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…
I ran down to my office early Sunday morning to grab some food from the fridge there and look for my cell phone. Things go missing on fair weekend. As I drove by, a woman leaving the Pioneer jumped on a skateboard, maybe heading off to the ‘Cutter. I lingered at my office to look down on a most extraordinary…
How to relieve congestion and make the Chilkoot River corridor more safe and enjoyable to visitors – and accommodating to brown bears – has been a borough issue since the mid-1990s, when brown bear sows and cubs started fishing there during daylight hours. Fortunately, the bears have been patient with us. In the late 1990s, the Haines Borough established a…
It’s impossible to know precisely what younger adults make of our town and their place in it, but the mayor’s “40 and Under Survey” conducted in February provides a pretty good idea. So as to not sway the results, the survey presented three open-ended questions: 1) Why are you here? 2) What do you need to succeed here? and 3)…
On Tuesday, the Haines Borough Assembly will hold a public hearing on a seasonal sales tax. It’s a great idea: An easy way to raise money for our schools while giving a tax break to year-round residents. I’m supporting a “clean” seasonal sales tax we can all get behind. It raises sales tax from the current 5.5 percent to 6.5…