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Adrienne Lally & Attilio Leonardi
This week on the Team Lally Real Estate Radio Show, we interviewed Dr. Elijah Pierick, Primary Election Winner and now a General Election Candidate of District 39. We talked about his  beliefs and values and purpose of running for office.
We also have your favorite experts providing this week’s tips on property management, mortgage loans, home inspection and home insurance!

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Who is Dr. Elijah Pierick?

Dr. Elijah Pierick was born on November 28th, 1994. His father is a U.S Navy Command Master Chief, Master Diver, with the Navy Seals, while his mother is a retired teacher. He moved to Hawaii in 2003. He was raised in Ewa Beach and he and his family lived here for 17 years.

Within the medical community, Dr. Elijah currently serves as a Chaplain and Ethics Committee member for hospice. He also is Adjunct Faculty with multiple schools and colleges on the island, Officer in the Air Force Reserves, and Pastor with Encounter (formerly New Hope Town). He was a volunteer Counselor in the Kapolei Youth Detention Facility, Mentor for the Hawaii Youth Challenge Academy, a local university Counselor, Education Director, Teacher, and President for a multi-congregation council on the island.

 

To reach Dr. Elijah, you may contact him in the following ways:

Phone: 808.258.3235

Email: oahudata@gmail.com

Website: https://www.elijahpierickdistrict39.com/

Social Media:  https://www.instagram.com/elect.elijahpierick.district39/ | https://www.facebook.com/elijah.pierick.1

 

Interview Transcription

 

ADRIENNE:
gave it to me

welcome back and thanks for listening to the team Lally real estate show home of the guaranteed sold program or will buy it. I’m Adrian. And I’m Attilio. If you have any questions, you can reach us at 7999596. Or check us out online at Team lally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Hey, Adrienne. So we were talking about the shifting market, you and I kind of kind of want to continue on this path of travel with our conversation and talk about strategies that you have to, you know, not have not also have in place but strategies that we’ve used in the past. One of the strategies that we use is to help you with your with your home, to make sure that it’s priced correctly. And actually, this is something proprietary to Keller Williams, what am I talking about the data that we look at, and the way it’s correlated to help you price your home correctly. What is that one called? There’s an acronym for it. Yes,

ADRIENNE: 
that is that is called the total market overview, which I would like to use. We can talk more about it after we are done with our guest, so I’m gonna do a quick intro for him. So our guest today was born on November 28 1994. So his birthday is coming up. His father is a US Navy Commander, Master Chief and his mother’s a retired teacher. He moved to Hawaii in 2003 and was raised in a beach he and his family have lived here for 17 years. Within the medical community. Dr. Elijah currently serves as a chaplain and ethics committee member for hospice. He’s also an adjunct faculty with multiple schools and colleges on the island officer in the Air Force Reserves, Pastor with encounter, which is formerly New Hope town, he was a volunteer counselor at the coplay youth detention facility, mentor for Hawaii Youth Challenge Academy, a local university counselor, educator, Director, teacher and president or a multi congregation counsel on the island. Dr. Elijah, welcome to the team Lally radio show.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yes, thank you both so much for having me on. It’s an honor.

ADRIENNE: 
So I guess Attilio, do you want to why don’t you start with your first question for Dr. Elijah?

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, so Dr. Elijah, the first question I have for you is, tell us about you, you know, how what made you decide to, as we say, throw your proverbial hat in the ring, and get into get into government?

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, thank you. It’s been an honor to serve our community here in Hawaii for many years. It’s been my desire for most of my life, just to be a servant to people and help them. And in March, a friend called me and said, paralyzer, you should run for office. Here’s the reasons why articulated what he thought of me and what he thought our district needed as our next rep. And then the very next month, I went to the Hawaii prayer breakfast, and I sat down with somebody providentially at my breakfast table, who was also running for office, it makes it allowed us to run for office, and he started to list the reasons why. And then he coached me at that breakfast, how to do it. And so I went to the office of elections and filed papers and got my nomination for the series by going door to door and Kunia. And then I became a candidate and one of the primary election by 60% of the vote. And it’s an art week, serving my community in the capacity. I’m now and if the people would choose me this November, do honor to continue to serve them even more in that capacity.

ADRIENNE: 
So Dr. Ely job. Could you share with our listeners, what is the area he said? You mentioned 10 different neighborhoods, but what is that area that you are currently wanting to serve?

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, so district 39 represents two zip codes as a beach and Waikato. The specific neighborhoods are whole theory, fairways with lots of Safe Harbor View. Oasis townhomes. Well, Camilla village Park, and then a few smaller neighborhoods once in like Carrie, and then once queens were there, the business district.

ADRIENNE: 
Wow, that’s, that’s quite a few neighborhoods. Now. You mentioned you went door to door.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, so one of the coaching techniques I received was, be involved in the community. You know, show your face let the people know you’re for them, but more importantly get to hear from them. What are their desires? What do they want done differently in the state of Maine to preserve what they want preserved and to change where they want to change? So I’ve gone door to door throughout my entire district asking people hey, if I get elected What can I do for you? What would you like change? Where do you want improvement? Why? And if you look at my goals section of the website, it’s basically a summarization of the most cost of feedback are some people that jumped into a race, having a platform. I did that with a very vague, you know, like one sentence per bullet point. platform. But now that I’ve gone door to door, I, almost every week or so I shift my platform to basically just reflect what I’m hearing. And so now that I’ve done canvassing throughout the entire district, my platform is, I believe, very reflective of what people are desiring people are asking, and we’ve been honored to implement the feedback.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, so let’s, let’s talk about some of these goals. Let’s start at the top screen sharing with our viewers who are on on the internet. But we’re on your goals page here better economy, tell us about the better economy. What’s the game plan?

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, so Hawaii, sadly, has some of the highest taxes out of every state in our nation. And that’s a bit problematic. If you look at the state of Florida, they have zero state income taxes, can you imagine that you go to work, you work hard to come home, and then the state doesn’t take any taxes away, that would be a nice reality for the state of Hawaii. So what we’re going to work towards that goal is decrease our taxes and shifted towards the tourists towards the investors. And for example, excise tax, we can eliminate that on foods, and really lowered the tax burden for our combiner. You can also introduce legislation that caps he goes, electric costs for us. So we have some initiatives in Hawaii that are trying to preserve our planet, which sounds great. But when we compare our goal of that with our economy, there needs to be good balance. So for shutting down our electric plant, and then we’re increasing our electric bill, the 7% rate to reevaluate them and try to look at sources of renewable energy that is instigated by a very organic or community based drive to go going to go renewable energy versus the government just saying, alright, this state are mandating renewable energy when there’s not a substitute. So our electric bills are going up, because we’re turning off our electric plants that we need. So how can we have a better economy, lower taxes, and have a diversified energy source that’s not hurting?

ADRIENNE: 
So, Dr. Elijah,

ATTILIO: 
doctor,

ADRIENNE: 
go ahead and tell you,

ATTILIO: 
Dr. Elijah, you I just had I do want to share something with you. I have adult kids that left Hawaii they work and live in Arizona and the governor. I think in his he’s on the way out, but he just signed I think he signed into law I could be wrong don’t quote me on this but 2% flat tax rate for the state of Arizona maybe that’s something we should take a look at.

DR. ELIJAH: 
I like that better than what we have now.

ADRIENNE: 
And then you tack let you tax the visitors and the out of state investors is the logic right? That’s what Florida does.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, Florida has zero state income taxes. Almost all the tax revenue comes from there over 30 million residents Excuse me 30 million tourists. Why in 2019 had 10 point 4 million tourists and we should increase the amount of revenue we get from them through taxes. We’re going to keep coming here the beautiful and so let’s find a smart way to preserve our kind of islands banks. And you know, utilize that the finances that people want to spend here in Hawaii.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, cuz when you I think when you live somewhere you really you do pay attention to taxes, right? Because you’re you’re self employed your quarterly estimates you gotta make or your monthlies at the end of the year. If you Oh, are you getting a refund? But when you’re on vacation? Are you really looking at the taxes you pay? I think that’s like you just this is like fun, and you’re not really paying attention to the taxes. So

ADRIENNE: 
it’s called the fun idea of tax.

ATTILIO: 
This skill. Yeah, yeah, we call it the fun tax instead of the tax we have right now, which is the blue tax blue.

DR. ELIJAH: 
I’m not sure if those terms will be used in the legislature, but I love the conversation we’re having.

ADRIENNE: 
So, so Dr. Elijah, with all of the doors that you’ve knocked on and all the people that you talk to you did come up with a wonderful list of initiatives. Attilio what was next I know you have the website up what’s next on the list that that we can touch on

ATTILIO: 
safer neighborhoods,

DR. ELIJAH: 
safer neighborhoods. So in going door to door, it’s been an honor to hear people describe, you know, parts of our district that’s Face appeal is fairly safe Westlock affair fairways with luck estate is fairly safe. When we start talking about Harbor View, Oasis, townhomes, village, park and park. The feedback is often times there’s crime, people are stealing things, people are harming others, and go down. Sadly, and Harbor View, somebody told me that they had somebody shot in their front yard. And so he said, If you recognize that I want you to degree decrease the crime in my possible. So what can we do about that the city and county wonderfully has enough finances to hire more police officers. That’s good. But what about the amount of police officers we have? Right now they’re having a problem with retention and recruitment. And I believe that’s in large part because of the messaging that the government gives towards our police officers imagine being hired, and then being told by many leaders in the military, the US military, the government, that your job needs to be continually audited, continue to be formed and unappreciated in the media. It’s hard to promote recruitment and retention for a police force, if we have this kind of messaging from leadership. So if I get elected, It’d be an honor to include in my monthly newsletters, affirmation and praise for the police officers who are doing a good job to bolster their reputation, and hopefully hire more, so we can have more designated for district 39 to keep us safe.

ADRIENNE: 
So, Dr. Elijah, how would you gather this data on? You know, catching the police doing something? Great. Is it something that like the community would message you on so that you can include it in your, on your website? Or your your monthly newsletter? How would that work?

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, I’ve been going to the neighborhood board meetings forever in my pocket with the officers are invited to come along with the police department, etc. And they just share the CES, they give out so many tickets this month, they’ve been given out so many arrests, etc. And they also have testimonials of what they’ve been doing to help protect our communities. So I could simply go to the neighbor board meetings, but more easily as they call Shawn, he’s the government relations person for chauveau and get the data directly from him. As to praise reports for the district.

ADRIENNE: 
And love that praise reports.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, because one of the things I want to say and the benefit for HPD is that we’re all happy and and and excited to see the police show up when we got the you know, ruckus going on in our neighborhoods, or, you know, something’s going down. And then we get all upset with them when they write us tickets or things like that, you know, I think as a community, we need to step up and own the fact that they’re not writing a ticket, just because they don’t like the color of your car, you’ve done something, some type of infraction, which is having them do that, which is in turn making it a safer neighborhood, they’re not the ones that let your car registration expired. They’re not the ones that told you not to get car insurance or anything else on your vehicle. So I think overall, the public needs to have a more positive attitude towards HPV, no matter the circumstances that you’re interacting with them, because they, what does it say? As well, not on the private ones, but on the patrol cars to serve and protect or TV shows that serve and protect.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Me protect. And if we can read scripture, Romans 13 It’s about honoring those in authority, which will include you know, those who have the the obligation to execute justice, in our society in our community. And so that would I believe, include the police officers. So if we are doing something wrong, we should be scared. If we’re doing something right, we should rejoice that we’re being protected. So absolutely, if I if any of us get a speeding ticket, if we’re being handed the delegation of justice, that ticket so what we’ve done wrong, and it’s part of the process of keeping us all safe.

ADRIENNE: 
So realize, you forgot to ask you one of the most important questions. Since you are since you did grow up here. What high school did you graduate from?

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, so I’ve been blessed to grow up in Denver. And while growing up and ever I was raised homeschooled by myself. And so from being homeschooled, I got to apply for scholarships that all of my college degrees paid for my Bachelor’s to Master’s, paid for by a 4.0 GPA, and then a doctorate from the University. So I just feel honored to have continued that journey of learning and growing. And it’s an honor to be here.

ADRIENNE: 
Now I know that one of your initiatives or things that you’re hearing from the community community was about the school systems and how that’s like the funds are treated. Let’s talk a little bit about that. I thought that was pretty interesting and interesting idea that you had.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah. So each child represents a certain amount of tax dollars that the state get for the Department of Education and theory. And some schools have high capacity of students like they’re almost overburdened with. So many students, other schools could use more students. And then some parents, they don’t want their kids in theory, they want private school or homeschool or Montessori or charter. So there’s lots of options for people in Hawaii. But what about funding, if all the taxes for each child follows the child, per the parents choice, I think that’s a better system, what we have right now, if we look at Arizona, they have a school choice system, where the parents can ask for a voucher from the viewing, and then all the taxes for that child, it follows the child into the school of choice that the parent directs the kid thing. So maybe it’s private, homeschool charter, if we had that for Hawaii, I believe we will have a more competitive and more, I think we have more results for most of our kids, because the schools are going to be competing for the funds of those vouchers to have their kids enrolled in them. And then once you have that competitive edge in the schools, I think we’re going to see better results. If there’s a across the board blanket system of kids will graduate no matter what I don’t think that leads towards progressive learning. It doesn’t, you know, lead the student into trihard. It’s, it’s not promoting of effort.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, and I think it’s important that the money follow the child. But luck is going to be an uphill battle. And I’ll be the bad guy will always go walk that fine line between creating change and upsetting people. And so I’ll probably gonna say something that’ll upset a few people. But I feel that our Department of Education, we got a lot of entrenchment, a lot of inefficiency. And this is coming from homeschool parent also who, you know, decided to opt out of the public school system, participated in it as a child, but couldn’t afford, you know, 20,000 a year for Pune Hall, or Island Pacific academy or any other private schools, you know, had a chance to go to Kamehameha Schools. But you know, obviously, we’re not paying that the parents are not paying the full cost. But we have a whole bunch of other kids out there that need better education. And I’m hoping that the teachers and and the administration will, you know, not just be doing the same ol same ol every year and pay attention to legislation that you’re going to try and get through.

DR. ELIJAH: 
To all of the people listening to the radio program that are with the Department of Education, which is Ta, the Board of Education superintendent, I want to say thank you to you all, for the hard work you’re doing to help our keiki I know you’re doing this oftentimes in a very selfless and sacrificial way. And I know that sometimes our State is ranked or not on the top when it comes to kids performance in education. So this battery system is an option in a way to help promote kids learning more in Hawaii.

ADRIENNE: 
Now, Dr. Elijah, as we wrap up our time with you, I know that you’re having a special meet and greet on Monday. Let’s announce to the listeners where they could come and talk story with you and just go and just visit and maybe give some additional feedback.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, so I’d love to talk to you all. If you want to come to my place. It’s just Google T press. So that will be the next key press so ever beach. And that’s like a tea coffee shop across the street from my house. So if your Google Maps direction to their look across the street, that’s my place. And I live on 9135 25 Kyle Lococo street apartment 200 to It’d be an honor to hear from you. Just share with me what’s on your mind for our district. And that’s this Monday, November 7, at 7pm. And can talk story.

ADRIENNE: 
Well, thank you so much for talking sorry with us here on the radio this weekend. Yes. And is there anything that you’d like to leave our listeners with that? Maybe we haven’t touched on yet?

DR. ELIJAH: 
Yeah, thank you both so much, folks. If you haven’t done InMail already, please drive to your nearest voting area. If you’re kind of on the electronic side, you can drive up to walking block is a voting in person location there or if you’re on the over your couple of weeks, I drive over to the municipal building. It’s the whole holiday building in Kapolei. That please vote, you can do that anytime between now and November 8.

ADRIENNE: 
Okay, well, thank you, Dr. Elijah, for our time. Appreciate you.

DR. ELIJAH: 
Thanks so much.

ADRIENNE: 
Aloha. Alright, so we’ve got about three minutes left in the show Attilio. I know that we were, what were we talking about? Oh, the total market overview was what we were touching on as far as that strategy TMO.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, so that’s something exclusive that our our SEO, Team Leader Chad Shima puts together for the different neighborhoods, it’s not something that comes out of the Honolulu Board of Realtors, or the raw data is there, but the way he correlates it, and explains this these data sheets is a great is something that we use exclusively at Keller Williams to go over what’s going on in the neighborhood to price your home correctly. I think the big mistake people are saying is like, hey, you know, my neighbor sold their house down the street for 850. So I’m going to list mine for 865. Because the market is going up know, what’s happening is you’re listening at above the last one, because maybe that was true six months ago. But what’s happening is the prices are softening, and coming down and so on. Even listing it at what was sold out before may not be a good enough strategy, maybe you need to go but below that if you want to get your home in escrow and not have it set.

ADRIENNE: 
So using that example, that 850 sale, that buyer likely had an interest rate of somewhere between maybe three to 5%. So you have to make these adjustments based on what’s happening with the interest rates, or like Attilio had alluded to earlier, we have some strategies to get those interest rates down for the buyers, as you know, part of the marketing strategy of your home.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, so if you want to learn the specifics of those strategies I got to do is give us a call. Be happy to do you know No, no stress, easy Namaste. No hard sell here. We just want to educate you on the process. You don’t necessarily need to meet face to face we’re really good at zoom. I think everybody’s got their I think everybody’s got really strong zoom muscles. Now.

ADRIENNE: 
I would just say that we’ll meet you where you’re at whether it’s zoom on the phone, in the house. We want to make it comfortable for you and what’s your best way to communicate.

Alright, so we are going to be wrapping up another show. So thank you for listening and thank you to our sponsors.

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