The Haines 5-Year Economic Development Plan is a good one. Let’s see if we can do anything with it.
The Haines Borough has paid for good plans in the past, including a downtown plan. Follow-through is the hard part. That requires commitment and a ton of meetings. People lose interest.
The economic plan holds no big surprises. It’s a good overview of our economy and a decent plan for moving ahead, despite its occasional slips into jargon like “cluster initiative” and “performance metrics.”
The plan would set up the fledgling Haines Economic Development Corporation as a kind of “think tank” and research center for the community. That’s not a bad thing. Deliberation on development issues often is superficial and emotional instead of fact-based, and that’s understandable. Many times we’re asked to decide issues with too few facts, or with unresolved discrepancies between competing narratives. The more facts, the better.
The plan also would have HEDC take over the business education and support function that had been provided sporadically by the Haines Chamber of Commerce. That’s also okay. Between organizing events, handling public inquiries, and serving as a soundboard for business ideas, our part-time Chamber office has always been strapped for serving its larger and more important role of fostering business and businesses.
Sharing this responsibility with HEDC means the Chamber should have more time for projects including an ongoing shop-at-home campaign essential to saving and building our retail sector.
Perhaps the most critical achievement of the plan is that it points a way forward that is politically acceptable to a majority of residents. By virtue of its polling showing that industrial logging and mining are among the least supported directions for the local economy, the plan allows the community – and the borough government – to put most of its energies elsewhere, despite the aggressive rhetoric that often comes from advocates of those industries.
Many, if not most Haines residents don’t see industrial logging and mining operations as desirable goals for the community. Interestingly, surveying also found low support for large cruise ship dockings. The plan suggests that residents are most interested in small-business growth, the kind of development that’s been occurring in Haines organically for decades.
None of this is much of a revelation, but HEDC and the McDowell Group, which provided research and authored the report, now have the community’s wishes – or at least its attitudes – in writing. That’s important, as the report will, and should be, used to direct and defend the direction taken by HEDC in the next few years.
HEDC now has its marching orders. Whether it can achieve much will be determined by the diligence of its staff and the willingness of the community to come aboard with support and enthusiasm for its work.
Like the Haines Borough tourism office – the agency in town it most closely matches – HEDC is funded with your tax dollars. Many in the public have been skeptical of funding it, despite the 2004 boroughwide election that expanded the 1 percent sales tax for tourism promotion to also pay for economic development.
What’s most important now is for HEDC to get some runs on the scoreboard, to complete a project other than a study that tangibly helps the town and its economy. This will be critical. I personally might spend $100,000 on a think tank, but I’m sure most residents wouldn’t.
What the public will want is something – preferably brick and mortar – that HEDC can point to as an accomplishment. Then more.