Are two local governments better than one?
Some of the folks who supported consolidation of the City of Haines and Haines Borough in 2002 are now wondering if it wasn’t a mistake.
The old City of Haines, with boundaries just around downtown, served as an extension of the Haines Chamber of Commerce, including keeping downtown looking trim and well-maintained. The city funded the police, tourism and harbor departments and kept water and sewer systems running.
The old Haines Borough, with boundaries that included everyone living from Excursion Inlet to the Canada border, operated the school and educational facilities, including Chilkat Center, Haines Sheldon Museum and Haines Public Library. It also collected taxes.
The borough represented everyone that lived here but had limited powers. The city held far more powers but was limited in its size and reach and represented only a fraction of our entire population.
Each government had an elected mayor and assembly, a clerk and a treasurer.
There were ideological differences as well. City residents historically supported development broadly; the borough, representing the area’s entire population, was lukewarm or cold to large-scale development.
Toward the end of the last century, people in the city pushed to combine the two governments under the logic that one government would work more efficiently and would bring the community together by bringing everyone to the same table.
Supporters included city residents who owned land in outlying areas. They feared that borough service areas for planning and zoning that sprung up at Mud Bay and Lutak would restrict the uses of their properties.
Opponents of the merger feared higher tax rates and tyranny of the majority: Decision-making by a government dominated by downtown’s population and business interests.
After voters approved consolidating the two governments in 2002, what resulted was “some-of-each” decision-making that has dissatisfied champions of both of the former governments.
When laissez-faire leaders were elected from outside the city, they overturned decisions like a prohibition on commercial trailers downtown, helping precipitate the scrum among our restaurants. “City” representatives on the combined assembly, meanwhile, questioned the need for a borough-funded museum and swimming pool.
“City” leaders had no problem approving helicopter traffic over rural areas of the borough, while “outside-city” citizens raised questions about management of previous “city” facilities, including Lutak Dock and the small boat harbor, facilities that were never controversial under separate governments.
What we’ve done in the past 22 years is to combine people and ideas that were previously somewhat separate and segregated and put them in the same room, a bit like the United Nations combines the governments of the entire world under one roof.
Ideally, people with differing ideas could learn to agree and to get along, but that’s a messy and difficult process. So it’s not surprising that our 22 years as a consolidated Haines Borough government have been messy and difficult.
Can we evolve into a more functional community of politely disagreeing neighbors under one government? Or did two, separate governments allow differing citizens to live more peacefully under two, differing governments?
To many people who pay attention to local government, that’s a nagging question.