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…
“People under 30 don’t read printed material.” First and Pike News owner Lee Lauckhart, 2019 Alaska Airlines magazine is gone. The newsstand at Seattle’s Pike Place Market is gone. Newspapers are almost gone from Hudson News at the airport. See if you can find them. They’re tucked back in the corner, beneath pop fiction. Hudson News has officially dropped…
It’s hard to remember Fourth of Julys in Haines without thinking of Dick Flegel and Erwin Hertz. Hertz organized arm-wrestling competitions, nail-pounding, and the Mad Raft Race while Dick put on the games for youngsters at Tlingit Park. Between the two of them, they held down quite a bit of our fun on the Fourth. Of course, Flegel’s connections and…
Perched on a hill in the rolling farmlands of eastern France stands a lone windmill, or “moulin” in French, a towering structure on those low fields, so stark and out of place that a passerby can’t help but stop in curiosity. The place is Valmy, in the Champagne region, an area that boasts the world’s most valuable grapes and some…
Andrew Letchworth is leaving town, and that’s too bad. Andrew is a respectful, thoughtful and kind man who headed up the Haines Chamber of Commerce the past few years. He’s young and energetic but had the unenviable job of standing up at public meetings and speaking for industrial development of this place that most closely resembles a national park. It’s…
Let’s start with the basics: In our political system, where individuals are asked to serve as representatives of many other people, choosing those individuals by appointment is a lousy way to go. People should be able to elect the people who lord over them. That was the point of the American Revolution and every other democratic revolution in history. But…
A friend remarked that the $57,000 the Haines Borough on cutting brush to eliminate “bear hiding places” is as much money as he spent building his house. When a government action becomes a joke, it’s a mistake, and jokes about the government undermine support for government. Until we come up with a better way to make decisions, we need a…