The One Main Plaza Fiasco
Different
approach to County office space shortage could have saved a
lot of time and money.
Johnny
Jackson
As with so many
things Hurricane Arakawa says, the truth begs to be told.
The issue of inadequate office space for the County is nothing
more than Hurricane’s attempt to cover up one of his administration’s
greatest blunders. Hurricane blames the Council for not giving
him $15 plus million to buy and retrofit One Main Plaza.
But The Unnatural Disaster won’t tell you, and the Council
apparently can’t remember, how this situation developed.
Well, I remember – and I’ll tell you.
When Hurricane entered office, former Mayor James “Kimo”
Apana, in conjunction with the Water Department, had arranged
for the Water Department to purchase the Kress Building in Wailuku.
With the Water Department’s move to the Kress Building,
an entire floor encompassing 9,000 square feet in the County
Building would have been available for use as additional office
space.
This amount of office space would have been more than adequate
to meet the short-term needs of the County. This additional
space would have alleviated the current over-crowding problem
as well as the need to rent any office space at One Main Plaza.
But beyond the immediate operational improvement that this purchase
would have provided, the cost to the County for the Kress Building
was only $2 million as opposed to the $15 million Arakawa requested
for the One Main Plaza purchase.
The next step in Apana’s plan was to purchase the Old
Wailuku Post Office for another $2 million and then either renovate
it or construct another building at its location. This move
would have addressed the County’s longer-term office space
issues.
So why didn’t Hurricane follow through with this plan?
The answer is two-fold.
First, Arakawa’s ego was (and continues to be) such that
to follow through with this plan would have been tantamount
to an admission that the Apana Administration knew what it was
doing. Hurricane would not do this. So in order to feed his
inflated ego, Arakawa needed to take ownership of any plan that
would provide additional office space regardless of cost to
taxpayers or inconvenience to County employees; ergo, the One
Main Plaza fiasco.
Second, when Arakawa came to office he wanted to move the entire
County seat to Waikapu.
Indeed, Arakawa was willing to cut and run from Wailuku and
would have if the community hadn’t stopped him.
This move would have had profound and devastating economic consequences
for Wailuku; likely dooming the town’s future as a business
center, but The Unnatural Disaster didn’t give that fact
one thought.
Rewriting history is a nice way to describe how Arakawa changes
the facts to meet his current needs.
I prefer calling it for what it is – outright lying.
Exposing his habitual practice of deception is the only way
to end Arakawa’s incompetent do-nothing, blame-it-on-someone-else
government and give the people of Maui a chance to elect responsible
leadership again.
