Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

It seems oddly synchronous that John Schnabel, Layton Bennett, Ray Menaker and Bob Henderson died within a year of each other.

(Henderson, age 95, April 13, 2015; Menaker, 93, September 22, 2015; Bennett, 96, Jan. 9, and Schnabel, 96, March 18.)

I’m tempted to call these guys our Fab Four. (Mix and match them yourself but I’d cast Menaker as John Lennon, Schnabel as Paul McCartney, Bennett as Ringo Starr and Henderson as George Harrison.)

When I arrived 30 years ago, these four were big guns in this town. Along with Carl Heinmiller, Mimi Gregg and Lib Hakkinen, they held up their respective corners of our community and helped shape it.

I took some comfort that gray-haired folks were in charge. I had lived for two years in Anchorage, where it seemed few people in positions of authority were much older than 40.

Haines felt like a more permanent place by virtue of its aging lions.

Writing the stories of these four lives in the past year brought to light some interesting parallels.

Each was a World War II serviceman and each moved here looking for something better.

Each was results-oriented, undaunted by large projects, and willing to bend with change at least enough to stay relevant.

Each kept busy well past retirement age. Menaker was 43 when he launched the CVN. Henderson managed the Haines Borough’s permanent fund investments into his seventies. Bennett’s airline didn’t start making significant sums of money until he was about 65. Schnabel became a TV star in his nineties.

Each kept a modest home and, on the whole, each was concerned more with ideas than image. Perhaps because they grew up in the years before television, they attached importance to words and deeds.

Significantly, these four were rooted here. None of them maintained homes in the Lower 48 or habitually spent months or even weeks in warmer climes. They were very much of this place and their concerns were about this place.

Menaker was fond of saying that no one is irreplaceable. Surely the town will see other ambitious, capable people. Also, these men had the advantage of coming of age during the post-World War II and Alaska oil booms, extended eras of opportunity.

Still, it’s hard to imagine four such interesting individuals, all about the same age, doing so much, lasting so long, and leaving legacies quite so big.

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Rather than spend much time on the budget for the coming year, Haines Borough Assembly members might consider quickly passing the draft proposed by interim manager Brad Ryan and moving directly to a more pressing question: How to keep the municipality afloat.

Ryan’s budget balances, albeit by using savings, but what will the borough do when the savings run out?

Unanticipated booms have rescued the Haines economy a number of times in the past 30 years: the arrival of Chilkoot Lumber Co. in 1987, filming of the movie “White Fang” in 1990, the real estate boom in the Pacific Northwest in the mid-1990s, and spinoff from the national real estate bubble in the early 2000s.

Today there is no economic savior on our horizon and government money from state oil revenues – which has played a large role in supporting our economy – is going away.

Here are some ideas the assembly might start talking about:

Historic levels of property tax. Before state oil revenues started paying the bills around here in the late 1970s, property taxes in the townsite ran as high as 16 mills and routinely exceeded last year’s rate of 10.47 mills. A property tax cap passed in 2003 by a mere six votes back in booming 2003 also should be reconsidered, as it hamstrings our ability to pay for things we need.

Use of the borough permanent fund. The $8 million fund was established as a rainy-day account. It is now rainy. Currently, interest from the fund is used to reduce property taxes. As property ownership is largely a privilege of the wealthy, the fund serves only a segment of our community that is already comfortable. This money might be better directed toward young people and families who are critical to keeping our community vibrant.

A severance tax on minerals. Regardless of whether or not the Palmer Project becomes a mine, it’s long overdue for the municipality to receive a share of the wealth removed from public lands in the valley. Severance taxes from local harvest of fisheries and trees come back to the municipality, and those resources are renewable. The nonrenewable nature of mining makes ironclad the case for such a levy. The assembly could look to a similarly-sized community with a severance tax to determine a reasonable rate.

Borough services that can be contracted to nonprofits. Services like sewage treatment and tourism promotion might be more cheaply provided by local nonprofits, which are boosted by volunteer labor and not bound by the borough’s union scale. In nearby Atlin, B.C., volunteers operate the library, museum and other town facilities. A like model may be a way to preserve our future.

A charge for ambulance service. Ambulance crew volunteers have opposed previous proposals to charge for this free service, saying they’re afraid people who need it may not call if they have to pay. That’s a legitimate concern. Here’s a compromise and a place to start: Charge only for a person’s second call in a calendar year. Petersburg charges $300.

Borough fee structures. The fee to use local boat ramps, for example, is $60 per year. If you’ve got enough for a boat, you can afford $100 for maintaining our harbors. Up until 2005, our harbors were owned and maintained by the State of Alaska. Now we must maintain them and the harbor fund is still a long way from paying for itself. That means taxpayers who don’t own boats subsidize services for those who do. In fairness, the burden of this expense, and perhaps others, should be borne most directly by those receiving services.

The motor vehicle tax. The $11 annual motor vehicle tax for disposing of junked vehicles could also be used for maintaining borough roads, if adjusted upward. An estimated 90 percent of the public works budget goes for road maintenance. Costs of roads should fall heavily on drivers. The motor vehicle tax is the levy that would most appropriately fund borough roads and their upkeep.

The sales tax cap on building supplies. If you’re building a house in Haines, you pay only on the first $5,000 of materials purchased locally in a year. Until 2004, you paid taxes on the first $10,000. Ironically, the break in 2004 came during a local building boom. Either way, a person building something that costs more than $10,000 in materials can afford to pay full tax on the first $10,000. As long as consumers continue to pay full sales tax on groceries, this cap will be questionable.

Promoting local shopping. As important as jobs are to the local economy, it’s as important that money from local jobs stays here and recirculates, particularly during lean times. Human nature would be to scrimp during such times by buying from big-box stores or online. That’s why continuing education is necessary for sustaining local sales, which provide $3 million of the borough’s $12 million budget.

Encouraging public review of the budget by publishing spending details online and a place for residents to comment on what can be adjusted or cut. Other municipalities have used this method to recruit the public in a creative discussion of budgeting. The more brains on the budget, the better.

This list represents only items off the top of this editor’s head. Careful scrutiny of the budget and the town’s economic situation would certainly lead to other options. Let’s get all the ideas on the table. Express yours to the CVN or to the assembly.

Nothing has to happen this year, but considering the speed of local decision-making, discussion should start now for making decisions a year from now. Budget decisions made at the last minute aren’t likely to be thoughtful or compassionate.

- Tom Morphet