The community and economic development director and the harbormaster did a cost-benefit analysis of the harbor expansion and their projections are absurd. They say there will be 35 50-foot-long boats paying in total $50,000 a year to store in the new parking lot. A 50-foot-long boat is a big boat. I don’t believe there is even a trailer in town that can haul out 50-footers. Thirty-five of them is two neighborhoods of boats. And why are they going to be sitting on land for the entire year, they are boats. They say the winter time transient moorage is going from 6,000 to 28,000. They have invented winter tourism and they are coming in boats. Of course people who have lived in Alaska for a bit know that boats don’t go around much in winter. Their costs don’t include the cost of building, maintaining or replacing the floats that would have to be built, or the cost of maintaining the gigantic steel wall that is being built. Then there is the fraudulent wait list which is still a fraud. There will be no new revenues. The bottom line is we the people of Haines are getting Enronned. (Enron was an energy company that faked its revenue projections and infamously flamed out.) If this project is legitimate, why is the borough making things up?
Joe Parnell