LIHUE — Kauai County Councilman Mel Rapozo will admit that he is not always on the winning side of the votes cast by the seven-member board, but that doesn’t faze him. “Everybody’s voice and every position deserves to be heard
LIHUE — Kauai County Councilman Mel Rapozo will admit that he is not always on the winning side of the votes cast by the seven-member board, but that doesn’t faze him.
“Everybody’s voice and every position deserves to be heard on that table whether they’re popular, unpopular, majority or minority,” Rapozo said during a brief respite from the County Council’s meeting Wednesday. “They all need to be heard and they all deserve to be heard. In many cases, I want to be that voice. I want to be, not so much the minority voice, but I want to make sure that everybody’s voice gets heard on that council and I’m prepared to do that.”
It is one of the reasons why the 49-year-old Kapaa resident said he is running for his fifth term on the Kauai County Council.
“I think the cliché is that there’s so much more to be done here on Kauai,” Rapozo said. “I think we’re going through a very tough budget season and I think experience is important. I really want to see the county through this tough budget session.”
Rapozo, who has owned and operated M&P Legal Support Services, LLC for the past 17 years, served three consecutive terms on the County Council from 2002 to 2008.
He then returned to the County Council in 2010 after placing sixth in that year’s general election.
During his last run for County Council in 2012, Rapozo placed fourth after receiving 12,752 votes of the 64,095 votes cast for nine County Council candidates in the general election.
Rapozo now serves as the chair of the County Council’s Environmental Services, Public Safety and Community Assistance Committee and vice chair of the Committee of the Whole.
He also serves as the president of the Hawaii State Association of Counties and a director on both the Western Interstate Region and National Association of Counties Boards.
“There’s just so much going on — so many moving parts — that I want to be able to continue what I do,” Rapozo said.
Among the many issues facing the County Council, Rapozo said he wants to keep addressing county spending, public safety, the preservation of land and cultural assets and shoreline access.
The goal, he said, is “making sure that the county tries to maintain the Kauai lifestyle as long as we can.”
“I know and understand that change will happen and development will occur, but we just have to return the focus back to where the traditional assets are preserved,” Rapozo said. “We’ve got to really focus on the needs and the requirements for our residents.”
• Darin Moriki, county government reporter, can be reached at 245-0428 or dmoriki@thegardenisland.com. Follow him on Twitter at @darinmoriki.
