A look back—and the week ahead in the Chilkat Valley.
Take a look around and let us know what you think by leaving a comment here and if you have meetings or deadlines you’d like to see included, send a note to Rashah McChesney at [email protected]. |
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| Duly Noted: A dessert auction, a new pastor, beading, 4-H, and a focaccia pop-up. |
Courtesy/Lesllie Evenden
Matt Whitman on a recent trip to Baja, Mexico. |
Avid Duly Noted column readers may recall details of a trip to Baja, Mexico last week. Locals Leslie Evenden, Nene Wolfe, and Sara and Richard Chapell were on the trip which included seeing cave painting made by the Indigenous Cochimí. Well, as it turns out we overlooked one local attendee. |
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| | 5 p.m. Haines wildlife meeting with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Takshanuk Watershed Council at the Haines library. There will be electric fence vouchers.
5:30 p.m. Haines’ Government Affairs and Services Committee to meet. Among the issues on its agenda: Am operating agreement and cost-share plan with the Four Winds Resource Center for the Mosquito Lake School, a contract with Becky’s Place, and an intergovernmental meeting with local tribes.
6:30 p.m. - Haines Borough School Board to meet in the school library. Among the items on its agenda,
the board will be discussing the lone proposal for pupil transportation that came in. Last year, the board voted to drop busing service after the sole proposal came in 86% higher than the previous contract. They'll also be contending with the resignations of board member Keely Baumgartner, two teachers, and a lunch aide and the first draft of next year's budget.
Wednesday, April 8
5:30 p.m. Joint assembly, planning commission , and Ports and Harbors Advisory Committee meeting to discuss concepts for the Lutak Dock.
Thursday, April 9
10 a.m. - Alaska Department of Public Safety second listening session open to representatives of Alaska’s 229 federally recognized tribes. The Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault wants to hear directly from tribal governments on how to improve Alaska’s response to domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking through development of the new four years Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), Services Training Officers Prosecutors (STOP) implementation plan. STOP is a federal grant awarded to the state which focuses primarily on training for law enforcement, prosecutors and the court system. |
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| | The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation has put out a draft of its 2026 Integrated Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment report. This report comes out every two years and catalogs the conditions of Alaska’s waters. Chilkoot Inlet, Lynn Canal, Taiya Inlet and Mosquito Lake are all included in the new report. | | 9 a.m., The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board’s regular meeting is being held in Nome and via Zoom. The Haines Brewing Company’s brewery retail license is up for renewal. | | 6:30 p.m. The Haines Borough assembly is considering an application from Alaska Mountain Guides for a new commercial tour permit to Eldred Rock, among other places. The tour is described as guided, narrated sightseeing and wildlife tours in Lutak Inlet, Taiya Inlet, Taiyasanka Harbor, and Lynn Canal focused on marine wildlife viewing, coastal scenery, glacial and fjord landscapes, and regional maritime and cultural history. Public comments can be made at the public hearing on April 14, or sent to the Haines borough clerk’s office at [email protected]. | | Deadline for registration for the May 2 SAT test at the Haines Borough School District. | | Comment deadline on Atlas Tower’s is proposal to build a 140-foot tall cell tower near 52 N Sawmill Road in Haines. Public comments on the potential side effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted to Trileaf Corp, Rachel Bishop at [email protected], or to 2121 W Chandler BLVD., Suite 108, Chandler, AZ, 85224. Or, by calling 480-447-8260. | | Written public comment deadline for weighing in on Proposal 189 on local traditional knowledge, which is being taken up by the state’s Board of Fisheries. The board, which sets regulations for management of all fisheries in the state, is considering creating a path for people with local traditional knowledge about an issue, and nominated by their community, tribe or a certain organizations, to share their experiences, values, observations, and data directly with the board. | | A preliminary plan for the revision of the Tongass National Forest Plan was published on March 23, beginning a 45-day public comment period which ends May 7. People can view and share their positions on the current state of the Tongass National Forest Plan and leave a comment here. | | Have a meeting, public comment period or something else you think Chilkat Valley residents should weigh-in on? Submit it here. | |
| | Reporter Will Steinfeld is in the middle of a month-long stay in the capitol as part of the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism’s Legislative Reporter Exchange. You can reach him anytime with questions or tips at [email protected] | | I’m picking up the vocab of the legislature left and right: effective dates, committee substitutes, “leg fin” (sounds like some vestigial structure, but is actually legislative finance, a bunch of analysts that work in the old church across the street). | | The new one for this week is “technical session.” I had been excited to check it out, thinking it was some special group of wonks ironing out the technical details of new policy. Instead, it turns out, it’s one lonely lawmaker, gaveling in and gaveling out an empty chamber: legislative floor session as pure technicality. | | That’s to allow the rest of the lawmakers and their staff to head back to their home districts for the holiday without running afoul of state statute, which doesn’t allow the legislature to adjourn for extended stretches during the session. | | The CVN, however, does not have the liberty of gaveling in and gaveling out for a week for a “technical issue.” That’s OK, because there was plenty of buzz in the building prior to the short shutdown. | | The biggest topics were two longtime statewide debates: the gasline and the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). | | Both are fuzzy issues. On the PFD, some lawmakers want to pass a large sum along to Alaskans, somewhere north of $3,000 per resident, even if it means handcuffing the rest of the budget. Others say it's necessary to drop the dividend — probably closer to the roughly $1,000 residents got last year — to keep the rest of the operating budget and state savings accounts whole. And according to some cynics, still others want to be able to say they supported a large dividend, knowing they’ll likely not deal with the resulting money crunch, given that a large dividend faces long odds of passing. | | What’s interesting is it’s not an up-and-down party line, or ideological issue. | | Some frame the PFD and Permanent Fund writ large as a large-scale, progressively-structured distribution of wealth — something you might think is favored by those on the left. | | But many members of the moderate and liberal majority coalition in the legislature have favored a smaller dividend in hopes of balancing the operating budget. | | On another level, many say that it’s as simple as the PFD being written into state statute, and that the government should follow the law. That’s what I heard one Republican representative saying, as he grumbled about the vote of his fellow minority member before the committee cameras and microphones turned on. | | One could go on and on with the list of different arguments and framings of the issue. | | All that makes for complicated debate with disagreement within both majority and minority caucuses. | | The Anchorage Daily News’ Iris Samuels wrote a good breakdown this week of what the House Finance Committee did with the PFD during its first real crack at the budget. | | On the pipeline issue, there’s a major push from the governor and federal government to build a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to ports further south, where liquified natural gas can then be exported to Asian markets. | | That kind of pipeline has long been debated, but proponents argue it’s particularly ripe now, with global natural gas supply dropping due to infrastructure destruction and interruption from the war with Iran. | | At a press conference two weeks ago, leaders from the Senate majority caucus told reporters lawmakers wanted to see a gas line get built. Where they’re hedging is on the terms of the deal. | | In one camp is Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who wants to give significant tax breaks to Glenfarne, the energy company set to develop the gas line. | | There are some parallels to debates in Haines: some want to create incentives to draw businesses in. Others say the government still needs to ensure its citizens see some of the revenue. | | While those two topics have, and will continue, to eat up much of the oxygen in the building, I think there are other pressing things going on that could hit closer to home. | | Take the Alaska Marine Highway System, which planned to have almost half of its 2026 operations funded by federal money. This winter, they had to deliver the bad news to legislators that the federal grants they had been counting on never even opened for applications. In testimony last month, Department of Transportation officials said without that money, the ferry system would run out of cash to operate in July. Yes, three months from now. | | This week is a critical time for seeing if there will be a solution to that crunch. I’m watching to see if the government money does in the end come through, as DOT officials have suggested. Check out this week’s paper if you’d like to read more about that. | | As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, there’s also some interesting stuff going on with regulations of PFAS, so-called forever chemicals. What’s making reporting on that more challenging is the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation saying they aren’t going to do any interviews on the topic of PFAS. Nevertheless, I’m planning to be able to tell you more about it when papers hit the stands in a couple days. | | Oh yeah: on a happier note, it’s folk fest week in Juneau. I’m excited to see some familiar faces here and listen to amazing Chilkat Valley artists like Keep the Pool Open, whose new song “Too True” could be a contender for song of the summer in Southeast, or even nationwide. At least that’s the word on the street. | | And as always, send me an email at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you about what you’d like to see me cover. | |
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