Interim Republican Party Chair Ron Agor recently announced that he will be seeking a seat on the Kaua‘i County Council this fall. “Over the last few months I have been preparing for a run at the mayor’s race in 2010,”
Interim Republican Party Chair Ron Agor recently announced that he will be seeking a seat on the Kaua‘i County Council this fall.
“Over the last few months I have been preparing for a run at the mayor’s race in 2010,” he said in a statement last week. “As I am not available for a full-time seat for at least two more years, I have chosen to run for a council seat instead.”
Kaua‘i is at a crossroad, Agor said.
“We either move Kaua‘i forward or we stand fast to keep the status quo,” he said. “I believe we must aggressively move Kaua‘i forward. We must move forward toward sustainability, including but not limited to, alternative energy, green building, diverse agriculture, aggressive recycling and a solid waste program that works for everyone.”
The county should also start looking at the overall lack of infrastructure and start planning for the future, in concert with the general plan, he said. Without government performing its basic function, providing community infrastructure, affordable housing will never materialize.
“It is sad to see our local families who want to build that additional home for their children only to be told by government that they first have to spend $250,000 to upgrade the county’s water lines and/or roadways,” Agor said.
Traffic is a horrendous problem, according to the candidate.
“We must think out of the box and look at the concept of moving workplaces to where the workforce is living,” he said. “Government should step up to this concept with its own offices and also look at giving incentives to companies that move to where the majority of their workforce lives.”
Agor said he would look strongly at developing a staggered four-hour day work week for certain government offices, as long as services are not diminished.
Families and small businesses are hurting from the county’s inability to issue permits in a reasonable time frame, he said. When families want to expand their homes or build a new one and small businesses want to expand, thus hiring more people, government has the responsibility to issue permits within an acceptable time frame.
“My experience as the Kaua‘i member of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources will help me to make decisions that will help balance our natural environment with our manmade environment,” he said. “I will continue to protect beach and mountain accesses, our natural and cultural resources, gathering rights and yet still respect individual property rights.”
If elected, Agor said he would work to foster serious discussions about the island’s future without being “nasty and dividing.
“I believe I have a record of experience and personality to pull people together,” he said. “In my work on the state land board, my working with nonprofit organizations and my management skills in pulling projects together, I have proven my ability to work with dissenting parties, as well as our state legislators and our county administration to achieve co-existence in our community and our state.”
Agor said to move Kaua‘i forward, it will be imperative to have the three branches of government, the council, the administration and the County Attorney’s Office working together, in harmony, for the people of Kaua‘i.
