16 Water Resources Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Aloha kakaiaka and welcome to the What's Up Committee meeting of Monday, June 1st, 2026. It is 9.07. Happy Vaayune. I'm Shane Sinensi, your committee chair. Mahalo members for taking the time to attend this meeting. And just as a reminder for members of the public, silence cell phones or any noise-making devices. Members, in accordance with the Sunshine Law, Uh, if you're not in the council chamber, please identify by name who, if anyone is in the room, vehicle or workspace with you today and minors do not need to be identified. Uh, please see the last page of the agenda for information on meeting connectivity. Joining us this morning, you have committee vice chair, Gabe Johnson, Aloha Kakaia.

Okay. Council members, community members, there's no testifiers at the Lanai District Office and alone on my side of the office. Morning.

Morning. Also joining us, Council Member Batongan is excused. Council Member Cook is excused. Council Chair Lee will join us later. In the chambers with us, we have Council Member Tamara Poulton. Aloha kakaiyaka.

Aloha kakai, kakako, shoot me live and direct from the council chambers.

Thanks for joining us this morning. Also, Council Member Rollins-Fernandez is running late and will join us later. Joining us from Kula Uka, Council Member Sugimura, aloha and good morning.

Good morning, everybody. I'm doing this meeting from Kula and there's nobody in my workspace with me. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. Also joining us online is Council Member Nohe Uuhajins. Aloha and good morning.

Aloha, Chair. Good morning, everyone. I'm at my private residence. I do have, it's summertime, so I have a couple kids running around the house. But I'm alone in my dining room that will function as my workspace for today. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us this morning. Also from Corporation Council, we have Deputy Corporation Council Yukari Murakami. Aloha and good morning.

Good morning, Chair.

Also, we have a whole list of what's up committee staff. Thank you for running this meeting this morning, and welcome. Members, we have two items on today's agenda, mental health crisis intervention, prevention, and support for youth in Maui County. What's up one, parent 19. And our second item, overview of a proposed community resilience and youth development campus. What's up one, parent 20. Members, without objection, for WSOP 1, parent 19, I'll designate Ms. Danielle Bergin. from mental health trainer and community affairs consultant, YouthLine Hawaii. Also with her we have Kelsey, Lori, and Ashley Tone, also welcome. As all resources under Rule 18A of the Rules of the Council because of their expertise on YouthLine and its operations. For What's Up One Parent 20, without objection, I'll designate the following as resources under Rule 18A because of their expertise on the proposed community resilience and youth development campus. Milton Babatibidu, Senior, President for Kupaa Enterprises. And Mike Diaz, Representative, the Ho'ilina Group LLC. We got that? Thanks for coming, gentlemen. Staff, do we have any testimony this morning?

Chair, no one has indicated that they would like to testify at the beginning of the meeting.

Okay, great, and just let me know, and then if anybody comes on, and then I'll read the testimony log. Okay, let's go straight to our first item. Members, what's up one, parent 19. Members, our first item. item is mental health crisis intervention and support for youth in Maui County members. Last month was mental health awareness month, a time to highlight the importance of mental wellness, reduce stigma and connect people with support. However, our discussions within this committee have made it clear that mental health is an issue we must prioritize year round. In our committee meeting on the Maui wildfire exposure study on July 21st, 2025, we heard how youth in particular are in urgent need of greater mental health support. Today we've invited representatives from Youth Line Hawaii to join us and share how they're supporting youth across the county and across the state. They plan to present on their particular services that they provide.

Excuse me.

including their peer to peer, uh, mental health support and crisis line. Um, I'd like to turn the floor over to Ms Bergen for her presentation. Thanks for being here.

Thank you, Chair Sinise, very much appreciative of having us here today. Again, my name is Danielle Bergen and I am a mental health trainer and community affairs coordinator for YouthLine Hawaii. We're gonna show you a little presentation here. We'll advance some slides as we go through and talk about it. And then at the end, we'll be able to open this up to questions for anyone who might have any. So you see our first slide here is we're a service of Lines for Life, which is the 988 out of Oregon. Youthline has been around for 26 years, and you can see the logos that we have from our different contact centers. Very excited to be able to tell you the work that we've been doing in the last year and a half at Youthline. Next slide, please. So we wanted to make sure when YouthLine came over from Portland at a time shortly, maybe a year, year and a half after the fires, they were invited by actually Maui United Way to do a mental health focus group on Maui. and we knew the importance of really connecting everybody at that time, and they did a presentation for us. But they also are very respectful of the land that we live on, and this is just something that we incorporate into our training, realizing that we live and work in the occupied homelands of the Kanaka'i'iwi, the native Hawaiian people, acknowledging the history of lost sovereignty, forced overthrow of their aloha ʻāina. We acknowledge the importance of the ʻāina and the spiritual and cultural identity connected with the Hawaiian culture and still connected within the islands on which we gather. Lastly, we honor and respect the many diverse peoples in these islands where we are allowed to live in the spirit of aloha. We are actually training our third cohort right now They're over in our center over at EMUA, over in Kahului. And we have another group of, I believe, four or five that we are training at the moment. Is that correct?

We actually have a class of seven. We were very excited. And that'll put our volunteer count at 19.

Yes, 19. That's awesome. And of course, we have Kelsey, one of our volunteers with us here, who's gonna talk a little bit after this. Next slide, please. Yeah, we're good with the pause. So this is our Hawaii team. You can see Ashley to my left. This is just our names and who we are with a little bit of our qualifications there as well. You know, Ashley is a graduate of UH Manoa. She's recently certified in Youth Mental Health First Aid. She has a Bachelor of Science in exercise science and psychology. He's also a community and public health professional. I've already introduced myself, so you know who we're at. And our clinical supervisor is Ms. Amber Drake, who's actually involved in the training right now. She was actually a volunteer with me by previous position with Mental Health America of Hawaii almost the entire time I was there. And she's also the NAMI affiliate for, affiliate leader and a member of the NAMI State Board of Directors. And if you don't know what NAMI is, it's the National Alliance for Mental Health. Next slide, please. So we're a peer-to-peer help support crisis line for young folks ages 10 to 24. Our service, our national service, which our youth line Hawaii is connected to every time we go online, which are now Sundays and Wednesday evenings, is in its 26th year. And we built out to the capacity to serve more and more youth. In 2024, our amazing youth volunteers and supervisors were able to assist roughly 25,000 youth across the country. Our call center is open in Hawaii from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time, but when you think about the times that we go online, which are two nights a week, and we're hoping with our additional group that we get in here, with our youth-trained volunteers, we're gonna be able to open one or two more nights as we move through. We'll actually be open till 10 o'clock p.m. So most of the folks, when the call center is closed in the Mainland, we're the only call center that's gonna be open across the country. So we'll be able to take calls, texts, whatever it is from youth who need to call in, whether it's in the middle of the night for them or whatever, we will be available.

Next slide please.

So why are you flying to Hawaii? Why did they come to Hawaii? And actually, we convinced them to come to Maui, which was great. They were originally looking at Oahu. Thank God for our focus groups that we did with them early in the middle of the 2024. But as many of you know that suicide is a high risk for our youth. And unfortunately, in Hawaii, suicide is the leading cause of injury death for ages 15 We are able to do crisis support on our lines. And while the vast majorities of our calls are not actually that high acuity, we'll have our youth trained in over 70 hours of mental health training before they even go online. But we also know the major problems that are happening with our youth these days, such as higher, you know, a duty to depression and anxiety. It's been rising steeply among our keiki. Housing shortage, trauma-related stress, especially exacerbated since the 2023 wildfires, as well recently as the Kona Low Storms. But we are also a workforce development, group that Ashley will talk more about as she goes along into the future slides here. But with expanded hours for youth, and the youth line's gonna strengthen the fabric of our support for our keiki, which is so, so important. Just a little bit about Lions for Life. They are actually, pardon? Oh, that's right, we need to get the slide there. I'm like looking at my computer.

Thank you, Ashley.

Okay, we're fading in here slowly. Yes, suspense, exactly. So our parent organization is Lines for Life. That as the 988 from Oregon. So a little bit about them is that their mission is to prevent substance abuse and suicide and also to promote mental wellness as a 988 call center. They do this in three ways. public policy, prevention, education, and of course the crisis lines. The services you see listed on the slide there include multiple services, which is including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Oregon affiliate for that, The veterans crisis line, they're also the ambassador for the VA connected to the crisis line for veterans and their family. Alcohol and drug helpline, which is support and resource line for those affected by addiction. And then a military confidential helpline for veterans, active duty, military, and their family. Multiple contact lines is a part of Lines for Life. Next slide, please. So people have asked all the time, what is YouthLine? And as I mentioned, you know, obviously we're a peer crisis and support center, but we also are many things just besides that. We do classroom education and community outreach. We have been to several schools in Maui County. Most recently, we were over with Lahaina Luna High School, which did a mental health lunchtime lemonade stand where we actually interacted with like 300 students that day. It was pretty powerful. And that's actually part of another program that we have going on that we're gonna be offering our various Maui County schools in the future. And Ashley will talk more about that as we move through. And then of course, we do volunteer mentorship and workforce development. One of the most interesting things that I found when being associated with the statistics that I heard that many of the youth volunteer actually go into social services or mental health positions and remain in the community, almost 50 or 60% historically. So this is gonna be a great way to build our own mental health supporters, social services supporters throughout Maui County as we go through to the future. Next slide, please. So again, these are our contact numbers. You can call us, you can text us, you can go on our website, Youthline, and you can chat with us. We generally have four or five youth volunteers on staff whenever we're open. And we always have a clinical supervisor on staff as well. We get a lot of questions about how our amazing youth are able to do this type of work. And it's absolutely natural for us adults to care and protect for our young folks. But the fact is that even before YouthLine Hawaii came here, there was folks, there was young people calling YouthLine from Hawaii or texting or contacting them. And our youth are already talking about problems that they have with their peers. So why not have peers that are trained to be able to listen, to be able to reflect, to be able to have that basic mental health knowledge to be there for someone without judgment, and making them feel more comfortable to talk with each other. And I don't know about you, but I wish that there was something like this when I was growing up, because the service we provide is absolutely amazing. And if you were to ever just view our youth and our call centers, they are very, very excellent at what they do. Next slide, please. So when we harness the peer-to-peer connection, okay, that helps break and support the stigma and it normalizes the help-seeking behavior. Asking for help is a sign of strength and not weakness. And the more that we can do that in our community outreach, in our focus groups, when we're in schools, when we're on the lines, wherever we can do it. Getting that message to our youth to let them know that somebody's there for them is so, so important. Many feel isolated. Many have problems with maybe family issues or friend issues. mental health concerns, some might even be thinking of taking their lives. But relationship issues, self-harm, anything that you can think of that might be something as simple sometimes as an A student who got a D on a test and doesn't know how to tell his parents or something as critical as someone harming themselves or living in a family. where there's domestic violence in the home. But YouthLine is a peer-to-peer crisis support services, which is such a benefit, not just for Maui, not just for the mainland, but for all of Hawaii. At this point, I want to turn it over to Ashley Tone, who's the Deputy Director of YouthLine Hawaii.

Aloha, good morning. Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you for allowing us the time to share about our resource. Our hope and goal is to be able to reinforce the support mesh for our youth that are across Maui County and of course across our state. I do want to say, before I get into this slide with these cool little pictures that I love so much, I just want to re-emphasize that we are help, support, and a crisis line. We do not have any assessments or markers as to why folks can call in. And our hope is really that youth will reach out to us before they get to a point where they are thinking or engaging in self-harm and suicide. Yeah, okay, so this fun little slide, I like this because I'm a very visual person. So we only go up to 2021. However, you can see from 2013 when we started this graphic here, how we've grown as a service. And part of that is that we have increased our availability on call lines. We've grown our volunteer, our volunteer numbers. We average about 200 volunteers between each of our different sites throughout the year. But as you can see, Hawaii is already peeing from early on well before we got here and started operations last year. Next slide, please. And here's another graph for our visual learners and our data folks. So this one breaks down our call volume from 2015. To no surprise, 2020 was a really hard year. Lots of youth isolated with families during COVID. That was our largest year with about 28,000 contacts. And when we say contacts, that is the group term for our calls, chats, and phone contacts. And as Daniel had mentioned earlier, we range at about the 25,000 count for our call volume annually. Since we started operating our call center here on Maui in January, we've noticed that our call volume from youth all over the state of Hawaii has increased. Comparing numbers from 2025 up to just the end of 2020, April of this year, our call volume has increased 225%. So all of the advocating from you folks here, from our outreach that we've been doing has really helped to spread the awareness of the service. And we're really glad that there are youth from across the island chain that have called in. We've done outreach on different islands. Actually, we've done outreach on every island except for Molokai so far. Molokai and Lanai will be our focus schools to provide outreach and education to this coming school year. Gabe, I'm coming for you. Next slide, please. So Daniel had mentioned the training that our volunteers go through. Again, I just want to emphasize that our youth are already having these conversations with each other. I think we can all definitely tap in and relate to that. As we were young ourselves at one point, some of the conversations and experiences we have as youth are really tough. sometimes to talk to our parents. We're always happy when our youth call in like, yeah, my parents are my person. It always makes us happy. But for many, that is not the case. And so the training that we offer is really, a lot of it is based around self-awareness for our youth volunteers. Really hard for folks to be there in support if we are unaware ourselves of where we are in our own mental health journeys. So as you can see here, cultural responsiveness is one of the top things that we like to train on. Because our youth volunteers are serving folks from all over the country, it's super important for us to Be aware that everyone is coming from a different place, noticing what our biases are as we come into these spaces. And we also talk about things such as sexual violence. We talk about how to maintain our supportive nature when folks are calling in for bullying. I mean, there's a whole list here. As part of the training week that our volunteers go through, before they are done, we actually have two nationally certified, recognized certifications, Youth Mental Health First Aid, Safe Talk. And those are amazing and incredible trainings that our youth have the privilege to undergo. Youth Mental Health First Aid is really like a first aid and CPR class for our entire bodies, but this one is really encompassing and incorporating how we care for our mental health and how we can support others. And also, SOASIST training is an applied suicide intervention specialist training. Skills training, almost. And after six months of our volunteers being part of our program, we do offer that. And we wait six months because it is a much more intensive certification. Yeah, let's see. And next slide, please. And so as Danielle had mentioned earlier, so all of our volunteers come into our call center. There is no remote work that is being done. And that is due to the nature of the work that we're doing. Also, we want to make sure that our volunteers are... Bless you. are very well supported. Um, and with that support, um, on every single shift, there is at least one master's level clinician that is, um, at the call center physically. Um, we do also offer, uh, we do also have some clinicians that are supporting us, um, virtually from our Oregon offices. Um, our ratio is, um, for every four volunteers that we have, there is at least one adult there. Um, And now that we are a growing ohana of volunteers, we are all hands on deck every single shift, and we're super excited about that. I do want to note that because of the high acuity of some of the nature of some of the calls that we get, all of the training that our volunteers go through, we have... high confidence that our volunteers are able to handle these calls, but they shouldn't have to. That's why we are in the room with them. And so if anyone is actively suicidal or if there is harm or abuse happening in the house, imminent danger, or if we have to reach out to any kind of crisis mobile outreach or EMS services, those are things that we do, we the adults. And then we'll go to the next slide, please, because it has some pretty cool information on there. So I really, really love this, the top line that's up there. Again, our volunteers, our youth are incredible, incredible human beings having really difficult conversations already, bolstered by a lot of the training and skill development that they obtain while they are volunteering. They're able to deescalate 96% of all of our And so meaning if someone is coming in at like a level eight, nine or 10, our volunteers are able to at least get them to commit to a safety plan, a self care plan. And all of our calls don't always end of, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. But they are able to stay safe. We are able to establish rapport, trust, and help someone work through what it is that they're calling in for so that they can stay safe during that call and commit to safety until we usually schedule a follow-up, which is normally the next day. Daniel had mentioned over half of our volunteers do end up going into behavioral health, education, or social services, which is incredibly high in need. I think Maui County is in dire need of more professionals in this field. And then I do also like to mention that all of our programming, our training, we are an accredited crisis service. So everything goes to the American Association of Suicidology. Next slide, please. Yay. Um, so what youth line Hawaii looks like. So what are we doing in the community? Um, we, my job, I love to do the community outreach. That's my jam. Um, but I, we are in schools providing mental health curriculum for middle and high schoolers. Um, in addition to students, we do also offer training for, um, staff and teachers. Um, so that, you know, as we are helping the whole, we're very holistic in how we approach, um, community engagement, education. And so it's really hard to just ask the students to improve if the staff also has opportunities to grow themselves. Community outreach and events. June is amazingly full of events this weekend. So come catch us at any of the events coming up on the Saturdays coming up. and creating connections with any youth serving organizations. We do love to facilitate training for our adults that are youth serving so that they can better support. I think one big opportunity that I am hopeful for is that we are able to engage with athletic coaches and trainers from all across different fields. As we all know, our coaches spend probably more time with our keiki than their teachers. So being able to just help them support their athletes, their students much better, our hope is that they also feel more comfortable if something does come up. We are locally staffed. Our youth are here from different high schools. I believe right now we have students from Kinkei Kaulike, we have Kamehameha School, Seabury Hall, Maui High School, Baldwin, and am I missing someone? Not yet, almost Lahaina Luna, we're almost there. We are hopeful to actually have a satellite center that we can open up in Lahaina, that way our West Side youth are able to give back. As Danielle mentioned earlier, we did outreach at Lahaina Luna. And actually, if you wanna go to the next slide, that'd be fantastic. So at our outreach at Lahaina Luna, we were able to meet with the Interact Club, amazing group of young folks who are so service oriented. The picture that you see on the left hand side is the mahalo flyer that they put together for us. but they were able to talk mental health, provide resources for students, for about 300 students. But yeah, it's hot. They had a frozen lemonade and frozen Pog truck that came to campus and they're able to do that. And most of them expressed that if there were something on the west side, they would absolutely wanna participate. Such amazing, compassionate folks that are on the west side there. And these are just some other photos. The top right photo, there's no way that we could have done the work or set the course for YouthLine Hawaii without doing focus groups and hearing from our youth. We conducted, I believe it was five different focus groups from different parts of the island here. And we were able to get input and feedback from youth from all the, like I think late elementary school, all the way up to high school and a couple of college students as well. one of the things that we really try to do is elevate our youth, elevate youth voices. Many of our youth have stated that they at some point have had a decision made for them that they had no input on. And I don't know that many people really love that. And so being able to provide opportunities for our youth to advocate for their needs, to share information, to better inform our lawmakers and policymakers on how to best move forward with things is something that we super love doing. The picture that is on the bottom in the center, we were able to take some of our youth from YouthLine Hawaii. We also had youth on this panel from Maui Youth and Family Services, Epekohana and Kokua Kalihi Valley, but we took them to the healthcare state of reform on Oahu. in January and they were able to share their mana'o on a youth mental health panel. We all know it's always a good sign when we run out of time because there's so many questions, but everyone was pretty engaged or locked in as we like to say. Next slide, please. Um, and so Danielle also mentioned, so we are currently running a, um, our summer training cohorts. Um, we were hoping for three, we got seven. Um, so we're really excited. Uh, majority of those students are from King kick out leaky this, uh, this cohort. So we do know that outreach works, um, and it can be effective. Um, It's day two for them. So after this, we'll check in and see how they're doing. But a really great group of folks from all diverse backgrounds, interests, but all with a heart to serve. Our recruitment is a rolling recruitment. And so we are happy to take applications for volunteering throughout the year. And we will run maybe four trainings per year. Our next training, we're looking at running over fall break in October. Save the date. So our next slide is a video. It's a 50-50 chance we work, but we'll give it a go. Okay, so she don't let go. So we're gonna Oh, maybe we're loading. So as we're hoping and hoping and hoping that the video works, I will say that the video is on our website. Okay, we're passing through it. Thank you guys.

Yeah.

We might try at the end. But one of the things that we do try to encourage is for, again, our youth voices to be heard. That video that we are efforting is a video that highlights the voices and feedback from our volunteers from our Portland office. One of the cool things that we are looking to engage in with our Hawaii group is to create all of our own videos and videos theme marketing giveaways that feel more like home. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce one of our volunteers, Kelsey. She's been with us since our spring cohort. Her development, watching her from day one at our training up until now where she's now taking lab contacts has been tremendous. It is a privilege to be around these young folks and I'm so excited to have her share a few things.

Hi, I'm Kelsey. Thank you, Ashley. I am a student at Seabury Hall, a junior, and I joined YouthLine to advocate and spread awareness for youth mental health, knowing personally how the difficulties and hard mental health challenges can be in a teen's life and how stressful those issues can come up. Before this opportunity, I felt that mental health for teenagers, especially in researchers, were really limited and overlooked, and that really motivated me to join this opportunity. Being a part of this group, I truly feel like I'm making a difference on those nights on the lines, taking real people with real issues, big or small, from all over the country. As a student, as I said, from Seabury Hall, I've had the opportunity to participate in a numerous amount of community service opportunities. And I've found that YouthLine is a truly unique one and definitely the most impactful opportunity that I've had the pleasure to be a part of. Being a part of YouthLine, I realized a lot of the tools that we use to support our context can be applicable to my outside life with my family and friends. This made me realize how truly powerful this space is in advocating for youth mental health and how important that can be. From my experience on the lines, I've got to talk to a variety of people with a variety of issues in their lives and something that surprised me was unfortunately how young these mental health challenges can start, just especially today with the rise of mass media and social media and just how that can affect a teenager or a young person's mental health as we weren't being in contact with so many people and hearing all those opinions can be really stressful. And it's just really can take a toll on someone's mental health. YouthLine is a truly amazing resource for teens and offering an amazing judgment-free space for all types of problems in one's life is given a space to be recognized, respected and supported. And I'm really happy to be a part of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelsey. That's so awesome. It takes a village and sometimes that village looks like youth supporting youth and the power behind what it means to have someone who is your age or close to your age who just gets it. It's a long time since we've been teenagers. And so to have that relatability on the line supporting you is incredibly powerful. Next slide, please. Amazing, so I do wanna take an opportunity to just mahalo everyone for giving us the time and space to share about YouthLine. The dedication that you all put into your professions and in your personal lives to help support those in your circles, your communities is incredible and special and very meaningful. Like I said, it does take a village. And so with all of us working together to spread awareness and advocate for a better tomorrow for our youth, I feel like we can make a very impactful and positive impact. I think just one thing that I wanna reiterate about the program is that it is a free program that is confidential. Youth that are reaching out to YouthLine do not need parental consent to reach out to use a service. Unfortunately, we all know that sometimes it is the family members or the guardians that may be where the issue may lead. And so one of the things that we like to just say is our youth shouldn't have to wait for someone to say it's okay to reach out for help. Our call line is 24 seven and they can reach out to us anytime. But again, there's a QR code there. I believe it takes you to our website. But again, mahalo for allowing us the time and space. And we're glad you're here. Oh, we're trying again. It's kind of DJ-ish. Thank you.

Mahalo, Ashley, Ms. Bergen, and Kelsey. Ms. Bergen, Ms. Bergen, Ms. Bergen. Thank you for that presentation. Before we go to questions from our members, staff, do we have anyone else wanting to testify?

Chair, no one has indicated a desire to testify. Would you like us to do a last call on this item?

Sure.

So I'm proceeding with the last call. If anyone in the audience or on teams would like to testify, please come up to the mic and begin her testimony or use the raise your hand function on teams. I'll provide a brief countdown. Three, two, one. Seeing none chair. No one has indicated they wish to testify on this item.

Thank you. Members. Any objections to closing public testimony at this time for this item? Okay. Thank you. Do we have any other resources online for the members to ask? Okay, we can go ahead and start our Q&A with Committee Vice Chair Johnson, followed by Member Poulton.

Okay, thank you, Chair. First off, Chair Sinensi, thank you for this agenda. It's very kid-focused and family-focused, and I really love the flow of the agenda, so thanks for bringing this up. I also want to thank Ms. Bergen, Ms. Lurie, and Ms. Tomei. The work you guys do is very valuable. I try not to get triggered on this, but when I was an eighth grader, my best friend Jeff killed himself over a divorce. And having gone through that as a young child myself, it's always been tough when we talk about this topic. You know, I guess my overall question is, you know, how do we get the kids that are falling through the cracks? You know, that's the overall question. I know you guys are in the schools, but take, for example, my friend Jeff. They were going through the divorce courts, and I wonder if there's a place for the courts to recommend to use your services There's eviction courts. There's times when children are being affected through our court systems that maybe they could get involved. and educating about this hotline or something, anything. It's really what I'm looking for is all this trauma that is being built up through the courts or just through life. How do we get them when they're not at school, you know, when they're not going to school or when their lives are in chaos because of family and they're not necessarily being on at school or not even paying attention. So maybe something in the courts is just my top of mind, but I'd like to hear what you guys, how do we get those kids that are falling through their cracks?

Thank you for that, Gabe. And thank you for sharing the story. That is a tremendous amount of weight and emotional, just emotions to carry, especially when we lose someone that we love. Our hope and goal is that we can collaborate with all the different systems, with all the different partners and entities that are involved with youth. We in no way think that YouthLine is the solution at all, but if we're able to help support by providing that extra service, our availability I think is one of the strengths that we have, but that still requires our youth to actively reach out for that help. we are happy to go into places and spaces to do presentations, to advocate for why this service might be helpful and impactful for youth. And I think especially naming youth in the court systems, they're there with, they have no power. So to feel so powerless in these spaces where it is the adults in their life that are trying to work through things, like they are the collateral that oftentimes carries burdens for the rest of their life. And so how we can support them, our service is there. If there's any way that we can just have conversations, like we're so open to any ways that we can be in a space to talk story.

Yeah, sorry, my dog's whining. If you heard a weird noise, it's my doggy. But I think I recall in family courts, when folks are having a divorce, they have to take a class or something if there's children involved. And maybe that would be an opportunity if there is a class for folks going through the family court that they could be educated on a service like this. So I'm glad... you guys' efforts on this topic. Funding-wise, are you guys okay? Where are you getting your funding from? County, maybe there's a lane for us, but how are you guys doing on funding? Maybe Ms. Bergen should respond here.

Currently, we're well-funded. We know the importance of... reaching out and getting as much funding as we can from whether they are private entities or right now we are substantially funded through a couple different grants and actually one from the federal government and one from the state. It's from Cam Dee. So we were thinking at some point, one of the reasons we wanted to be here today was just to let you know who we are and what we're doing. And you never know down the road, we could be reaching out for funding in the future, but we wanted to make sure that we could be sustainable at first. And I think that that's the most important thing, especially in this day and age where funding is so critical and it's so difficult to get.

Yeah, thank you for that. I heard the time. Thank you, Chair.

If I can just add one more bit to that, I think part of it is, as we are new in setting up the first site outside of the state of Oregon, we wanna make sure that we're doing things in a Pono way, in a very ethical way. And so rather than doing the grab for all the funding that might be available, we wanna make sure that we're able to provide the deliverables. And so yes, the funding is fantastic, but certainly as we look to grow and expand our capability to serve more youth, that conversation will likely come up. But I appreciate the ask and the support behind that. Thank you.

Hello Ashley. Uh, next we have member Paulton followed by members tomorrow.

Thank you chair. Thank you for the presentation. Um, I guess my first question would be like, how do you measure success?

That's a very good question and I think that's really important to acknowledge because this is the work that happens on the lines and what we have to a lot of the issues that we have to deal with a lot of the time even personally I've had to deal with more often than I thought when starting this opportunity the assessment for self-harm and suicide and being able to measure the success is just whether that takes one or two hours or even just a few minutes with that person is just taking them down from that really high acuity situation and just offering them that space. And even if that means like we've, I've had to learn as a volunteer in short term that we, cannot guarantee their safety for one, the next day or a week from now or a month from now, but it's just that success is just keeping them safe for that one night and coming up with that safety plan and self care plan for that one night and making sure that they're safe while they're talking to us and just giving them space to share what they need to, they feel like they need to be heard about.

What if the issue was a struggle between parent and kid social media access? I think five to seven hours a day is sufficient. My kids don't agree. And so that's a point of contention in my house. How would you address that?

That, well, on YouthLine we, we don't really, as volunteers, we don't come up with necessarily, we don't tell them what to do. We almost, we can lead them and kind of explore options with them, but we, if a teen is coming to us with an issue like that, when they're feeling they're conflicted with their own parents, we kind of, we just have to give them space to talk about that and we can't really tell them what to think or what to do because again, we are short-term support and they only truly know what is best for their lives even and it's just giving them that space to be heard. that I think that even also as a teen, I definitely would feel sometimes being conflicted with my own parents and I think it's just really powerful this space and having feeling like you're being heard, even if that person can't necessarily tell you what to do, but just being able to brainstorm with them and talk to them.

If our Hawaii kids call when it's Oregon, is it sometimes hard for them to understand or connect with that? Can I answer that one? like Oregon picks up instead of Hawaii picks up the fall.

Yeah, and that's a very fair point. Because everyone that reaches out to Youthline goes through basically a centralized queue. And so part of that cultural responsiveness training is not just for our volunteers here, it's also for our volunteers that work at our other sites in Oregon. So we've had partners like Michelle Navarro from Piha Wellness go up. We've had folks from KKV go up and do trainings for our volunteers and staff up in Oregon. We can never be perfect, but we can always work to try to be better in supporting folks.

That was one of the main concerns we had in the very beginning. That's why we did the outreach with Michelle's group and with other groups. Oregon flew them over and brought them to the different call centers and spent time not just with the youth, the volunteer youth on the lines, but with the adult supervisors as well. So we realized that that was such a important tie-in, especially giving them an example of maybe some kid calling in and speaking pigeon. And we do have also, it's relatable, I think, to those in the Native American area as well.

Thank you.

Hello, Member Pulte. Next, we have Member Sugimura, followed by Member Uuhajins.

Thank you. Thanks for bringing this up, Chair Sinensi. I appreciate always your heartfelt committee work. I think the beginning, I think it was Danielle, she mentioned Epic Ohana. And if that's correct, was that mentioned as one of the resources that you have networked with here?

Yes, it was. We've done trainings with them.

Great. I was on their board before I did this job. And I was just wondering, you know, how they are engaged because to me, members, they are foster care, foster youth. And I think the mission of that when I was involved was to get them recognized. So once they're 18 and they're no longer part of high school, that they would continually get care, financial care, foster kids up to age 21 or 25. I don't know what it is. So I was wondering what you're doing with them. And I'm glad to even hear their organization mentioned.

Do you know the trainings they did? Go ahead.

That's a great question and thank you for bringing that up. We love Epic Ohana. The work that they do is profound and so important. We have done cross trainings with them, so they have helped to inform our youth line as far as what the experience of a child going through foster care might be like. Youthline in return has done trainings around trauma informed care. Although they are very trauma informed, I'm just giving it from a different lens, from a Youthline lens. The material is similar, but it's also informed by our youth who are doing the work. And so how that partnership looks like is we are another one of the resources that we could potentially help support some of the youth going through some hard times. caseworkers, the peer mentors, are not always available. And so in those spaces and gaps where they don't get to be with their people, that's kind of where YouthLine falls in. But we've learned a lot about youth in the foster care and some of the things that they typically struggle with from our partners at Epic Ohana. Thank you.

That's it.

Mahalo, Member Sugimura. Next we have Member Uhu Hutchins.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our resources. To the young woman who goes to Seabury, you are so eloquent. That was impressive to hear you speak and hear what you folks do. When I was listening to the original presentation, I was kind of wondering what kind of impacts and support you folks might have when you're listening to other people's Concerns, don't get me wrong, you guys are all impressive, but always impressed with our Kiki and how well they handle, even just doing this right now is not an easy job. But other than that, I really don't have any other questions, except what kind of resources you folks might need as you internalize other people's issues, which I know is really difficult. It's difficult for us sometimes when we have to hear what our community goes through. So if you wouldn't mind answering that, thank you.

That is a very good to acknowledge that concern and doing our training that has always been something that is acknowledged as Danielle and Ashley always putting the volunteers mental health before even the context because they're taking their time to being there for those people that are struggling. And me personally, I have had contacts and hearing about issues with whether it's self-harm, suicide, or even small issues that may, mental health struggles that I may have seen relatable in my own life, has definitely stuck around for weeks after I take those contacts. But just having even that, just having that in my head, is still supported by our team at YouthLine as if it's a really hard contact that we take at night and just taking a 15, 20, 30 minute break after if that's really taking a toll on that person and how that's affecting them, but it all really just depends. And YouthLine always gives us opportunity to talk about as volunteers if there is a issue that is affecting them. So I think just YouthLine itself offers that support to its own volunteers as well.

That's good to hear. Thank you. And thank you, ladies, for being with us today. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to add a follow up for Kelsey. I know you mentioned sometimes mom and dad and with people that call in to their parents or their guardians might be the issue. How do you as volunteers kind of, like you mentioned, maybe to deescalate if there's anything going on at the home As the volunteer, how do you try to deescalate what's going on at the house? Do you compromise? What are some of your, I guess, approaches? Oh, and before you do, I do see Chair Lee. Welcome, Chair Lee.

Good morning, everyone. Sorry for my tidiness. Had to go to the doctor today. I'm home alone and in my workspace. Looking forward to your meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to you afterwards for your question. Go ahead, Kelsey.

That's a very good question. As... Wait, I'm so sorry. You said, oh, the tools. I'm sorry, I got distracted. So the tools that we use that we are taught in our training is to like validate a lot of the time of our contacts as they're going through a very hard time and just being heard is really powerful, even if that doesn't mean a change that is right away in their lives, but just validating their feelings and offering opportunities a care plan as we talk about that. And just also another tool that we use is just summarizing a lot of their the situation that's going on at home and that a lot of the time does just deescalate the issue because a lot of these kids are mostly just experiencing isolation and not really feeling heard in their particular situation and knowing that there's somebody out there that can help and support even if it is just talking for one night. Regarding if there is a situation at home that may not be safe for that contact, we are like mandatory reporters. So like if there is any cases of neglect, abuse, and Neglect, abuse, imminent injury. We are required to report to outside resources. And it also depends on the age of the contact, which we ask when starting the conversation. Thank you.

Mahalo for that. I'm so impressed that you can recognize all the different types of situations. Mahalo for that. Members, any need for, oh, I'll go to Chair Lee. Chair Lee, did you have any questions for our panel this morning?

Not really, just a couple. Thank you for scheduling this item. I think it's very important, I just wanted to check with any one of the resource folks if and if so, how much funding do you get from the county?

Ashley.

Thank you. It's nice to see you, Alice. We are currently not receiving any funding from county. I think probably mentioned before you hopped on, we're sustainable at this moment. And one of my responses also to the funding is we wanna make sure that we're able to deliver on the services that we are putting forth as an ask for funding. This conversation, I'm hopeful we can keep open for future. Right now, we're doing pretty good. But as we look to expand and to be able to grow our service here so we can support more youth, certainly funding is one of the things that typically comes up. I appreciate that.

Well, thank you. Thank you for the work you do. If there should be a need for funding or other types of resources, please don't hesitate to call us.

Yeah, Mahalo. I think really where we are is we want to just expand the awareness of the service. We want to be able to support more youth, I think especially because we have so many youth in rural areas with very few resources or access to resources, we want to try to be one of the resources to help reduce some of the barriers for our youth to get that support that they're looking for.

Wonderful, thank you very much.

Mahalo, Chair Lee. Members, any need for a second round of questions? Go ahead and raise your hand. Member Poulton.

I just was wondering what you consider a youth like what if there's someone in their early 20s is that still like what is there a cut off like what if an adult calls and they're in crisis like with their youth is that not do you say put the youth on the line or?

Generally, we speak only with youth, or whether it's by text or call, whatever it might be, and the ages are 10 to 24. Our youth volunteers are ages 15 to 24 as well. And If it is, let's say a younger adult is maybe in their mid or late 20s or whatever, we can always refer them over to the 988 lines or at least take a moment to listen and see what's going on and try to provide the best resources we can as a referral. When I was first brought in with the youth line, I developed, at least across the state, a vast, resource list of whatever situations might come up that we might be able to help them with. So we wouldn't just dismiss them. I think we would spend some time with them and then make sure that they're connected to get the help they need at that time.

Thank you. I'm glad you mentioned up to 24, because I mean, I would have assumed 18 or something, so that's good to know.

Yeah, I think there is with the peer-to-peer model. I mean, the reason why it works so well is because there is a relatability. So below 10, it gets really tough for our teens to relate. I think one of the cutest contacts that we had, one of our volunteers was chatting with someone who was 12, and this person just wanted to talk about dinosaurs. And so our volunteer... looked at us and said, I don't know what to say. What do I say? I'm like, bro, just talk about dinosaurs. Ask him what his favorite dinosaur is. And so we also learned something about that volunteer that evening is that they also used to really love dinosaurs. And so sometimes we get so like dialed in and tunnel vision, like we're going to get these really high QED calls all the time, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just Yeah, they got more chores than their sibling, and they want to talk about something else. So it is interesting, obviously, if our contacts are older, there's usually kids involved or marriages or divorces, and our teens are just like, huh, what?

can you trade, is there a range of people and they're like, oh, I got someone with a kid or having a marriage issue, you want this one? Or once you take the call, you're stuck with that person?

Um, not necessarily. Um, as whenever you take a call, um, that may say also, um, say it would be bothering that person to the con or the volunteer, there is always the option to switch over to another volunteer that is more comfortable or like more equipped, uh, to feel like they can support that person in the best way. Um, regarding, um, Marriage and divorces, I'm not sure I've ever really experienced that as there's mostly I've gotten up to as young as I think 11 years old to maybe 18 or 19 and just their issues are definitely very different but being able to support them and just making sure that they feel heard.

I'd say the typical age range of youth that reach out to us are between the ages of 13 and 17. And I just wanna touch real quick because we have youth now from Hawaii and we are receiving contacts from Hawaii. Our service is also anonymous, both for our volunteers and for the people that are reaching out. We've had it happen one time so far where we had a contact that had reached out and the volunteer that picked up this text knew this person. And so we will never have anyone that knows each other work a contact for many different reasons. mostly for the health and safety of our volunteer who, because we're confidential and anonymous, may see this person at school the next day and could say nothing. And that is a very heavy emotional burden for our folks to potentially carry. So I just wanted to name that because we are a small community and as we continue to build awareness around the service, it is highly likely that we will start to see more youth from Maui reaching out. And so I just wanted to touch on that real quick.

Thank you.

Member Poulton, any other questions? I did wanna add, I'm happy that there is someone real on the other side of the line to answer their questions. I know that we've heard some horror stories about AI and AI not helping very much. So I appreciate having somebody real on the other side.

Just a real quick add. There is a lot of the time definitely that our contacts do ask us, am I talking to a real person? And just having even having a couple of typos in your text can tell them that you are talking to another teenager or not a bot that's just artificial intelligence.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. Okay, members. With that, I did want to Mahalo Ms. Bergen, Kelsey, Ashley. Thank you guys for answering our questions. Very informative. Again, can we... We have the... the scan code online. If we wanted to share your information on any of our social media blasts, we can do that?

Yes, of course. More the better. Share as much as you like.

Okay, great, thank you. Members, mahalo for all of your poignant questions this morning. And are there any objections to deferring this item at this time? Okay, again, mahalo for your presentation this morning. Members, we'll do our mid-morning break and we'll come back at 10.30 and we will switch out for our next item. Thank you. It is 10.17, we'll be back at 10.30. What's up in recess? And welcome back to the What's Up Committee meeting of Monday, June 1st, 2026. It's 10.33. Mahalo for the quick break. On to our final agenda item, members. What's Up One Parent 20, the overview of proposed community resilience and youth development campus. And Mahalo Committee Vice Chair Johnson. Yes, we've got... uh we're investing in our youth and as we go into our summer months today we have invited mr thibodeau from kupa enterprises and mr diaz from ho'olina group llc to talk about their proposal to develop approximately 320 acres of kahili golf course land in wailuku maui for Community Resilience and Youth Development Campus. The campus would be a multi-use community hub integrating youth sports facilities, workforce training programs, community programming, and resilience infrastructure. I did wanna mahalo Chair Lee for introducing this to the committee. Mahalo for that. And so before we take public testimony, I'd like to turn the floor over to Mr. Thibodeau and Mr. Diaz for their presentation.

Thank you. Aloha, Chair Sinensi, Vice Chair Johnson, council members, community staff, and members of our Maui community. My name is Milton Bobathibodo, Sr., and I've served as president of Kupaa Enterprises, a Native Hawaiian organization, nonprofit focused on youth development, workforce opportunities, community resilience, and long-term stewardship. Today, I'm here to share a vision for Maui's future. It's not simply a project. not simply a sports complex, but a long-term community asset designed to serve Maui families and future generations. Over the last several years, and especially following the Lahaina tragedy, many of us have reflected on an important question. How do we create opportunities that allow our people to live, work, raise families, and thrive here on Maui? That question is what led to this vision of the Community Resilience and Health Development Campus. The vision brings together several important community priorities. Youth sports and recreation, wellness and healthy living, workforce training, apprenticeship opportunities, community gathering, and cultural programming, emergency preparedness, resilience, infrastructure, long-term economic opportunity for local residents. From Kupaa Enterprises' perspective, our focus is people. We believe in creating opportunities for our youth. We believe in mentorship. We believe in workforce pathways. And we believe in strengthening families. And we believe in building community infrastructure that continues serving Maui long after we are gone. This vision is about investing in our future generation. It's about creating opportunities that help our young people succeed. It is about creating workforce opportunities that help residents build careers. And it is about strengthening Maui ability to prepare and to respond to future challenges. Today, we're not requesting approvals. We're not requesting any fundings. We are here respectfully seeking guidance, discussions, and an opportunity to better understand how this vision may align with county priorities and community needs moving forward. We appreciate the opportunity to begin this conversation. We welcome your mana'u, your questions, and your feedback. Mahalo for your time and consideration at this time. I would like to introduce Mike Diaz, and he's with the Holina Group, LLC, to provide an overview of the site and long-term planning vision. Mahalo.

Mahalo, Bubba. I appreciate that. Good morning, Chair Sinense, council members. There you go. Again, mahalo baba. Good morning, Chair Sesensei, council members, and committee staff. My name is Mike Diaz. I'm currently the owner and operator of Hitters Paradise Indoor Training Facility in Kahului. And I'm here representing the Hohelina Group, LLC. First, mahalo for the opportunity to participate in today's discussion. Being a resident for over 40 years on Maui, I've committed myself to the betterment of our youth and our community on Maui. The Holina Group's sole purpose is to offer our youth and community opportunities that will allow Maui to sustain an economic model that benefits our county on a year-round basis. We have been evaluating the long-term potential of this specific property and the possibility of creating a thoughtfully planned, phased campus that can serve Maui's community needs for generations to come for some time now. In fact, it's been well over 10 years. From our perspective, this vision is about much more than just the development per se. It is about exploring how this opportunity, how this property may responsibly support recreational facilities, wellness opportunities, youth and workforce programming, community gathering spaces, and above all, resilience-focused infrastructure that'll strengthen Maui's long-term future. Ironically, the people from Youth Line who just proposed before us would need a campus and we would fit right up there on point for them to have our youth, to have our kapuna. In essence, we basically have something that we're proposing as a group, as a whole, as a community that will basically go ahead and encompass everybody from the tourism to our locals to everybody that's on Maui that would be able to benefit specifically our youth. As we look at the property, we see the potential for a balanced and community-centered environment that could integrate athletic and wellness facilities, open spaces, workforce and educational opportunities, and emergency support infrastructure in a way that aligns with the broader needs of the island. Our role is primarily focused on land stewardship, long-term planning, infrastructure coordination, and phase development feasibility. Coupa, right now, where Bubba is the president, and we've lined ourselves with Coupa Enterprises, it brings the nonprofit mission. the community programming vision, and the long-term focus on youth development, workforce opportunity, resilience, and above all, public benefit. We understand the importance of responsible planning, the environmental stewardship, the infrastructure coordination, and the meaningful community engagement as these discussions continue moving forward. At this stage, we're here to begin the dialogue, as Bob already stated. We want to listen carefully. We want to better understand potential pathways for the collaboration and alignment with county priorities and the long term needs of Maui's communities. We feel for a youth sports complex proposal, or for a better term, a youth sports village, our strongest entitlement path would probably likely be, we would probably want to preserve a significant portion of the land in active agriculture. We'd want to develop baseball, softball, soccer, football fields, and a large indoor gymnasium as a community recreation component. We would incorporate agriculture education, farm operations, or even ag tourism uses. We would seek a special use permit rather than attempting a full rezoning to expedite build out. Our concept is basic. It's 60 to 100 acres of sports fields, agricultural crops or orchards surrounding the fields, the farm market, and educational facilities. Tournament public parking and support buildings would generally align more closely with Hawaii's agricultural land use policies than a purely commercial sports park or village. This location is especially attractive to us because it sits in central Maui with direct access to the Honoapiliani Highway and already has substantial recreational activities. infrastructure with the existing golf courses. The King Kamehameha property alone occupies roughly 150 acres in the Waikapu foothills. If we are seriously exploring this, together, only together, can we plan our future. Whether Maui County agricultural zoning and state land use agricultural district rules would support it or not. we have provided a conceptual site, as you see on the screen, showing the fields, the parking, the agriculture, the concessions, and a tournament play and the capacity for your review to give us better and modify ideas that will better suit Maui County. Again, we appreciate the opportunity to participate in this process, and we look forward to the committee's guidance and questions.

Mahalo, Mr. Diaz. And Mr. Thibodeau, I'm sure if you build it, they will come. Before we go to testimony, I'd like to introduce Member Rollins-Fernandez. Aloha and good morning.

Aloha, Awa Kea, Chair. Aloha, Awa Kea Kako. I call on you for my tardiness. I'm at my private residence, alone in this room. But my children may walk around unnamed. And then my husband, McKenna Fernandez, is also here. Mahalo, Chair.

Okay, thanks for joining us this morning. Staff, is there anyone wishing to provide testimony for this item?

Chair, there is currently no one who has signed up to testify. Would you like me to issue a final call?

Do you want to testify? No?

Sure, go ahead. If somebody would like to testify in the chamber, please let staff know, or on Microsoft Teams, please raise your hand. This is the final call. Three, two, one. Chair, it appears that nobody wishes to testify.

Members, any objections to closing oral testimony for this item at this time?

No objections.

Thank you. Okay, members, I'll open up the floor for questions and comments. Each member will have three minutes for the first round and three minutes for the additional rounds as needed. I will start with Chair Lee since she introduced this in the committee. Go ahead, Chair Lee.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here today and sharing your incredible vision. That's what caught my attention when you sent your email to our office. I think that you have a tremendous amount of imagination, and this would serve a tremendous need in the community. The way my brain works is I always think who's going to pay for it. So did you have, besides the sports development program, did you have an economic development program to pay for this? And the second part is, my second question is, Are you sure you just want a special use permit? I'm not sure if you can get funding on something like that. I think the bankers would prefer a more permanent land use situation than a temporary special use permit, which needs to be usually renewed, and then it's not all that secure. So those are my first questions, okay? Thank you.

I'll probably go ahead and answer and then defer to Baba. Being the representative of our whole group, thank you, Chair Lee, where you brought this to the table and you do have an imagination just like we do. Living here for over 40 years, it's always been to me, working with the youth, working with the parents, working with Kapuna. I'm 66 years old and I'm a grandfather. My granddaughter is 11 years old. Seeing her learning how to surf here on our shores before she learned how to walk, it was special. But now she's getting into softball, she's getting into all these gymnastics. And you know what the problem's always been? They always have to leave our island to go to the mainland to do tournaments, to do training, to do whatever, just like we do in colleges. We don't have a sustaining athletic college here on Maui that the kids can stay here. So we've been thinking about this now for, it's been over 10 years and over 10 years, we wanted to always do Bono, do the right thing and do the right thing by everybody, not just the youth sports. Your first question was, how do we fund this? I was part of 1996, the funding and the origination and the development of a small campus called Cooperstown Dreams Park in New York and Cooperstown Dreams Park started with three fields. It started with about 12 teams and it started with a gentleman by the name of Luper Sudi and Luper Sudi's dream was everybody should have the opportunity to play baseball. And the target group at that time was 12 and under. So we went there in 1996. I had a 10-year-old son. And at that point in time, firsthand, I viewed what had happened. And kids were coming from all over the country to visit one place, and it was called Cooperstown. And Cooperstown, the hall of fame of baseball, it was the destination site. So as we thought over the last 10 years, what better destination site without baseball, without softball, without youth sports, without anything, was better than Maui, Hawaii? I can't think of one. So I played for the Hawaii Islanders and I was on Oahu for two years in Aiea. I made trips to Molokai. I made trips to Unai. I made trips to Kauai. My last trip was to Maui back in 1984. I have not left since. Maui is the special place that nobody understands until they come here. And what makes it so special are the people. The people, the beauty of the land, the kids, the respectfulness, just absolutely loved it. It's been well over 40 years. We found that if we could go ahead and do the same business model that Cooperstown did, which currently they bring in $30 million every 12 weeks, they do nothing but tournaments. So if you were just to go ahead and relieve us of everything and we were to go to a banker and say, we're going to bring X amount of teams off island from Korea, Japan, mainly from the west side, west of the Rockies, from the mainland and from internationally, Mexico, Australia, Canada, they inquire every day. And that's where I work currently, which I'm the owner of, Peter's Paradise, where they come to training camps. And we'll bring anywhere from 12 to 60 kids out, stay at local hotels, and we'll train with them all week. The beauty of it is they're not used to training on the beach. We train two hours on the beach. They're not used to training on a beautiful field out on our beautiful island. go there and train on the field. And when we close everything off after nine hours in one day, they come indoors to hitters paradise. And we had said 10 years ago, if we had a place where you guys could come like a Cooperstown and we had more than one sport, would you come? And it's always, where can we sign up? Cooperstown currently gets deposits two years in advance for 12 year olds. So they pay two years in advance of a 10% deposit upfront to come here, or excuse me, to come to New York when they're 12 years old. So we did an analysis, a financial feasibility study in regards to just tournaments. We would sustain ourselves. With that being said, it always comes down to how do we develop a $300 million project? So we had to go outside and we went outside of the box and my good friend and part of my Ohana, Bubba Thibodeau, we said, do you have any ideas? And he'll go ahead and expound upon that a little bit more about his ideas, the rest of the funding.

Mahalo, Mr. Diaz. Mahalo, Chair Lee. Next, we have a... You have plenty of opportunity. We've got a couple more questions coming. Next, we have...

Maybe you wanna explain the format, what the bells mean and stuff today.

Okay, yeah, everybody gets three minutes. And then we'll ring it after 30 seconds. But next we have Committee Vice Chair Johnson followed by Member Poulton.

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, gentlemen. Mr. Tabato and Mr. Diaz, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate your vision. It's a big vision. That's big what you guys are talking about. My question is, is the owner of the land on board for this project?

Yes, in fact, it's my partner, a gentleman made the name of Dr. Jack Cassis, who's a surgeon who had a lot to do with inventing the stint, 80-year-old gentleman who's been wanting to invest in Maui. His daughter is one of the partners in Ho'olina Group. And yes, he would make the initial purchase of the land.

Who owns the land presently then?

A gentleman out of Tokyo. He's owned all of Kamehameha Golf Course and Kahili. That's right. Okay. I recall that.

So, you know, a big project like this, we want to have some community input. Did you guys do any community input? Because I'm sure Pickleball people would love to have a conversation with you. And then do you plan to do any community outreach?

We would love to do that. In fact, that's what the dialogue is open for right now. As far as doing focus groups and what have you, we might have the best focus group on island right now with our 150 plus families that it is paradise. Also, we also have Bubba, who runs a volleyball academy for the last 15-plus years with his families. I also deal with all the high schools here on a regular basis, and we've thrown it out there indirectly, nothing that has been significant in writing until today. And we didn't want to move forward without the, I guess you could say, opinion and the help of the council.

A project like this reminds me, you know, we just, me and myself and Council Member Rollins just came back from Japan and I remember the Budokan. I don't know if you guys remember live at the Budokan, but basically that was a sports judo, kendo, martial arts facility that they also had live rock concerts, like the Beatles played there in 66. So having the sports facility with like big events, you know, concerts, don't want to throw a wrench in it because i could imagine it just widens the permits and widens the you know the scope but when when i think of a big facility like that there's going to be so much you want to put in there and i was reminded that budokan how it used to be like a sumo wrestler thing and all of a sudden you've got rocks and concerts but anyways I just was curious. It sounded like you said everything is on the table at this point. I just wanted to... 100%.

In fact, ironically, I lived in Japan for five years. I played for the Latte Marines over there. So I speak enough Japanese to be, I guess you could say, dangerous. I can take a cab and I can eat. Up nine. Yeah, up nine. Walk out at night. All right. Thanks for your time.

All right. Thank you, Chair.

Hello Committee, Vice Chair Johnson. Next we have Member Poulton followed by Member Sugimura.

Thank you, Chair. You know, it's always great to have dreamers in our community. I guess my suggestion would be like you talk to somebody that does this for a living, like consultants, Muneke or somebody, because Same thing as Chair Lee, if somebody's gonna invest $300 million, a special use permit's not gonna do it. With that amount of money, you wanna have permanence. changing zoning, community plan amendment, a lot more, and not just the sports community outreach, all the surrounding neighbors, parking requirements, all those things, and also taking into account where the central Maui fields are, it's pretty close for a population of our size. The Halawa of Oewe Arts is being built to withstand a category three hurricane, so I mean, if you're gonna do a resilience center for a shelter, maybe upscale it to a category five or something, but yeah. yeah, land ownership and permanency, where would you get your startup funding from, like the first hundred million for phase one?

So, being that Native Hawaiian organization, right? And we're gonna be doing this in phases. And of course the first phase would probably be me getting funding, and there's funding out there for this particular kind of projects, you know, access. But planning it the right way where we start, when we do phase one, that phase one we'll consider of sports that would generate income already to start the second phase. So it'll be self-efficient once we get phase one started. I come in with the workforce programs, everything else to do with the community side of it, where we can.

So I mean, just like the planning and design for phase one, like the Halawa Woiwi Arts was like four million just to plan one million.

That can be accessed through grants and stuff.

100 million?

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh yeah.

If you got access to 100 million off the bat, I don't know that there's anything more that we can give you that you don't already have.

I understand, I understand, but then being here with your folks' guidance and everything, like I said, we're not here for fundings. We're gonna find our ways to do it.

Yeah, I wouldn't even come to us for guidance. I would go to a professional planning organization because... I'm just the lifeguard. Member Johnson's a farmer. We're not the professionals.

We absolutely have professionals that build all of Florida and the spring trainings of Major League Baseball.

I mean like professionals of Hawaii for planning, design, and all the things that you want to do because it's a little different here. 100%.

That's what we would go ahead and reach out to.

But thank you. Mahalo, Member Bolton. Next, we have member Sugimura, followed by member Uhu Hodgins, and then Rollins Fernandez.

Thank you. Very creative. So this is the Kahili Golf Course. So my question is, then if you're talking to the owners from Japan, are you also talking about having to purchase the King Cam Golf Course also?

No, right now, King Kamehameha is being purchased by a gentleman right now. It's in escrow as we speak, but because of our flooding and the extensive damage of over $8 billion in our community, it's being restructured. So it's already been on the table and escrow to go ahead and purchase it. And we have gone to them. I'm sure you're familiar with the attorney, Paul Mancini. And we basically have gone to him and says, is this something that your new buyer would go ahead and consider? Said, absolutely. He's doing nothing with Keeley Golf Course. He just wants to revamp, refurbish, and make Kamehameha Golf Club the cat's meow, so to speak, and make it as well known as the plantation. So yes, we have discussed it. It is on the table. Are we stuck with doing only Kahili? The answer is no. We've had several different sites. We've had Alawala, we've had Kihei, we've had a number of different places where we can go, but this seems to be the number one choice of everybody because of the access and there's existing sports there. We are open. We just have the infrastructure to do it. We have the resources. We have the experience. And above all, we have the money. It's just now of getting the blessing of the community, of the council that's saying, hey, this just isn't about you sports. It's so much more than that. That's kind of where we're coming from.

So if I try to understand what you just said is that the ownership for King Kamehameha and Kahili is under 1-1 and the Kamehameha Golf Course is being sold and you are going to be asking them to build this?

No, the new prospective buyer, the new potential buyer of Kamehameha is buying both. He's buying Kamea and Kamele. It's one piece. And that one piece of property, he's chose not to develop anything on Kahili, on the Kahili side. So we went in and said, we would just like to use the 320 acres of the Kahili side.

Oh, so that's a whole another layer that you must go through. So another big thing always with Maui is water. So what is your water accessibility then for the Kahili?

The ironic part of that is all our fields are AstroTurf. We won't be watering our AstroTurf very often. So we're not concerned. We've addressed that. We're not concerned with the acres, excuse me, the amount of gallons that go through per day. It's like 750,000, 750 million. I forget what the number was. The attorney had told me what it was, but when he found out that we were going to be doing nothing but turf, we really don't have any more than what they're already using currently. And I think he's been dormant now for what? Seven, eight years.

Okay. Mahalo, Mr. Diaz. Mahalo. Uh, Berserker Murrah. Next we have member audience followed by member Rollins Fernandez.

Thank you, Chair. Aloha, Mr. Thibodeau. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you. The other gentleman, I'm sorry, I forgot your name.

Mike Diaz.

Mike, very nice to see you. I really don't have any questions. I don't disagree with my colleagues. I'm curious. what a planner might get you. I know you would have to come to us if you needed a change in zoning or something similar. But other than that, I guess I look forward to seeing what you guys put forward in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Mahalo, Member Uhuhajens, Member Rollins-Fernandez for your opportunity.

Mahalo, Chair. Aloha, mahalo for your presentation. My apologies, I missed the very beginning of it. I understand that you're here to share and not to request funding or anything like that right now. I guess looking at your projected budget or estimation of the stadium, alone for 80 million and knowing that the state has been struggling to figure out what to do with the dilapidated Aloha Stadium and then knowing, you know, like that they had I guess appropriated 400 million for that and like now it's like 650 million dollars. How did you get $80 million for your estimate for the stadium? And maybe you should go talk to the state guys because they're estimating $650 million.

Yeah, it's of a different scale. So you can scale up as high as you want. We can go ahead and build a billion-dollar stadium. We're building basically a college spring training-type stadium where we'll seat no more than 5,000 people. It'll be more to the likes of... Murakami over at, I played in Aloha Stadium, I understand. That's a major league NFL football stadium. We don't have any aspirations of doing that. We would be more of the Murakami Stadium for Hawaii Manoa University. Spring training stadiums, they run anywhere from 50 to 60 million. After consulting with a number of people on what we wanted to do, as Council Member Pelton said, we've consulted with professionals where they said you would maximize it probably within three years of about 80 million bucks. So that's where we got our information. But it would be significantly smaller than a Loa Stadium.

Yeah, they're projecting 31,000 seats. So you're projecting 5,000. 100%. Okay, and then I looked at Cooperstown Dream Park's website.

Yes.

And I see, you know, like, yeah, lots of smiles and, you know, kids happy to be there. But I see them driving there. So when I think about, you know, like folks, you know, like these 12 and under or, you know, those with the dream to play baseball professionally or otherwise, you know, I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't want to come to Maui to play baseball. Often it's just cost prohibitive. So I can see folks driving to Cooperstown, so I guess When thinking about the access and the cost to come to Maui, if that was factored in when comparing it to Cooperstown.

I don't know if that's so true, and I'm not disputing that, but originally I'm from California. And being from California, 90% of their teams come west of the Rockies. And yes, the local teams east of the Rockies do drive there, but they bring 120 teams in per week at this point in time. And very, very few times do the people that are local want to go to a local place. In fact, they go out to California, whereas the Californians, the Coloradians, the Arizonians, they go back because it's such a huge trip. Well, currently every year we probably send no less than a dozen teams here, 1,200 to Cooperstown as we speak. What does it cost? It costs about $1,500 per person. Travel with mom and dad, it's probably about a $5,000 to $6,000 a week. And it's really interesting that parents, including myself, back, God, when my son was 10, 11, 12, it was no problems if I had access to it, a $30,000 summer to give him the opportunity to go to Cooperstown, to go to Maui, to go whatever, we did it. You're only gonna be 10, 11, 12 once and to go and have a staycation, so to speak, and play sports with the family. We just not have had any people say, I don't want to come. Currently, we run programs for just training and development on our beaches, fields, and our indoor facility with no sports village, and they come in droves. That's what I do for a living. We get people to teach them about the culture of Maui. We teach them the culture of Hawaii. We teach them how to do lays. We do a luau. They taste our cuisine. Maui's a special place, in my opinion. I can't say enough good things about it. And I don't know what to say rather than I don't see the deterrence of people flying here from, especially coming from the Orient, from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, as opposed to flying all the way to Cooperstown. So we would kind of be the west side of Cooperstown. Yeah, great question, though. Thank you.

Mahalo for your response. Mahalo, Chair.

Mahalo, Member Rollins-Fernandez. For my opportunity, I'm just glad you're designing a sports complex and not an ice center or a data center. But Mr. Diaz, it sounds like you guys are open. It's still in the conceptual stages and you guys are opening to either scaling it to kind of either, whether it be to fit the community needs or to fit your budget. So those are things that are still up in the air.

Absolutely. We just don't want to overstep our bounds. As Council Member said earlier, Council Palton said, we're dreamers. At 66 years old, I've got nothing left to do but dream. So to leave our legacy and make an impact on, I'm with kids every day. I'm with parents every day. I'm with grandparents every day. And they always ask me, when can we stop leaving Maui? When can we bring the world to us? And when I say, well, it's not in my hands. Would I love to do it? Absolutely. But there's a lot of stuff that has to happen to get here. But the biggest thing, as we've always said, and it's already been stated earlier, is the funding. Well, when we met with Kapau Enterprises and the funding was there via grants, sponsorships, just the whole NHO, when that presented itself, that gave us a whole new light. Otherwise, I would continue what I'm doing. We're benefiting more local children on Maui than you could possibly believe. In fact, anybody that comes from off island, we charge them an exorbitant amount of money to pay for our local kids. And why we do that is because they're willing to do it. If you're going to spend $1,500 a night at the Grand Waialea, well, that could afford me to get two local kids to train and develop and play games for free. I'm very partial to our local community. I've lived here over 40 years and I know how hard it is to travel. I know how hard it is to get here. But when you do get here and you do have some... discretionary amount of funds, you make things happen. And to get those kids to surf, to play tennis, to play soccer, to play baseball, softball, I don't think we do it enough here to understand what the world wants to do, specifically when we're rebuilding Lahaina, when we're rebuilding our community. It always comes back to, well, it's kind of like we're giving back and still getting something. Yeah, it's kind of a quid pro quo because we are still building and we are still fighting back and the kids are kind of struggling. So that's kind of where Kapaa and whole whole Lena group kind of coincide. That's why the marriage was perfect from them having the expertise and having the resources to fund and build and do the local. We do this training and development and tournaments and get kids college offers worldwide. It just so happens we live here.

Mr. Diaz, a second question. Are you open to not just expanding for athletics, but also athletic trainers and sports medicine?

That's a huge part of our business. Usually the kids, when people say, The kids aren't as good on Hawaii, specifically Maui. Well, it has nothing to do with the kids. It has everything to do with training the trainers, training the coaches, training the managers. I lived in Japan for five years, and their teachers were exceptional. In fact, when they left college, they would pay them six-figure money. I said, well, if we did that in the States, I'd probably never leave school. Our focus is to go ahead and really, really get quality people to take care of our keiki and really to take care of them to a point where they'll sustain themselves even if they're not that good athletes. But if they learn something about what pono means, what aloha means, I'm a knight of probably over 200 families. It's crazy what's out there when you learn about it and understand it. And it all starts with us as the adult.

Mahalo. Members, any need for a second round of questions? Go ahead and raise your hands. Member Poulton. Followed by Member Rollins-Fernandez.

Thank you, Chair. Being that you said maybe one of your funders is 88, you're 66, and like that, what is the timeframe? I mean... at least I guess for phase one, and maybe you might wanna also speak with Mr. Atherton and his journey into developing around this area as well, the housing and infrastructure and whatnot. I know you said you're gonna do AstroTurf, but I imagine you're gonna need a number of bathrooms, sinks, parking lots, things like that. So, I mean, with you being 66, no offense, and the other guy being 88, it's kind of a short timeframe you got there to make something happen. And how do you, like, I didn't see any dates or goals or things like that. And how...

Great question, and I'll be very specific. We'll go as fast as the council lets us. And when I say as far as the council lets us, you're talking about permits. If we had permits, whether it's a special use permit, whether it's a change of zoning, right now we're dealing, it's agriculture. We need housing. We're going to sleep 900 people on a given day. To do that, just when people, like when they go to Cooperstown, they sleep over, I think it's close to 1,000 kids in bunk beds. So when they travel, instead of putting them in hotels, they put them in just like dorm barracks.

We need to put that somewhere. Hawaii is a right-to-farm state, so have you thought about the interactions between any noise or pesticides or things like that? That's often some of the complaints we get from folks living in the direct line of agriculture, whether it's heavy machinery for coffee machines running all night and things like that, or spraying and things like that. if you have active ag, it's a right to farm state. So it's not like you can say, oh, we're playing a game. Don't do your farming this week, you know? Yeah.

No, we're going to leave that up to Kapaa Enterprises. That's his expertise. And that's why we're... Yeah, we're the experts in the tournaments, the training, the development, the facility. But as far as the community and what have you, going back to your original question, the timeframe would be hopefully the second we have the approvals and the blessing, we would immediately go for funding. We'd suppose that would take no more than anywhere from six to 12 months in my past experience. So in my past experience of developing facilities from 10 to $20 million in other regions, um, it could move pretty fast. Um, Being 66 years old, the great news about that is I have plenty of younger people that are much smarter, much more mobile than I am, but to be able to be a consultant until the good Lord takes me, I'm not worried about my age whatsoever. Currently, I'm in my facility throwing batting practice eight hours a day. That being said, the whole project, if given the opportunity to get permitted change of zoning, whatever it may take, the funding in place, probably take anywhere from three to five years.

Yeah, I would just talk to a professional land use consultant to kind of ground truth your ideas.

100%. And we have spoke to Mike Atherton before. And we spoke to the other landowners out in Oluwole. We've kind of been all over the county in regards to what piece of land best suits for the county to go ahead and benefit because it's so much more. We have 10 sports. It's just not baseball.

That land isn't necessarily flat. It's at the foothills kind of, right?

The bottom part of the golf course is all flat.

So that's where you're looking at the flat area?

Yes. Well, we'd use a little bit of the top, but right now, currently, it still has the golf course.

So a lot of grading and grubbing and that, I mean, that alluvial plains is kind of like important ag lands because of all the nutrients coming down in that area. So, I mean, have you spoken to farmers or people that would rather do farming than sports over there, the community, surrounding community?

Yeah, we're immediately right now in our first steps.

because I can see a lot of the sports people being excited, but I can see a lot of the other folks doing other activities in that area be like, we often run into NIMBY folks, whatever it is, housing, sports, someone just bought their 10 million dollar house and they don't want to hear people screaming and cheering all the time or something like that you know i'm sure people from away would like it people who want to play sports but maybe not someone that just bought their house and want like peace and quiet and not a lot of traffic or something so i mean I just wanna temper your dreams a bit in reality by ground truthing with a consultant, ground truthing with other members of the community that aren't baseball players and things like that.

Again, I completely understand and agree with what you're saying. We would work with those people, with those professionals, and we would look for their guidance, and then we would actually make a specific plan as opposed to a generic, which you see. Right now, the dream is something that's going on throughout the United States. We're just so much more than a baseball tournament facility. We're a village for the community.

Mahalo, Mr. Diaz. Next we have Member Rollins-Fernandez for your second round.

Mahalo, Chair. Just a quick comment and then a question. The dorms, I think that would be great for, Member Johnson, Member Sinensi, and my district, our kids, our high school, well, just all the kids that have to travel to Maui always, you know, it's always a challenge to find a place to stay. So that's a highlight for me in the comments and presentation. My question is regarding the name of your group, Ho'oilina.

Yes, it means legacy. Our legacy. That's where the name came from.

Is it Ho'oilina?

Yeah, Ho'oilina. H-O-O-I-L-I-N-A. Probably misspelt it wrong in the presentation. Yeah.

Oh, okay. You mean it as legacy?

Yes, it is. That's where it came from, our legacy.

Well, I mean, you know. has multiple meanings. It also means inheritance, heir, and a burying place.

Ours is specifically legacy.

Yeah, okay. It's just important to know all the meanings of words when you choose one. Yes, yes. It doesn't just come with one meaning. It comes with all the meanings, and that was one of the meanings. Thank you. Mahalo.

Mahalo, Member Rollins-Fernandez. Okay, members. If there are no other questions for Mr. Diaz and Mr. Thibodeau, wanted to mahalo them for joining us this morning to share their vision with all of us. Members, are there any objections to deferring this item?

No objections.

Okay, mahalo. Staff, is there anything else before we adjourn this What's Up Committee meeting?

Chair, there is currently nothing outstanding.

Again, mahalo, members, for all your great questions participating this morning. This concludes the Water Authority Social Services and Parks Committee meeting. The time is now 1121, with some more to spare, but this meeting is now adjourned.