Though she now makes her home on O’ahu, former mayor JoAnn Yukimura holds tenaciously to her vision for Kaua’i. “It was my vision of our community, of what it could be and the preciousness of this island in the middle
Though she now makes her home on O’ahu, former mayor JoAnn Yukimura holds
tenaciously to her vision for Kaua’i.
“It was my vision of our community,
of what it could be and the preciousness of this island in the middle of the
Pacific that has driven me all these years — that’s a big vision,” she
says.
Over three decades of public service, Yukimura, 50, carried the
banner for her slow growth philosophy first as a grassroots lawyer-activist,
then as a bicycle-riding county councilmember and finally as an uncompromising,
hard-nosed mayor.
Defeated in 1994 for another term in office, Yukimura has
since maintained a low political profile, opting to devote most of her time to
her daughter, Maile, who is attending high school on O’ahu, and her husband,
John Wehrheim.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m not doing politics. I only
have three more years with her and politics is so demanding,” she
says.
Even though Yukimura has changed much over the years, her vision for
Kaua’i has not budged an inch.
To fully explain her vision, it is
necessary also to tell her story, for the two go hand-in-hand.
AWAY FROM
HOME: When Yukimura went to Stanford University for her undergraduate degree in
psychology in the late ’60s she had only been to the Mainland twice
before.
“I was pretty naive. I thought the rest of the world was pretty
much like Kaua’i,” she says.
Just seeing all the traffic, billboards and
urban sprawl on the drive from the San Francisco Airport to the Stanford campus
was enough to make her miss her sleepy island home.
“I became so homesick
because I suddenly realized what I had on Kaua’i in terms of a closely knit
family and a closely knit community and clean open spaces and just beauty all
around and just a sense of who I was in terms of my culture and my family,”
Yukimura says.
During the summer breaks, she would come back to work in a
mental ward on O’ahu. At the time, O’ahu was in the midst of an economic
boom.
“That was the time when they said the state bird was the construction
crane because everywhere you looked on O’ahu, there were these tall high-rises
coming up.”
Each time she returned from the Mainland, she was shocked at
the amount of urban development that had taken place during her
absence.
“There was just tremendous growth and you see it much more when
you are gone for nine months,” she says.
Yukimura originally planned to
join the Peace Corps or do foreign service work after her schooling. But after
seeing what was happening to the state in terms of environmentally unconscious
growth, she decided to return to Kaua’i.
“I thought maybe my Peace Corps
job was at home,” Yukimura says.
BACK HOME: Yukimura came back to stay in
1974 after obtaining a law degree from the University of Washington. But upon
her return, the young lawyer found herself becoming more and more involved in
local activism and politics, rather than her chosen profession.
The
five-year boundary review of the Land Use Commission for Kaua’i was taking
place in 1974 and was a very critical time for the island, she says.
“The
Land Board did boundary reviews and what happened is it became a developer’s
heyday across the state. People used it like some people are trying to use the
General Plan now to sanction and change their districts and get huge
redistricting.”
But the level of citizen activism on island was also high.
Yukimura joined the fray by working with the grassroots groups like the Kilauea
Agriculture Association, ‘Ohana O Mahalapu’u, and Niumalu Tenants Association,
who opposed the redistricting. There were 800 acres in Kilauea up for urban
designation which at the time would mean a 10 fold increase in acreage. One
thousand acres in Mahalapu’u were also up for redistricting from ag to urban
for condominiums.
“The citizens won every challenge, it was phenomenal.
They stopped every redistricting except at Nukoli’i,” she says.
The effort
wasn’t won without a struggle, made worse by the attitude of some public
officials at the time. Yukimura says, they treated citizens like troublemakers
rather than partners.
Yukimura got sick of how citizens were being treated
at the public meetings.
“So I said I want to be on the other side of it and
I want to run for office — so I ran in 1976,” she says.
WORKING FROM
WITHIN: On a shoestring budget, Yukimura campaigned on preserving the beauty
of the island, and planned growth. Having studied ecology at Stanford, and
environmental law at Washington University, she hinged her platform on having
an alternative transportation system using buses and bikeways.
Yukimura was
the highest vote-getter in the council election that year. She was also the
only woman, only one under 30 years of age and only one who rode a bike to
work.
Working to make changes from within, the
activist-turned-councilmember often was outmanuvered by her
colleagues.
“There were so many 6-1 votes. But I found that just by
speaking another side was good because then the public knew what choices we
were making,” she says.
Often when Yukimura did have successes passing
progressive legislation —as in an energy self-sufficiency plan for the county
or the first law in the country requiring solar water heaters — the
administration would not enforce it.
“Finally I said ‘I want to be mayor
because that’s where things can happen.'”
THE HARDSHIPS OF MAYORSHIP: But
this was not as easily done as said. Yukimura had two close but unsuccessful
bids for Kaua’i mayor, the first against Eduardo Malapit in 1980 and then
against Tony Kunimura two years later.
Finally, after serving another term
as a councilmember, Yukimura ran for mayor a third time in 1988 and won by a
two-to-one margin against the incumbent Kunimura.
Once in office, Yukimura
, eager to implement her far-reaching vision for the island, was promptly beset
by numerous internal operational problems.
When she arrived she found there
were only 16 computers and one fax machine to the county’s name.
“We
actually did a lot of housekeeping because every door we opened things fell
out.”
What’s more, one day after she got into office the landfill in Kekaha
was due to close in 30 days.
In her second month, Hanalei boaters marched
on the mayor’s office, opposing an injunction against them. And within less
than a year in office, a $1.3 million embezzlement scheme was uncovered.
“I
was doing a lot of crisis management and trying to do long range planning,” she
says.
Yukimura built her cabinet by doing executive searches, based on
merit.
This, she says, was a new way of doing things in government.
Before people were given commitments for jobs in the administration, she says.
“It wasn’t a matter of finding the best qualified. And that’s why to a
certain extent we did bring in a new way of government.
“I had never done
it before either so I didn’t always do it most artfully.”
When it came
time to prepare the budget, Yukimura tied her vision of slow growth and long
range planning to her budget.
“Then I laid out this vision because I was
finally having this chance, right?”
But her budget “just got totally
decimated by the council. Every initiative I wanted to do they crossed it
out.”
This diminutive new mayor, however, refused to roll over. The ensuing
budget war with Ron Kouchi and others on the council dragged out for seven
months.
“I came out just lambasting them and that wasn’t a good way to
handle it. That set up a big confrontation which set up almost a stalemate,”
Yukimura says.
She admits that the manner in which she did things in the
past tended to generate conflict.
“My gift is that I can usually see the
big picture, the long range, so a lot of times, I am right in my position on an
issue but … I often had to make people wrong in order to prove myself right,”
she says.
After much conflict, Yukimura did manage to get a solid waste
manager and film coordinator put back into the midyear supplementary
budget.
The solid waste management plan set up by the Yukimura
administration won national accolades after the hurricane. Her film commission
now generates $3 million to $6 million every year for the island economy.
Yukimura was not afraid to go up against powerful developers. Sometimes
she won.
In 1990, the county intervened against a proposal to put a golf
course on the Ninini Coastline. When hotelier Chris Hemmeter saw it was going
to be a really long drawn out process, he backed down.
“On Christmas Eve, I
got a call from Hemmeter’s assistant who said they were withdrawing their
application. It was a Christmas present I’ll never forget.”
BLOWN AWAY:
Yukimura’s pursuit of her vision was rudely interrupted in late 1992 by
Hurricane ‘Iniki, which caused nearly $1.6 billion in damages.
“What she
anticipated to do as mayor exploded with ‘Iniki,” Kilauea resident, Beryl
Blaich says.
But Blaich says that the fact Yukimura had a plan for the
future stood Kaua’i in good stead during the disaster recovery period.
“She
was able to use the resources to take things forward, and not just for
cleanup,” she says.
Yukimura won a public service award in 1994 from the
Federal Emergency Management Agency for her response efforts after the
hurricane.
“We were able to respond to ‘Iniki because we had done
groundwork already, we were already engaged in long-range planning,” says
Yukimura. She says she was able to get free public transportation for the
island, thanks to the bus system she had started before the
hurricane.
“What became the modus operandi was to turn problems into
opportunities — after the hurricane we had these huge problems but they gave
us huge opportunities,” says Yukimura.
The mayor often found herself on
the unpopular side of issues. One week after the hurricane, Yukimura asked for
a stronger builder code.
“Everybody wanted to rebuild and we wanted them to
build to hurricane standards,” she says.
It was in part the lack of such
standards after Hurricane ‘Iwa in 1982 that so many structures succumbed 10
years later, she says.
“There were citizens who were saying, ‘Oh we have to
learn a new building code? The most important thing is rebuilding right now, we
have to go, you are delaying this.’ After the hurricane, everyone in this
immediacy mode,” Yukimura says.
“We didn’t do everything perfectly but I
think we did many good things, and people didn’t know about it, we were so busy
doing it we didn’t do the PR for it,” she says.
THE VISION: This vision
continues to draw people in. The phrase that Yukimura popularized — Keep
Kaua’i Kaua’i — rolls easily off the lips of a whole cross section of
people.
This is true even when they were on the opposing side of the
issue.
“I disagreed with her on many items but respected that she always
had the best intentions of the island at heart,” says Mark Hubbard, former
president of the Kaua’i Chamber of Commerce.
“I think my forté is
long range visioning, seeing what’s needed in the long range,” she says. “And I
think some of that’s bourne out by the fact that people are now seeing my
vision. There are more people who support it now than when I first started it,”
says Yukimura.
Despite some disappointments, she says, many of her
long-term plans are still bearing fruit, even though she has been away from
office for five years.
“Look at Kealia Bike Path, it’s happening. And even
the (recent) power plant issue — that’s an energy self-sufficiency issue,
conservation and learning to be more efficient in how we use energy, and
thinking of alternative more natural renewable sources.”
Many of the issues
she pushed for three decades are just as valid today, she says.
The
watchdogging efforts of the General Plan Update by Raymond Chuan and others is
similar to the opposition of the boundary rezoning issue back in the 70’s, she
says.
“There is a growing momentum of citizens’ concern and action that I
think is really important because the reason why Kaua’i is doing so well in
tourism now is because of all the people before who helped to keep the island
natural and beautiful and rural and friendly. If we lose these things, we are
going to lose our attractiveness as a tourist destination. Plus we are going to
lose our home.
“I don’t want to be dramatic but we are going to lose the
home we love and know.”
This is the heart of Yukimura’s vision.
Would
she do it all over again?
“Absolutely. I love public policy. It’s my
passion.”
And in three years after Maile has graduated from high
school?
“I would like to go back in some way. I don’t know whether it’ll be
elected office or appointed, but I do want to deal with public issues on the
island,” she says.