Women on Maui Council
buoy environmentalists
WAILUKU » As an executive assistant, Michelle Anderson worked with Maui Councilman Wayne Nishiki to require more public parking as part of a zoning change at the Makena Resort earlier this year.
The new Maui County Council will have three women, including Anderson, for the next two years -- the most it has had in the last 15 years.
Some political observers hope that with the three, the Council will step up planning public park and conservation space.
Of the nine Maui County Council members elected, only the three women were endorsed by the Sierra Club of Hawaii.
Sierra Club chairwoman Lucienne de Naie said Anderson, Jo Anne Johnson and Charmaine Tavares had "credible responses" to questions.
"They had a good grasp of the issues," she said.
De Naie, who did not vote in the selection, said the three seemed to feel that Maui needed to be good place for everybody to live, then it would be a good place for visitors.
A couple of major quality-of-life issues include developing open-space plans for the North Shore from Spreckelsville to Maliko Gulch and for West Maui from the Pali to Puamana, de Naie said.
Anderson said she wants to reduce the abusive development of agricultural subdivisions for residential purposes -- a practice that allows builders to avoid undergoing the scrutiny of an urban development.
"Who's kidding who? These are not farm dwellings. ... We have to stop estate-type homes on agricultural land," she said.
Anderson said the Democratic and Republican parties tried to recruit her to become a member, but she chose to sign with neither because she wanted to remain true to voters' wishes that the Council race remain nonpartisan.
Although Johnson, Tavares and Nishiki have run as Republicans in the past, Anderson said she is not a Republican or Democrat.
