I encourage voters to pass the seasonal sales tax initiative.
For the fall and winter months, the measure would effectively cut grocery prices in Haines by 5.5 percent and cut prices on everything else by 1 percent.
For the other half of the year, prices on all items would go up 1.5 percent downtown and 1 percent in outlying areas.
The borough would come out ahead by $280,000, money desperately needed to run our town.
This proposal gives an advantage to year-round residents who try to support their neighbors by shopping at home. How much it hurts or helps you depends on what you buy and when you buy it.
Our town government is under siege by cuts from the state and federal governments, including more than $400,000 alone in the past year ($206,000 less in federal Secure Rural Schools, $207,000 less in state school debt reimbursement). The borough additionally lost $285,000 to the secondary senior property tax exemption approved last fall by voters.
Finally, the borough gave an additional $540,000 to our school district in the past year because wages/benefits there had dropped so abysmally low that few Americans were even applying for work at our schools.
To cover those losses, the current borough assembly took more than $1 million from savings.
Some opponents of the seasonal sales tax say that instead, the borough should just sell more land. The government is working as hard as it can to make more land sales available.
But all the borough land sales in the borough’s history, combined, equals only $10.5 million and we’ve already sold the most valuable land. That $10.5 million is in the borough Permanent Fund. Interest from the fund helps pay down the cost of local government but only in the amount of $330,000 in the current year.
To offset major cuts, our community needs to take significant action.
If you oppose this measure, I look forward to hearing your ideas for bridging this gap. Alternatives include making deeper cuts, using more savings, launching new revenues measures such as a severance tax, gasoline tax or tour tax, or increasing existing taxes on beds or property.