Kauaʻi Mayor Derek Kawakami shared his takeaways after attending the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors in Kansas City, Missouri.
He has been involved with the conference since he started serving as Kauaʻi County's 11th mayor in 2018.
"The biggest takeaway is that this is a wonderful bipartisanship collaborative of mayors from big cities and very small counties, smaller than Kauaʻi, and it's realizing that we have common denominators when it comes to issues," Kawakami said.
Kawakami shared that seeing a collaborative effort on mental health treatment from mayors across the nation was exciting for him.
"A lot of our residents and people that are dealing with mental health issues are either becoming incarcerated, which is the absolute worst way that you could try to treat mental health issues, or they're ending up on the streets," he said.
This interview aired on The Conversation on June 25, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
