Because it’s election season, people wanting political power are complaining that our town’s economy is in ruins.
That’s not the truth. I know because I’ve heard that line for the 38 years I’ve lived here despite the fact that young, energetic people keep moving here and our town keeps improving.
The Haines economy is doing fine, despite attempts by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and some Republicans to bankrupt Alaska and every town in it.
There’s a light on at the top of the Chisel Building, which was dark for the first 30 years I lived here. The apartment there was restored by a young, local contractor who graduated from Haines High and has been quietly building Haines.
There’s a new hotel on Main Street where the old school was torn down and a towering vacation rental where a half-built building stood since the early 1990s. Also on Main Street, there’s a brewery, a cidery and a shop where a woman sells children’s clothing that she designs. All new in the past 10 years.
At Fort Seward, the old buildings are finding new owners. With the exception of the Port Chilkoot Company’s largest structures, the Fort is being bought up by people with money and vision.
Our local Native tribe, the Chilkoot Indian Association, is rebuilding the tribal house there, maintaining the Parade Grounds, and looking to revive the hospital building into a Native arts center.
Seven Haines residents are working as local real estate agents. Does that sound like a dying town to you? It’s a changing town, and that can be scary, especially for wannabe homeowners who are feeling the pinch, and that issue needs addressing.
But the parts of Haines that are struggling belong to Governor Dunleavy. They are state infrastructure that Dunleavy has failed to maintain, including our schools, our ferry system, and our state parks. Dunleavy can’t even operate the food stamps program, and they’re provided by the federal government.
People are investing their fortunes in Haines. Dunleavy isn’t. His cuts to school wages and benefits mean that we needed to go to the Phillipines to find a high school science teacher who would work for Dunleavy teacher pay.
The school year started with a history teacher who believed space aliens built the pyramids.
Dunleavy’s cuts to our state ferry system so devastated staffing – Dunleavy wrote in a zero for ferry funding – that the state must now offer giant bonuses to find anyone to work aboard them.
Dunleavy has closed two of our four state campgrounds – Portage Cove and Mosquito Lake – and he has so mismanaged Chilkoot Lake that the tiny Chilkoot Indian Association can make a credible claim that it should have that land and could do a better job with it.
Many who complain about our economy are shills for the giant corporation that would like to dig up the Chilkat River’s headwaters on the chance of getting rich there. Our town doesn’t need a mine at Constantine.
Curiously, some of the mine’s biggest backers aren’t struggling workers.
They’re wealthy retirees, many from careers in government, whose support for heavy industry can only be explained as stemming from some kind of penance for the taxpayer largesse they enjoyed for decades.
The Haines economy is just fine, despite Dunleavy’s attempts to kill it. We need only to survive two more years of his administration for even better days.