The Haines Borough Assembly meeting on May 12 will include the first reading of the FY27 budget. The Chilkat Valley News’ Will Steinfeld and KHNS’ Melinda Munson sat down to talk about the budget process.

Melinda Munson: The budget process has started, and it will make its first appearance at the assembly meeting. Can you walk us through that process?

Will Steinfeld: Where we’re at right now is this is the first official chance for residents to weigh in on the borough’s budget plan for the upcoming year. The whole budget has to go through by June 15. But before that happens, there’s all these public hearings. There’s going to be at least two, maybe a third. And there’s likely going to be a whole bunch of amendments to the budget by assembly members that will change what the plan is going forward. 

I think what the Assembly is really looking for here is the optimal mix of services for residents, given the money that the borough is taking in. And that’s a hard question to answer … What is that optimal mix of services? So, I think when people weigh in and come to assembly meetings and tell assembly members what they want to see from their government, I think that at least has some role to play in what the final budget plan is.

So last year, the school ended up getting more money than was typical. And after a lot of citizen comment, the pool got more money than was originally budgeted. Nonprofits did not get any money. What are the things that we’re watching for in this year’s budget discussions?

One thing I’ve heard in recent weeks is Borough Manager Alekka Fullerton has encouraged assembly members to hey, if you think there are changes you want to propose to this budget, try and make them early. Make them at this first public hearing, instead of waiting right till the end. In that way, residents have time to see what these changes are, hear the debate and then tell assembly members what they think.

And the Haines Economic Development Corporation is on the agenda. What is the HEDC, exactly, and what will they be talking about?

Haines Economic Development Corporation – they recently dissolved. They had been doing economic development work –  a lot of studies and research about the local economy, providing data. They’re back now. They’ve reorganized their board, and they’re supposed to get money from the borough to continue doing work, at least similar to what they’ve been doing.

Last assembly meeting, a kind of broad range of assembly members seemed hesitant about giving them more money. Or outright have said, you know, I don’t think we should give them more money until we figure out what’s going on with all nonprofits. 

The one update for this week is the mayor has come out and said he is going to veto any cuts to HEDC funding. The mayor has that power to veto legislation. His rationale for that is, he says the borough has a special tax that they levy that’s supposed to go toward economic development. And right now, HEDC is the avenue we have to spend it. And the mayor says if we’re going to tax citizens, we owe it to them. We have responsibility to them to spend it in the way that we promise. So that’s his reasoning.

There’s a new tour permit on Tuesday’s agenda for a boat tour. Give us some details about that.

This is one that got a lot of public input, outcry, maybe you could call it, last time it was heard. AMG owner Sean Gaffney is coming to the Assembly to ask for a new permit for a boat tour that would go into Lutak Inlet. Residents around Lutak last time expressed a lot of worry about noise, disturbance to wildlife and themselves, their neighborhood. And the Assembly approved part of Gaffney’s proposal, but for this Lutak Inlet portion said, please resubmit and come back to us. 

So Gaffney is back this week. He has written up a whole number of kind of conditions, or stipulations he would have on these tours that seem like they’re aimed at addressing the concerns that have come up. So talking about limiting the frequency of these boat trips, the distance the boats would be from shore, trying to talk about boat speed and reducing noise. We’ll see if that lands with residents, and which side the Assembly decides to come down on.”