Latest / The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi / Mayor Blangiardi on Wahi Pana and a new strategic housing plan

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Mayor Blangiardi on Wahi Pana and a new strategic housing plan · The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi

0:14
Welcome to the One Oahu podcast.
0:17
I'm your host, Brandi Higa,
0:18
and it's been a minute, but we're back with Mayor Rick Blangiardi.
0:22
And just like that, it's already February and they're happy Lunar New Year.
0:26
Happy lunar new year.
0:27
Happy Valentine's day. Wow.
0:29
I mean, but I'll say I'm kind of glad January's over was a tough month.
0:33
Hard to start the year.
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Not just because of what happened to Armando.
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And that's not just because.
0:39
Because those were serious matters.
0:40
And Jeffrey Arbor was a challenging month.
0:43
And the passing of Jeff was just, you know, that it happened
0:47
early in the month, just sort of set a somber tone for the whole month.
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But, you know, a lot of things going on.
0:52
So, we hold all of that deep in our memory and we move forward here.
0:56
And, we got a lot to get done this year.
0:59
And I'm excited and I'm sad to see some things come to fruition and come together.
1:03
Our plans are really a good place, for execution.
1:06
So off we go. Yeah.
1:08
You mentioned firefighter Jeffrey Fiala.
1:11
For those that weren't able to watch the service either on Olelo
1:14
or the news that night, what was it like for you to be there at his finals?
1:18
You know, that was one of the more, powerful experiences I've been in my life.
1:22
And I've been to a number of services.
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But, you know, the show for, if you will, from the entire fire department,
1:28
the absolute sorrow at the loss of one of their own, the family.
1:33
And having been up close and personal there at the hospital
1:36
the night that it happened and just seeing what had transpired
1:39
from that night and the shock of it to the actual service itself.
1:43
But I could not commend the fire department enough for
1:48
putting out, if you will,
1:49
and putting on an incredible service that really,
1:53
I don't think in any city in America anyone could do it better.
1:57
And so to Jeff's memory and to all of our firemen
2:01
who put their lives on the line each and every day, just goes to show
2:03
you, you never know what can happen when it happens.
2:07
On a Monday evening on McCullough in the York Street area
2:12
where you would never think that, you know, if something happened like that,
2:15
someone could possibly die from a firefighter standpoint.
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But it did.
2:19
So, one more time, my personal respects,
2:24
incredible respect for all of our first responders,
2:28
because they live each and every day that same way.
2:31
You just never know what might happen.
2:33
Like you said, though, we move forward from here.
2:36
Pretty much
2:37
a whiplash of emotions on that day, specifically because later that afternoon
2:41
you were in Chinatown to welcome in the year of the snake.
2:44
With the parade.
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What was it like for you?
2:47
I know that district means so much to you to see Chinatown come to life
2:50
in that way. Yeah.
2:51
You know, it was an incredible transition I had was less than two hours between
2:55
the end of the service and.
2:58
And then we finally you find yourself on a parade.
3:00
It almost seemed surreal in that parade.
3:03
First of all, it's a very intimate parade because Hotel Street is a narrow street.
3:08
Everybody comes out for that.
3:09
The sidewalks were packed, the side streets were packed.
3:12
I mean, the last time we saw that was when we did,
3:14
you know, see lights, our Christmas parade.
3:16
But this is the middle of the afternoon.
3:19
So you can see
3:20
everybody, everybody's just, very boisterous.
3:23
And it was, it was really nice.
3:26
And I got so many compliments that day about how much Chinatown has improved.
3:30
We talked about the things we're trying to get done, and I know it's real.
3:33
And so that was a nice, a nice, it was a nice parade.
3:38
It was really good. It was. You know what?
3:40
We've talked about this, it seems like what?
3:43
Every day, week, month, we pull away further from Covid.
3:47
But Covid, you know, in some regards, still lingers its aftereffects.
3:52
The things we're dealing with.
3:53
One of them is that we continue to try to build hope in our community
3:58
because so many people are devastated, you know, financially, psychologically.
4:02
People have since moved away. Families have been torn apart.
4:05
All of that stuff emotionally is very real.
4:08
So we could do these things in a joyous light.
4:10
That and brings the community together.
4:12
It's it's healthy and and and so,
4:16
you know, we continue to do that.
4:17
There's no playbook.
4:18
I have yet to find a book on how to build hope.
4:21
So you just have to look at those kinds of times, those moments in time
4:25
when you can bring joy and bring people together for all the right reasons.
4:29
And the Chinatown parade was all of that, and then some, because it was so festive.
4:33
It was almost like a mardi Gras parade, you know, so people in different costumes
4:37
and the music and the drums and it was it was great.
4:40
We also have some good news in, in the next few weeks,
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one of our city busses, one of a handful actually will be in circulation
4:48
with an art piece wrapped around it as part of Viking Pana.
4:51
That's part of a grant that we've been awarded.
4:54
Can you talk about that? Yeah.
4:57
You know,
4:57
we were fortunate in our first year in office to be selected to the Bloomberg
5:01
Harvard City Leadership Initiative, and our administration was one of 40,
5:07
23 from the United States, and the rest were from 11 countries on four continents.
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And I was only in office for nine months.
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So it was really an incredible global learning experience that went on
5:17
for about 18 months.
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But one of the things that happened when I went to New York initially,
5:22
but then it was my monthly zoom calls it sometimes 4 a.m.
5:26
in his office because we're trying to accommodate all these various time zones.
5:31
But also we finished it was sort of like, okay,
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you guys are alums and you will be forever home is in there.
5:37
And so there have been different opportunities,
5:40
different things we've applied for. And one of them,
5:43
was this
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million dollar grant for the support of culture in the arts.
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And, that, you know, 200 and somewhat cities that applied
5:52
because it wasn't just Bloomberg cities that could apply for the grant,
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and we were one of the eight that were awarded.
5:57
So, with that, you know, comes what we why we were awarded it, which is,
6:03
this whole thing about five pineapples having Hawaii stories of supporting
6:07
and perpetuating our culture.
6:08
We have such unique,
6:11
story to tell, especially compared to other places.
6:14
So this is going to be, and I think 11 or
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12 locations, it's a three year program.
6:20
We're going to take advantage of today's technology with QR codes there,
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because you can't have a docent there.
6:26
But the is raised and some private funds that came in to supplement
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that are going to help the artists.
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So we'll have our art pieces there.
6:32
But also it's about tying the stories of those places.
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You know, the island of Oahu has such incredible stories with the thing
6:40
that we live with today in modern Honolulu is one dynamic.
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But if you go back, you know, 100 years things were very different.
6:49
And then even further back to that, I'm not talking pre-contact.
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Pre-contact was a whole different deal.
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But, you know, there were a lot of places
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that were very different that over time sort of changed.
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But there's some great stories and that's what we want to do.
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We want to share this incredible history for people
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and with people for all generations, all ages.
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And we're excited about doing that.
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It's just one more effort.
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And like, we're doing a lot of things
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to support culture and the arts is one of those areas that,
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and coming into it, into office,
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you know,
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one of the things that they even stressed when I spent their time in New York
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with the other mayors, that all great cities, great cities,
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if they're going to be great, really celebrate their culture.
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There are actually no local artisans.
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But more than anything, what it means for the community that lives there.
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And so we wanted to up our game and we're doing that,
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that's a long term play, but I'm excited about it.
7:41
Something else you were able to celebrate recently
7:43
was the acquisition of a new trash truck for your parks department.
7:47
Yeah. Seems one right. One trash truck. Yeah.
7:49
But what does that mean for the Leeward coast?
7:52
It means a lot, I think, because, you know, one of the things
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I want to really give a shout out to the people on the leeward side
7:57
that they have actually heard our response about community has to come together
8:01
and help us. We can't do everything ourselves.
8:03
And whether that's a neighborhood watch against crime
8:06
or all the other things, because God knows we've had our share out there,
8:09
but certainly keeping our beaches clean,
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and we know that we have a number of homeless people that live out there or
8:14
in tents or whatever.
8:15
But people have done a really good job of picking up the trash.
8:19
The problem was, was what do you do after you fill up all these garbage bags
8:24
and you get out there and you see next to a beach on a Monday
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morning, 20, 25 garbage bags.
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And so now we got a tragic go around
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because we didn't know what they were doing.
8:33
It was just parliament, two pickup trucks and taking them to this dump.
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And I was asking too much of them because in some cases
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there was nobody to do that.
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So the trash was there.
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It was all picked up off the beaches.
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But yeah, this big pile of garbage bags.
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So now we're able to do this very efficiently,
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have a team out there be deployed, pick up that and just
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just show a mahalo, if you will, to the local community.
8:58
Who's helping us keep it clean, that we're doing our part as well.
9:02
We recently broke ground on another Portland development.
9:05
We put out some RFQ for several, underutilized city properties,
9:09
and we also recently put more money
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into our affordable housing fund to make available for those at the lower
9:14
end of the Army.
9:15
This is a different start to the year, kind of a different launch.
9:18
It was the ask that you put on that housing department
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or where is this coming from?
9:22
Well, I'm really pleased you asked me that because, you know,
9:25
we haven't really changed our game plan, you know, from the time we came in,
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we decided as a team we're going to take on the wicked problems.
9:31
You know, those big, seemingly intractable problems
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that were playing in this place for a long time.
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Homelessness is one.
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Certainly we've been in that crisis mode for more than a couple of decades now.
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Same is true with housing and the cost of housing.
9:45
And where was the city and all of that?
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The city was quite honestly, I was a non player.
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And that was also true about systemically, whether we work with GPP
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or even some of our other departments
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that really needed the kind of focus we've been able to give it.
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But, you know, fixing GPP clearly was a big barrier to entry
10:01
in creating housing because one is before the other.
10:05
If you will. And so,
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when we came in,
10:08
and this is not to denigrate anybody before us, there was one person
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in charge of housing and homelessness, two of our top five crises, if you will.
10:19
One person were administrative assistant
10:22
was really very little to show for it because there was
10:26
there just wasn't the appropriations from a budget standpoint,
10:29
there wasn't the know how.
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One of the things that hit me very quickly in this world of building
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housing between the state and all the other ground rules
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with developers and everybody and the whole financing track,
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it's it's own, it's it's own world, it's own vocabulary.
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And we had nobody with that kind of experience.
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So it's taken us a couple of years to put together a team.
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And, you know, the city
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hadn't even been involved in the private activity bonds for 23 years.
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We not only have that back in the private sector, we bond business.
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We've already allocated
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over a couple hundred million dollars and have more in the pipeline to do that.
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We've taken out
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affordable housing fund monies that had lapsed, were just sitting there.
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I think our first tranche was over 48 million.
11:06
We invested with developers in their various projects.
11:09
To help stimulate that,
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we have a Bill seven, which we went through
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two different iterations to bring up the speech,
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which is first time ever the city is incentivized private developers,
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to build units on, on,
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privately held property and has a deal in the city.
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In the urban core alone, we have more than 5000 lots
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actually is probably about 6500, but there's 5000 lots of 5000ft² each.
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And these are full of, you know, and everybody sees them everywhere they go.
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This, you know, this, cinder block, you know, two,
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three story, you know, walk up the stairs kind of thing.
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They've been here for a long time.
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When I went to graduate school in 1971, a University of Hawaii.
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I lived in one of those for a year.
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It looked old then.
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That building still there today looks even a little bit older, you know,
12:02
and I'm not I'm being facetious, but the truth is,
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the thing about this project is those buildings, in many cases, are dilapidated,
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but they've been held on by families because of the equity value,
12:14
if given the proper incentives to knock them down and rebuild,
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which is what we're doing, which is built, set, we built seven is all about,
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and we contribute the money to make it really pencil out for them,
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because that's part of the reason why developers were spending their time.
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This is a great project because,
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because, first of all, one of the biggest things in development is infrastructure.
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You know, access to sewer, water, electricity,
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walking distance, if you will.
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What didn't require a car
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because pump people in low income housing caring for an automobile.
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But if you're in the middle of the urban core, where you can walk to stores,
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get on a bus, etc., all all of those conveniences are built in.
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So and knocking down these buildings and incentivizing,
13:00
those and pulling them is a great way he's done it.
13:02
I think done done five. And he's going to do at least
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at least I he's told me at least ten more.
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And that's what I'm hoping for. I mean, that's one developer doing 15.
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We have over 40 in the queue right now.
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We're a little bit slow
13:15
coming out of the blocks, because interest rates jumped to 7.5%
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during our first term, not the least of which was the other problem,
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which is still ongoing, because of the natural disasters
13:26
happening in a lot of other places, access to materials and stuff,
13:30
prices have gone way up, but that stabilized a little bit.
13:34
I mean, we had our own issues here in, you know, in the height of what happened.
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But you know, LA, I was just with this morning came from a prayer
13:43
breakfast talking to a retired, general who lives in North Carolina.
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And he was telling me about the devastation. Was there.
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He's been in world he's been in combat zones.
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He said he never saw anything like what you saw.
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So these things are happening elsewhere, and those are a drain on materials.
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But the point is that, even that now, because it's increased production
14:01
elsewhere and materials are getting available, interest rates are coming down.
14:05
That's a stimulus we need.
14:06
And so ideally,
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it's amazing what people can build on a 5000 square foot lot
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when they knock it down.
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I think, Brenda, you've been with me.
14:13
We've gone to the groundbreaking.
14:14
We've been to the blessings transformative in only 8 to 9 months to.
14:18
That's all it takes
14:19
with the new building techniques and the materials that they have.
14:22
And there,
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you know, so I'm excited about that because not only does it sort of gentrify
14:26
the city,
14:27
take down surgeries, all the buildings, but they're
14:29
creating some really nice housing.
14:31
I've walked through all these buildings and the inside compared to what was there.
14:35
And they're affordable.
14:36
They're, you know, they're they're being built specifically
14:39
for people that they know of working and minimum
14:41
wage jobs, if you will, maybe a little bit better.
14:43
Combined incomes.
14:45
Great starter housing, places for people to go in really highly desired
14:48
neighborhoods. It's a good concept all the way around.
14:51
You know, telling on that this just came to me.
14:53
But it's hard to miss, right?
14:54
When you turn on a television,
14:55
there's a lot of talk of tariffs, the price of eggs, and then,
14:58
like you just mentioned, possibly in the future,
15:01
the cost of lumber, especially for us here, in Hawaii.
15:04
So what's your message to businesses, developers who,
15:08
you know, fear seeing their costs start to rise in an already tough climate?
15:12
I'm not sure if anyone's even briefed you on this yet. I know it's pretty fresh.
15:15
Well, you know,
15:15
listen to this whole thing about tariffs coming out, you know, and quite honestly,
15:20
and you know, I think even President Trump has said that,
15:23
you know, it could get tough a little bit because actually
15:26
the tariff doesn't get imposed on the country.
15:29
It gets imposed on the buyer, if you will.
15:32
And so the idea there is that they impose a tariff.
15:35
I might be less apt to buy something from,
15:37
let's say, Canada, Mexico or even China and look for something else.
15:42
You know, maybe locally produced.
15:44
They have they have they have less sales, you know, that kind of a thing.
15:50
It's complicated. Deal.
15:52
Look, I mean, the, the whole egg thing
15:54
since part of it, I think it's tied more to the bird flu and what happened.
15:57
Right. You know, well, we're
16:00
now I say something that sounds very supportive of what's happening federally.
16:05
Trump elected, promising to be a disruptor.
16:09
Everything he said it was going to do during the campaign
16:11
is what they're now doing.
16:12
Everybody could anticipated the differences.
16:14
They came in with a game plan ready to go as the federal government, you know,
16:18
I don't I don't I don't see us here taking a designing position.
16:22
We need all the help we can get.
16:24
It's already going to be challenging enough.
16:25
So this is early on.
16:28
It was interesting to see him do something very uncharacteristic
16:31
when they backed down.
16:32
If they put that whole federal thing and, on on the cuts, if you will,
16:36
for all the alternate product, then they put a pause on that.
16:39
So I think reason will prevail.
16:41
And so far, what I've seen, it's a really,
16:44
smart people on camera saying a lot of the right things.
16:47
Change is hard.
16:48
And I talked about in my own inauguration in government,
16:52
one of the hardest things to get through is change is an incredible resistance
16:55
to change within the city and also elsewhere, even with the general public.
17:01
We know for a fact I've talked long ahead about this.
17:03
The city is way overregulated.
17:06
In fact,
17:06
everything that we look at that drives up cost here has to do with overregulation.
17:10
We're off the charts.
17:11
You can look at do you hear report or talk today?
17:13
The US is one of the things we're looking to us to deregulate.
17:16
Well, that sounds all well and good until you start to do that.
17:19
And when you start to do it, people get out of their comfort zones.
17:21
And because you're making changes. And so,
17:24
because we're in that same mode or maybe driven differently politically
17:30
for trying to just part of the things we're doing for the city
17:34
is to create change, eliminate regulatory processes
17:37
that are just solely drive up cost but become cumbersome,
17:40
stop things from happening.
17:42
I'll tell you, I'm going for all the change.
17:44
If if what I'm hearing is true and what I'm seeing,
17:48
I think the best thing to do as rather than fight is to be accepting
17:51
and then figure out how do we make the most of this.
17:53
To me, that's being practical.
17:55
I, we've been a country divided for far too long.
17:59
People got to come together.
18:00
We've got to figure out a way to make a better world.
18:01
You know, I'm at my age right now.
18:03
I know I'm not going to be on this planet a lot more years.
18:06
But I will tell you, for a while now, I've been really concerned
18:09
about where things were headed.
18:11
We need to get back to things that make sense.
18:13
I do want to mention, though, you did say the pause on certain cuts.
18:16
And for this administration, you shot our equity score up, you know, way high.
18:21
And you made that a point very early on. Yeah.
18:23
So what does what's happening nationally have any effect on.
18:27
You know, maybe the DTI initiatives are already set into motion for this year.
18:30
We have here.
18:31
And what we're doing in a local county is not going to be impacted.
18:34
You know, I think all along,
18:36
if you want to talk about Dei and hiring or whatever,
18:38
we've always looked for the very best people you can get.
18:40
I mean, look, we have a benefit here.
18:43
You know why?
18:44
We're we're all of different colors and whatever.
18:46
It's not the same way.
18:47
It's not divided that way.
18:49
And so, you know, you got to know what to react to
18:51
what not to react to, you know, forever and a day.
18:54
You know, and the privilege I've had of living and working in Hawaii
18:57
now for 60 years and the organizations that I've led and whatever,
19:00
we've always looked like United Nations I've never had even before
19:04
or even dei was even talked about just when we were talking about
19:08
with respect to the things that were you expected to do, Hawaii was never a problem
19:12
when it came to diversity and ethnicity, but you always looked for it.
19:16
I always said that before anyway.
19:18
I just want the best and the brightest.
19:20
I you look for it and I think you can come in any color or any know.
19:24
And so we've been very open about that
19:27
and I don't anticipate that's going to impact us one single bit.
19:30
Yeah, love is love and mayor next week is our day of the Valentine's Day.
19:35
Yeah.
19:35
You're going to go to the dance for.
19:36
Me I for you I'm not in replace.
19:39
You're going to have to go out there and shake yourself yourself.
19:41
They wait for you, you know that.
19:43
I know, I know, it's a that's an amazing experience.
19:46
Right. Okay.
19:48
But what do you love most of all?
19:50
Your wife, Karen.
19:51
Well, my wife Karen.
19:54
Well, you know, we've been together 22 years,
19:57
and, it took me 56 years to find this woman on the planet.
20:01
So you do the math at 78?
20:05
Karen is, you know, in so many ways, we're so different.
20:09
Yet, you know, she's,
20:13
she's,
20:14
she's just everything you want to be.
20:16
She's just a she is the rock, you know?
20:19
She's, She's very smart.
20:21
She's, solid spiritually.
20:24
She has great compassion for people.
20:25
She it all right? Was very successful.
20:28
I think that gave her a perspective.
20:30
But, you know, as a woman that was born in Beijing,
20:32
grew up in a refugee camp and then ended up making it
20:35
to corporate America and doing really well.
20:38
And, yeah, she was a president charged work nationally.
20:41
She's the highest ranking female executive United States.
20:43
So at the time in financial services,
20:46
you just don't get there without a lot of stuff.
20:49
And today, now in her retirement years of being supportive of me
20:52
and being married and living in this community
20:54
and knowing that she has incredible heart, she's one of the most generous people
20:58
I've ever met.
20:59
And I'm just talking about financial philanthropy.
21:01
She's just her generosity of spirit.
21:03
And that's because she came from hard times
21:07
and in far her way to good times.
21:09
And so I love that.
21:10
And that was somebody I like to joke sometimes.
21:13
I was with a rich girl, you know, she's because,
21:17
you know, when we got married, that was the deal.
21:18
You know, we everything that she had would be hers.
21:21
And everything I had would be hers. Yeah.
21:23
So it was like that, and that was.
21:24
That was the deal.
21:25
There's no prenup, is I give her everything, and.
21:27
But it's sort of like that.
21:28
In that spirit, we both, I think, feel really blessed that we've met each other,
21:32
that we live together in this incredible place, that now we have this chance to,
21:37
share and try to make a difference in the community in some very real ways.
21:41
As we're recording this today, I know she's in some meetings downtown
21:45
talking about supporting the arts with the Downtown Arts Center
21:48
and what they want to do.
21:48
She's got this thing called the Creative City,
21:50
and if raised a bunch of money, you've already done some cool things.
21:54
So I kind of like doing it together.
21:56
You know, I found it interesting.
21:57
We went to a mahalo party tonight and somebody got up and they started off
22:01
with a one and a half finished deduction.
22:04
I thought maybe it was going to be about me
22:05
in this setting, all this great stuff.
22:07
And that's why we all love Karen Chang.
22:09
And everybody clapped because it was true. It was all relevant.
22:12
Relevant to her.
22:13
So yeah, I, it's love at a different stage of life.
22:18
And, and our meeting was,
22:24
more than serendipity.
22:26
I said the other night when we had this thing.
22:27
I have a sense of destiny about where I am in the world.
22:30
Karen's part of destiny.
22:33
Yeah. She completes your your power couple.
22:35
Kind of like a Travis. Kelsey and Taylor.
22:37
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. No.
22:39
That's funny.
22:39
So on that, have you have any Super Bowl.
22:42
Oh Super Bowl.
22:44
Do I have any predictions. Eagles. Yeah I know you don't like it.
22:47
Well I, I don't know why because I like Andy Reid I like you eat a lot.
22:51
I'm certainly in awe of Patrick Mahomes.
22:54
But I'm putting on my old football coaching hat.
22:56
My analyst.
22:57
That's the defense of the Eagles.
22:59
And the running attack of the Eagles is something the Chiefs haven't really seen.
23:03
You know they're really powerful.
23:05
Not just Saquon Barkley.
23:06
They they're good and hurts is playing well as a QB.
23:09
So look I love the matchup in a sense because the Chiefs are playing
23:14
for everything history and whatever.
23:17
And they're going to be totally inspired.
23:19
And honestly to their credit, they fought their way to
23:23
so far this year,
23:24
there were a number of games I watched where it looked like
23:26
they were going to lose, and they found a way to win.
23:28
You got to give them a lot of credit.
23:30
My, my, my think about Kansas City is where I kind of
23:34
I was cheering for them, but I still admire the greatness
23:38
because they were the nemesis to the Patriots.
23:40
You know, I was really strong patience for him.
23:42
But if I look at the two teams now,
23:44
who they face, how they finish and what they've done, and that's just
23:47
because the Eagles pull up Washington, the Eagles are really physical.
23:50
And if they come and play their game, I just think that the Kansas City
23:54
has looked vulnerable this year. Like I just said, they fought.
23:57
They found a way to win.
23:59
I don't see Eagles making those kind of mistakes.
24:02
You know.
24:02
Mayor, I know how much mentoring means to you.
24:05
You've kind of given us,
24:06
you know, your take on why it's so important to have them in our lives?
24:10
So not to put you on the spot, but we have a young man
24:13
named Obadiah that's in here with us as we're recording this podcast.
24:16
Obi, there's actually a microphone right in front of you.
24:18
Yeah. I think, you know, it's,
24:21
when you talk about mentoring, I think, you know, just
24:24
with my experiences, I would say I'm here today just because
24:27
of all the wonderful mentors, the wonderful people I've,
24:31
had the opportunity to come across and, you know, my, especially being a cyber
24:35
science guy, being, very in the cyber world, you know, one of the,
24:40
things I've adopted was, you know, no one knows everything.
24:43
And it's important to,
24:46
you know, you can be the smartest
24:48
Bill gates guy of, computers or, low level guy like me who's,
24:53
starting to get into this world, you know,
24:57
it doesn't matter who you are.
24:58
You never know anything.
24:59
And, you know, it's so important to really, connect, network
25:03
and really share your experience knowledge with others because, you know,
25:08
I may know how to,
25:11
turn on a computer and,
25:14
the may or may know how to, may or may not
25:18
know just just saying, but, you know,
25:20
I think, the bottom line is, you know,
25:23
when you go into leadership, when you go into life experiences,
25:26
you know, I've probably experienced, more thing or, different things
25:30
in, you guys have and you guys experience different things than I have.
25:34
And, you know,
25:34
that's why it's important to really, you know, reach out and really share and,
25:38
network and, yeah, you know, and that's why,
25:41
you know, I'm really fortunate to be here talking right now.
25:45
Really sharing that experience with, everybody here. So.
25:48
Yeah. Yeah. Well,
25:51
Brandy just mentioned about mentors, right.
25:53
And I just heard you say I'm here today because I've had many mentors
25:57
along the way. Right. How old are you?
26:00
19 and, turning 20 here, 19.
26:02
20, 20.
26:03
So I'm 78.
26:05
And I would say the same thing, the reason why I'm in this chair
26:08
as mayor, because of the many mentors and people in my life that helped
26:11
shape and guide me, gave me opportunities and whatever.
26:14
And it's becomes a lifelong thing.
26:16
And so and so in that regard, I would just say to you,
26:19
since you on the receiving end right now, there will come a time in your life
26:24
maybe, maybe you've already done some of that where I would just challenge
26:28
you to make sure you
26:29
you give it back, remember the people that help you along the way.
26:33
And so I've always why I've always been a strong believer in mentorship
26:37
because that those people that came into my life have made all the difference.
26:41
And we all need that as part of the human experience.
26:44
You, no matter how smart you are,
26:47
no matter how
26:47
gifted you might be and whether it's in athletics or any endeavor, of course,
26:52
you need people there along the way who believe in you can help you,
26:56
who can, you know, kind of of course, correction, if you will,
27:00
maybe even more so, give you opportunity.
27:02
And so in that regard, I've always believed that you,
27:05
you know, forget where you came from. You never get to eat it.
27:07
Nobody, nobody achieves greatness ever got there alone.
27:10
And, I'm really pleased to hear you say at the young age, I don't mean
27:14
this as a pejorative way.
27:15
At 19, you've had a lot of matches along the way.
27:19
The fact that you were aware of that and appreciative of that is very good.
27:23
Of course. Thank you. Yeah.
27:26
Well, mayor, this is the 1 or 2 podcast.
27:28
So for one final thought.
27:30
Well let's go back to the Super Bowl.
27:31
Go Eagles. And let's just go with that.
27:34
Yeah I got to cheer for somebody I you know I don't bet on games.
27:40
But honestly if the Chiefs end up doing three
27:43
it'll be it'll be great to watch and witness truly history.
27:47
And there is a part of me that likes to see teams excel.
27:52
You know, I open up the Little league season,
27:55
this past weekend I put my Noah in.
27:57
Coach Rich Hill came up there from the university baseball team,
28:01
and he did something with the kids that really impressed me.
28:04
He said, I want everybody, including me, to raise your right hand, raise it up.
28:08
He says, okay, everybody's got their hands up.
28:10
Everybody's up there like this year.
28:12
And I want to see if you can go just a little bit higher.
28:14
Everybody just said yes, okay.
28:16
So you know that that one inch that you just went, don't forget that one inch.
28:20
That's what makes all the difference.
28:21
You can always push yourself a little bit further.
28:25
And on that note,
28:27
we're going to push ourselves
28:28
this team this year a lot.
28:32
Well said. Mayor, thank you so much for your time.
28:33
You're welcome. Our best wishes to Obadiah. Yeah.
28:36
Thanks to all of you for listening.
28:38
And next week we'll sit down with Kevin Day
28:40
to hear more about the city's strategic housing plan that mayor just talked about.
28:43
I hope you'll join us for that. Until then, Aloha.