Some people blamed Mayor Jan Hill for the firing of Haines Borough Manager Debra Schnabel. Hill cast the deciding, tie-breaking vote, but I’m sure she hated doing it. Hill has carved a long career in local politics by dodging bullets. The law of survival in politics is to show your cards only when it’s safe or when you must. Otherwise,…
Lorenzo Fertitta came cruising up the Inside Passage this week aboard his $125 million yacht “Lonian.” Because it’s only 285 feet long, the Lonian was accompanied by a support yacht carrying Lorenzo’s toys, including a helicopter, a submarine, skiffs and jet skis. Lorenzo, who raked in $2 billion on a bit of televised savagery called Ultimate Fighting Championship, didn’t spend…
The Haines Borough Assembly wants the public’s thoughts about reducing borough manager turnover. Here’s my idea: Supervise the next one. That would be a start, and a first. Assembly members say they supervise the manager, but how do six people actually supervise anyone? The truth is that the only real “supervision” borough managers get are annual performance evaluations, if they’re…
If you’re concerned about cuts to Haines Borough facilities like the public library, museum, Chilkat Center and swimming pool, where were you last year when the assembly approved three years of raises for borough employees totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars? Without those raises, our town could have been spared recent cuts to facilities. Haines progressives need to get their…
It’s easy to throw up your hands about local politics, about the issues that divide us, about the excruciating difficulty we have resolving many of the shared challenges we face as a community. So it’s helpful to remember that right here in Haines we have tackled problems and put them behind us. We forget our victories, and that’s too bad.…
If you say you care about the local economy but you’re not upset by the shooting of brown bears downtown, you’re either lying or not paying attention. Short of jumping on the back of a killer whale, seeing a brown bear at a close distance is our town’s biggest wildlife thrill. It’s also a license to print money. Photographers from…
The high turnover rate in the Haines Borough manager’s position doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the people who live here. There’s a larger possibility that the problem is structural and not personal. After all, both “liberal” and “conservative” assemblies have fired managers for a range of reasons and the people on those assemblies couldn’t have all been mean-spirited, dysfunctional…
I was speaking the other night with Vince Hansen, who once served as manager for the City of Haines, about recent and historic turnover in that position. The town hasn’t figured out how a manager system should work regarding the relationship between assembly members and the manager, Hansen said, or words to that effect. Specifically, it appeared that the assembly…
Toward the end of my term on the Haines Borough Assembly, I commented at a meeting that my time there had been a failure. I ran on a platform of stemming losses to borough facilities, boosting nonprofits, increasing recreation opportunities and reducing the police department. I was defeated on all four fronts. That latter two were connected, I reasoned: Create…
If you’re interested in seeing a public use cabin built in the Haines State Forest, it’s time to act, or at least to write. The state Division of Forestry is seeking public comments on its five-year-plan, including potential cabins at Walker Lake and Chilkat Lake. At Walker Lake, foresters have identified preliminary trail and road sites, as well as…