Two-term planning commissioner Eben Sargent is throwing his hat in the ring for borough assembly.
He’s hoping to bring to the top elected body plenty of ideas about improving the borough — and improving borough government.
And even after seeing plenty of disagreement during his time in office, he thinks those ideas can exist in a space of broad agreement. Haines residents, he said, have more in common than not.
“There isn’t a big faction that wants high taxes and huge government,” Sargent said. “Let’s figure out how to have small-ish government that is effective.”
Sargent, originally from a small town in Vermont, has an undergraduate degree in engineering. Since then he’s made a career in product design, going freelance since his full-time move to Haines in 2021. It’s that engineering skillset — long-range planning, attention to detail and good process — that Sargent believes can help make borough government more functional. As he puts it, it’s a plan to focus on policy, not personalities.
“Actually, like ninety percent of (planning commission and assembly business) is uncontroversial,” Sargent said. “It’s often about how we best get the project done for the lowest cost.”
If elected, Sargent hopes to drive assembly effort back towards those areas that he said do “the most good for the most people.” That covers issues like childcare and housing, where his suggestions include using favorable borough financing and land sale terms to incentivize more affordable housing construction.
No doubt Sargent is in line with plenty of voters, and candidates, with his focus on these issues. At the same time, public participation thus far in candidate forums and question-and-answer sessions suggest many voters will be paying close attention to the more divisive issues.
For Sargent, there’s still a middle ground to reach, even there.
On a possible mine in the Chilkat Valley, for instance, he argues that the borough government doesn’t actually have much power one way or another.
“It’s going to happen if it’s economically viable and it won’t happen if it’s not,” Sargent said. “The economics are at a scale that even something like a $20 million dock isn’t suddenly going to make it viable.”
In Sargent’s view, a mine is likely to remain at least a possibility for the foreseeable future. With little control over the matter, the avenue forward for elected officials, he said, is to maximize benefit to the borough in the event a mine does start production. That includes making the borough a community where mine workers want to “live and contribute,” something he argued is not the case at other regional mines, where mine workers take their salaries back to homes in the Lower 48.
“We have people that choose to work in mines in Southeast and choose to live (in Haines),” Sargent said. “A lot of times that’s a salary that enables a spouse to work in schools, or do something beneficial for the community not involved at all with mining. Were there to be a mine upriver, it’s in Haines’ best interest to think about how we can make people stay in the community, so that if there are negative sides to the mine, at least we get the positives.”
That’s his way of linking even mining back to infrastructure, housing, and childcare: measures that he thinks could maximize the upside of a mine — but not just a mine. The core of Sargent’s economic vision is to support a diverse array of industries. On the assembly, that would mean avoiding chasing “silver bullet” industries, and instead pushing for broad, long-term growth.
“We’ve had a mentality of trying to proactively develop economy by spending money,” Sargent said. “My attitude is we should shift, and instead build the kind of stuff that is going to be beneficial to the most businesses, now and in the future.”
Still, for all the talk of long-range planning, Sargent said if he were to be on the assembly next year, in addition to the Lutak Dock, his focus would “100% be on the budget.”
Sargent argues that there is more that can be done early in the process, to decide which parts of the budget to dedicate time to. In terms of actually closing a deficit, he thinks revenue can be found from sources like borough land sales and an expanded tax on short-term rentals
And on the spending side, he’s focused on aging borough facilities and infrastructure with rising costs.
On these budget issues, like on everything else, Sargent said he hopes to avoid ideological labels, except for one.
“National politics isn’t relevant (in the assembly), ” Sargent said. “Detail-oriented is a more relevant political identity for local government than national social causes.”
As for whether there can be too much of a good thing with his approach, he acknowledged the concern. “Detail-oriented people often, when left to their own devices, miss the forest for the trees. Engineers are notorious for doing a great job solving the wrong problem,” Sargent said.
But the assembly, he argued, is a team with a broad range of skill sets. His approach would be just one of many. And one, he argued, that could help sidestep some of the controversy and discord associated with the body.