If voters don’t approve a seasonal sales tax Tuesday, it will be no skin off my nose.
I’m too old and I’ve seen too much to pin my personal happiness on the whims of the electorate.
I would, however, like to see the initiative pass for all the reasons I’ve already shared, plus this one: To prove to ourselves that we as a community can try something new. In fact, that triumph would be of greater importance than the initiative’s passage.
I may have been the only Haines representative paying attention at the time, but at last year’s conference of the Alaska Municipal League, Dave Sandor, the president of the National League of Cities and himself a mayor, told municipal leaders that if they don’t make at least a couple blunders a year, they’re not doing enough.
The message was clear: With trial comes the possibility of error. But without trial comes nothing.
It’s a general rule of life that “winners” are people who have lost more times than they’ve won. But they’ve learned from their losses and learned to carry on. Persistence – the willingness to keep at a goal – is the birthmark of success.
This idea runs deep in the Alaska vein. When our skiff engine dies in the middle of the bay, or the weather turns on our expedition or our old truck doesn’t start on a cold, winter morning, we don’t throw up our hands. We don’t whine. We try things. And if those things don’t work, we try other things.
At its heart, making it in Alaska is mostly about trying, including things we’ve never tried before, and seizing the solutions that work.
But in our small town of longtime residents, a kind of score is kept. Few mistakes are forgotten or forgiven. They’re remembered for years or decades. Like it or not, after a while all of us, including our institutions – the government, the town’s businesses, its nonprofits – wear scorecards by which we’re judged.
And for fear of losing points on our scorecards, we stop taking chances. We stop making mistakes and instead, we do nothing.
Also at last year’s municipal conference, Haines leaders heard the story of Valdez, Alaska and its housing shortage. To address it, Valdez leaders approved trailer homes in all residential neighborhoods. Previously, house trailers were limited to a trailer park outside of town.
Did Valdez make the right decision? Maybe, maybe not. But leaders there were willing to try, willing to risk a mistake to move their community forward.
Until Haines citizens and leaders can look away from their scorecards and muster the courage to try a new idea – including the possibility that it’s a mistake – the Haines Borough is going nowhere.