Morphet chooses committee member
Diana Lapham was appointed by mayor Tom Morphet to fill a vacant seat on the Ports and Harbors Advisory Committee, but only after lengthy and heated debate.
Lapham, who previously served six years on the committee, was one of two candidates who expressed interest in the open seat, which was previously held by Fred Gray, who is moving to a different vacated seat on the committee.
The other candidate was commercial fisherman Cynthia Adams, who previously served six years on the advisory committee.
The advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend Lapham for the seat at their most recent meeting. But according to borough code, the mayor ultimately holds the power to appoint members to advisory committees, though theoretically taking into consideration the candidates’ applications and the recommendation of the committee.
Morphet, however, initially said he would let the assembly decide who they wanted to appoint, though he expressed a preference for Adams.
“I would gladly appoint Ms. Lapham, but I want more commercial fishermen on the committee and there aren’t commercial seats opening up,” Morphet said.
Advice for Morphet came in from a number of sources, including from the public. Don Turner Jr., who recently resigned from the committee, said the mayor could move a different committee member, Mike Ward, from a commercial seat to a non-commercial seat, put Lapham in the vacant non-commercial seat, and open applications for the commercial seat vacated by Ward’s transfer.
With the possibility of shuffling seats around, proceedings became confusing, and at times seemed to run afoul of procedural rules for publicly listing open committee seats, according to clerk Mike Denker.
But it became clear that ultimately it was up to Morphet to either choose Adams, or Lapham.
In the end, Morphet chose Lapham.
“I’m not going to appoint a commercial fisherman to a non-commercial seat,” Morphet said.
There will likely be multiple additional seats on the committee opening in the next month, Denker said. That could mean Adams could also soon be seated alongside Lapham. But even so, there was plenty of bad feeling that remained in the room.
It included assembly member Mark Smith, who described the debate, and public comment supporting Adams, as “the mob rolling up in our face right now demanding Cindy because they hate Diana.”
Two public commenters later asked Smith to apologize for that statement, including former assembly member Natalie Dawson, saying that it disparaged citizens participating in public process.
“I sat on the dais when you brought a large group of people together to advocate for certain tax issues,” Dawson said. “The assembly… carried out every single provision you asked for. Several times we addressed the awesome organizing that group did because it is public process.”
When asked after the meeting, Smith stood by his comments.
“There are people who make a lot of noise who I think don’t represent the majority of the town,” Smith said. In explaining his use of the term mob, he made a distinction between a “constitutional republic,” which is how he said the United States government is organized, and democracy.
A constitutional republic, he said, operates under guiding documents. Democracy, on the other hand, is “mob rule.”
Mosquito Lake School sale paused, negotiations to begin
The potential sale of the Mosquito Lake Facility has been paused, but the property could still change hands.
The potential sale has been pitched by some as a way to rid the borough of an aging and costly facility. But others, particularly Upper Valley residents, say the facility is integral in providing services and knitting the community together, and represents a fair return on taxes paid to the borough.
Rather than make a decision on a sale, the assembly Tuesday decided to re-enter negotiations on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Four Winds Resource Center, the non-profit that operates and helps maintain the community center housed in the building.
A completed MOU would lay out the division of responsibilities in running the facility between the borough and the non-profit. The broader goal of the negotiations, from the borough’s side of things, will be to find a way to gradually transfer ownership to the non-profit, potentially for free.
Four Winds board member Erika Merklin told assembly members this summer that the non-profit “would absolutely be able to manage (the facility) into the future if it were deeded to us, but it would need to be done in a very measured way.”
That’s an idea assembly members have generally voiced support for.
“If we can figure out an (agreement) to give them a few years and then give (the facility) to them — they’re doing better with it than we were,” assembly member Gabe Thomas said Tuesday.
Fullerton plans Lutak Dock path
The borough has officially cut ties with the two firms that previously served as contractor and owner-advisor for the Lutak Dock project.
Neither the borough staff nor assembly has laid out exactly what the process for building the dock will be going forward. But on Tuesday, borough manager Alekka Fullerton described broadly her vision for the next two steps, public engagement and “concept development.”
Public engagement, Fullerton said, will center around having an engineer answer questions from the public.
“To go to the next step, we need to make sure the public is engaged, and questions are answered by somebody who knows how to answer them — an engineer who is looking at various designs,” Fullerton said.
Once that is complete, Fullerton said an engineering firm will create a preliminary design to be put out for bid.
Harbormaster Henry Pollan said the borough has been in talks with engineering firm Moffat & Nichol to advise on the process, but no contract has been signed. Fullerton will be meeting with Moffat and Nichol on November 6.
The assembly will also hold a Nov. 13 committee-of-the-whole meeting to discuss the dock planning process. A time has not yet been specified for that meeting.
Assembly makes request of Governor
The assembly voted Tuesday to officially ask Gov. Mike Dunleavy to fill a vacant state parks position based in the borough.
Mayor Tom Morphet said filling the state parks specialist role could lead to the state taking over management of the Portage Cove campground. Assembly member Cheryl Stickler said it would help address issues in the Chilkoot Corridor.
Filling the position would require a waiver from the state’s Office of Management and Budget due to a hiring freeze for all state government positions enacted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in May.
Opposed to sending the letter to the governor were assembly members Gabe Thomas and Mark Smith.
Smith, during discussion on the issue, called out the mayor’s personal blog.
“There’s no money in the state,” Smith said. “You want me to vote for this to send to a governor who you called a jackass on your blog twice in the last week?”
After checking his blog post-meeting, Morphet clarified that he had not called Dunleavy a “jackass,” and had directed that term only at president Donald Trump.
More talk slated for sales tax amendments
Three possible changes to sales tax code were up for introduction Tuesday night, but were instead referred back to the commerce committee for further discussion.
The measures would expand the range of sales in the borough subject to the tax. All three were included in one piece of legislation, though each one would amend a different section of sales tax regulations.
The first proposed change would add language to code taxing non-profit organizations on sales competing with other local businesses.
Under current borough policy, non-profit organizations are exempt from collecting sales-tax on sales that are “substantially related” to the core purpose of the organization.
The goal of the new legislation would be to take away any competitive advantage those organizations would derive from being tax-exempt.
“These nonprofits enjoy other benefits such as property tax exemption,” borough finance director Jila Stuart said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Having the sales tax exemption creates an imbalance between them and for-profit businesses that are struggling to exist in Haines, and in some cases, providing the same service.”
The second proposed change was a decrease in the proportion of building materials exempt from sales tax.
Currently in the borough, buyers pay sales tax on a maximum of $5,000 of construction materials per purchase. The new legislation proposed taxing a maximum of $20,000 of construction materials per purchase.
The legislation also proposed applying the materials exemption only to single-structure projects. Projects building multiple structures would pay the standard sales-tax rates on construction purchases.
The final proposed change would require cruise ship companies to charge sales tax on any purchases made on boats that are “docked, moored, or anchored,” inside the borough’s boundaries.
But rather than vote to introduce the legislation, which would have started the process of public hearings in advance of a final vote, new assembly member Eben Sargent argued that the issue needed more committee discussion.
The commerce committee did hold one discussion on the exemptions at their last meeting, but Sargent said he didn’t see a consensus on the specifics of the proposed legislation. For instance, Sargent questioned why the construction materials exemption was raised specifically to $20,000.
“The general consensus seemed to be that this was a work in progress,” Sargent said. “I was surprised to see it was on the consent agenda. You have three heavy hitters here… I want to present a solid argument of why (the exemptions) are set at the level they are.”
Sargent’s motion to send the issue back to committee passed 4-2, with assembly members Smith and Stickler voting against.
School Board compensation approved
The School Board has long paid its members a per-meeting stipend, likely since borough consolidation, Fullerton said Tuesday night. The stipend has been paid out of the school district budget.
But borough officials said district officials last week notified them about a section of borough charter that says school board compensation is “fixed by resolution adopted by the assembly.”
To comply with that process, the assembly officially approved the $100 per-meeting stipend that school board members are already being paid, with only Smith voting against the measure.
The assembly’s vote will not result in any new borough spending, as the stipend is already being paid, and comes from the school district’s annual budget, and not the borough’s.