HILO, Hawai'i — Only two of the nine seats on the Big Island County Council will be decided in the general election, but the way those two council contests play out could change the leadership of the council and the pace of development on the island.

Councilman Bob Jacobson hopes to assemble a new council majority made up mostly of council members from outside urban Hilo. The outcome of the two pending council contests in Kealakekua and Lower Puna may determine whether Jacobson and his allies succeed.

Underlying the reorganization effort is a common complaint: Many Big Island residents outside of Hilo believe East Hawai'i politicians dominated the council for many years, and have favored Hilo-area public works projects at the expense of other parts of the island.

Kona residents, in particular, are infuriated at having to endure traffic jams each day because their network of roadways can't accommodate the surge in population and cars that arrived during years of rapid economic growth.

In Kona, as well as in Puna and Ka'u, many residents say their communities don't receive their fair share of county tax collections.

Jacobson, who represents Upper Puna, Ka'u and South Kona, won re-election to the council in the September primary, and is helping Captain Cook resident Brenda Ford in her effort to unseat incumbent Kona Councilwoman Virginia Isbell.

Isbell has become a target because she is part of the sitting council majority that selected Hilo Councilman Stacy Higa as the current council chairman. Higa, who represents Keaukaha, is supporting Isbell's re-election.

Ford, 59, is friends with Jacobson and his wife Julie, but won't say if she will support Jacobson for chairman. Ford is a first-time candidate who said she entered the race because Kona residents are frustrated with the clogged roads and lack of affordable housing in their neighborhoods.

A retired manager with Pacific Bell, Ford has lived in Captain Cook for 10 years. She is a California native and graduated from St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif., in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in management.

She is campaigning in part on a plan to impose a moratorium on rezoning for new development in Kona until the Kona Community Development plan is completed. She also said she may favor a longer moratorium because the county needs time to build the infrastructure necessary to properly serve its present residents.

"We need to catch up here before we go farther," she said. "We already have 20 or 30 years of approved subdivisions, and thousands of vacant lots over on this side of the island, many of which have not yet started (building) ... and yet with our terrible congestion, hardly any parks over here, and minimal services for our people, and we keep getting new rezoning and new subdivisions piled on top of it.

"My diagnosis is, we've allowed ourselves to become a developer-driven county instead of a people-driven county."

Isbell, 74, is a veteran lawmaker who spent 16 years in the state House until she left in 1996 to make an unsuccessful run for Big Island mayor.

Isbell was elected to the council in 2004 in a campaign in which she, like Ford, strongly criticized a lack of county planning that resulted in traffic gridlock in Kona. The difference, Isbell said, is "I'm doing something about it."

Isbell pointed to preliminary state plans to put affordable housing on almost 200 acres of state-owned land mauka of the Kmart in Kona, land that Isbell worked to acquire for the state in the early 1990s when she was chairwoman of the House Housing Committee in the Legislature.

She said she was also able to successfully negotiate with a Kona developer for four acres of land above the Kona Costco that is now available for affordable housing for people who work in the area.

She was also able to persuade other council members to include $14 million in the county budget to ease Kona traffic by widening and improving Mamalahoa Highway from Captain Cook to Honalo, she said.

Isbell opposes a moratorium on development in Kona, saying that would cause the already sky-high price of housing to escalate even more, putting it out of reach for most people. And Isbell said a moratorium would not stop the building in subdivisions that were approved by the county years ago.

In Puna, first-time candidate Emily Naeole is also calling for an islandwide moratorium on new development while the county catches up on the infrastructure needs.

"We don't need any more big businesses until we can handle what we have now," she said.

Naeole, 50, is challenging incumbent Councilman Gary Safarik for the seat in lower Puna that Safarik has held for six years. Naeole declined to say who she would support for chairman if she is elected, but she is clearly dissatisfied with the way the county divides up its resources today.

"We're just getting shortchanged on our side of the island," she said. "I just feel like I've lived here for 50 years, and a lot of times, everybody else is getting everything, and we're not getting nothing."

Naeole herself lived for 15 years without electric service or county water service on Hawaiian Home Lands at Maku'u until the state built the infrastructure to serve the subdivision.

She is a former outreach counselor for Hui Ho'ola, a drug- treatment program based in Hawaiian Paradise Park, and has coached volleyball and softball for the county parks department.

Naeole's top priority is affordable housing and rental units for the elderly. Puna has some of the most affordable land and homes in the state, but Naeole said the prices are still too much for many families.

Safarik, 57, is a three-term councilman and a former Ho-nolulu police officer. He was owner with his wife of Western Pacific Communications, a wireless service provider for industrial users, until he sold the business about two years ago.

He also favors a new highway to provide an alternative route into lower Puna, but said the route for the new road needs further study.

In the meantime, Safarik said, he wants to build a park-and-ride facility to encourage bus ridership, and wants expanded bus service.

Safarik also wants to station police officers at major intersections on Highway 130 to help motorists emerging from the lower Puna subdivisions to get on the busy highway.

He said he opposes a rezoning moratorium because a blanket ban on new development would amount to the council abdicating its responsibility.

"We have 57,000 buildable lots here in Puna, and the people are going to be building whether we want them to or not," he said.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.