Assembly member Paul Rogers has created a draft Haines Borough Charter amendment that adds emergency police response outside of the townsite to the borough’s charter. Rogers summarized the amendment to the public safety commission last week, the body that will grapple with an issue that’s been simmering since 2017.

The emergency police power is effective “only in the absence of the Alaska State Troopers,” according to the draft charter amendment. It also includes two other provisions that funding will come from the general fund, and that the police department will be “reimbursed for these services after the fact.”

“If it comes out totally different than this, I don’t care,” Rogers told the public safety commission, which has been tasked to address the issue. “This has been a problem. We haven’t solved it. We need to get past it. I put this together to give you a push.”

Rogers said having the borough receive an invoice from the police department will quell the fears of residents who are concerned about areawide policing, and the cost that such an expansion would incur. In October 2018 residents outside the townsite largely rejected a proposal to create and fund separate police service areas in Mud Bay, Lutak and the Haines Highway by raising property taxes.

“(It) would be a good way to alleviate some of the fears of some people thinking we’re just going to give a blanket budget to the police department and increase it…and it won’t go away even if the state troopers are there,” Rogers said.

Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton said the commission could consider code changes that include provisions, rather than add them to a charter amendment.

“This is something that is supposed to endure the test of time,” Fullerton said of a charter amendment. “Sometimes less is more.”

Public safety commission members include Judy Erekson, Kelly Williamson and Greg Podsiki. Dana Hallett and Kevin Woods recently applied to fill vacancies on the commission and are awaiting assembly approval after commission members recommended their approval last week.

They’ll meet Feb. 26 at 5:30 p.m. in the assembly chambers to discuss the charter amendment.

The assembly is planning to consider language for a charter amendment in October’s election. It will need to vote on a draft by this summer.

The borough assembly began discussing areawide policing early in 2017 after the Alaska State Troopers announced it would not hire another blue shirt trooper to fill the Haines post. Borough manager Debra Schnabel and police chief Heath Scott organized town hall meetings discussing an option for a boroughwide police service area, which met with resistance from the assembly and residents.

In December, the borough assembly approved a resolution to reinterpret charter to include police response in the definition of “emergency dispatch.” The definition formerly covered only medical and fire response. The vote prompted Sean Maidy to resign from the assembly.

Colonel Bryan Barlow, recently appointed head of AST, wrote in an op-ed this week that the agency’s goals include creating more trooper posts in rural Alaska. Trooper spokespeople did not respond by press time to the question of whether Haines is included in that goal. “The Alaska State Troopers are, for all purposes, a rural police agency and my focus is on strengthening our agency to serve Alaskans all through this great state more effectively,” Barlow wrote.

Rogers, a Mosquito Lake resident, became involved in borough politics when boroughwide policing discussions began three years ago. He was later appointed to the public safety commission before running successfully for the borough assembly in October 2019.