“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H.L. Mencken
I don’t blame junior assembly members Will Prisciandaro and Sean Maidy for wanting the borough to take over the trash business and to expand the police department to the border.
When I was young I wanted everything in the Sears catalogue, every Christmas. As people grow older they learn the steep cost of many things they’d like, and they begin to appreciate the benefits of not wanting it all.
As it’s now proposed, a borough plan for taking over the garbage business would cost the town up to $628,000 per year. Plus, under the plan, you would also be charged a tipping fee when taking your trash to the landfill.
Why is a change necessary? It’s not, but governments, like people with too much time and money, get into all kinds of mischief. About five years ago, a group of like-minded citizens intent on changing the town’s garbage business sat down and wrote a plan on how to do it. The plan has never gone to borough voters for approval, and the assembly has been divided on it for years, both because of its pricetag and legitimate questions about its need.
We do know this. Another 1 percent of general sales tax would drive up the cost of shopping in Haines, damage our already frail retail sector and incentivize residents to shop online or in Juneau.
Expanding police jurisdiction from the town all the way to the border and our Mud Bay and Lutak would cost more than $300,000, quickly. Borough police chief Heath Scott already has said he wants an 8-man police force, which is three more officers, which go for about $100,000 each with health care and benefits.
Now add on the cost up gasoline for police to expand their service area exponentially, plus the cost of more patrol cars, more uniforms, more guns and more dispatchers, and expanding police service is easily an additional $500,000 to the borough’s $19 million budget, which is already in the red.
And for what? The area outside the townsite already is serviced by a state wildlife trooper, which is typical for rural areas. My parents’ home in Middletown Township, Pa., is 12 miles from Philadelphia (a city with a population of 1.6 million) and has a population of more than 15,000 people. The Pennsylvania state troopers are the only police who serve the township.
No one in Middletown is crying out for more cops. Nor are rural residents of Haines. This plan was hatched by our expansionist police department, and embraced by borough staff for ideological, not practical, reasons.
Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy recently made cuts to programs and people in Haines that amount to more than $1 million. For the borough to cover that loss would take a 2 percent increase in general sales tax, or a 3-5-mill property tax increase. Expanding the police department to the borough’s roaded boundaries and taking over management of garbage would likely cost us as much as Dunleavy’s cuts.
Where is that money going to come from? Currently the Haines townsite is taxed at nearly at 10 mills, bumping up against a cap on property taxes that residents of the former city approved nearly 20 years ago. Due to the cap, about the only way for the police to expand their force and their budget is to make police service areawide, which would move police funding outside the cap, making its funding virtually limitless.
Is that what’s really behind the push to expand police powers areawide?
Progressives in Haines need to wake up. There’s a threat to the Haines Borough bigger than a mine at Constantine. It’s a government that’s intent on taking on new responsibilities at a time when funding from the State of Alaska and other sources are drying up. The money for more police and sewer service will come from money that now provides popular facilities and programs.
Expanding police and taking on garbage service will cost at least $1 million per year, and taxpayers won’t accept that much more in taxes anytime soon. Already, the Haines Borough has nearly eliminated support for non-profits. (The assembly in May reduced amount of the $19 million borough budget allocated for non-profits from two-tenths of 1 percent to one-tenth of 1 percent.)
Hours at our public library and swimming pool have been reduced. The Haines library, Chilkat Center, swimming pool and museum will be cut next, in order to fund an expanded police force and a new, borough garbage program, both of which are unnecessary.
It’s already happening. Borough staffers and police already are lobbying the assembly, describing more police and a garbage program as “essential government services.” They won’t be using those words to describe our library, Chilkat Center or museum when the administration puts those things on the chopping block.
And that’s what surely will break the Haines Borough, as we know it.
Our borough government – once a friendly and popular government launched solely to provide for educational facilities, including the school, library, museum and Chilkat Center – will be devoured by hobgoblins, exaggerated fears aimed at creating new bureaucracies for unnecessary services, growing the staff and robbing your tax dollars.