planning Department is considering publishing notices on a county website or loosening the rules so that notices could continue to appear in The Maui News despite its reduced publishing schedule. The proposed ordinance would require Maui County Council approval.

“We’re down to one print newspaper and it’s weak so if The Garden Island collapses, this change would give us alternatives,” said TenBruggencate, who proposed the reform for Kauai. “We want to make it so that you can’t just not publish it because there’s no newspaper, if that will be the case in the future.”

Swede Sandblom, a 17-year-old commission member, chimed in at a recent public meeting, saying social media isn’t built for long-form notices. He discouraged the idea of naming specific social media platforms in the charter since he said they rise and fall in popularity and some could be obsolete in a matter of a few years.

In 2024, Kaua‘i voters approved a charter amendment allowing junior and senior high school students to become members of county boards and commissions, creating a new opportunity for youth to weigh in on crucial community discussion. Sandblom, a Waimea High School senior, was the first student to be seated on a county panel alongside his mother, who also serves on the charter commission.

“You ask him about how this stuff impacts his community and he gives us insights that otherwise we wouldn’t have,” TenBruggencate said.  

Seven students have applied since applications opened in July and six of them are currently seated on the Kaua‘i Charter Review Commission, Board of Ethics, Board of Water, Committee on the Status of Women, Historic Preservation Review Commission, and the Public Access, Open Space, Natural Resources Preservation Fund Commission. 

These young members can’t vote or sit in on executive sessions but can participate in the panel’s regular business, gaining firsthand experience in policy decision making.

Civil Beat’s reporting on Kauaʻi is supported in part by a grant from the G. N. Wilcox Trust.