For Chen Wu, Haines borough planner is his first job out of school. His new office in the borough administration building is thousands of miles from his family in Shenzhen — one of the most populous urban areas in the world — and thousands of miles away from New York State, where Wu spent the last two years in graduate school. But according to Wu, he’s home, right here in the Chilkat Valley.
“Basically, I have my bag with me, my laptop, all the food I need to eat,” Wu said in an interview last week.
“It’s really hard to define a place of home,” Wu, who has lived all over China and went to college in England, added. “My home is where my lease is signed.”
The 24-year-old Wu graduated this year from Cornell with a masters degree in planning. Coming to Haines was his chance to put that training into practice — not an easy thing to find, he said. When offered the Haines job, he jumped at it. Now, he’s the newest department head in the administration building.
For Wu, it’s a big job, but not an intimidating job. “I wasn’t nervous (coming to Haines). I trust in my training and my education. I feel prepared.”
Wu is the first to acknowledge the gap between training and practical experience. But he brings to the job a clear explanation for why he wants to do what he’s doing.
Planning, he said, isn’t about buildings, but about the people who use the buildings. And specifically, how to use land use planning to deliver services to those people.
In speaking to Wu, a focus on impacting others comes up again and again. That goes beyond work, with Wu saying he hopes to join the fire department. Haines’ volunteer culture — not the mountains, or the views — is the aspect of the place he said he appreciates the most.
At Cornell, Wu worked on a project studying health care centers embedded in rural Upstate New York schools, he said. Seeing it in practice, it was clear to him the impacts of what was, at a basic level, just rearranging space: kids had easier access to healthcare, and there were other effects too, like parents not having to take off work as frequently.
So far, people who have spent time with Wu are firm in saying his focus on serving others isn’t just empty talk. Wu is renting from Stan and Kathy Pardee Jones, who say they feel blessed to have him in the community.
“Everything is so positive and polite,” Pardee Jones said, of her first impression of Wu. “It’s like, woah. What a gem.”
At the same time, borough planner is a difficult job — one that the borough struggled to fill until Wu was brought in. The planner’s duties include making recommendations on housing, zoning, utilities, economic development, and use of borough-owned land.
“The lands department deals with people’s property, their homes, and their money,” borough clerk Mike Denker said. “Those are some of the most personal things we have. It’s one of the toughest jobs in the borough.”
Tough tasks loom including a rewrite of borough land use code. That could include contentious topics like changes to single-family zoning.
In recent months, land use issues have turned into flashpoints with little warning. This summer, residents spoke out over a particularly controversial proposal to grant an easement through Jones Point Cemetery for a compost facility. Included in those heated debates were allegations that previous borough staff members had acted negligently in permitting and review of the facility. Part of their evidence included emails from a former borough planner.
While Wu was clear on his core principles for the job, he was reluctant to get into specifics about how those principles might translate into specific land-use goals — at least for now, while he is still fresh on the job.
“As a government employee, the first thing I need to do is obey the rules and the public,” Wu said. He’s wary of overstepping his mandate as planner.
“I see in Haines the good tourism resources and natural resources. I also see lots of challenges with infrastructure, housing, healthcare and education. What the (specific) areas of need are — it’s a hard question, and one I ask myself every day.”
Wu added that he wants to better understand the public’s desires before settling on clear answers for himself.
But for decisions made in the borough government, the cemetery easement being just one example, there’s not always a clear, unified answer for what the public wants.
Wu recognizes that, and it’s something he said he feels he’s ready to deal with. Or, more specifically, to trust other parts of the borough government to deal with.
“I understand there are a lot of disputes,” Wu said. “I understand ‘the people’ as an entity represented by the assembly and planning commission. So to deal with (disagreement) is to trust our decision-making bodies.”
Those bodies, elected by the people, he said, are the ones charged with weighing different viewpoints. His job is to take their instruction and execute it.
But still, the stakes, as Denker said, are high in the lands department. And in recent months, discussions about governing the borough haven’t always been polite.
That could be a contrast with Wu’s style, which, people who have met him say is positive and polite. When asked what he wanted residents to know about him, he took the opportunity to apologize to anyone who greeted him without him responding; he has a lot of new names and faces to remember.
But the politeness doesn’t necessarily mean he’s shy.
One of Wu’s first nights in town, he attended a meeting at the former Mosquito Lake School, which, controversially, could be put up for sale in the near future. After the meeting, Wu introduced himself and made the rounds to both elected officials and Upper Valley residents. When most had left, darkness and clouds of mosquitos descending on the school, Wu was still outside discussing the issue.
Denker said he’s been impressed seeing Wu’s willingness to dive into what could be highly-charged conversations.
“One of the things I’ve liked is that when there’s a question, he jumps right up and wants to talk to the person and listen,” Denker said. “He’s not avoiding (difficult situations). He doesn’t hesitate at all.”
Wu said he has a lot to learn — even if he feels at home in Haines. But it’s less daunting, he said, because he’s not going at it alone. He’ll be trying to learn from locals, at his desk and off the job.
He’ll also be keeping his eye on a small plastic monkey atop his desk. Denker gave it to him, with a story from Denker’s flying days to go along with it.
If you were flying an airplane and a monkey jumped on your back, the story goes, you wouldn’t stand up and wrestle the monkey, lest you leave the controls unattended. With a monkey on your back, chaos left and right, the right move, Wu said with a smile, is simple: You call over a colleague and ask for help.
He’s amenable to that advice, because as he steps into his role, that’s his plan: focusing on the people, and the interactions, even as he immerses himself in studying borough code.
“Planning is about land use, yes, and the physical assets of this place,” Wu said. “But the reason we do this is the services and benefits to the public. That’s why I want to be here.”