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All signs point to a healthy economic climate on Mau'i...if you just look at where the growth is coming from...tourism, construction, job growth, etc.
The other side of the coin is what the booming economy is doing to the average citizen of Mau'i County: higher property taxes, farmlands being sold to developers, existing farms becoming cash crop farms (selling produce to hotels and restaurnts rather than for the local consumer market) with the resultant higher food costs because more has to be imported.
Mau'i County citizens are going to have to decide if the cost of this "progress" is worth putting the kinds of strains it is putting on them, in terms of what they can afford to buy and how they will live.
One sign that maybe the trend of uncontrolled growth at the expense of the welfare of the citizens may be slowing down is the fight that's just begun over the Mau'i terminal for the Hawai'i Superferry.
Miulang
The other side of the coin is what the booming economy is doing to the average citizen of Mau'i County: higher property taxes, farmlands being sold to developers, existing farms becoming cash crop farms (selling produce to hotels and restaurnts rather than for the local consumer market) with the resultant higher food costs because more has to be imported.
Mau'i County citizens are going to have to decide if the cost of this "progress" is worth putting the kinds of strains it is putting on them, in terms of what they can afford to buy and how they will live.
One sign that maybe the trend of uncontrolled growth at the expense of the welfare of the citizens may be slowing down is the fight that's just begun over the Mau'i terminal for the Hawai'i Superferry.
Miulang