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By Krista Kielsmeier Haines Borough code mandates the municipality have a department of economic development and a director to lead it. “Despite this code requirement, to my knowledge the department has never been established,” Mayor Stephanie Scott wrote in a memo last month, requesting that section of code be repealed. The Haines Borough Assembly this week advanced to a second public […]

Projects in the Chilkat Valley would receive $18.9 million in state funding from bills approved in the past week by the Alaska Legislature, including $6.1 million for a new veterans’ home and $4.5 million in harbor breakwater improvements. The amount is the highest in years. State Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines, who helped secure the funds, said […]

Residents got a look at the first round of the state’s thinking about improvements along the Chilkoot River corridor at a meeting Tuesday with officials from several agencies involved in planning. State archaeologist, biologists, landscapers, planners and state Division of Parks employees hosted the meeting, attended also by Ben Ellis, the division’s director. State Rep. Bill […]

Add another plan to borough planning efforts. In addition to work on a comprehensive plan and a strategic plan, the Haines Borough is embarking on a master plan for facilities. The firm selected to provide professional design services for a proposed community center also will evaluate all Haines Borough facilities, manager Mark Earnest wrote in a report this month. Earnest wrote […]

Haines Borough Manager Mark Earnest on Tuesday proposed using increased property taxes, a variety of cuts and reserves to fill a $579,000 hole in the municipality’s $11.3 million budget for the coming year. “This is the starting point. We know there are challenges here. We hope, through this process, to make it work,” Earnest told assembly members […]

A State Department proposal to eliminate seafood processing from a visa program that brings thousands of foreign students to Alaska may not have a big impact on Haines area fish plants, managers said this week. Mike Forbush of Ocean Beauty Seafoods said the change to the J-1 Summer Work Travel program should have little impact […]

The Haines Borough Assembly last week rescinded a February disaster declaration for sloughing of the Mount Ripinsky hillside at Lutak Road. Borough manager Mark Earnest provided the assembly with an e-mail from Kerry Seifert, an emergency management specialist with Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, before the 5-0 vote. Member Joanne Waterman was absent. Seifert wrote “the slope has stopped or slowed movement […]

Developer John Floreske Jr. is seeking a preliminary permit for a hydro-electric project at Walker Lake. The plant would generate 3,600 megawatt-hours annually, more than one-tenth of the electricity used annually by Haines and Skagway. The project, by Floreske’s Southern Energy, Inc., would build two, 15-foot wide, rock-filled dams, 250 feet and 325 feet in […]