Debra Schnabel has lived in Haines since she was 11 days old.
She left for a period of time to go to college and then to pursue a career in broadcasting – but she got caught up in the family business. Her father, John Schnabel, was involved in timber, and mining, and a lot of industry in Haines.
“I mean, when I was 12 years old, I was doing payroll. I was very helpful for a lot of the tedious work involved in timber, selling logs, loading log ships, doing all of the paperwork, etc,” she said.
She worked to get a public radio station built in Haines. Then she left for a few years and toured Alaska working for the Alaska Public Radio Network and helping communities like Chevak, Galena and Sand Point with community development.
She returned to Haines and spent about a decade working to build and grow a lodge at Chilkat Lake – a venture she said ultimately failed because the Tsirku River started backing up into the lake regularly, making it more difficult to fish. And, because she was dumped by the cruise industry, which was a major source of income.
“I supported a tour tax,” she said. “I thought that the borough would have good revenue if we taxed tours.”
Schnabel has also been active in public service since her mid-20s.
“I’ve always been kind of an organizer, [and] manager,” she said. “I was a junior or senior in high school when the city asked me to be in charge of the Strawberry Festival, and then it was Jack Dalton Days. In fact, I want you to know that it was my idea to have a Mad Raft Race.”
Schnabel has served multiple terms on the Haines city and then borough assemblies, and the school board. She also did a stint as the borough manager. It’s a career that has been challenging at times – especially as a woman in local politics.
“I think it’s because we have a large population of very arrogant men,” she said. “I mean, even growing up my father – one of my favorite stories to tell people – is about when Stephanie Scott was working as a borough clerk. Somebody considered that she should be getting paid $35,000 a year and my father stood up in a public meeting and said there was no woman in this town worth $35,000 a year.”
One thing Schnabel, who has a master’s degree in public administration, has learned during her decades in city and borough administration is that sometimes it’s best to give in.
“Haines is, I think sometimes it’s ungovernable,” she said. “As painful as that is to learn that lesson, and even though sometimes you can know damn well it’s not going to turn out right – if that’s where people want to go with it, you can’t fight it.”
She has seen a lot of controversies over her decades in politics, and been embroiled in a few of her own: she was fired as borough manager by a previous assembly. She often tackles complex, sometimes divisive issues head-on during assembly meetings.
“People call me blunt and some people call me frank. But why beat around the bush about anything? I mean, it wastes time,” she said. “…There is more harm done by not addressing an issue than the pain of trying to bring something up and work it out with people.”
Right now, she and others on the current assembly have been criticized for their handling of the Lutak Dock upgrade project. A common thread is allegations that they are trying to kill the project.
Schnabel said she is surprised people would think that of her, given that she supports the current encapsulation design of the dock, which has become a flashpoint for people who say it’s too big and will require too much maintenance and that the borough should go back to the drawing board with a scaled-down design.
Schnabel introduced the idea of a simpler design to the federal environmental assessment of the project – a move that some said restarted the clock and is an indicator that she is trying to slow the project down. But she disagrees.
Schnabel said she figured there was no harm in adding the alternative to the environmental assessment to be analyzed, so that people in Haines would know they were being heard by their elected officials.
“Do I stamp my foot down and say ‘You guys are all wrong?’ she said. “No, you say ‘Hey, there are people in the community who want to take a look at this.’ That’s all I was thinking.”
She does think the assembly made a misstep in early 2023 when it authorized the contractor and the borough to go into Phase II of the project. Ultimately the contractor used that as a justification to purchase nearly $10 million in steel which ran afoul of complex federal grant requirements.
Schnabel attributes the morass to the borough’s owner manager agent R&M Engineering and the former borough administration.
“I mean, I don’t think anybody sitting at that table, at the dais, had the education to say ‘No, this isn’t right. We’re not in Phase II, we can’t do this yet,” she said.
Now the borough and assembly are having a difficult time with the project contractor, Turnagain Marine, which has requested mediation over contract disputes.
“What sort of baffles me, in a way, is how a person or how a business that has had such extensive experience as Turnagain Marine in constructing huge capital projects – many of them with FEMA/MARAD money, how could we derail so spectacularly?” she said,. “It really seems to me.. we’re in a Gordian knot.”
Regardless of how that knot gets untangled, Schnabel said she decided to run again when fellow assembly member Ben Aultman-Moore resigned.
“I thought ‘Oh my God, brand new manager, brand new clerk, three new assembly members potentially and a lot of problems or issues that have a long history. I thought that continuity was important,” she said.
Ultimately, Schnabel said she hopes people in Haines avoid being reactionary, that they avoid the idea that punishing people or wiping the slate clean and starting over is the right way to approach problem solving.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Debra Schnabel as a former member of the Planning Commission.