Editor’s note: This year the Chilkat Valley News partnered with KHNS on its election coverage in addition to hosting two candidate forums. A playlist of these profiles, as they are posted, can be found here.
You can find KHNS’ coverage, including audio-only excerpts of these conversations here.
We’re hosting a forum for assembly candidates on Friday, Sept. 25 at 6:30 p.m. in the Chilkat Center. It will also air live on KHNS, 102.3 locally.
Will Steinfeld: Anne Marie Palmieri, thanks so much for joining me. You’re running for assembly this year. Introduce yourself as much as you want, and then tell me why you’re running for office.
Anne Marie Palmieri: Thanks for having me, and I appreciate you taking the time today to talk about why I’m interested in running. I am a 30-year resident of Haines. I’m a wife and a mom and a grandmother. I grew up on the East Coast and moved here. My then boyfriend, now husband, got a job in Haines, and we moved in 1995. And really, I have grown up in my adult life here in Haines, raising a family, and I’ve been a public servant working for DEC for over 30 years for the state of Alaska, and that’s pretty much who I am. I’m a moderately successful gardener. I think we would starve slowly if we had to subsist on that. I love to subsistence fish and can food that Greg and the boys would bring home hunting
I’m curious why now for assembly because you, correct me if I’m wrong, you served on the school board. I’m sure you have a pretty involved, busy job in state government. What what is it about right now that’s made you feel like you want to get involved at the assembly level?
I’ve been involved in a number of different organizations in Haines just over time. From the school board, I was involved there for about 14 years when my kids were in the school. I was on the library board just for my love of reading and support of literacy through the library and those programs, and I really feel called, compelled to run for assembly this year because I feel like there are a lot of issues. Big issues are coming up for Haines, and I feel like I could help with making the assembly more functional, just through experience in different organizations, some of my skills with strategic planning, and discernment.
I consider myself pretty moderate, and kind of a bridge builder, and just focusing on conversations and building those relationships within the team on the assembly. How can we be more functional on the assembly and make decisions that really are the best for Haines.
When you talk about the types of questions the assembly is considering right now, to me it feels like there are some really weighty turning points that are coming up, but I’ve also only been here for a year and a half. I’m curious if, in your 30 years or so, if you’ve seen the type of questions the assembly is considering change over time.
I think some of the questions that we’re dealing with now, we’ve been dealing with for quite a while.
What are some of those questions?
Lutak Dock is one. You know, I think we’ve been talking about that for quite a while, maybe 10 years, something like that. I know that there was a report back in the early 2000s that said the Lutak Dock was ending its useful life. Then we were like, ah, what are we going to do? But now we have the money, right? And now we have a deadline. So, you know, getting to a decision in order to not lose that money is important. And what is the information that we need to know in order to make a decision?
Something I’ve heard from a couple of candidates and a couple of public officials I’ve talked to in the past few months is that when they went into office, they felt like one of their goals was to point the borough towards more of a long-term strategic planning focus to be able to deal with things before they become crises.
And then what I’ve heard from some of those same people is, once you get into office or start doing the job, it’s really hard because you’re just so overloaded with work and issues that it can be hard to carve out time or find a way to do that long term planning. Do you feel like there’s some kind of answer to that that can reorient the assembly in a way that’s practical?
Yeah, I think that balance is important. You have a fire, and you’re trying to put that out at the same time that you’re trying to plan. But if you don’t, if you don’t take the time to do that strategic planning, and have those conversations, it makes more fires, right? So there is a balance there. I mean, you can’t anticipate every question, but, I think there’s a situation that I’ve been thinking about with tourism and the the cruise ship dock and Global Port Holdings.
So you can do it several different ways, and I’m not being critical of the way that the assembly chose to move this forward. I’m just saying there are different ways, right? And one way is that you can put out an RFP that says to Global Port Holdings or anyone else, tell us what is your idea for what this would look like in Haines. Another way to do it would be to have a conversation with the community and say, we are looking for an RFP that addresses these 10 things, right? You can either have your framework, or you can get a whole bunch of ideas from the beginning. It’s just different ways of doing it.
Something that feels unresolved to me is I’ve heard all along with global ports, we need to figure out what the community wants as its target number of passengers.
Whether or not that’s the right question to ask, it’s the question that a lot of people have been asking, and I don’t feel like I’ve personally heard an answer or seen a process for finding that answer. I think it’s challenging — I think the practical nature of answering that question is really hard.
I don’t know if I think that’s the question. For me, and I’m still trying to figure out what all my questions are. But one of the questions is how do we as a community retain control over what happens, and I think just in talking to people about about this, what I’ve heard is that people say, “Well, we don’t want it to be like this, or we don’t want it to be like this,” which helps you understand what you do want. But I don’t think we’re at the point where we can say, well, we want tourism to look a certain way. We only know what we don’t want, right? And that’s easier. That’s easier to figure out.
But just knowing what we want, I don’t think it’s a number. I think the community could look a lot of different ways, with the same number. So I don’t think we can fixate and say, “Oh, you know, the number is 100,000,” and I just threw that out, just to pick a number, because I don’t think it’s just picking the number. I think it’s kind of retaining that small town feel of Haines, kind of what makes us special. The fact that most of the people who own the stores here in Haines, they live here. They’re invested, and that’s important to us, right? That we’re all kind of pulling together.
Do you have an idea of how we get to that positive vision of what we want it to look like?
I can see that you sort of have an idea or or sort of idea about what it could look like. But I’m wondering, it seems challenging to find the right mix of regulations or ordinances or whatever it is to be able to actually guide it in that direction. Do you think either you have ideas about how to do that or ways to find the expertise to know how to do that.
I mean, I have some ideas, but I also think I’m only one person, and I think there are a lot of other people who have a lot more experience and expertise in something like tourism than I do. And so I think just as we listen to each other and learn from each other, and kind of come together in a relationship and mutual positive regard, let’s just have a conversation about it, and without judgment.
Are there specific things that you’ve seen from the assembly in the past three years or six years, however long, that you would like to change to have the dialogue be more productive?
Well, one thing that I’ve been thinking about with the assembly, and really, I mean, it’s with any elected body. It was like this on the school board, that it changes every year. So there are new people and there’s a new dynamic. The assembly of six years ago is not the assembly of today.
The assembly that takes that takes over at the end of October or beginning of November, is going to be different. There’ll be a new mayor, and that person will be responsible for kind of directing and charting a path.
One of the things that helped us on the on the school board was to have frequent planning sessions and workshops places where we could all sit down together talk about issues talk talk things through, answer questions directly, without without having to worry about Robert’s rules of order, and just having that that informal conversation.
At DEC I work on a group where we write regulations and guidance, and a lot of times when you’re writing regulations, you sit down and you say, okay, the current regulation says this. We’re going to change it a little bit, and then with a group of several people, three, four people, you know, you look at the wording and you say, well, what does this mean to you, and how can it be interpreted, and to have that time to really just kind of delve into it, I think is important, and I think I think we’re stronger with a diversity of opinion, I think that’s I think that’s vital because everybody brings something different and everybody’s valued, and those and those questions are valued.
I’m interested in you saying that you spend time working on writing regulations at DEC, because one challenge I’ve heard the assembly talking about this year is figuring out how to write environmental guidelines of various sorts for heavy industry. There’s always discussion, especially at the planning commission, but at the assembly too, of land use regulations just being sort of mangled because they’re really hard to write, and there are parts that are missing and parts that got repealed. People talk about rewriting Title 18 all the time. Do you think there are lessons from your professional life that you want to take to the assembly? Are there things about writing these kinds of regulations that people who don’t do it all the time you feel like might not realize?
I think every regulation is different. And so I think on the assembly side, I think a lot of it’s reviewing regulations as opposed to writing, which, I mean, writing code would be, on the staff. So, it’s different. On the assembly, it’s kind of the broader view than actually doing it.
Before we get too far, I should ask you about budgets, and I think it’s kind of related to state government because I would guess you spend some time each year waiting for the state budget to come in and see how much you have to work with in your program. The borough spent a pretty good amount from savings last year and a smaller amount this year. Do you feel like the borough’s revenue mix right now and spending mix is something sustainable going forward?
I haven’t been involved in the borough budget, so I think that is something that I think, until you go through that process, I think it’s somewhat hard to understand all the nitty gritty from the outside. So I’m looking forward to learning more about that.
But my opinion is that we need to spend only what we have. The borough doesn’t have much discretionary money, so just in looking at the way they, you know, the revenue that they have, and the money that they do spend, we’ve got salaries. We’ve got employees to pay. We’ve got infrastructure to maintain. All of these things. So if you look at the discretionary part of that, it’s a very small piece. So it’s a challenge.
Where do you think we go if federal money and state money keeps dropping? What can we do since margins are already so tight?
Well, you can either raise more revenue or you can cut your spending. Those are tough conversations to have. I think that raising taxes is hard, and I think that before taxes are raised, I think it really has to be justified as to why those are being raised.
How do you think you justify that? Is it a matter of feeling like you’ve cut everything that there is to be cut? How does that work?
I think people want to know that you’re spending their money wisely. I think they have to trust that.
I was talking with someone in town who owns a small business, and they were telling me how much they are taxed. They say, how much is my service worth, they pay taxes on that. They pay the property tax where they have their building. They pay property tax on their home. They pay all the sales tax on things that they buy, and so all these things really just compound. So if we think about the different taxes that people pay, I think it’s a lot.
What does it mean to show people that you’re spending their money wisely? How do you go about doing that?
Yes, that’s a tough one. That’s a tough one. I think there’s a conversation. One of the things that I saw when I’ve attended borough budget meetings is that I haven’t really understood how the assembly makes decisions about the money. There’s a presentation, and then kind of at the last meeting, on that last COW, someone will make a motion.
I feel like I’ve jumped around and kind of had you touch on a lot of different topics, and I feel like I haven’t asked what I think is the most important question, which is what do you feel like your highest priorities are? If you’re on the assembly come November, what’s the issue that you’re going to get to work on first?
I think the highest priority right now for the borough is the Lutak Dock.
Why is that? What about it makes it the highest priority?
Well, I think that it is critical infrastructure. If the dock fails, then it’ll be really devastating for our community. Maybe not devastating. Maybe just challenging. Let’s just say challenging. Because that’s how we get our fuel. That’s how we get our groceries. And so, I think that there’s certain deadlines that need to be met. So let’s just say that the dock is structurally fine and we have that time to replace it, which would be great. We have to get the grant done by the end of September of 2027. So we just have to get all of our ducks in a row, and it’s a process to get to that point, and just making sure that we are making this forward progress, and we’re making the decisions in the time that we need to make them, and we’re hitting all those milestones.
Is there anything the assembly or the admin, or the community even, could have been doing differently in the last year or two years to avoid where we’re at right now?
You know, I think people are making the best decisions that they can with the information that they have at the time. I don’t want to go back and point fingers. I do think people are just trying to do the right thing. I mean, that’s what I hear when I talk to people.
It’s how much they love Haines, and they want Haines to be a great place to live. So okay, let’s chart a path. Thinking about what I would like to do if I’m on the assembly: last year the the assembly had a planning committee planning meeting, and one of the things that they voted for as a high priority was housing, and I think that’s important too. Childcare is also important. I mean, these are some critical issues. That they’re big, they’re weighty. So, how do we move those forward? What are the little things? How can we break it down? How can we come up with a path to get to this goal where we want to be?
I have one question about the doc, but I think it applies to those other issues. Last assembly meeting, one assembly member was kind of saying, we pay Moffatt and Nichol to be experts. So when they give us advice, we should accept it. And then there was kind of another group group of thought, another assembly member saying, our job as assembly members is to ask questions and provide oversight. Where do you stand on the assembly’s relationship to hired expertise?
I’m going to say it’s a balance, right? It’s not one or the other. I think it’s a balance. I think that you do hire experts for that. I mean, I’m not an engineer, and I don’t know about building a dock, but I’m hoping that the experts we hire can explain it to us in a way that answers our questions and provides us the information that we need. I know that there’s been a lot of concern about the cost, and it seems to me that that’s the big issue right now. How much does it cost? We need to know how much it costs, but we also need to know, we don’t have enough money, and how are we going to get that money?
And I think that’s a great question that one assembly member raised. Which is, what are our options for for getting this extra money, because we’re not going to know the true cost until a proposal comes in, so we can we can try to kind of narrow down the cost now with an estimate, but until the the proposals come in from the RFP in this in the spring, that’s when we’ll know the cost.
Things change. So, there’s a war going on. Steel prices go up. We just ordered some deck furniture this summer and saw on our bill from AML, a 14% fuel surcharge. Things are just getting more expensive.
I have one last question for you before we run out of time. Do you feel like there are people, types of voices, that are underrepresented on the assembly? Are there people that you’re excited to get on the assembly to represent?
Speaker 3 33:43
Well, you know, I’m hoping that I can represent all of the Hanes community. I appreciate the fact that all of our seats are at large seats, and I hope that everyone in the community would know that they can call me, they can email me, and let’s have a cup of tea. Let’s go for a walk, or meet somewhere, or just talk on the phone. Just have that conversation. Tell me what you think, and, like I said, I think we’re stronger with our diversity and with all the different voices.
Anne Marie Palmieri, thank you for joining us.