Community plan process meeting Thursday

An online public meeting on expediting the Maui County community plan process will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

While the County Code calls for comprehensive updates of community plans every 10 years, the county has fallen behind, council Chairwoman Alice Lee said in a news release announcing the meeting.

The meeting will be conducted by Matrix Consulting Group, which has been retained to conduct a comprehensive study of procedures, evaluate alternative approaches and develop recommendations for expediting the update of nine community plans.

Comprehensive updates of community plans were last done in 1994 for Hana, 1995 for Paia-Haiku and Kahoolawe, 1996 for West Maui and Makawao-Pukalani-Kula, 1998 for Kihei-Makena, 2002 for Wailuku-Kahului, 2016 for Lanai and 2018 for Molokai.

Each community plan is part of the county general plan and is meant to guide government action and decision-making. Community plans include information on major problems and opportunities concerning needs and development of the area; social, economic and environmental effects of development; and the desired sequence, patterns and characteristics of future development.

Matrix has conducted interviews and surveys with council members, Planning Department staff, planning commission members and community plan advisory committee members and is seeking ideas from the public, Lee said.

People can participate in the meeting by videoconference at https://meet.google.com/hromwwm-dca or by phone by calling (609) 800-2674 and entering PIN 740760753#.

The meeting is scheduled to last about 90 minutes.

Comments or suggestions can be submitted by email to Khushboo Hussain at khussain @matrixcg.net by Friday.