Simultaneous vacancies in three full-time Haines Borough jobs – planner, facilities director and grant writer – offer the community a chance to streamline staff and reshuffle priorities in an era of deep government cuts that historically supported our town.
The assembly should act on this for several reasons including: 1) It’s very difficult to eliminate a position when it’s occupied, 2) short of increased taxation, reductions in income must be balanced either with cuts to staff or cuts to services (or both), and, 3) members of the public have consistently expressed concern about levels of staffing.
When I ran for office three years ago, both Mud Bay liberals and downtown conservatives told me they were concerned about jobs added to the payroll in recent years. Since then, the borough has added two full-time positions (planning assistant and police patrolman) and it has expanded pay and benefits twice, including major pay increases for police.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe most borough employees are necessary and earn their pay. But when government funding shrinks, government staffing should reflect that. When government is flush and able to do more for citizens, it should grow.
The second part of that equation is why the job of facilities director was created in July 2008. At the time, the price of a barrel of oil hovered near $150 and Alaska was rich. Our hometown state Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines, was shoveling millions of dollars in capital grants toward Haines, faster than then-manager Robert Venables could keep up with getting those projects out the door.
The job was created as a temporary position to help get those projects completed.
Still, there was reluctance to create the position, which now costs the borough well over $100,000 annually. Venables sold the idea by saying that it would pay for itself, with administrative funds attached to those grants.
It was a neat idea, though an accounting was never made to see if Venables’s math worked out. In any case, the halcyon days of borough projects is over, and along with it, the justification for this position.
Also, since consolidation, the borough has added three full-time maintenance workers to the staff, including a carpenter, and built this department its own shop. That was a smart move. That trio does great work holding together the town’s aging buildings. But a facilities manager, a job created to handle new projects, is a stretch in an era of scant capital funding.
There’s another alternative if the administration and assembly allies are determined to keep this position: increase pay enough to hire a licensed staff engineer. Keeping engineering in house holds the potential to save the borough money; continuing to staff a facilities director doesn’t.
The grant-writer position, which also served as assistant to the facilities director, is an important one, but one that either could be contracted out on a per-job basis or folded into the borough planner position.
Planning is another department that can be expected to see less business as our state and local economies shrink. Further, the planning department was boosted with an additional full-time position last year, alleviating some of the planner’s duties. That might leave enough breathing room for the planner to write some grants.
Another possible area for savings is automating billing. When she applied to serve as manager, Debra Schnabel raised a legitimate question of whether automation and computerization could streamline some office jobs that involve sending out bills each month. It seemed to make sense. That idea also should be explored.
I will not, in this column, take on the question of police budget cuts because I’ve written extensively on the matter of police overstaffing. (If you need more information, check out Gustavus, a retirement and arts community like Haines, with a summertime population of about 800 and no police force at all.)
Suffice it to say, the Haines Borough could show good faith to taxpayers and alleviate some pressure on its budget by trimming some jobs at city hall. The question is whether the assembly has the political will to run with that ball.