About 55 Haines Highway residents asked questions and aired concerns to borough officials Thursday during a community meeting at the Mosquito Lake Community Center about policing out the highway.
The discussion centered around an ordinance that will ask voters in October if they want to raise property taxes to create and fund an on-call police service area. Mud Bay, Haines Highway and Lutak residents would vote to create individual service areas in their respective regions.
The proposed ordinance will levy neighborhood’s property taxes up to 1 mill to provide servicve “in response to verbal or written reports of situations described as crimes in progress, public health and safety risks, or property crimes,” the ordinance says. “Services may include traffic control and enforcement or patrols based on scheduled events, citizen complaints or a request.”
That langauge was changed durng Tuesdays assembly meeting.
Police chief Heath Scott estimated those services would cost $70,000 annually for Mud Bay, Lutak and the Haines Highway; borough officials have not broken down costs by area.
Many highway residents said they’d support emergency police response. But they also said they pay enough into borough coffers through property taxes and sales taxes.
Twenty-five percent of sales tax, a tax all borough residents pay, funds the townsite police service area. Dana Hallett said highway residents pay their fair share of taxes. It’s also not fair to ask highway residents to pay fully for the cost of police service for travelers on the Haines Highway, he said. “I want to put it to rest that we’re asking for something for nothing because I think we pay a lot out here and get really, honestly, very little services,” Hallett said.
Borough manager Debra Schnabel told upper valley residents that reallocating sales tax to pay for police service outside the townsite requires assembly action. “If you can convince them you are paying for police coverage out here with the money that is being collected in town to fund the police department, more power to you,” Schnabel said. “But right now that’s not exactly where I hear them landing.”
Hallett asked how the local police paid for responses when they backed up the Alaska State Trooper before the state moved the position to Western Alaska.
It wasn’t budgeted, Scott said. “I’m kind of a knuckle dragger, but there were some obvious things I saw when I came into the job…one of the limitations I found I was responsible for, and I’ve kind of used this term consistently since I’ve been here, was the unfunded requirement of providing services out here,” Scott said. “There wasn’t anything in my budget that said I have a pot of money to provide services outside the townsite…if I had all the money in the world I’d have a substation out here with an officer.”
George Campbell said borough officials are mistaking man power with jurisdiction and that the assembly and administration should put more effort into lobbying the state to return the trooper position.
Pat Hefley said the borough needs to explain how much on-call police service area would cost highway taxpayers before they vote on the measure.
Others said they didn’t want patrols and thought the ordinance’s language was vague. Assembly member Brenda Josephson criticized the ‘health and safety risks’ language. “As a safety officer I can tell you everything we do is a safety risk,” Josephson said. “You get out of bed, it’s a safety risk. You stay in bed, it’s a safety risk.”
Scott said some of the language was meant to afford the police “some discretion” and that the police department isn’t staffed to maintain a presence out the highway.
“Except that that discretion opens the door for you to need more officers,” Kyle Ponsford said. “We’re arguing with what’s written because of where it’s going to go, not because of where it is today.”
Josephson told the audience they all have the discretion to “Vote no.”
“Just understand what ‘no’ is,” Scott said. “‘No’ is us not coming and the troopers not coming…That’s a reality that scares me…that scares me.”
To a response of laughter and agreement, Schnabel said she understood that the room was full of people who intend to vote ‘no.’ “But I also know there are people that are not in this room,” Schnabel said. “I hear you believing that somehow I have decided what’s best for you, but there are people who have said, ‘We would like to see a level of service.’”
Carolann Wooton said she was one of those people. “By all means, if I make a 911 call, I want someone to come.”
Jim Stanford said while most of the people in the room could take care of themselves, it’s the people who can’t that he worries about. “If a young mother of three kids is being abused, calls 911, and she doesn’t get a response…that would be a horrible community. I don’t think I’d want to live in a community like that.”