Next year’s budget

Assembly members held a public hearing on next year’s budget and, while they did vote to add $1,000 to support volunteer recruitment and retention by the Haines Volunteer Fire Department, the majority of the discussion was centered on a proposal to potentially cut staff.  

Assembly member Eben Sargent kicked off the discussion by saying that he does not support the borough balancing its budget by spending from savings long term. 

“The Mayor and I have had some discussion. I don’t think things are going to change or get better, he does. I think that these are real structural problems and if we spend all of our rainy day fund when we get the big rainy day – that we haven’t really seen I think – we’ll be in trouble,” he said. 

Sargent said he wanted to consider both ways to generate more revenue and also cuts to the current budget. He suggested a tax on alcohol which borough manager Alekka Fullerton told him would have to be ratified by the voters. two

The last time Haines borough voters considered an alcohol tax was during the 2019 election. Voters had two options in front of them that year, one to tax the sale of alcohol and the other to tax the sale of marijuana.  Of the people who voted on those two propositions, nearly 61% of people voted against the alcohol tax, while 55% voted in favor of a marijuana tax. 

Sargent said he thought it could be time to revisit the issue again. “I think if we put a big revenue package in front of the voters and the voters say no, then next year we need to come back and start making the cuts. We’ve had a number of changes that have reduced our revenue and we haven’t really cut our spending.” 

To that end, Sargent said he had looked at possible cuts and while he first supported the idea of cutting a fifth police officer position, data from finance officer Jila Stuart convinced him that the borough needs at least five officers. 

“This is, across all departments, the questions we want to have,” he said. 

He proposed a “standby officer,” or someone in the community who has police training but could be on-call and available to work part time if the department needs them, also reducing the amount of standby pay going to current officers who are covering a staff shortfall. 

He also suggested asking the borough manager to model what a $200,000 reduction in payroll would look like. 

“How would we handle that at the borough? Because I just don’t see how we handle this gap and I don’t want to personally cherry-pick people’s jobs, but I don’t know how to close this gap,” he said. “If people don’t like the level of service they get with less staff then they should give us some more money to play with.” 

In response, borough finance director Jila Stuart told assembly members that the budget errs on the side of under-projecting revenue and over-projecting spending. Stuart also pointed out that the amount of money the current budget proposal would draw from a savings account is about  2% of the total amount in that account. Fullerton noted that the borough is projected to have $5 million in fund balance – or savings – after this budget season. 

“So if the expenses come in a little low, which they probably will, or if the revenues come in a little high, we’ll be just about right,” Stuart said. 

She said the borough’s savings give it the luxury of budgeting to use some of it. 

“I’m not alarmed by the amount of funding that the manager has proposed using to provide services,” she said. “But I appreciate that you guys are being fiscally conservative and you’re careful with the people’s money and you don’t want to spend recklessly.” 

Fullerton also pushed back against the idea that she should be tasked with identifying staff to cut. “With all due respect, my job is to bring you guys a budget and then I need to defend my budget choices that I made. If you guys want to cut staff, I think that’s your job to do,” she said. 

Sargent countered that the reason management jobs are highly paid is to deal specifically with these kinds of issues. “I would like to take this to the people of Haines and say, reduce your government or fund your government,” he said. 

In the end, Sargent’s proposal was voted down 3-2 with Sargent and Loomis voting in favor of the idea. 

AMG Lutak boat tour permit

A new type of tour will be joining others that take visitors to the Chilkoot Corridor to see bears and other wildlife. 

Alaska Mountain Guides applied to run boat tours in the Lutak Inlet, which has faced opposition from some residents who said they were concerned about everything from boat noise, to crowding, to poor behavior by AMG guides, the prospect of a new tour adding pressure to an already stressed population of bears in the area, and the potential for environmental contamination. 

Owner Sean Gaffney originally submitted the tour permit request along with another giving the company the ability to run tours to Eldred Rock Lighthouse.  The Lutak Inlet tour, Gaffney said during Tuesday’s meeting, is in part designed as a backup for days that the boat can’t make the 17 mile trip to Eldred Rock. 

The company’s proposal is for a 44-foot vessel that will take up to 26 passengers at a time on a maximum of two tours a day. The company also proposed a number of restrictions on the boat’s movement including that it would remain “mid-channel,” at least 1,000 feet from shore and go a maximum speed of 7 knots in the Lutak Inlet. 

But members of the public pointed out that the wildlife in the Chilkoot River area are already stressed by the volume of people who travel there to see them. 

“The tourism impacts at Lutak and Chilkoot are already too high,” said Ann Myren. “At what point will our community say ‘enough is enough’ and protect the wildlife and the sense of the Lutak area as well as protect the safety of visitors and the quality of life of the residents along the end of Lutak Road and Lutak Spur road. Please keep the inlet tour-free, so at least one area is not impacted by tourism.” 

Some commenters, like resident Cori Stennett, asked that if the assembly chose to disregard their concerns that it identify an obvious ‘do not pass’ boundary for the boat. Stennet also asked that there be a clear pathway for reporting violations of the permit. 

Others, like Barb Nettleton and Haynes Tormey, said they supported the permit and asked that the assembly prioritize economic development. 

“I take issue with using wildlife to prevent commerce or commercial activity,” said Nettleton. 

Cindy Jones, who also supported the tour, said she didn’t understand the complaints of residents who said they were concerned about the potential noise of boat tours. 

“Never once did I hear [about] the subsistence fishing rodeo that goes on during the fishing season up at Lutak. I guess tour boats are louder than fishing boats? Or do they go closer to the shore than fishing boats? I don’t know, it seems like they wouldn’t,” she said. 

Assembly member Craig Loomis said he was concerned that giving AMG the permit would spark interest from other operators looking to move into the area. 

“We’re going to end up with the same problems with cars in Chilkoot without any regulations. There has got to be a set standard or we’re going to end up with another fiasco like on the beach,” he said.   

Gaffney, who up until recently chaired a working group trying to find solutions for the hotly contested and congested Chilkoot Corridor area, said he agreed with Loomis that there should be set standards. But he said he thought that was a different conversation than the one the assembly was having on his single tour-permit application. 

“I think it’s one that we should look over.  We dance around it all the time with the Chilkoot specifically but it’s increasingly a concern and we should make it a different level of conversation,” he said. 

Assembly members mulled over a number of restrictions, but ultimately settled on keeping the boat a half-mile from the mean low tide mark at the mouth of the Chilkoot River, mandating that the company keep its GPS coordinate data for each trip for a year and make it available to the borough by request. The body also voted to require that the permit come back to the assembly for consideration in two years. 

A motion by Craig Loomis to keep the tours from starting until May 20 to protect the eulachon run failed with Forster, Stickler, and Thomas voting against it. 

The tour permit was approved by a 5-0 vote. 

A cop on call

Police chief Jimmy Yoakum was in the room for most of the meeting. Before public comment began on Tuesday night, Mayor Tom Morphet said he asked Yoakum to attend after obscenity and disruptive behavior interrupted the last assembly meeting. 

“I ask folks to be civil and to keep their comments positive and helpful but if we lose decorum I’m going to ask police chief Jimmy Yoakum to remove disruptive people from the assembled group,” Morphet said. “We’re going to try to keep a tighter meeting.” 

The incident Morphet was referring to happened during the April 28 assembly meeting when Fred Gray was giving public testimony on the Lutak Dock. Gray said “bull****” as he was wrapping up his comment and Morphet gaveled him down. 

But as Gray was leaving the podium and returning to his seat, Gray ignored that gavel and continued talking. 

Gray said Wednesday that when he continued talking after being gaveled, he was calling out Morphet for having used obscene language in the past and the hypocrisy of gaveling him down for doing it. “He has no grounds to say anything about my behavior,” Gray said.

But he also said he doesn’t think he’s a threat and he was not intending to be threatening with his profanity.

Both Morphet and Gray said they couldn’t recall a recent time when a mayor called in the police to keep order during a meeting. But Gray said he did remember a time when it happened in the past. 

“That was years and years ago,” he said. “We had people threaten people at the borough assembly. There was a direct threat.” 

When asked if he felt Gray’s actions were threatening, Morphet said once someone is ignoring the gavel, they don’t have respect for control of the room. 

He said his decision to call in a police officer to keep the meeting civil is supported in code. 

“I think it’s important for people to remember that they don’t necessarily have to respect the mayor or the assembly members but they do have to respect the forum,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “No one owns that forum, it belongs to the community and when you step beyond the rules of the meeting, then we have an issue.” 

He also pointed out that people don’t have absolute free speech in the assembly chambers. “You can’t get in there and yell f***, f***, f***, f***,” he said. “You can do that on the street corner.” 

Morphet said he doesn’t necessarily think the police will have to remove anyone, but that people tend to behave better when an officer is present. 

“Once I can’t gavel order in the room, I’m out of options, other than me jumping over the dais and grabbing the person. I’d rather Jimmy (Yoakum) do that because he’s trained.”