John Norton has lived many lives around the region: commercial fisherman, geologist, Juneau-Douglas High School science teacher, over a decade in the Haines Volunteer Fire Department, and until recently, independent artist. Now, he hopes to add a term on the borough assembly to that resume. And if that happens, Norton plans to bring a change of direction with him.
That pitch has included some direct comparisons to this year’s incumbents. He described the Lutak Dock rebuild, which he called the biggest issue facing the borough, as “something that (incumbents Richard Clement and Gabe Thomas) have had before them for three years.”
“It’s turned into a steep decline in likelihood of being resolved… They’ve been at that table to go ahead and change directions and they haven’t done that,” Norton said.
On the dock issue, rather than just voting differently, Norton said he hopes to change the way things get done.
He would push to create a “working group” to evaluate the full range of dock-design proposals and do a cost-benefit analysis for each one. The group’s analysis would then be passed along to the assembly to make, in theory, a better-informed decision on how to proceed with the project.
The borough does currently have an open call for citizen design proposals. Manager Alekka Fullerton has said those proposals will be evaluated in a similar cost-benefit manner by engineers.
But Norton said his vision is different. For one, the working group would be an official assembly-appointed group.
“I think you’d have to have it be representative of different opinions in the community,” Norton said. “Having critics and proponents of those different scenarios for solving our dock problem ends up being the best way to diffuse the divisiveness that we’ve seen in the community.”
Beyond just the working group, Norton also has a significantly different assessment of time constraints on the dock project from the sitting assembly. Many in borough government, including Fullerton and harbormaster Henry Pollan, have said recently the existing dock is in imminent danger of structural failure; Norton believes it is less urgent.
“We’re not faced with a dock collapsing,” Norton said, calling the current roll-on-roll-off ramp a “perfectly workable solution” for unloading freight in the event of serious dock failure.
Norton said his assessment comes from looking at pictures taken during regular inspections by Pollan — who has sounded the alarm of imminent dock failure — and on previous engineering assessments.
Norton’s pitch to do things differently includes managing government spending and closing the borough’s revenue deficit. During a candidate forum last week, Clement, the incumbent, advocated for nonprofits to “have a good marketing plan” to fundraise, rather than take government support.
Norton said he disagreed with that statement and called it inconsistent, given assembly support for a for-profit enterprise in the Freeride World Tour. He also said the statement didn’t account for Haines residents without much to spare.
“We have a significant amount of our population that needs those services that don’t have money to pay for it,” Norton said. “As a community, we recognize they need those services and so we provide them.”
But Norton’s solution on nonprofit allocation was not too far off from Clement’s position: wary of giving outright government funding to private groups that don’t serve “the community as a whole,” he said.
The definition of what qualifies as “serving the community as a whole” is a key sticking point in the funding debate; Norton specifically picked out issues of health, safety and education, and organizations like Becky’s Place and Haines Friends of Recycling, the latter of which Norton volunteers for.
“I’m very careful when we’re putting public funds into any enterprise that would support an individual kind of private business,” Norton said.
Of course, the assembly didn’t fund nonprofits at all this year. Even without that spending, the borough struggled with a budget deficit opened in large part by the loss of state and federal funding, and an expanded senior property tax exemption.
If elected to office, closing that budget shortfall, Norton said, would come from a number of smaller measures. Specifically, Norton said he would suggest cutting back on borough equipment purchases, which was the one area of cuts assembly members suggested last year, and “revisiting” the senior property tax exemption — though any rollback of that tax code would have to be done by voters through a ballot measure.
When asked about other plans to increase revenue, he also suggested initiatives to benefit local commerce. That included better marketing, pointing as an example to social media advocacy from the Chamber of Commerce, and a pitch for an improved food court, or food truck area, near the cruise ship dock.
Beyond the specific policy points, Norton plans to hold his out-of-office experience close if he does win a seat. Even during his time in Juneau, Norton said, he had plenty of small-world Haines ties. Current superintendent Lilly Boron was a student teacher in his classroom, and Kaleb Froehlich, who was recently — and mistakenly — pitched as a borough lobbyist candidate last month, was his student.
“These are all things that give me that sense of belonging to the community — knowing people, and wanting to see whatever I can do to help make their lives functional.”
And though he has drawn some comparisons between himself and other candidates, he said he’s confident in their motives, as well.
“One thing we all share is a belief in doing the best for our community,” Norton said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that’s what they’re working on.”