Appraisal Company of Alaska’s Assessor Martin Onskulus meets with a few dozen residents to talk about the borough’s new assessments and his process on March 29, 2024, in Haines. (Photo by Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News)

It was a meeting that could have soured quickly. 

And there were signs that some people expected it to. Borough administration asked police Sgt. Josh Dryden to attend. He sat watching as a crowd gathered in the assembly chambers to meet…

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...