The Honolulu City Council decided Wednesday to prevent an incumbent member of a state board that regulates development in Kakaako from being reappointed despite the urging of two colleagues representing the area and the board’s chairman.
Steve Scott, the owner of local slipper maker Scott Hawaii, was removed from consideration for a new term on the board of the Hawaii Community Development Authority in a move led by Councilwoman Kymberly Pine.
Council members representing Kakaako, Carol Fukunaga and Ann Kobayashi, said they were disappointed by how Pine handled the nominating process that called for the Council to present six nominees for two HCDA board seats to Gov. David Ige for consideration.
“I am dismayed by the process,” said Fukunaga, who nominated Scott for reconsideration after Ige picked him for HCDA’s board in 2015.
After the meeting, Fukunaga told Scott supporters that development interests prevailed. The contenders for Scott’s HCDA seat have ties to developers.
Two Council members who voted with Pine, Ikaika Anderson and Brandon Elefante, said the selection process was fair. Yet two others, Trevor Ozawa and Ernest Martin, said they weren’t clear on how Pine was treating nominations.
Pine was in charge of taking nominations as chairwoman of the Zoning and Housing Committee. The nominations are needed because the terms of Scott and fellow HCDA board member Jason Okuhama expire June 30. One of the two board positions is reserved for a resident of Kakaako and the other one is for a Kakaako business owner.
Pine said that as of last week there were only two nominees for the resident seat — Okuhama and Jonathan L.W. Ching — when three were needed. And there were four nominees for the business seat — Scott, Jay Kadowaki, Phillip Hasha and Nani Medeiros. Hasha also lives in Kakaako and could serve as a resident representative.
Pine on Wednesday morning added Diane Georgene Fujio to the resident seat list and removed Scott from the business seat list. Pine said she dropped Scott’s name because he was nominated fewer times by Council members, some of whom offered nominees already nominated by other Council members.
Ozawa said his chief of staff didn’t know it was possible to nominate someone after they had already been nominated. Kobayashi said if she knew that one person being nominated more than once mattered, then she would have asked other Council members to nominate Scott.
“I am very disappointed not to see his name here,” Kobayashi said.
Supporting Pine were Anderson, Elefante, Ozawa, Joey Manahan and Council Chairman Ron Menor.
HCDA board Chairman John Whalen told the Council that Scott and Okuhama are valuable members who would provide the board with continuity. “I don’t know who the governor will choose to appoint to fill these two positions on the Kakaako board, but I believe he should at least have the option to reappoint Mr. Scott and Mr. Okuhama, who have served so well,” he said.
HCDA has a nine-member board, so changing one or possibly two members represents a relatively small change. But it could sway the board’s direction. Scott has challenged developers on issues that include affordable housing.
Of the three nominees for Scott’s seat, all have ties to developers.
Kadowaki is the head of general contracting firm J. Kadowaki Inc. Hasha heads the commercial real estate development firm The Redmont Group LLC. Medeiros is executive director of HomeAid Hawaii, a nonprofit that assists with building or renovating facilities to help the homeless and is guided by a board of directors that includes representatives from Kakaako developers Howard Hughes Corp., Stanford Carr, Castle &Cooke and Alexander &Baldwin.