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…
After pedaling a bicycle from Netherlands to Germany to Denmark to Sweden to France to Belgium and back to Holland again without ever having to stop at a customs station, it struck me as absurd on my return through Canada that I’d have to stop at U.S. Customs. The U.S. and Canada are both former colonies of Britain. We are…
The Haines Borough needs at least a short-range fiscal plan to resolve a shortfall resulting from Governor Dunleavy’s radical cuts to local government and the ill-advised exemption of up to $300,000 in local property taxes passed by voters last October. That’s the bad news. The good news is that making up about $1 million in lost or reduced revenues needn’t…
The Haines Borough Assembly is scheduled to introduce a seasonal sales tax ordinance on Tuesday. That action must happen on Tuesday in order for voters to decide on the idea in October’s municipal election. I strongly support a seasonal sales tax, but the assembly’s main option at this time is bogged down in complications and politics. I’m asking voters to…
The federal government – which at one time helped fund our police and fire departments – is now looking to eliminate Headstart, a 50-year-old program that provides our most vulnerable young people with a few meals and instruction on being good people. The State of Alaska has $80 billion in the bank but can’t manage to fund schools, parks, ferries…