Assembly candidate Mark Smith was born and raised in Alabama, where he went to college and then onto a military career spanning more than three decades.
Smith, who retired a colonel and doctor in the army, did not start out to be a doctor.
“I started off as a combat officer, he said. “I was an artillery officer.”
He did two tours with combat divisions – though not in combat – in the 1980s. Then he went to West Point and got his master’s degree in organizational leadership. After teaching for a few years, he decided to apply to medical school and went to New York Med.
Once he graduated from there, Smith said he was assigned to the United States Military Academy, so his first job was the chief of cadet health services at West Point
“I took care of 4,400 kids and they let me do OB on the side with staff and faculty,” he said. “So I really focused during my training to add obstetrics, which is unusual for family practitioners.”
That combination of leadership and medical experience meant that he was often nudged toward administrative positions in hospitals and medical facilities.
After he retired in 2012, he and his wife, Lori Lapeyri-Smith, stayed in Huntsville for three more years and then moved to Haines in 2015. Lapeyri-Smith is from Haines.
Smith said they had been back and forth visiting town for some time. And it was on the list when they were looking for the right place to live.
“We went to Idaho, we went to Wyoming, we went to Montana,” he said.
They were looking for some places with mountains, fresh air and fewer people.
“I think it was an informed choice,” he said. “This sure is a nice place to live. Incredible vista, small town. I like that. I’m tired of four-lane highways and traffic lights and Targets and Walmarts and all that.”
He said the couple are well suited for life in the Chilkat Valley. Smith said he stopped traveling for work in January of 2020. He is still board certified and practices, but his focus is on telemedicine.
“We’re very outdoorsy so immediately took on mastering the task of how to get up and down that river in a jet boat. Four-wheel vehicles [and] snowmachines,” he said. “I’m not necessarily a big time hunter [anymore]. I kind of lost my taste for taking any life after Baghdad – that’s a true statement by the way – but I will take a moose because we eat it. I just don’t hunt and kill things for the sport of it. I never did.”
As Smith started to meet people and get more involved in the community, he said he got pulled into a leadership role during the landslides in 2020.
“I was very close to [former police chief] Heath Scott,” he said. “He called and asked me ‘Do you mind taking a tour out on Beach Road? We’ve got an obstacle up [but] people are still trying to get in there. You’ve got good customer service skills, you’re not going to piss anybody off. So just acknowledge their concerns and kind of turn them around.”
Then he got heavily involved in a citizens’ effort to reform the borough’s property tax assessment system and sat on the Board of Equalization in 2023.
If he were elected to the assembly, Smith said he’d continue to push for a citizen-led board. He said right around that time he also started to pay close attention to what the borough assembly is doing and watching all of the meetings.
“I’m just concerned, you know. I know … a lot about groups and a lot about group dynamics,” he said.
Watching the conflict between the assembly and its former manager, the handling of the Lutak Dock project and other things prompted Smith to run for office. He said it’s his first time throwing his hat in the ring.
He said he made the decision after talking to people in the community about what he was seeing.
“You know, if I say I’m crossing ideological boundaries, that means I have one. I’m not going to say that,” he said. “I’m talking to everybody. People, pretty much in this town, who are … fairly grounded in certain ideology.”
He said a lot of those people have been telling him to run. He said he values integrity, transparency and loving and respecting everybody.
Smith said what he brings to the table is experience operating in high-stress situations where he had to set his own personal bias aside and work with a group, something he said is missing on the current assembly.
“I think what ends up coming out under stress is their own personal agendas,” Smith said. “I can see it clear as a bell.”
Smith said he thinks people on the current assembly are working hard to get the job done.
“I just think that as a group, they’re struggling to plow through the morass, and I think the morass is the pressure they’re getting from people around them.”
He said he’s not interested in what he calls bipolar or tripolar politicking on things. Rather he wants to evaluate each project and idea on its merits – like the Lutak Dock. He said he’s not for or against any particular design.
“I want the damn thing fixed so it serves its purpose,” he said.
He’s also interested in tackling the borough’s budget if he gets elected.
“So the words affordable and Haines don’t collide in the same sentence,” he said. He points to cost of living, deflation of the dollar and stagnant wages.
“I’m not getting paid any more today to do a consult than I was four years ago or even 10 years ago,” he said.
Because Haines is remote and expensive, Smith said it is getting harder and harder to live here.
“There has been no correlate restraint or fiscal conservatism by .. not just this assembly, but the previous two or three,” he said. “So they keep going, they keep spending money.”
Rather than squeezing more money out of residents, Smith said he believes the assembly should be figuring out how to cut its budget.
“I’m not going to tell you what should get cut,” Smith said. Rather he wants to see the assembly sit down and make a conscious decision to arrest the descent.
“That means rolling your sleeves up and going line by line, OK? The priorities are safety and infrastructure, no doubt about that. Everything after that is on the [chopping] block, he said.
Ultimately, Smith said he wants to serve on the assembly because he believes in public service.
“I’m an amalgamation of two of the most respected professions in America, I’m a retired soldier … and I’m a physician,” he said. People who come out of the end of those two professions have a heart to serve, he said. “They care about people and I care about human beings, and that’s ultimately why I’m running.”