An anonymous Facebook group calling itself Haines Front and Center posted a slam against the mayor last night, alleging my “failed policies” and “significant turnover inside the borough government.” It insinuates that our town is in decline due to my mayorship.
I have worked at every turn to improve the Haines Borough while my opponents have said, posted or written scurrilous and untrue statements about me, threatened recall and worked to obstruct projects and ideas I supported that promised to improve our town.
This latest smear is a perfect example of their work: Slamming me personally while offering no new ideas, nothing creative, no optimism about our town’s future, nothing but bile. I’d venture to guess that the people behind Haines Front and Center have never stopped in the mayor’s office for a chat.
But let’s examine their argument that Haines is dying. Our little town of 2,400 people has an expanding salmon cannery, three grocery stores, a giant mini-mart, two lumberyards, a brewery, a distillery and a meadery, four restaurants, two cafes, an assortment of general stores and souvenir shops, a hotel, two motels and, dozens of vacation rentals plus a summertime public market.
Does this sound like a dying town to you? I don’t think so.
What I think is that Haines has been under assault by people who don’t believe in Haines, including our Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the Republican President Donald Trump.
As an Alaska state senator, Dunleavy said Alaska “needed 100,000 less people.” As governor, he followed through on that goal by strangling funding for our public schools, mothballing our ferries, closing our state parks and facilities, and abandoning roads and other vital infrastructure.
Besides jacking up gas and oil prices by starting a senseless war with Iran, Trump has alienated our closest neighbor and largest trading partner, costing our town as much as one third of annual visitor revenue. He has done nothing to temper the power of giant corporations, such as the unregulated monopolies that control the prices of all the fuel and arriving into Haines.
I’m sorry that our schools, roads, and buildings need additional funding at this time, and that taxation is the most efficient way to raise community money. But the reason we need that money is that Republicans are using our money to build ballrooms onto the White House or a ferry terminal in the wilderness at Cascade Point.
They are drunk on power and they need to be replaced by responsible people. Please vote.