August’s warm and sunny weather led to some late summer reverie but the season’s long shadows didn’t lie. The crimson blaze of fireweed turned to gray, seedy fluff. Soon enough clouds shrouded Ripinsky. Soon enough they’ll lift to show us snow. Like squirrels we’ll scurry into our burrows. Until then we will gather up the blueberries and raspberries that grew…
Leaders are obliged to look forward, not back. That’s why I’m opposed to the ballot question that will ask voters in October if they want to increase the amount of the exemption from property taxes that senior citizens enjoy from the first $150,000 of the value of their homes to the first $300,000. Certainly that change would help lower property…
Volunteerism was down at our state fair this year. Two teachers hired last spring haven’t shown up at the Haines School. Word is our runners are quitting the cross-country team, one of the town’s most popular and successful sports programs in recent years. Folks are having a hard time committing. Is it any wonder? The fate of the nation hangs…
The biggest issue facing the Haines Borough isn’t the Lutak Dock. Amd it’s not the Constantine mine. It’s not the price of fish or the future of the cruise ship industry. The biggest issue facing our town is the funding of the Haines Borough School District and whether the State of Alaska – and more broadly, we Alaskans – have…
Many point to turnover at the borough – and particularly in the borough manager’s position – as a sign of community dysfunction. Those folks should look a little more closely. The deeper cause of manager turnover, as well as a major, overlooked problem with our government – is turnover on our elected assembly, the group that hires and fires managers.…
My anti-immigration friends are always telling me that the new immigrants aren’t like the “good old” immigrants who assimilated to life in the USA. So I’m thinking about my granddad, who we called Pop Pop, a tough little Polack who arrived at Ellis Island from a farm near Warsaw in 1905. He was 17 years old and he found his…
At least three seats will be open on the Haines Borough Assembly this fall, and with luck, some old-timers will throw in their hats. I’m not hoping for Biden-old and certainly not Trump-crazy, but generally the best candidates for local leadership are people who have been around this town 20 or 40 years and have paid attention. Retirees of moderate…
A recent think-tank survey found 42 percent of Haines business leaders “pessimistic,” according to Rain Coast Data, a think-tank based in Juneau. If those numbers are accurate, they’re not particularly surprising given that commercial fishing — a big economic driver in Haines — is suffering a severe downturn in prices to fishermen. A crisis occurs in the fishery about every…
A political tide turned against liberalism in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the New Right. Funded by ultra-rich ideologues, the New Right made a sharp turn away from moderate conservatism – which for a decade or more had supported reasonable advances like abortion rights and environmental protection – and embraced issues it could use…
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…