Mitch Roth will seek a second term as mayor.
The current mayor and former Hawaii County prosecutor announced his candidacy Thursday evening at an event at Nani Mau Gardens in Hilo. Surrounded by supporters and county officials, he reflected on the struggles and triumphs of the last four years, and promised to bring about “an island that thrives and succeeds.”
“We live in a time now where there’s more Hawaiians living out of the state than in the state,” Roth said. “As we lose our Hawaiians, we lose our culture; as we lose our culture, we lose our identity of who we are.
“And as we lose the identity of who we are, we become Honolulu or Los Angeles,” Roth went on, to scattered boos.
Roth, reiterating a frequent slogan during his first term, said he has worked for four years to make Hawaii “an island where our kids can raise their kids for generations to come.”
The mayor listed dozens of the projects he has initiated throughout his first term, particularly highlighting the improvements made to the county’s building permit system, which was previously called the worst in the nation, with permit applications taking more than 200 days to be approved under ideal conditions.
Since taking office, he said, the process has been streamlined so that a permit application can be approved in only 34 days, while the county has accelerated its housing pipeline so that there are nearly 7,000 affordable housing units in some form of development, compared to the 1,200 units in the pipeline when he was elected.
“The amount we’ve done has increased and the time it takes to do it has decreased,” Roth later told the Tribune-Herald, adding that the improvements to the building permit system is one of the things he’s most proud of during his time as mayor.
Roth added that he has doubled the amount of roads paved compared to Harry Kim, the previous mayor’s, last term, while doubling the county’s capital improvement budget. Furthermore, he said, the Parks and Recreation Department’s maintenance budget has been increased tenfold, allowing much-needed repairs to be made to decaying park facilities.
Looking ahead, Roth said that he has set projects in motion that will improve the county’s sustainability and reduce its impact on the climate, including the development of a Climate Action Plan and the planned construction of a reusable foodware processing facility that he said would be completed later this year.
The mayor also promoted plans to form a “hydrogen alliance” with Hilo’s sister city Namie in Japan and the city of Lancaster in California, to collectively be at “the cutting edge of clean energy innovation.”
“The energy stuff, it’s a question of ‘how do we stay ahead of everything instead of just responding,’” Roth told the Tribune-Herald.
During his speech, Roth reflected on some of the challenges since 2020, most prominently the COVID-19 pandemic, which rocked the world only months after he took office. He praised the county for its handling of the pandemic, saying it helped administer over 439,000 COVID tests, caught more than 18,000 positive cases at county airports, and injected $22 million to address housing uncertainties.
Roth also promoted the ongoing plans to upgrade the ailing Hilo Wastewater Treatment Plant, which he called one of the biggest infrastructure projects the county has ever taken on. A bid proposal for the project last year estimated the total cost of construction to be $177 million, with construction expected to begin sometime this year.
“That facility has the ability, if not maintained, to dump millions of gallons of raw sewage into … our coastlines at Keaukaha,” Roth said. “We are not going to allow that to happen. We are not going to have a Red Hill incident here.”
Roth concluded by promising he would finish the projects he’s started while pursuing new initiatives to adapt to the county’s growing needs.
With Roth’s announcement, he becomes the second major candidate to enter the mayor’s race this election, after Kimo Alameda, formerly the CEO of Bay Clinic Health Center and the former executive of the County Office of Aging, announced his candidacy on Tuesday in a press release. Alameda’s first official rally to declare his candidacy will take place 5:30 p.m. Saturday at Wailoa State Park.
When asked about his opponent, Roth did not offer strong comment.
“I’ve known him a long time,” Roth said. “Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
