Former Haines Borough Mayor Fred Shields approached me a few weeks ago when I was circulating a ballot petition to reduce the amount of the senior citizen property tax exemption. “You know that’s not proper for you to do that,” Shields said to me, intimating that a mayor should not involve himself in partisan politics. It’s an opinion persistent among…
My all-boys high school offered an after-school activity called “computer club.” The guys who joined were mostly pasty-faced, squishy fellows who wore pocket protectors to keep pens from staining their white button-downs. If you saw them approach a cute girl at a school dance, she would look sidewards and say, “Um, I have to get a drink of water.” These…
I gave my truck keys to my dad one time and told him to take my mom into Canada to see Chilkat Pass. They came back early. “I don’t know why you sent us up there. There’s nothing there,” dad reported. In a manner of speaking, he was right. For 100 miles on the only road out of here, there’s…
One year into the Trump administration, it’s obvious that the Chaos Theory of Government isn’t working and that the president either is an idiot when it comes to governance, Putin’s stooge, or both. For Putin, it doesn’t matter which. He and his henchmen oligarchs gain every inch of ground that America loses. “Look at the insanity of America. That’s what…
Working as a tour guide in summer, I’m occasionally asked what it’s like to live in Haines year-round. “It’s hard and it’s sweet,” I tell them, “and the hardest parts of it make the sweet parts even sweeter.” A couple minutes after getting out of bed Friday I was on all fours in a cold, windy rain, fishing around on…
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…
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.…
At the mayor’s request, the below letter will be included in the Oct. 14 Haines Borough Assembly packet under “New Business.” Writer Midge (Paddock) McClellan Clark was a Haines School classmate of Eileen Wafer, a 14-year-old girl raped and strangled to death downtown in 1982. No one was ever charged with the crimes. By all accounts, Eileen was a kind…
It’s ironic that the Haines Borough is carrying a million-dollar deficit because it just so happens that the Jackass in the White House owes our town at least half that much up front. We should have our tourism department send him a bill. Back in February, the Jackass started flapping his jaws about “making Canada the 51st state.” Ostensibly, this…
The Haines Borough annual municipal election will be held Tuesday, Oct. 7. New candidates seeking office offer new ideas and approaches for leading our community. Incumbents must defend their time in office. The day after I was elected Haines Borough Mayor in October 2023, I was asked by a citizen what I would do about gasoline prices. It was a…