If you think a proposed charter change to formalize police service outside the Townsite of Haines is a rehash of a matter resolved by voters in last fall’s municipal election, you’re right.
Like a zombie, attempts by the Haines Borough administration and its police department to expand police service outside the townsite just won’t die.
This year’s proposal is a seemingly friendlier, back-door approach to the same end as last fall’s election that found, by a convincing margin, that residents living outside our urban core don’t want service from Townsite police.
You moved on. But the folks at city hall who want to expand the service – and more importantly, to expand the police department – have time and money enough on their hands to ask if you really meant it.
On the surface, this matter is about police service. But it’s as much about the police budget, which can’t grow because a cap on property taxes inside the Townsite has been nearly reached, and downtown businessmen justifiably aren’t interested in raising our town’s 5.5 percent general sales tax.
(Tellingly, when the borough assembly increased the police budget by approximately $150,000 to pay for hiring a fifth officer in 2017, no funding source was identified for the increase. Instead, the Townsite instead just slipped further into the red.)
If you can’t get money for more police from inside the Townsite, where are you going to get it? You’re going to try to get it from people outside the Townsite. And that’s what’s happening.
The recently proposed charter change would make the technical change required for Townsite police to routinely respond to calls outside their existing police service area – and to tax residents for those calls. Currently, Townsite police have been directed to answer only critical, emergency calls from outside their jurisdiction.
This year’s argument by police and the administration is to say that police trips outside the Townsite pose a risk to the borough because the borough’s charter limits police service to the Townsite. While technically correct, that’s never been a problem.
Previous to 2002 (when the Townsite was called the City of Haines) city law limited the police to the area inside city limits. But just as today, when state troopers needed help or some emergency occurred, city police went outside the city.
Further, Haines police chief Heath Scott has repeatedly stated, since arriving here in 2016, that the State of Alaska certification he holds as a policeman allows him to act as a policeman anywhere in Alaska. (Scott also has said he feels a duty to respond to police calls from all over the valley, regardless of local laws and and where those calls originate.)
And since the Haines Borough and City of Haines combined in 2002, whenever there’s urgent cause for Townsite police to respond in the area outside of their official jurisdiction, they have, the same way that doctors treat strangers who are not their patients during emergencies. No big deal.
People advocating expanded police service would like you to think there’s no law beyond the borders of the Townsite, that the area beyond 4 Mile is an outlaw roost of the Wild West, where Townsite residents face danger if they dare tread.
Baloney. The Alaska State Troopers still cover the area, with a full-time wildlife trooper trained in criminal enforcement. The biggest emergencies outside the Townsite in the past year involved two, high-profile search and rescues of lost and stranded residents. Both were conducted by Alaska State Troopers.
There is no need to change the charter. There is no need to expand police service or the police department. We are facing a battery of losses to our community from recent cuts by the State of Alaska. We’ll need to generate more money from our community to maintain what we have now. We certainly shouldn’t adding the cost of more police or more policing.
When people who live outside the Townsite decide they want police service, they’ll come to the borough and ask for it and the government will find a way for them to help pay for it.
In the meantime, stay calm and mind your pocketbook. The same people who tell you there is no money to help non-profits or to keep reasonable hours at borough facilities may soon be wanting more of your money to police you, of all things.