A start to Lutak Dock mediation
Haines interim manager Alekka Fullerton warned the assembly last month that pending litigation with Lutak Dock contractor Turnagain Marine could be bogged down for the better part of the year. At that point, the borough had filed for a motion to hold, arguing Turnagain had no grounds to file suit without first entering mediation.
As of this week, it seems the process will be moving quicker than initially expected. A judge has ruled in favor of the borough’s motion to hold, and mediation is now being scheduled, likely for some time in the next two months.
The assembly will now have to appoint a team to represent the borough in mediation. That team will be empowered to negotiate within assembly-approved “parameters,” including presumably a maximum for potential spending in a settlement. A settlement deal that exceeds those parameters will have to be reapproved by the assembly.
The limited information on the process posted prior to the meeting brought about a significant amount of public comment, much of which expressed concern about spending of taxpayer money and the borough’s negotiating strategy – or lack thereof.
Any deliberations on negotiating strategy will wait until a tentatively scheduled April 3 special assembly meeting, where assembly members will talk strategy and select the mediation team. The assembly said Tuesday that the discussion will be conducted in executive session, so members of the public will likely not get full answers on anything more than process questions.
Based on initial discussions Tuesday, the negotiating team will almost certainly include Fullerton, as well as either one or two assembly members. Fullerton, who is a lawyer, said she has 26 years of experience in mediation. After a member of the public commented saying the borough had in the past been afraid of litigation, Fullerton could not help responding with a smile. “For the record, I am not afraid of litigation,” she said. “I enjoy it actually, though I am very cognizant of taxpayer dollars.”
Assembly members Richard Clement and Gabe Thomas were nominated to join Fullerton, but discussions on those nominees were cut off after the assembly decided it would wait to discuss further until the special meeting. The full pool of nominees and final size of the team is still undecided.
Fullerton said she can and will answer many of the questions submitted in public comment and will post that information to the borough website.
Nonprofit funding decided
The assembly has finally closed its long-running saga of non-profit funding allocation – a process that concluded in committee in January but was delayed for weeks after assembly members were slow to complete a nonprofit scoring task. What looked to be a simple up-and-down motion to either distribute or not distribute the already-allocated funding was complicated by a public letter written by assembly member Mark Smith and posted to the assembly website prior to the meeting. In the three-and-a-half page document, Smith reviewed each of the 13 applicants for non-profit funding and argued that only two – The Salvation Army and Becky’s Place – were “worthy” of the non-profit designation. Smith said even those two should operate on the support of private donations rather than government dollars.
That letter was met with a flurry of public comment running close to an hour. Five commenters spoke specifically in response to the tone and content of the letter, including charges that the letter was “discriminatory” and “offensive.” In total, eight members of the public spoke to defend nonprofit funding while three spoke in support of Smith’s message. Smith responded after the close of public comment and said he was “more inspired tonight than I ever have been” seeing people “speak their opinions with respect.” Smith declined to comment further on the matter.
Smith and assembly member Cheryl Stickler were the two on the dais to express serious reservations about funding nonprofits. Stickler said her constituents were frustrated their tax dollars were going towards organizations they did not support, specifically citing Takshunuk Watershed Council and what she said was a propensity for TWC to do political advocacy “over the top of the borough.”
Those concerns were ultimately enough to motivate a change on the funding plan. The assembly had originally planned to divide the $100,000 non-profit appropriation purely based on the score each organization received from assembly members – save for organizations whose funding, as assigned by score, exceeded their requested funding.
Assembly member Gabe Thomas proposed an amendment to change that plan, funding the entire requests made by each of the top three scoring organizations, and then distributing the remaining funding among the rest by score as originally planned. That meant more than doubling funding for Alaska Avalanche Center, Becky’s Place, and Southeast Alaska State Fair, resulting in a significantly smaller pool of money for the other 10 applicants. The amendment passed, with assembly members Kevin Forster and Craig Loomis in opposition.
Loomis said afterward he was frustrated that the original rubric, which he felt was already a way to compromise, was changed in such short order. “All the people in the community want different things. That’s why we put all the work into the rubric,” Loomis said. “What about the people I represent – the people who do want their money to go to [Takshanuk Watershed Council]?”
Forster also defended funding organizations further down the list, specifically citing the borough’s comprehensive plan, which he said showed a public desire to fund a full range of nonprofits. Forster also took issue with comments from Smith calling the borough’s comprehensive plan “propaganda”.
Both Loomis and Forster voted for the amended motion despite opposing the amendment. Loomis said that putting an end to the lengthy wait for funding was more important than arguing over how to divvy it up.
Compared to the original funding plan, the amendment increases Alaska Avalanche Center and Becky’s Place funding by just under $13,000 each and State Fair funding by just under $11,000.
New Standards of Behavior and Conduct Policy
The assembly voted unanimously to adopt new standards of behavior for assembly members, which will ask members to be “tough on problems, not on people.”
Focuses of the new policy include protecting confidential information obtained in executive sessions and making clear when assembly members are speaking their personal opinion, rather than speaking for the assembly.
That section of the policy was put to the test right away when Gabe Thomas said during assembly member comment that he was “displeased” with mayor Tom Morphet inviting Loomis on an official trip to Haines Junction earlier this month. Thomas argued the decision of choosing a representative to speak for the assembly should have been done by assembly vote.
Morphet responded that he had also invited assembly members Stickler and Clement, and needed Loomis to accompany him because Morphet did not have a car that could make the trip up the highway. As it turned out, Morphet could have taken a borough vehicle, as he was on official borough business, but he said he only learned of that afterward.
As for government conduct outside the assembly chambers, the policy currently only applies to the members of the assembly and the mayor. Other elected officials, such as planning board members, will have to choose for themselves whether to take it up. Forster said that he believes the voluntary nature of the policy gives it more weight, especially in the absence of any enforcement stronger than a censure.
Budget amendments and spending at Public Safety
The assembly passed a series of budget amendments including two line items authorizing new spending at the public safety building.
The first is $45,164.82, funded by the Alaska Department of Corrections, to add a secure room to the jail facility for holding individuals in mental health crisis.
According to state law, individuals may be involuntarily committed without being charged if deemed to be in dangerous crisis. Those detainments are supposed to be in secure rooms inside hospital facilities. But in Haines, the lone medical facility – the SEARHC clinic – has said they have neither the facilities nor the round-the-clock staffing to fill this role. For years the borough has addressed this by using the rural jail facility instead, even though the rural jail facility is not properly equipped with necessary furnishings like padded walls. This spending solves that issue, though it does not address concerns about the legality of the borough’s system.
Elsewhere in the building, the assembly approved $38,300 towards emergency dispatch payroll. For much of 2024 Haines was critically short on emergency dispatchers, at one point down to two dispatchers rotating 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. The full $38,300 sum will go to the dispatchers for overtime pay.
A call for citizen participation
The borough will open up an avenue for limited public participation in their search for a new police chief. Clerk Mike Denker announced a Zoom panel scheduled for this Saturday at 1 p.m. with the three remaining candidates for the position open to public viewing. Members of the public will be able to log on via Zoom or watch the interview board ask questions in person in the assembly chambers, though the candidates themselves will be on zoom.
The candidates will each give an introduction and closing statement, and will answer three questions from the board. They will also answer questions submitted by the public, which can be emailed to [email protected] until Thursday at noon.