The Honolulu City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to approve Dawn Takeuchi Apuna to lead the city’s troubled Department of Planning and Permitting.
Takeuchi Apuna will oversee a department that has suffered multiple setbacks, including months-long backlogs in processing building permits and a dysfunctional work culture that reportedly bred years of corruption, most recently seen in the bribery case of former DPP chief building examiner Wayne Inouye, who pleaded guilty in October to accepting more than $100,000 from 2012 to 2017 in exchange for fast-tracking city building permits.
In December, Mayor Rick Blangiardi appointed Takeuchi Apuna as DPP’s acting director, following former Director Dean Uchida’s abrupt resignation in September.
Takeuchi Apuna holds a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a law degree from the University of California’s Hastings College of Law. In Hawaii, her work has included stints as DPP’s deputy director and a chief planner for the state. In addition, Takeuchi Apuna served as a deputy state attorney general and as a deputy city corporation counsel.
In January, Takeuchi Apuna told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that DPP, which issues 15,000 permits annually, needs to solve long-term problems such as staffing shortages via the active recruitment and hiring of more plan reviewers and engineers — the latter seeing only 15 positions filled over the past 20 years.
In addition, she said DPP must revamp its software technology to reduce the average seven-month wait time for building permits to a matter of days. She also said the agency must beef up its enforcement team to crack down on illegal vacation rentals and permit violators who build “monster homes.”
In related votes Wednesday, the Council unanimously approved or referred appointments for two other city positions. Dominic H.K. Milles was named director of the Department of Design and Construction, which oversees the city’s capital improvement program and performs project planning, design, construction, inspection and land acquisition for public facilities.
The panel also voted to refer Dr. Elizabeth Char, former director of the state Department of Health, for possible consideration as a member of the seven- member Honolulu Police Commission, which, among other things, has the power to appoint and remove the police chief.
