Last week, Billy and I had a chance to attend a meeting on the Maui County General Plan presented by Mike Foley and Dave Michaelson. The first post on the subject discussed some of the issues that the new general plan hopes to address. Today, I wanted to review some of the methods the planning commision will be using to gather input from the community and some of the technology the commision will have at their disposal.
With the future of Maui at stake, the county planning commission is doing its best to gather as much testimony from the community as possible. Michaelson indicated that there will be a website that will enables members of the community to post their input. He also discussed how cameras have been distributed to members of the community to capture things they like about Maui and the things that they would like to see preserved. At the same time, they are tasked with documenting things they see about Maui that they want to see curbed. Public meetings will also be an important part of the input process. Knowing that the future of Maui will have the greatest impact on the next generation, there will be a number of public meetings that will be held at schools. Maui’s youth will have an opportunity to provide their vision for Maui in the next twenty to thirty years. While the planning commision has been and will continue to work hard to gather community input, they can and will also draw upon the efforts of previous planning initiatives. The considerable time, effort and input from Focus Maui Nui will be used as valuable feedback from the community.
The human contribution to the community plan has been and will continue to be integral. However, technology is going to play a part too. In addition to the afforementioned web portal, the planning commission is using tools like GIS and other advanced mapping technologies extensively. Critical view corridors have been identified and plotted to ensure that future construction does not mar views.
The meeting with Mike and Dave was full of a lot of information over a short period time. I think it did much to raise the hopes of many in the audience that positive strides are being made in the development of the plan. With the legislative backing of Maui County Bill 84, there is hope that the vision created by the general plan will be a vision that will be fulfilled. We will continue to follow the efforts to develop the general plan closely on The Maui Real Estate Blog.
