If you hunt, fish, run a boat, snowmachine, hike, pick berries or cut firewood between 10 Mile Haines Highway and the border, your voice on management of those activities by the State of Alaska is in jeopardy. Act today to defend it. Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy has issued an executive order to abolish the local advisory council of the Alaska…
Before this year, I didn’t think much about drag shows. If I thought of them at all, I regarded them perhaps like jai alai: Fun and exotic for folks who are into that but nothing I couldn’t live without. Men dressing up as women for laughs or because they like silk undies. It’s a free country. Knock yourselves out. So…
For a town that bills itself as a recreation mecca, we have a parks and recreation problem: Our parks and outdoor facilities need help and our recreation events occur on a spotty, irregular schedule. Because we compete with the rest of the world for visitors and residents, these are important issues. Magnificent scenery won’t solve them. Nonprofits and volunteer efforts…
The addition of the Alcan 200 snowmachine race to this year’s Winterfest celebration promises to add critical mass to the fledgling event, making it a bigger draw that can bring more visitors and money to our town. Winterfest happens Feb. 16-18. That’s enough lead time to start promoting this year’s event as a blockbuster. Former tourism director Leslie Ross created…
“There’s just two things in life that can’t be created and that’s true love and home-grown tomatoes.” song lyric On the table at Jane’s house is a bowl of cherry tomatoes she grew. Because only a dozen are ripe and I didn’t grow them, I can get away with snatching maybe one a day. But this morning I took two.…
Six candidate forums were held during the municipal election campaign in 2016 when I was elected to the Haines Borough Assembly. The final forum was held at the Chilkat Center, with a proposed theme that we articulate a vision for what Haines should look like 25 years into the future. The forum strayed wildly from that theme and got hung…
The key to the Haines economy is to do better with what we already have and to encourage and support people already busy with worthwhile projects that have popular support. We tend to think of government as a budget and departments, funded by tax collection. But government can do so much more than the essentials. One of the things the…
Resolving Constantine Mine: Hold a boroughwide advisory vote on whether residents support the development of an industrial mine at the Palmer deposit. Let the results determine whether our borough government resists or accommodates this development, including on issues like improving Porcupine Road and in providing the borough’s public comment on regulatory matters. In either case, pass a minerals severance tax…
Starting around 2013, Chris Thorgesen arrived from Colorado and did a remarkable thing. He bought five prominent and empty commercial buildings on Main Street, refurbished them and filled them with tenants. Then he bought others. When retired golf pro Dave Canipe, who owned the King’s Store building, complained to Thor that he’d bought every crappy building on Main Street but…
In 37 years in Haines, including as a newspaper reporter, editor, publisher and Haines Borough Assembly member, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know our town, its people, history, culture and politics. I have celebrated our successes and mourned our losses, endured our battles and led or joined various efforts to improve our town. Now I’d like to work…