This election season, there are two candidates running for Mayor, Tom Morphet and Jan Hill. The two candidates have deep roots in the community and have served Haines in myriad ways. While both Morphet and Hill have expressed that they want the best for the community, their visions and priorities diverge. CVN interviewed the two candidates separately and in person. Their responses are recorded below with slight edits for clarity and brevity.
Interviews by Nakeshia Diop and Lex Treinen
Who are you and why are you running for mayor?
Jan Hill: I’m a lifelong, year-round Haines resident and I’m running for Mayor because I love my community and I care what happens here. I have been Mayor four times. The first time I was Mayor, we were a third-class borough, meaning the assembly was the school board, which gave me a term as president of the school board. My last three terms have been under the consolidated borough. I have a clear understanding of the role of Mayor in this form of government. I know I represent our community well, and I want to do it again. I’ve stayed involved with the Southeast Conference and SEARHC, and I got appointed by the governor to the Alcohol Beverage Control Board a couple years ago. There’s nobody running for any public office this year that has seen more changes in Haines than I have. I can be a little resistant to change, but I also accept good change.
Tom Morphet: I’ve been here 37 years. I was at the paper for 30 years. I was on the assembly for three years. I got the sauna built. I started the Friends of the Pool. I was the first president of the Friends of the Library. I’ve been president of the Haines Arts Council. I’m co-founder of the Haines Marching Band. I started the Polar Bear Swim back in 2004. I like to see things get done. And I see that in many ways our community moves forward, but oftentimes our government is an obstacle to progress because we don’t function well, communally as a government. I think that I’ve proved that I can do new things in Haines and get things done. Because I’ve lived here and had to be a neutral observer as a reporter for some years, I’ve gotten to know the people here and I’ve learned how to talk to them and I know their values.
What are your top three priorities for Haines?
Jan Hill: We need to continue to be focused on the dock. That’s our lifeline for our groceries and fuel. We also need affordable housing here. I would like to focus on working with whatever entities will help us get some year-round jobs in Haines. We need to embrace opportunities that might provide year-round employment for people, particularly young people. We need child care, affordable child care for people so they can go to work because right now a lot of our businesses have help wanted signs in the windows. We need to find a way to make it so people can work and their kids are taken care of and they have housing.
Tom Morphet: I’m not the most qualified person to be the Mayor of this town. I think there are people much more qualified, but we’ve poisoned the well to a certain extent with vitriolic personality attacks and recalls, and that’s kept the best people out of government. So my first goal is to maintain increasing amounts of accountability, transparency, and responsiveness from our local government. My second priority is encouraging young people to move here and take over this community. We can do that by investing in housing for people and partnering with nonprofits to provide services. The third goal is responding to these terrible cuts that we’re seeing at the state level, to our ferry system, to our education system, and to our state parks. I want to be a loud and forceful voice and maybe ally myself with some leaders in other small communities saying, this cannot continue.
Give an example of how you’ve worked with someone on a different side of a political debate from yourself. What did you learn from the experience?
Jan Hill: For the most part, I think I work well with people on both sides, people that agree with me and people that don’t, as long as there’s respect. I’ve worked with people who have very different viewpoints and strong feelings about their opinions and views, but as long as we’re respectful, we can have a decent debate and I actually appreciate those conversations because it allows me to better understand their perspective. Many times when you do that, you realize that you really have a lot more in common than you don’t.
Tom Morphet: When I put together the sauna project, there was opposition to the idea of the borough offering a sauna. I think a lot of people didn’t know what a sauna was. So the way we approached it rather than demanding the borough build a sauna was to say, ‘we will build a sauna, if you will just pick up the electric bill. We’ll raise the money, we’ll do the construction. All you guys have to do is pay the bill.’ It took seven years to raise $15,000. The big takeaway is things take longer than any of us ever imagined. I’ve learned to have some patience, to know that if you’re the guy putting a seed in the ground, you might never live to see the fruit.
How much should the Mayor be involved in assembly discussions?
Jan Hill: The role of the Mayor is pretty clearly outlined. This particular question isn’t outlined in the description, but I think that the Mayor facilitates those discussions and does more listening than talking. In my experience, I would always allow the whole assembly to have their discussion, then if I had a comment I would be the last one to say it, but typically I would not engage in the discussion. When I’m the Mayor I always go to the committee meetings, so that when they bring a recommendation to the assembly I know how they came to that recommendation and that helps me develop my position in case there’s a tie because that’s the only time my opinion really matters. But again, as Mayor, my opinion doesn’t matter. My job is to carry out the wishes of the assembly.
Tom Morphet: I think the Mayor needs to be involved. My general philosophy is the more brains you have on any problem, the better the solution will be. When the assembly is up there, you have six brains, the Mayor should be the seventh. But we have an assembly manager form of government, not a Mayor form of government. As Mayor, the first thing I want the new assembly to do is have a goal-setting session where the assembly’s priorities are determined. I want to empower the assembly. I think that the Mayor needs to be a part of the discussion. But I also acknowledge if I have my own personal ideas of what we should do, I need to sell that to the assembly, just like the manager needs to sell their ideas to the assembly. The power has to come from the top, from the assembly.
How do you rate Doug Olerud’s term?
Jan Hill: I think that’s a difficult question because I’m not sure it’s my job to rate the outgoing Mayor. I would say, unfortunately, when he became the Mayor, he had to deal with two catastrophic things. There was COVID and then the landslide. But fortunately for him, he lives in a community where when people need help or there’s a tragedy in our community, this community comes together.
Tom Morphet: Doug greatly improved the tone of meetings and the general professionalism of the office of Mayor. I couldn’t commend Doug more. If he was running again, I probably wouldn’t have sought the seat. I think he did a great job.
Should the borough spend more money on local parks and trails?
Jan Hill: I think that right now, Chilkoot Indian Association has done a good job with trails, and there are other things that are more important than more trails. Somehow, CIA seems to have a funding source that’s allowing them to build all these trails that people use and love. If we have funding available for recreational things, the borough could potentially look into trails. In terms of parks, I know there’s been a lot of concern, particularly at Chilkoot, that the borough should take a more active role in working with state parks to resolve the situation with the bears. Overall, I think that the borough needs to work closely with state parks.
Tom Morphet: A lot, because we have this half million dollars we spend on tourism every year since the one percent tax for tourism was created. In Juneau, they have a group called Trail Mix. It’s a nonprofit, and they build a lot of the parks that are in the Tongass Forest. They have people that know where the money for trails is in the federal budget. They go out and get it and they bring it home to Juneau. I think when you have a narrow service like trail making and public use cabins, a local group can do a better job at it than a general government. I would like to see a recreation non -profit that does physical recreation, fun runs, and helps with the little league and basketball tournaments. I think our city parks should just be part of the maintenance by the division of Public Works, but I would like to see a working physical recreation department.
How should the borough be involved with potential development of the Palmer Project?
Jan Hill: The Palmer Project is a private project, and I think the borough needs to pay attention to it. I’ve always said I support responsible resource development and I do because those are the kinds of things that provide good paying jobs. Constantine has been open with the community, they’ve held mining forums to help educate us, they have press releases to keep us informed on what they’re doing, and they operate tours at different times of the year. Mining is a part of Haines’ history, and unless people are willing to give up things like cell phones, I would rather have those minerals come from an area where there’s a lot of oversight and regulation, rather than in places where there isn’t. I think we need to pay attention to it and not let it become a problem, but I don’t like worrying about a problem that isn’t a problem.
Tom Morphet: I think we have to be involved, but we also can’t allow it to supersede everything else we’re trying to do. We can’t allow it to suck up all the oxygen in the room, because we have other things we need to do. I’d like to see a plebiscite and advisory vote on whether people support the development of an industrial mine at Constantine or oppose it, and I don’t mind if that’s on the ballot every October. That should guide the borough decisionmaking, so the assembly is not sitting down there being pulled one way by the anti-mine people and pulled this way by the pro-mine people. We should also adopt the severance tax. Unlike the fish that come back every year, or trees that grow every 200-300 years, minerals are a one-shot deal. Other municipalities in Alaska have severance taxes, and it helps compensate municipalities.
How do you feel the borough is doing with its relationships with the tribal governments in the area? Should it be doing something differently or develop relationships differently?
Jan Hill: I think that the borough has over the years tried very hard to work with the tribal government here, which is Chilkoot Indian Association, because Klukwan is not in the borough. Klukwan is a tribal government and they’re important, but they’re not part of the borough. I know that our borough has worked with CIA over the years, and I was actually the president of CIA when we were planning that subdivision over there and that meant a lot of work with the planning commission, planner, and manager. So I think our borough does a pretty good job of working with the tribal governments. From my time in the borough we’ve tried to work on some things and it just wasn’t compatible, but overall I think the Haines Borough is working with our tribal government pretty well.
Tom Morphet: Well, I know in other communities, their elected body assemblies meet regularly with the local tribes. I think the first step would be to have an annual meeting and just talk about what we’re doing, and then we might start a dialogue about where we can overlap functions. CIA is a credible engine–about 10 years ago, they did a survey and asked members what their biggest needs are, and people said housing. They then went out and built the subdivision. The only reason Haines has a clinic is because, SEARHC, a Southeast-wide tribal health consortium, expanded their program to non-Natives. The borough tried to manage our health clinic for about five or six years, and it was a tremendous strain on the borough. Tribes could be an enormous resource for us.
What’s a mistake you’ve made in your political career? What did you learn from it?
Jan Hill: I think along the way, there were a couple of times when I trusted people that I shouldn’t have. I’ve always had an open-door policy, and sometimes I need to pay a little more attention. I’ve done things that some people disagreed with and maybe didn’t like, and they talked to me about it. I was able to explain maybe why I broke a tie the way I did, but I don’t think I made a mistake. I don’t like to say that I haven’t made any mistakes, but I don’t think I’ve made any glaring mistakes that had a negative impact on our community.
Tom Morphet: I got censured when I was on the assembly for releasing these complaints about police heavy handedness. I had given those complaints to the borough manager, and at that point apparently they became the borough’s property. I didn’t have faith that the manager at the time was going to do anything with them, so I gave them to the media. And then that was a violation of protocol because police complaints weren’t supposed to go to the public. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have just turned them over to the media and said you should look into this. You live and you learn. I’m sure I’ve made lots of other mistakes. What I’ve learned is that the wheels turn very slowly in government.
What’s your favorite place to get a drink on a weekday? What do you order?
Jan Hill: It depends on my mood. I’ve enjoyed that we have the Three Northmen. I can say that I actually was able to help them with my position on the Alcohol Beverage Control Board because there was a piece in the statute that was confusing, and the Three Northmen couldn’t figure out if it was legal for them to sell to Skagway or not. So I called our director of the Alcohol Beverage Control Board, and she explained the whole statute. They are now selling their product to Skagway, Petersburg and Wrangell. When I’m there, I order the mojito, because they won the prize at beerfest. I also used to bartend at the Pioneer Bar in the 80s, and I go to the Fogcutter to watch football.
Tom Morphet: I go to the Pioneer and have a salty dog (a cocktail made with vodka, gin and grapefruit juice with salt on the rim). But now the new one I like is tequila and grapefruit with salt on the rim.
Say something nice about your opponent
Jan Hill: Probably the only thing we have in common is we both live in Haines.
Tom Morphet: I can say a lot of nice things about Jan. When she was the Mayor, she had a community picnic down here. And that resulted in a community photograph and brought the whole community together. I think that was a really worthwhile thing she did. I think Jan has her own vision for what the community should be. And my vision, I think, is different. I think my vision understands that us old coots, we don’t have much time left. And we’ve got to bring in the new people and the younger people and give them the tools to take over this community.