The Haines Borough Assembly created an advisory board to guide the borough’s response to state and federal regulations that affect Haines’ commercial fisheries.
The board will comprise seven members: four permit holders, a seafood processor and two community at-large seats. Each permit holder will represent a different sector of Haines’ commercial fisheries. Seats are reserved for a gillnetter, troller, longliner and pot fisherman.
Borough Mayor Douglas Olerud first suggested creating the board at a September assembly meeting. The Government Affairs and Services Committee (GASC) recommended at a meeting last week that the assembly create the board.
“The idea was: we have a tourism advisory board (because tourism) is one of our key industry components in the community. One of our other ones is commercial fishing,” Olerud said at the meeting. “I think it would be good for us to have a group of commercial fishermen representing all the different fisheries—pot fishermen, longliners, trollers and gillnets—that can serve in an advisory role to the assembly… (This would) allow them to have a voice as one of the key economic drivers of our community.”
Olerud said he and Haines resident Bill Thomas came up with the idea over the summer. This board would differ from the Upper Lynn Canal Fish and Game Advisory Committee, which advises the state on local management issues, in that it would advise the borough only on issues related to Haines’ commercial fisheries.
Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton suggested that the board include at-large seats to ensure that it represents a range of ideas and opinions. “For a committee to really work you don’t want just one voice. They work much better when there’s a diversity of interests and a diversity of conversation, so you can have a really vibrant discussion,” Fullerton said.
GAS Committee chair Cheryl Stickler and member Caitie Kirby, with colleague Gabe Thomas’ absence, spent much of the Wednesday meeting working out the scope and makeup of the advisory board. Stickler wondered if it should include a sport fisheries representative. In public comment, Tim McDonough suggested reserving a seat for a subsistence fisherman.
Olerud argued that the committee should be composed mostly of commercial fisheries permit holders because of their economic ties to the industry and to regulations that affect it. The tourism advisory board is made up almost entirely of people with financial interests in the tourism industry, he said, and the commercial fisheries advisory board should be similar.
Fullerton pointed out that one of the biggest concerns she’s heard about the tourism advisory board is that it’s lopsided. She also said that commercial fisheries permit holders are not the only people financially affected by regulations and the wellbeing of the industry.
The assembly voted 4-1 on Tuesday to create the board, with assembly member Carol Tuynman opposed.
“I felt like we didn’t really have a chance to discuss it in detail,” Tuynman told the CVN, adding that the borough is already “spread thin” with advisory committees.