Maui News by Ilima Loomis
Planning Director Will Spence said Friday that his efforts to simplify the Maui Island Plan have been misunderstood by critics as an attempt to gut the document.

Spence said that he was a strong supporter of ideas like greenbelts and growth boundaries, and that his proposal for the Maui Island Plan would include the same separation between communities as shown in an earlier version.

Simplifying and consolidating them would not remove them from the plan, but would be no more significant than “changing the font,” he said.

“I think it’s important for communities to retain their identities,” he said. “We are not proposing to eliminate any of the greenways between communities.”

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But Irene Bowie, executive director of the Maui Tomorrow Foundation, disagreed with that approach.

“Number one, the community plans are a ways down the road, and, number two, some of these types of things overlay more than one type of community,” she said.

Bowie shared Mayer’s opinion that the plan would be stronger if it were more specific. But she also questioned whether it was appropriate to change parts of the plan that were the result of years of deliberation by three previous planning directors, the General Plan Advisory Committee and the Maui Planning Commission.

“It is of concern to remove so much language that has been a part of the process over so many years,” she said. “Really, a lot of care and thought has gone into this.”

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