A consultant hired by the University of Alaska is leading what many expected would be a locally organized working group addressing opportunities and concerns regarding the university’s timber sale here.

Morgan Howard owns Morgan Howard Productions, a communications company based in Seattle. The university hired Howard to facilitate a local working group. Howard will determine its structure and membership.

In an effort to bridge community and university needs, small mill owner Sylvia Heinz asked about forming a working group during a community meeting with the university last spring. Howard said the university officials gave him names of people who contacted them interested in such a group. Among those invited to meet with Howard on Tuesday were Heinz, assembly member Brenda Josephson, Chamber of Commerce director Tracey Harmon and residents George Campbell and Haynes Tormey-a group supportive of the sale.

Josephson said she hoped a working group would be able to speak on behalf of itself and that the meeting would address an organizational structure. “I did not feel much more organized when I left than when I walked in,” Josephson said. “I’m not sure if we’re going to be meeting or just going to be facilitating information to and from the university electronically by way of Morgan Howard.”

Planning commissioner chair Rob Goldberg, who’s been critical of the sale, also expressed interest in being part of a working group, but the university did not give Howard his name. “I don’t know who he is,” Howard said of Goldberg.

Borough manager Debra Schnabel and Lynn Canal Conservation director Elsa Sebastian reached out to Howard, who agreed to meet with them separately. Sebastian said Howard showed a commitment to transparency and Schnabel said “he was the man for the job.”

But Schnabel also criticized university lands office staff for what she characterized as misrepresenting the nature of the local group to the University of Alaska Board of Regents.

In August, university president James Johnsen wrote to Schnabel that the university would work with representatives from Haines willing to participate in a “voluntary task force organized by local residents to exchange input, opportunities, and concerns on behalf of the community regarding UA’s timber project.”

In a September regents committee meeting, university chief lands officer Christine Klein told the regents that the group was “led locally by some people interested in providing an information exchange.”

Schnabel said the university is deciding how to put the group together, not the people of Haines. “I think the way it’s being represented to the board of regents implies that a diverse group of people in Haines have come together with some kind of a formal understanding of how to get the ear of the lands department and I don’t think that’s happened at all.”

Howard told the CVN Wednesday that he met with small groups in town and heard from people who are excited about a timber sale’s economic opportunities and others who expressed concerns. He said forming a group that mirrors a government committee or board that follows protocol and parliamentary procedure might not be the best way to move forward.

“I know what I don’t want,” Howard said. “I don’t want an ineffective, inefficient group where people don’t have trust in it and it doesn’t show progress.”

Schnabel informed the assembly of the meeting last Tuesday and said she was surprised to learn they were coming. Assembly member Heather Lende said she was disappointed the university didn’t choose a more public process and asked whether the borough should form its own committee.

At the time, assembly members were aware of only members Josephson and Heinz. Assembly member Tresham Gregg said both are “timber-oriented people” and that he supported Lende’s idea to form an assembly group. “I support Heather’s concept that the borough form its own committee and try to interface with the university in that fashion, because there’s a lot of different points of view here and I think they should all be represented,” Gregg said.

Schnabel advised that creating two groups could cause confusion and that the assembly should wait to see what happens with the working group.

Sebastian said it appeared during the meeting that Howard wasn’t sure how a working group would be able to interact with the timber purchaser once the contract was signed. “Given that the university is negotiating the contract presently and the contract is not information the public has, it’s uncertain how long this working group would be effective, and what its capacity for actually being able to provide input during the project is unknown,” Sebastian said.

Howard said his first step is to create an email list of anyone who wants to be contacted for information regarding the project. He wants the email to be tied to a website dedicated to the project. He said he will “essentially create a database of folks who are interested in certain things so when the purchaser gets on they can say ‘Oh this is a small mill owner and they’re interested in the supply of wood. Here’s a landowner who’s interested in having his property logged.’”

He said he plans to continue talking with residents, but that a “community wide group” wouldn’t be beneficial to him and that he’d rather meet with small groups of individuals.

Heinz said she would be disappointed if a locally led committee did not form, but that she trusts Howard’s expertise and experience. She said she plans to devote her time to creating an industry organization that will have a chance at being productive.

“I think it’s past time for our local timber industry to organize and I’ve been having conversations about an organization for our local foresters, loggers, sawyers, contractors, woodworkers,” Heinz said. “I look forward to getting that going and hopefully communicating with the university land trust and continuing to have a positive working relationship.”

The negotiated timber sale, the details of which are unknown until a contract is signed with a buyer, generated controversy among the assembly and some residents last spring. Some residents criticized the university for asking them to comment on a timber sale that would be the largest here in decades, without details.

Josephson said she’s concerned that the university “is fatigued with all the pushback they’ve received” and that the community needs to build trust with the university if it wants to effectively engage with it.

The university is considering about 13,000 acres that it owns throughout the borough for timber harvesting, but the final sale could cover half that size. The parcels consist of Sitka spruce, western hemlock, cottonwood and birch.

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