Civil Beat has asked candidates for the primary election on Aug. 8 to answer a survey about where they stand on various issues and what their priorities will be if elected. There are 10 candidates on the primary ballot and the top two finalists will go through to the General Election ballot in November.

The following comes from Justin Herrmann, nonpartisan candidate for Maui County Mayor.

His primary opponents are incumbent Richard Bissen, John Dunbar P. Denise La Costa, Travis A. Liggett, Joseph Moses, Amy Petterson, Yuki Lei Sugimura, Callahan P. Welsh and Laurent Zahnd.

Go to Civil Beat’s 2026 Elections Guide for general information, and check out the other candidates on Civil Beatʻs 2026 Hawaiʻi Primary Ballot.

Why are you best suited for the job of mayor? And why do you want the job?

I am a natural born leader. I have a knack for leaving all projects finished better then when I started. I am a compassionate individual that takes consideration of all of those around me no matter status. I am a 41-year-old with energy just continuing with my lifestyle at a bigger level. Over the last five years, the fires and the floods, I have helped my fellow Islanders and seen their faces during all this time and have found myself in a position where I have some ideas that could benefit us.

What is the biggest issue facing Maui County, and what is the first thing you would do to address it in the first six months after being elected?

The biggest issue facing the county trying to push forward and go when we haven’t finished things that could possibly be beneficial to making those other things happen in the future. We continue to add things on, being very reactive to situations that come about. Instead be proactive and trying to stop these things from happening before they do. I will be auditing to find the things that we can get done right away. Start leveling things out to where we can start accomplishing some projects.

Here’s one question from a constituent: What is your position on upcountry speed humps? Would you remove them? Why or why not?

I would not remove them as of now but would work on that throughout my term. I would not remove them because with the research that I have done it would cost us an extreme amount of our budget to just take them out. I would like to figure out a way we can repurpose the materials without just having to throw them out and then work on a project that way.

The county has been moving forward with plans to bring much more of Maui’s water supply under public ownership instead of private. What are the obstacles to achieving that goal, and what is the cost?

I believe there doesn’t seem to be many obstacles so far with the signing over the water systems. I believe we need to audit and manage all these situations just to make sure that we are not giving up anything on the back end besides purchasing the rights. We should not allow any caveats with this.

Overtourism can degrade the environment, contribute to wear and tear on infrastructure, generate traffic and disrupt neighborhoods. What do you think about the amount of tourism on Maui and how it’s managed?

I believe we’ve crossed that threshold many years ago on whether or not we can even call it overtourism. We have signed ourselves up for this and it’s really working on processes to work our way out of it now. With our economy based solely on tourism there are many things we need to put in place before we start to decrease that tourism on our islands. I think much of our tourism is things that have just been built over for years and need to be revamped on how we interact with tourism.

There are thousands of cesspools on Maui that must be removed by 2050. With an average cost of $15,000 to $30,000 to convert to septic, many homeowners say making the transition is not affordable. What should the county do to help with the conversion?

We as a county really need to step it up to upgrade us in a whole. We really need to start actually melding with our community and working on these things together getting them done so then it’s not a thing that we’re dragging out for the next 24 years. Let’s work together on getting things finished now and then we can start working on other situations. Start programs that can help the resident fund in part or in whole this problem.

Maui has been targeted for enforcement by ICE agents. What will be the position of your office to requests for more cooperation by county law enforcement and federal authorities?

We have had in place with the fttp for many years a partnership. But there has been requests but there was a meeting in the council that made this a bill. So we will just have to pay attention and take on and be very upfront with the community and everyone and have everyone make the decision on what we really want here.

There is a growing mental health crisis on Maui, which faces a huge shortage in adult psychiatrists as well as primary care doctors. Outline what steps you will take to support efforts to meet that gap in services.

With many that I’ve seen as I’ve been around the island. It seems like it’s really just keeping up with the ones with mental health. Seems that we help for a little bit and then we just allow them to go back into that spiral. I have a couple ideas of how we could build places that could house or rehabilitate those while having a space to actually work with like a farm or some sort of large piece of land. And then we can help them to the finish without leaving them behind after all that work

The $1.6 billion federal Community Block Development Grant is the largest disaster loan in U.S. history, but it falls far short of the estimates for recovery from the 2023 wildfires. What is the county doing to ensure those dollars are spent wisely and efficiently?

I believe we need to really put everything out there in the open. With a way that we can put the community into an interaction that we can all work together to see how these dollars are spent wisely. The community should always have a say in what happens.

What is your assessment of programs combating invasive species in Maui Nui and what other measures would you advocate for in office?

These are the programs here that we really need to put our heads together with farmers, DLNR, government, and community and come up with a great situation where we can all work together to teach our keiki how to hunt or garden or eradicate invasive species. Then give incentives to those that do these things. We really shouldn’t have as hard of laws as we do on as you say hunting if we are having an overpopulation of those animals. We should make it easier when that is going on.

The county now has a law on the books to phase out several thousand vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts starting in 2029. The companion measure to grandfather in more than half of those properties has since been rejected by all three planning commissions. What should be done about this unresolved issue?

This could have been handled a little bit different instead of trying to force a situation. This is going to take longer than just voting it in. There is a lot of things that are entwined with our housing and tourism that could take down our whole system if we don’t do it gradually and make sure we’re doing it perfect every step of the way. I do believe that we can get to the situation of having this happen and bring more inventory back to the local community by just slowly managing the outcome.

How would you make the county administration more transparent and accessible to the public?

As a younger individual with social media and really a phone at my side at all times I feel that we need to come up with better situations to access the public. Live feeds from all meetings. Live feeds from county workers showing how they’re cleaning up the island and what they’re doing to make our island better. Live updates to each individual part of the county by their leader once-a-month just to get an update. Just allowing everything to be accessed by everyone that lives in the county.