HAUNTED BY CLIMATE CHANGE

Friday’s 19-inch snowfall ranks as the largest two-day October snowfall on record. Technically, it may be a tie with a dump that occurred in 2026, but suffice it to say the storm was yet another 100-year weather event.

About 30 years ago, when a cold winter came without much snow, a bunch of us learned to ice skate. Only a couple people in our group really knew how, which is to say, to skate backwards and sideways without always falling down.

Someone rounded up a box of old hockey skates, which are essential for beginners as they provide needed ankle support. At Rutzebeck and Chilkoot lakes, friends from New England and Anchorage taught the rest of us. The trick to skating backward is to stick your butt out, we learned, then to shift your weight from one leg to another. It’s not difficult.

THANKS FOR THE GOOGLY EYES

The Kids’ Stage at the Southeast Alaska State Fair requires a pile of craft materials, enough to keep youngsters in art creations for four straight days.

MAKING PROGRESS AND ROOM FOR BEARS

About 7:30 a.m. last Friday, a healthy, average-sized brown bear sauntered along Mud Bay Road near the drinking water spring there. Six days later, a juvenile brown bear, part of its natal collar ring still visible, pranced around in the road behind Fort Seward at around 6 p.m.

I drove past these bears in the course of doing other things. I imagine nearly everyone in town has similar stories.

Daylight sightings of brown bears downtown by were rare when I moved to Haines 38 years ago. Now they’re common in August and September, even into October. Children walking to school each fall must keep an eye out.

Many theories are thrown about but no one can explain with certainty this change in bear behavior. What’s important is that for everyone – and the bears – to be safe, people need to change their behavior accordingly.

It’s encouraging to see that’s starting to happen.

Folks at the Sheldon Museum have ringed with an electric fence the apple tree there that’s thick with fruit. Four years ago, a former police chief shot a bear in the same tree, an ugly morning scene a half-block from Main Street.

Fort Seward’s lumberyard offers three long shelves of parts for building your own electric fence. At our town’s landfill out FAA Road, Craig Frankie is burying fencing to keep out bears that have learned to burrow under the electric fence there.The borough will soon acquire about 110 bear-resistant trash cans to distribute to residents.

The behavior of bears apparently can change quickly. If we can change our own habits as swiftly, we might learn to live peacefully among these magnificent creatures.

Incidentally, that would match a piece of art created by the late Haines sculptor Judd Mullady on display in downtown Juneau. Judd carved a wooden carousel of people and bears, holding hands. Titled “Living Together in Peace,” it spins on a sidewalk in the Starr Hill neighborhood.

It’s a great vision and a worthy goal.

GETTING SMART ABOUT BEARS

A combination of factors is again creating dangerous and expensive problems with brown bears in our town.

I was smartly dressed yesterday, the occasion being I had depleted my clean laundry in the wake of the state fair. All that remained in the clean pile was wedding-funeral wear.

Also, I was missing one pair of green slacks, my wristwatch was set to the wrong date and I discovered nine, broken raw eggs in a carton crushed under a pile of laundry. By fair standards, I was doing marvelously, as nothing of great value was missing or destroyed.

As I’ve previously opined, Haines tries to do too much in July. Moving a large summer event (Kluane-Chilkat Bike Race or Southeast Alaska State Fair, for example) into August would provide some breathing room to our summers that are now too heavily front-loaded in June and July.

THE MAYOR NEEDS YOUR HELP

If you enjoy Haines summertime celebrations, you know we’ve entered the triathlon: The Kluane-Chilkat International Bike Relay, Fourth of July, and Southeast Alaska State Fair, all in just six weeks.

Starting June 1, a thinking person might launder all their clothes, pre-cook and freeze their meals and get into shape for our town’s three biggest parties, all smooshed together in little more than one month’s time.

I like a party. I’m here through the fall monsoons, during winter’s mad doldrums and down the long, cold stretch of gray snow that, out of sheer fantasy and desperation we call “spring.”

Anytime it’s not cold in Alaska is cause for celebration, but can we stretch out our summertime events so that participating in all three doesn’t amount to an endurance sport?

It wasn’t always this way. Up until about the mid-1990s, our state fair was held in August. In the mid-1980s, the local school year started the day after the fair ended. The fair was a harvest festival and grand finale of summer, a more raucous event than it is today.

Then the State of Alaska eliminated state funding of fairs and to stay afloat financially, the fair turned to selling beer, which doesn’t sell as well when it’s chilly outside, and the fair moved into July.

The bike relay, initially held on July 3, nudged forward on the calendar a smidge but our big-event schedule hasn’t budged since. It should. If beerfest and school graduation are included, plus the inevitable July weddings, our town ramps up in mid-May, sprints until August, then stops pretty much cold for 10 months.

It’s a crazy busy schedule, and by virtue of it, each of our three biggest events suffer a little. Particularly for folks who like to make the most of each celebration, there’s too little time for prep or recovery. I can’t remember the last time I entered an exhibit in the fair: The deadline comes just after Independence Day.

Here’s an idea: Move the bike relay into the second or third week of August. That would give riders time to train all summer, plus it would allow the gillnetters to grill up their famous dinner with fish that are ocean-fresh.

Or push the fair one week later.

Haines throws some great parties. Must they all happen in just six weeks?

BEERFEST: STILL BRILLIANT, THIRTY-ONE YEARS LATER

Late on beerfest Saturday afternoon, two young couples were noodling around the entrance of Howsers, buying sundries and taking photos of the aisles and of the postings on the bulletin board out front.

You couldn’t miss them in their bright red tuques decorated with yellow dandelion flowers tucked in the folds. They were finding great amusement in our grocery store, giggling and carrying on.

Because they were speaking French, none of us had a clue what inspired their mirth, other than perhaps an afternoon of drinking beer, but we were happy for their reverie, contagious as such moments are.

Someone said beerfest-goers pitched a flower pot off the Port Chilkoot Dock but I’m not buying it. The young people who come to drink beer (average age 27) are a delightful crowd on the whole, particularly the Canadians.

They don’t bust up our bars. They don’t assault our womenfolk or children. This year, they even observed the “no camping” sign at Portage Cove, where many of them pitched tents for decades.

Mostly the beerfest kids drink beer, find something to eat and nod off in their tents. For years, they slathered up a tarp at the Parade Grounds to rig an adult-sized Slip-and-Slide, creating about as much legal fun as you can have in Haines on a hot summer day.

Move beerfest to Girdwood and you’d need 100 security guards just to keep the Hell’s Angels from tearing down the town. In Haines, we attract 1,000 office workers and maybe lose a flower pot.

Want more economic development? Host a second beerfest every year on Labor Day weekend.

(Editor’s Note: The Great Alaska Craft Beer and Homebrew Festival, launched in 1993, is a vital source of income to the Southeast Alaska State Fair. All beer at the festival is donated by brewers; proceeds from the festival benefit the fair, helping replace funding of up to $60,000 per year from the State of Alaska Division of Agriculture that was eliminated in the mid-1980s.)

BE A FRIEND: HELP CLEAN UP THE TOWN

For years, the late Carol Waldo and her sister Elaine Pigott would walk around downtown each morning, scooping up trash on Main Street and side streets.

I’d see them on my way into the Chilkat Valley News office. Carol and Elaine did not seek out attention for themselves. Main Street was mostly empty when they made their rounds, so it was a good time to spot trash and also not be seen.

On July 25, two days before last year’s state fair, a big pile of dog crap materialized on the sidewalk in front of Howsers. Because folks are busy at state fair time and most of us don’t carry pooper-scoopers, the pile wasn’t cleaned up. Two days later it had become smooshed into a wide, poop pancake on our busiest sidewalk, a fecal greeting to our many visitors.

At 8 a.m. on Friday, March 22 the sun across Chilkoot Inlet was staring me straight in the eye. I was in swim trunks, sweating, and the temperature was just right, about 180 F.

From the top bench in the Haines Pool sauna, life was good.

Winters in the North pose challenges but also offer rewards, like the pool sauna. It’s a working man’s trip to Costa Rica. For a fraction of the price of a tropical vacation, a person can roast off winter’s cold and feel heat deep in their bones. And it comes with a view of the mountains.

A bunch of us donated money and a bunch of others donated labor and the sauna opened in 2019. The Haines Borough agreed to provide the electric if we built it, and we did.

That’s the kind of collaboration we’ll need if our community is to improve, at least in the short run.

Due to the oil boom and smart investment, Alaska is still phenomenally rich. At $80 billion in savings, we’re the wealthiest state in the nation per capita. No other state even comes close.

Someone should tell this to Governor Dunleavy, who seems determined to shrink Alaska down to a size he could drag into the bathroom and drown in a bathtub. Why?

Even Jed Clampett understood that after striking oil he didn’t have to live like a hillbilly anymore. But not our governor. He would keep us in a shack and feed us squirrel stew.

Were it not for President Biden’s infrastructure money, we’d be fixing Lutak Dock with some lashed-together creosote timbers like Hank Stamper propping up his sagging riverbank in “Sometimes A Great Notion.”

E.F. Schumacher sold us on the idea that Small Is Beautiful and we’ll return to his genius or we’ll die breathing carbon exhaust.

But put all that behind you for an hour. Find your old swimsuit and head over to the pool. Look a sunbeam straight in the eye and feel a blast of heat go deep down into your bones.

TRASH BILLS A PROBLEM? COME SEE ME

It’s the time of year that cash gets tight, winter won’t end and the fish can’t get here soon enough.

Prices are high and paying the bills can seem like robbery. I know how that can feel.

If you’re having trouble paying your garbage bill, come see me at my office at the municipal building on Third Avenue. I’ve dipped into the mayor’s annual $1,000 allowance to buy some of those pre-paid garbage bags.

Fill it with your garbage, then drop it off for free at the landfill at the end of FAA Road. Or, if you can’t get to the landfill, have a friend drop it off.

Don’t throw your garbage off the roadside or any other place. It’s ugly and it habituates bears to garbage, eventually forcing them to be killed. Just stop by and I’ll give you a bag, or two, if you need them.

FIRST FRIDAY AT BOROUGH HALL

Alaska’s spring break-up and local politics can be a volatile mix. In March and April we tend to behave like bears coming out of hibernation, cranky and ready to take a bite out of something or someone.

Historically, most of the town’s most bruising fights come this time of year. Too often, meaningful discussion of issues happens only during political campaigns in the heat of Haines Borough Assembly meetings.

We need neutral ground and friendly conversations.

To help take some of the edge off local politics, I’ll be hosting First Friday at the borough office on Friday, April 5, 5:15 p.m. to 6:30. I’m dipping into the mayor’s discretionary fund for pop and snacks. Stop by and chat.

You’re invited to to chew my ear about what grates you about our local government, to make a useful suggestion, or just to grab a nibble and say hi. Anything goes and humor goes farthest. Tell me a new joke and I’ll loan you the key to the city.

Please stop by. If it works, First Fridays at city hall will become a regular thing.

PLAN, PLAN, PLAN

In 1995, residents turned out for meetings that were part of “Haines 2005,” an exercise sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce intended to bring residents together to formulate a common vision for our town, 10 years into the future.

After weeks of testimony, a brief list of priorities was distilled, including: 1) Improve our town’s downtown, 2) utilize hydro power, 3) encourage development of local wood-products and 4) build a series of mountain huts on Takshanuk Ridge.

The Haines 2005 list was not funded, nor was it adopted by local governments, but we achieved — or at least launched — many of its dreams quite organically. It turns out that the exercise was accurate in reflecting what residents wanted.

WINTERFEST SUCCEEDS GLORIOUSLY

A middle-aged Canadian woman stepped up on the Dalton City boardwalk Saturday, looked around and said to a friend, “This is pretty cool, eh?”

A Juneau dad here chaperoning young skiers from the Capital City who also competed in Winter Games at the fairgrounds remarked, “This is great. Juneau has nothing like this.”

A sporty, twentysomething blond who drove to Haines from New Jersey last weekend to meet a friend who drove down from Palmer — both making their first visits to our town — said, “I heard there was a real community down here.”

The better part of being a destination is making the town enjoyable to residents and visitors equally. Last weekend’s Winterfest achieved that in spades. Combining the Alcan 200 snowmachine race, the Kat to Koot Adventure Race, the Miles Klehini Classic Nordic Ski Event and the annual Winter Games created a critical mass of fun that attracted visitors to Haines and got locals up off their sofas.

One 40-year-resident told me he had a blast during the festival playing ping-pong at the Klukwan gym, a place he had never been. The village hosted sledding, a fun walk, and games, a fantastic addition to festival offerings.

Keeping residents and visitors on friendly terms is sometimes a challenge during warm summer months, as everyone likes to have this valley to themselves. But in winter, when many of haven’t seen each other for months and the sight of a stranger is a genuine novelty, even a modest festival is a great party.

Plus, in the north in mid-winter, the opportunity for a trip out of town to any other place is a reason to go. We’re a short trip from 60,000 cases of cabin fever in Skagway, Juneau, Haines Junction and Whitehorse champing at the bit for some relief.

So we’re well situated to grow the festival. Dog sled, snowmachine and Big Air ski events all could be incorporated. With the eventual construction of a refrigerated ice arena at Dalton City, we’ll have hockey and ice-skating competitions. A theater production the same weekend would provide a boost, as would a cover band playing downtown on Saturday night.

The only limit to Winterfest is what we can imagine. We’re off to a great start. Now, let’s imagine.

WE’LL BE KEEPING BUG LAKE SCHOOL

They used to say that a Republican is a Democrat who has been mugged. Count the mayor as a strong believer in borough ownership of Mosquito Lake School after getting trapped on the far side of an avalanche at 22 Mile on Jan. 28-29.

The Canada side of the Haines Highway was also closed at the time, so the upper valley became an island. On the Haines Chatters Facebook page, a highway mom asked if neighbors could provide her some baby formula. Another resident inspected the slide to see if a snowmachine could ferry their ailing spouse to a car on the opposite side.

A visitor stranded between 22 Mile and 42 Mile after 5 p.m. Jan. 28 would have been hard-pressed for lodging. Cell phones work sporadically, if at all, along the upper highway. There are few lights and no lodges. On days that it is open, the restaurant at 33 Mile closes early.

Suddenly blocked from entering town at 22 Mile or the recent slides at 16 Mile, where would  a stranger seek shelter for the night? Get drinking water? Use a restroom? Knocking on a stranger’s door after dark might be a dicey option.

At the very least, signs on the northbound ad southbound sides of the highway at its intersection with Mosquito Lake Road should direct motorists to a “community center/emergency shelter,” along with the distance to the school.

Outside of the school should be a phone with an open line to 911. That would at least allow a stranded motorist to reach a dispatcher in town for advice on options, like directions to the home of a friendly neighbor. Maybe a plastic tote out front could offer a few old sleeping bags and bottles of water.

Enough, at least, for a tired, stranded traveler to survive a cold, January night.

Life-saving is far from the only reason to keep the old school in public hands. The building also serves as the only public gathering place for 30 miles in one direction and 130 miles in the other.

In the event of a disastrous wildfire or earthquake, the school provides the most obvious and perhaps only good option for victims and rescuers to gather.

Last winter, about 40 upper valley residents gathered at the school for a discussion of resuscitating a historic ski lift along Mosquito Lake Road. A few months previous to that, a public meeting held by the state on a plan for logging also was held at the school. Where else would such meetings be held?

A neighborhood nonprofit has done an marvelous job of repurposing the school as a community center for myriad uses: yoga classes, arts events, game nights, political forums, gardens, flea markets, even a tool library. The group understandably won the Haines Borough’s new award for building community.

But perhaps the strongest argument for keeping the building in borough hands is to provide shelter in emergencies and a muster station during disasters. That’s the capacity to save lives, and that can’t be diminished in a vast, wild and sparsely populated place like our valley.

I’ll be asking the Haines Borough Assembly to hold one of its summertime meetings at Mosquito Lake School. Besides serving as the only convenient public building for a sizeable chunk of our borough’s population, the building is critical to public health and safety.

BUILDING COMMUNITY, THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY

On Thursday night, Jane and I dropped into River Talk, the monthly story-telling event in the Chilkat Center lobby. It was crowded with folks of all ages.

When Lynn Canal Community Players started River Talk about 10 years ago, I was skeptical that it would last. How many stories are there in this town? Won’t folks get tired of listening to their same neighbors crowing on about yet another misadventure?

Turns out, we’re rich in stories, with an appetite for hearing more. Thursday’s River Talk crowd was enthusiastic and boisterous. New arrivals and young adults dominated and seemed ready to inherit the event from the baby-boomers who invented it. That’s a good thing, boding well for the future.

When I arrived in Haines in 1986, there was no “River Talk.” There were no “open mikes” at local bars and no karaoke. There was no First Friday. For night life, local watering holes featured serious and more serious drinking. A local play or Haines Arts Council event provided occasional alternatives. The school’s Community Education program offered Friday night movies at the Chilkat Center for a few years.

Interestingly, with the rise of cable and satellite TV and the Internet came a reaction in the opposite direction — toward public, in-person gatherings of all kinds. There seem to be more each year. From Mosquito Lake School to the yarn shop on Main Street to the Christian Women’s Fellowship, neighbors, acquaintances and strangers are gathering to chat, exchange news or pass the time.

We are returning to the ancient form of social media, born in bazaars and coffee houses and kept alive by my parents’ generation with weekend card parties and board games. It’s about seeing people, chatting about nothing and everything, sharing laughter and wishing each other well. And it’s as good or better for us than taking pills, watching TV, and surfing the Internet, combined.

All of it stitches us together a bit more tightly and builds community in a thousand ways that a borough meeting never can. It’s just friendly conversation but it produces civilization just as surely as a thin layer of topsoil produces all of our food.

MAKING DOWNTOWN WALKABLE YEAR-ROUND

Walking is one of the simple joys of living downtown, and it’s getting easier due to some thoughtful help from plow drivers and others.

State and borough plows are clearing sidewalks on Main Street and along Second and Third Avenues this winter, creating safe pedestrian paths. The Haines Borough’s Dave Long also is plowing the Tlingit Park trail leading to the post office, a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Long is also looking for a way to keep clear another artery, the small trail connecting the swimming pool to Main Street. Students and pedestrians heavily use this gravel path, a major short-cut and time-saver.

Long also is looking at pinch points at intersections, streetlight posts and stop signs, sections of sidewalk where road plows can’t reach. Snow berms are still forcing pedestrians into traffic at these spots. Progress is being made here, and plow drivers and borough employees deserve credit.

By making our downtown more walkable, we increase capacity for commerce, promote healthy recreation and save money and our planet by not driving cars or polluting the atmosphere. Thanks to Dave Long and others who are making these thoughtful improvements.

HELP AVAILABLE WITH SENIOR PROPERTY TAX FORM

The Haines Borough office is getting away from paper applications for the senior citizen property tax exemption.

A friend who lives out the road asked me recently what public rest rooms folks are expected to use in winter.

It’s a fair question. Residents who live a distance from town often plan a full day downtown, stopping in offices to pay bills, ducking into a restaurant for a meal, then taking in an evening show or sports event. But where should a person go who needs to go?

The borough built a stand-alone restroom for visitors next to the Visitor’s Center cabin about a decade ago, but that’s locked during winter months. During open hours, the cabin offers lavatories but they’re tiny and barely private.

The public library, Chilkat Center and borough administration building have restrooms open to the public, but they’re also open only during hours of operation, not publicly advertised and they’re tucked fairly deep inside these office buildings.

What about visiting parents who need to breast-feed or change a diaper at mid-day? Where do they go?

We advertise for visitors and we hope to become a winter destination, but do we make it easy for our own residents — much less visitors — to take care of basic necessities?

I thanked my out-the-road friend for the question. It’s a good one for forcing we townies to change our perspectives and consider downtown amenities from a less familiar point of view.

If you have thoughts on this question — or some clear answers — call me or stop by the mayor’s office to let me know what you think.

THANKS FOR THE GYMS AND SWIMS

Thanks to pool manager Jae McDermaid and school superintendent Roy Getchell, youths and adults enjoyed some indoor recreation during the holidays.

For the first time in memory, or ever, school gyms were open to students for three days. The swimming pool, traditionally open during the break, was scheduled to close before swimmers spoke up to secure swims between Christmas and New Year’s.

If we are to have healthy young people and happy adults, this must be the start of offerings that provide physical recreation opportunities during our town’s darkest season and most unhospitable weather. Slush and ice storms marked the holiday. Last year’s Christmas was perilously cold.

Highway closures, included at 15 Mile, nixed opportunities to driving north for colder weather and snow sports.

There’s no convincing reason that during this time of year we can’t manage to open up these facilities – that already are heated and operating – so young ones can blow off steam and adults can exercise.

And the holidays aren’t the only issue. Winter is our longest season and our greatest challenge. It’s when our town tends to come off the rails, emotionally speaking. Penned up, we get cranky and miserable and make those around us the same way.

It’s a cycle that needs breaking. Keeping the pool and gyms open will help.

THE MAYOR IS IN

I have moved into the mayor’s office at the borough administration building at Third Avenue and Willard Street.

For now I’m here much of the day, but officially I reserve the hours of 3-5 p.m. Monday through Friday to meet with constituents. I’m also available to constituents from 5-6 p.m. by appointment (because the borough office gets locked at 5 p.m.). I do not keep regular constituent hours on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, as I’ll be preparing for regular assembly meetings on those days.

Otherwise, if my door is open, come right on in.

If I’m with someone and the mayor’s office door is closed, leave a note on my office door.

The best way to phone me about borough business at this time is to call my borough office phone directly, 766-6405, between 3 and 5 p.m. You also can try calling or texting me at my personal cell phone, 303-2688.

With all the different forms of communication, we live in a kind of Tower of Babel, with many missed connections. It seems that if all any of us did was to constantly check our devices, we’d hardly have time to get our work done. I will try to reply to every message. If you don’t hear back from me, try another method.

If you absolutely must see me at this minute, come looking for me. If I’m not at the borough office on Third Avenue and Willard Street, I’m often at my private office, Suite #27 in the Gateway Building on Main Street. (Upstairs of Ampersand Alaska.)

ACTIVE ON THANKSGIVING 

It’s evident that Haines goes big for Thanksgiving. Last week’s tragic landslide in Wrangell added to the poignancy of the holiday for residents who remember the eerily similar fatal slide that occurred here around this time just three years ago.

Give thanks every day.

On 9 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, 39 folks turned out to run or walk in the Turkey Trot, a local tradition for about 20 years sometimes conjoined with the “Turkey Bowl,” a flag football game held in slush. Thanks to Kari and Stephanie of SEARHC for organizing the trot this year and for the waffles.

That nearly 40 people showed up to walk or run in the gray, rain and wind reflects a public demand for recreation opportunities that isn’t going away. As a community, we are beginning to understand that physical recreation plays a vital part in our health and wellness, particularly during the winter months.

Please join me in efforts to increase Haines Borough recreation offerings. If you’re interested in serving on the borough’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, please submit an email or letter to the borough by Nov. 30.

Captain Kevin Woods of the Haines Salvation Army said 170 residents turned out for the Haines Community Thanksgiving, noon to 4 p.m. at Haines School. The Haines Ministerial Association sponsored the meal, which included turkey, ham and all the trimmings. Another 140 meals were packaged to-go.

It was great to see folks at the dinner sharing time and conversation with their neighbors. It’s events like this that provide the glue that holds our town together. The mayor heartily endorsed the hot sweet potato dish made with molten marshmallows.

Crowds of folks came downtown to take advantage of holiday sales Friday and Saturday. That’s a boost. When you shop in Haines, your money goes to your neighbors, recirculates in the community and is likely to come back to you, directly or indirectly. Shopping out of town exports cash directly to corporations in faraway places.

GRATEFUL FOR THE LAUGHS

There’s nothing quite like seeing a surly teenager thrown through a window on a frosty, November night.

Thanks to director Tod Sebens and his outstanding cast for their performance of “The Play That Goes Wrong,” a needed night of laughs during our dark season.

It’s almost 70 years now that Lynn Canal Community Players has been staging live theater in Haines for no other reason than it’s fun and winter is long. We should be grateful.

The group’s long trajectory owes to a remarkable string of stage newbies who can act.

Almost 30 years ago, Dan Henry, Jono Greene and Jeremy Andrews brought down the house with “A Night in the Ukraine,” a Marx Brothers sendup. So it was fitting to see Jono in the audience Saturday as Dan Mahoney, Ryan Staska, Crystal Miller, Kelsi Gloyer and company followed suit with another fine and raucous comedy.

It’s likely that some of the youngsters who were in the theater’s front row Saturday howling at the pranks and pratfalls will take the stage as our next generation of entertainers.

The show goes on and we’re lucky for that.

A WINTER WANDER LAND

Borough staff has stationed four trash cans downtown this winter — at 4th and Main, 2nd and Main, Picture Point and Tlingit Park.

It’s the first step of an effort to make our town more pedestrian friendly year-round. Though the details haven’t been ironed out, I’ll also be looking to keep Main Street sidewalks clear of snow this winter. Shoppers shouldn’t have to walk into traffic to reach our stores.

Further, I am looking at ways to keep two, important walking trails shoveled and sanded this winter — one through Tlingit Park to the post office and another behind the Aspen Hotel to the Haines School. These paths are important shortcuts that save time and keep pedestrians away from traffic.

If you have time, ideas or equipment that might help in this effort, contact me.

Also, please respect your neighbors and clean up after your dog downtown. Plastic bags have been ordered for pooper-scooper stations. Scoop the poop and get it into trash cans.

DO YOU NEED A STREET SIGN?

A resident on First Avenue North recently informed me that their street has no street sign. As First Avenue North doesn’t connect to Main Street, the resident was having trouble explaining to out-of-town friends exactly how to find her home.

Discussion at city hall revealed that other streets also are missing signs, including Young Road at its junction with Second Avenue, an important intersection.

We are making an effort to ensure are borough streets and roads are properly signed. If your street is missing a sign, call the borough at 766-6400, or call me at 907-303-2688 and I’ll get you on a list.

Also, the borough plans to resume its efforts to identify homes with house numbers.

Numbers are important so people who need to find your house — including firefighters and ambulance drivers — can do that, even at night. To facilitate numbering, in the coming months we’ll be looking at providing building owners with numbers. Stay tuned.

MAYOR’S APOLOGY

Property valuations and property tax collection are necessary functions of local government, allowing the Haines Borough to pay for vital services and facilities. Unfortunately, those functions ran afoul of taxpayers this year.

The borough is committed to fixing the tax assessments process, including by establishing policies that will more clearly define procedures and make valuations more transparent.

A constituent asked that I post here an apology to taxpayers I made at the Nov. 14 assembly meeting. Here it is:

“I’d like to make a formal apology to the public for the property tax assessment situation. The borough has struggled with the assessment process for years, perhaps decades. We fell behind in getting values done and this year we had an overwhelming number of appeals.

“There’s no question that we are in a state of need. We appreciate the work that’s been done and continues to be done by a committed group of residents who have brought forth issues with — and failings of — our process.

“We are sorry for the upset this has caused, for not fully anticipating the pr0blems that arose this year, and for the time it took for government to full understand and appreciate the concerns of taxpayers.

“We are working as fast as we can to fix the assessment system and to make it right for both the Haines Borough and property taxpayers.”

ASSESSMENT ISSUE #2

The Haines Borough Assembly is working to provide relief to property taxpayers having difficulty paying their taxes this year.

The Assembly on Monday introduced an ordinance that would delay collection of penalty and interest for late property tax returns, retroactively to the Nov. 1 due date and extending to Dec. 31, 2023.

Because of requirements for advertising and public hearings, the assembly’s action won’t become effective until passage of the ordinance at the Nov. 14 regular assembly meeting. But if you are worried, please don’t be. There is unanimous support on the assembly at this time for granting this break.

Once this measure passes, if you missed the Nov. 1 deadline, you will not be charged interest or penalties on your overdue amount until Jan. 1, 2024.

A hike in assessments and subsequent increase in tax bills have been especially difficult for residents this year because of other price increases, including gasoline, electricity, and consumer goods. Your borough leaders are sensitive to this situation and trying to help.

COME OUT TO THE PARADE — AND THE FESTIVAL

The Haines Borough has become lead organizer of the annual Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Festival, a tradition here since the 1990s.

Hats off to the borough’s tourism department for organizing this year’s celebration of our more valley’s most prominent bird.

As there were no injured eagles awaiting release, this year’s festival won’t feature a wild eagle being released back into the wild, but eagle fest weekend is still a fun way to learn about bald eagles and get out to see your neighbors.

The festival kicks off 3-5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10 with children’s activities at the Sheldon Museum and a meet-and-greet at the same time at Haines brewery. Starting at 5 p.m., a “mini-parade” featuring local musicians and folks in eagle costumes will lead festival guests and locals from Main Street, down Third Avenue, and to a party at the American Bald Eagle Foundation.

Special events continue through Sunday afternoon, Nov. 12. Check schedules posted around town. Get out on Eagle Fest weekend!

ASSESSMENT ISSUE #1

As mayor, I understand and appreciate the hurt that has been caused by the administration of property taxes and particularly a spike in valuations for some properties this year. Spikes were caused by a variety of factors including the tragic loss of our staff assessor last fall, the real estate market and the hire of a contract assessor. They also resulted in some big increases in property tax bills.

The meetings of our tax appeals board (called the Board of Equalization) were difficult, painful and divisive. Appellants have organized and are demanding the borough address the hurt the process has caused and to make changes to prevent such difficulty and heartache in the future. That’s a good thing. Citizen pressure gets the job done.

The Haines Borough Assembly will start taking on this issue at a workshop set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2 at the assembly chambers. I think I speak for all assembly members when I say that we are sorry for the way this happened and we are making assessments our #1 issue to resolve.

In the meantime, appellants have asked the borough to “abate” or delay penalties and interest on property tax payments due Nov. 1. The borough staff is investigating how to do this while staying within the laws that members of assembly swore to uphold when they took office. Or to come up with any other legal way to address penalty and interest.

Many of the rules governing property tax collection are borough and state laws. Borough laws cannot be easily changed before Nov. 1. The process for changing state laws is much more complex and time-consuming.

Please bear with us. Starting Tuesday, we have new leadership in the borough government, including three new assembly members and a new mayor. We’re getting to this as quickly as we can.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

The Chilkat Valley Preschool administrator phoned me and asked if I’d speak to her students about being mayor.

Easy, I thought. I would explain to students that government is how grown-ups make decisions for large groups of people, the same way that their own parents make decisions for them. Maybe we’d have a little mock election.

So I explained what government is. In our mock election, Bunny beat out Cat as the best pet by a 3-1-0 margin. (It was a three-way race but Dog did not win a single vote.)

Then I got ambushed. Turns out that that the preschoolers wanted to use the opportunity of my visit to press the mayor on what THEY wanted from the Haines Borough. They gave me a good, old-fashioned button-holing.

This is what my four diminutive constituents said:

“Can you get us some swings at Emerson Field and fix the skateboard ramp there?” (At the intersection of Haines Highway and Mosquito Lake Road.)

“Can you do get us some playground equipment at Mosquito Lake School?”

“Can you do something about all the puddles?”

“Can you make the town look brand new?”

Aging infrastructure, capital projects, potholes and downtown revitalization. These are the universal issues and they start at a tender age. Funny how that is.

As leaders, our jobs are to address the universal issues, plus all the other business that comes up.

For the record, the school’s teacher and assistant also voiced constituent concerns. The teacher wanted the borough government to do something about the high price of gas. The assistant wanted a slide at the swimming pool.

If you have a project or concern that you think the Haines Borough should address, stop by, phone or email me. If nothing else, we’ll get it on a list. Knowing what’s on your mind is the best place for us to start in serving you.