A friend remarked that the $57,000 the Haines Borough on cutting brush to eliminate “bear hiding places” is as much money as he spent building his house.
When a government action becomes a joke, it’s a mistake, and jokes about the government undermine support for government. Until we come up with a better way to make decisions, we need a government and our government needs a certain level of support to operate.
I hate to write about this issue because so many truthful and helpful things have been said about it already. The issue is that those things should have been said before the borough spent that money and priority now should be to make changes so that in the borough’s decision-making process, the intelligent discussion happens before the assembly votes to spend money.
But before we go there, a little history.
The state wildlife trooper saw some area he though could use some brushing around areas that bears might be bedding down, figuring it would be a small job. The borough’s facilities director drove around town and drew up some specs on what should be cut.
The director’s specs were put out to bid and the only bid on the project came in at $57,000.
There are a lot of things that could have happened next but didn’t. Borough management could have decided to re-bid a smaller project and advertise the bid more, resulting in lower bids. Or borough management could have decided to scrap the idea entirely. Or to delay the project until the public works crew had some time to cut the brush.
Or borough management could have decided – as was pointed out by assembly member Jerry Lapp – that bears weren’t coming to town to hide in brush, but to get into garbage. Management could have decided to spend a little on brush but to spend most of the money on eliminating bear attractants.
The borough could have spent $30,000 or more to provide electric fences or bear-proof containers or to have a summer employee knock on doors asking residents if they could help find ways to bear-proof their trash.
In the realm of ways to keep our town safe from bears, cutting brush would appear to be among the highest in cost, as brush grows back, and the lowest in effectiveness, as cutting brush is unlikely to stop a bear attracted to town by human food.
Brush-cutting also poses a risk to bears, which are a big part of our tourism marketing. As a friend who has operated a nature tour company in Haines for 40 years remarked to me, “A lot of times, a seen bear is a dead bear.”
Also, unseen bears are around us all the time. Or, as professional bear hunting guide Larry Benda told me years ago, “You don’t see the brown bear, but he knows where you are all the time.”
Bear wisdom. Yada, yada.
The biggest mistake in the $57,000 brush-cutting fiasco was how it played out at city hall. The brush-cutting proposal came to the assembly in the form of a resolution for them to vote on, with only one public hearing that came just moments before they had to vote.
Even with such short notice, two assembly members – Debra Schnabel and Ben Aultman-Moore, opposed the idea. Member Jerry Lapp spoke against it but voted for it. Had the general public been given time to consider this matter, the $57,000 brush-cutting job never would have been approved.
Here’s what city hall can do to fix this problem. In policy or code, require two public hearings for any expenditure greater than $25,000. That would give the public and assembly members time to fully discuss a proposed expenditure and to avoid costly blunders that give our government a black eye.