People on the political left, right and center have groused to me about the borough spending $49,500 on an economic development plan.
That’s not a big surprise. If there’s one thing Haines agrees on, it’s disagreement. Plus, $49,500 is real money.
I have been critical of some previous borough-funded studies, including ones about the police department and borough worker morale that I thought wouldn’t be necessary with competent management.
But an economic development plan – a community-supported plan for improving the local economy – isn’t something we can write in-house. Here’s why: Regardless of who wrote it or how good it was, the plan would be suspect. That’s a fact of small-town life. We know each other too well to trust one other. If ambulance driver Al Badgley, arguably the town’s most trusted citizen, wrote the plan, people would find it biased toward the fire department.
And with shaky support, an economic development plan – which requires lots of public backing even under the best conditions – would be dead in the water.
So we’re paying $50,000 to hear an objective source tell us what most of us already know, or might be able to deduce. That’s okay, because we need an economic development plan, and because there’s no other way to get one.
Why do we need an economic development plan?
1) We need to come to agreement on which economic development initiatives to pursue. McDowell’s process will put ideas for economic development through a public screening, through phone surveys and other outreach. The outcome should be a product we can use for our marching orders.
2) We’ve been taking your tax money for economic development for years, with no plan for how to spend it.
Through a 1 percent local sales tax, the Haines Borough taxes the public roughly $150,000 per year for economic development, but for most of the 14 years since the economic development tax was approved by voters, the borough hasn’t done much or anything with that money.
Since 2004, the borough twice hired short-lived economic development directors – Robert Venables and Bill Mandeville – but otherwise sprinkled economic development money around in the budget, here for some of the manager’s salary, there for cleaning out harbor fuel tanks, anywhere in the budget that could reasonably be described as boosting the economy.
On the whole, the borough took the public’s money for economic development but didn’t do development. That was wrong. We shouldn’t tax for a service we don’t deliver.
That’s why I supported creating and funding the non-profit Haines Economic Development Corporation. Nonprofits have a shining record in this town of accomplishing tasks our borough government either can’t or won’t do, and we need to do economic development or abolish the tax we collect for it.
3) We have historic examples that tell us that McDowell’s model will work.
We’ve used the same methods previously, to develop goals during the Haines 2005 project and to write a Downtown Revitalization Plan.
Haines 2005 and the revitalization plan were valuable efforts for reaching agreement on community direction. They worked in that regard. They only failed insomuch as the community didn’t follow through on recommendations of those plans. That was our fault, not the fault of the plans.
Twenty-three years after the Haines 2005 effort (which occurred in 1995), you can see how close it came to hitting the mark.
The nine projects recommended for the community to pursue were: 1) boat harbor expansion, 2) energy conservation, 3) development of a small business development organization, 4) downtown revitalization, 5) inventory of baseline habitat, 6) Native culture infrastructure expansion, 7) value-added industry promotion, 8) establishment of a teen center, 9) creation a local business directory.
Apart from the teen center and business directory, our town has made progress on each of the goals, even without any centralized or organized effort to accomplish them. Klukwan opened a cultural center. Fish and Game recently completed a baseline study of goat habitat. The borough is pursuing a biomass fuel project to conserve energy. Haines Packing Company has developed new kinds of fish products and opened new markets.
Haines 2005 helped focus our community goals and demonstrated public support for projects that, in fact, were pursued or are still being pursued.
The downtown revitalization plan, written in 2010 as a response to questions of what should replace the old school buildings on Main Street, cost $40,000 and consumed months of the town’s time.
The result was a plan that was easy to follow, identifying steps for breathing life back into our downtown. They included formalizing a downtown improvement district, hiring a half-time worker, dedicating a local revenue source, launching a building improvement grant program, and starting talks with the State of Alaska about what the town could do in its right-of-way.
But the project hit several hitches. The revitalization committee was comprised of business owners operating under the Haines Chamber of Commerce, and the Haines Borough was slow to buy into its actions. Significantly, some of the group’s recommendations – including concern about commercial trailers downtown and a call for a “green space” at Third and Main – were opposed by local elected leaders.
After a strong start, the group fizzled. Mayor Stephanie Scott re-created it as a subcommittee of the borough’s planning commission in 2014. One meeting with members and borough manager David Sosa in July 2014 was enough to kill the effort, for reasons that included Sosa’s insistence at the meeting that the group would do planning only and that it needed short-term, mid-term and long-term goals, despite the fact that goals already were in hand, in the plan.
There was another rub. The revitalization committee’s recommendations would need approval by the borough planning commission and by the assembly. The committee’s authority would be limited to writing letters, and only ones approved by the manager. The committee — comprised of people accustomed to getting things done — gave up.
But make no mistake. The downtown plan was a good one. It cost $40,000 and it delivered technical recommendations and a “how-to-get-it-done” process that the borough couldn’t have developed on its own.
The mistake belonged to the town, which never followed through on its recommendations.
The revitalization plan is still there. Most if not all of the information it contains is still valid. It’s just awaiting town leadership serious and diligent enough to complete its recommendations.
In sum, unnecessary studies are a waste of money. But it’s also a waste money to pay for worthwhile studies and plans, then leave them on the shelf.