Three vie to represent Puna

By PETER SUR

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Puna voters have a history of taking out their frustrations on their County Council representatives.

From Helene Hale to Al Smith, Gary Safarik and Emily Naeole, all were defeated in their bids for re-election after two or three terms.

The incumbent this year is Councilman Fred Blas, a retired businessman who is seeking his second term on the council. His opponents in the Aug. 11 primary election are James Weatherford and Greggor Ilagan.

All are seeking to represent the County Council’s 4th District, which mostly runs on the makai side of Highway 130, and includes the subdivisions of Hawaiian Paradise Park, Hawaiian Beaches, Hawaiian Shores, Nanawale Estates, Leilani Estates and Kapoho.

Blas, 64, represents Puna makai as the 5th District councilman, but because of rapid growth over the last decade in Puna subdivisions he’s now running to represent the redrawn 4th District. Blas came into office touting his ability to get things done in the community, both on the council and on his busy community service group, the Hawaiian Beaches Action Team.

Born in Guam and raised in Southern California, Blas was a certified automotive technician who studied business management at Long Beach City College and also at the Sears Institute of Management. He worked for 11 years as a Sears automotive manager in Costa Mesa, Calif., and then opened his own tire dealership. He became a permanent resident to the Big Island in 1998, living in Hilo for five years and then moving to Puna in 2003.

He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state House of Representatives in 2008 but now considers himself a fiscally conservative Democrat. He defeated Naeole in a general election runoff in 2010, receiving 3,678 votes to her 2,533.

Blas came to prominence in 2006 with the creation of community bus shelters and the formation of his action team. Then came projects to spruce up Puna parks and roads, beautifying Pahoa and neighboring areas, a $10,000 personal donation to start the Puna Panthers football team, and donations to Pahoa High School athletics.

While on the County Council, he’s tried to be a model of fiscal prudence. He donated 10 percent of his salary back to the county. He doesn’t ask for reimbursement for food, lodging or gas for meetings in Kona, or when he’s attending conferences off-island. He doesn’t charge the county for his cell phone use and he makes a point of being a self-funded candidate.

“I’m running for re-election because I do care about Puna,” Blas said.

In 2010, he told the Tribune-Herald that the current County Council has been working well, “except for a few,” and that his chief asset was being able to bring people together and work as a team.

Last Monday, the thing that surprised him most is how “a lot of the council members don’t get along, and I tried to stay neutral in the first year and a half … but overall, I get along pretty well with everybody.”

In keeping with his theme of running a positive campaign, Blas won’t say anything negative about anybody. So he’ll say Mayor Billy Kenoi has done a good job managing the budget, but he’ll only say of Council Chairman Dominic Yagong, “He could do a better job.”

He runs through his legislative accomplishments for Puna, and they are many, ranging from road repairs around Pahoa to the sending of certified letters from his own pocket to landowners around the world, warning them about the dangers of albizia trees.

But he wouldn’t say before the vote which way he would go on three of veto override attempts on Wednesday, including two bills relating to geothermal energy in his district. He voted to uphold Kenoi’s vetoes on all three bills.

He supports geothermal energy expansion “if everything’s done right,” including health monitoring and research into its effects on people.

Blas wants to focus on creating more jobs, helping small business, improving roads and lowering crime in his second term. During meetings, he probably speaks the least of all the council members, leaving some members of the public and the media to wonder why he voted a certain way.

“I don’t talk too much. I like to listen. I don’t like to talk,” Blas said. “Get to the point. Vote for the bill, and let’s get out.” He was responding to a question of how a restless person can sit through hours of public testimony on controversial topics.

“I always listen to the public or to the council. I always listen,” he said. “And then I make my decision.”

Ilagan, 26, was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii when he was 7. A 2004 graduate of Waiakea High, he enlisted with the 291st Combat Communications Squadron of the Air National Guard and served for two years, before being transferred to the 180th Fighter Wing in Toledo, Ohio. There, he served four years, reaching the rank of senior airman (E-4). Upon leaving the service, he decided to return home and enrolled at Hawaii Community College to study accounting. He’s in the process of transferring to the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

A resident of Hawaiian Paradise Park, Ilagan decided to run after realizing that his councilman, Blas, was not doing as effective a job of representing the district’s concerns as he would have liked, and because he learned that public funding for his campaign was available. He applied for the campaign funds and received $16,320.

“I feel … it actually gives me a better chance of actually winning an election,” Ilagan said.

He feels that Blas has “lost his motivation” to serve on the council and has trouble voicing his opinion. That’s not to diminish all the good that Blas has done for the community; it’s just that Ilagan doesn’t think his talents are put to the best use on the County Council.

“He (Blas) has a big heart, he really does,” Ilagan said.

“This lack of infrastructure in Puna, it’s problematic, the fact that we don’t have those commercial zones, and we don’t have those light industrial zones,” he said. He realizes that there’s not a lot of communication among people from the different subdivisions and would like to create a “town hall” to address community needs.

“You have to consider the uniqueness of each subdivision,” he said.

Ilagan believes people will be more likely to accept geothermal energy if they are kept “informed, rather than isolated and alienated.” He wants to work with Puna Geothermal Venture and he supports geothermal as a renewable energy resource.

Commenting on the current controversy between Kenoi and Dominic Yagong over prepayments to the employee retirement benefits account, Ilagan prefaced his remarks by saying he doesn’t have all the information. But in general, he said a deferral may be OK for today if you know you’re able to cover the shortfall tomorrow.

On the question of solid waste, he would prefer pursuing expert advice from the federal government as to which technologies and processes would be best to reduce the waste stream.

Weatherford, 60, was born in Kentucky and served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War as a 2nd Class Petty Officer (E-5), based out of Pearl Harbor. He studied agriculture and political science at Murray State University in Kentucky and spent two years in the Philippines in the Peace Corps with his wife Elizabeth. He earned a Ph.D. in agriculture from the University of Tennessee. By 1993, he was in Perth, Australia, teaching classes in agriculture in Curtin University, where he would stay for eight years. He worked with the Australian government on writing policy for grain markets and mass transit.

Weatherford thought about Hawaii “every day” during his travels around the Pacific, and got a job at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He and his wife built a home in Hawaiian Paradise Park in 2005. Weatherford was an aide to Councilman Bob Jacobson and became involved with county and Puna issues. He ran against Naeole, Blas and Barbara Lively for the County Council in 2010, and finished third with 20 percent of the votes.

He criticizes Blas for not speaking more at County Council meetings, a reference to the councilman’s tendency to sit through long periods of public testimony and council members’ discussions, and then to cast a vote without making comments.

“You got to be able to explain why you voted a certain way,” Weatherford said. “I think you have to be engaged.” He’s heard of people calling the Pahoa council office and not getting calls returned.

“A constituent has a right to know and deserves an explanation” as to why a vote goes a certain way, Weatherford said. “I think some of those protracted council meetings might not happen if Puna had better representation. I really do.”

He would make time available to meet with community members in the days before a council or committee meeting to hear concerns. He thinks Blas would be more effective with his community group, doing public service projects, than on the council.

“Fred’s done a lot of good things in the community,” he said. But Weatherford argues that the main issues facing the island are waste reduction and geothermal energy.

Since he began studying waste-to-energy when it was pending before the County Council in 2008, Weatherford has come out strongly against it. He says the consultants who pitched the combustion technology to the Harry Kim administration misled and defrauded the county into thinking it was an acceptable solution. Instead, he would like Hawaii County to embrace fully the concept of zero waste, as used by the New Zealand village of Opitiki, and to consider the possibility of shipping waste to the Honolulu incinerator.

Weatherford said he would probably vote to overturn Mayor Billy Kenoi’s vetoes of the geothermal bills.

Weatherford agrees with Kenoi on some issues and disagrees with him on others. He doesn’t have a preference as to who wins the mayor’s race. He wants to put in a capital improvement project for a Puna Railroad Bikeway.

Asked about what he thought about Blas, Weatherford said, “Clearly, If I thought he was doing a good enough job, I wouldn’t be running.” Weatherford respects Ilagan’s attempt to run, but he adds, “This is not the place for on-the-job training. This is not what it’s about.”

But Ilagan has at least one well-known supporter. A few minutes after James and Elizabeth Weatherford left the interview at the Pahoa Village Museum, in walked Naeole, the former vice chair of the County Council.

“I believe that Fred became a puppet to the strong powers,” Naeole said. Ilagan is her preferred candidate, she said, and he comes from a good family. “Even though he’s young, we got to give ‘em chance.”

Email Peter Sur at psur@hawaiitribune-herald.com.