Month: May 2026

Next year’s budget

Assembly members held a public hearing on next year’s budget and, while they did vote to add $1,000 to support volunteer recruitment and retention by the Haines Volunteer Fire Department, the majority of the discussion was centered on a proposal to potentially cut staff.  

Assembly member Eben Sargent kicked off the discussion by saying that he does not support the borough balancing its budget by spending from savings long term. 

“The Mayor and I have had some discussion. I don’t think things are going to change or get better, he does. I think that these are real structural problems and if we spend all of our rainy day fund when we get the big rainy day – that we haven’t really seen I think – we’ll be in trouble,” he said. 

Sargent said he wanted to consider both ways to generate more revenue and also cuts to the current budget. He suggested a tax on alcohol which borough manager Alekka Fullerton told him would have to be ratified by the voters. two

The last time Haines borough voters considered an alcohol tax was during the 2019 election. Voters had two options in front of them that year, one to tax the sale of alcohol and the other to tax the sale of marijuana.  Of the people who voted on those two propositions, nearly 61% of people voted against the alcohol tax, while 55% voted in favor of a marijuana tax. 

Sargent said he thought it could be time to revisit the issue again. “I think if we put a big revenue package in front of the voters and the voters say no, then next year we need to come back and start making the cuts. We’ve had a number of changes that have reduced our revenue and we haven’t really cut our spending.” 

To that end, Sargent said he had looked at possible cuts and while he first supported the idea of cutting a fifth police officer position, data from finance officer Jila Stuart convinced him that the borough needs at least five officers. 

“This is, across all departments, the questions we want to have,” he said. 

He proposed a “standby officer,” or someone in the community who has police training but could be on-call and available to work part time if the department needs them, also reducing the amount of standby pay going to current officers who are covering a staff shortfall. 

He also suggested asking the borough manager to model what a $200,000 reduction in payroll would look like. 

“How would we handle that at the borough? Because I just don’t see how we handle this gap and I don’t want to personally cherry-pick people’s jobs, but I don’t know how to close this gap,” he said. “If people don’t like the level of service they get with less staff then they should give us some more money to play with.” 

In response, borough finance director Jila Stuart told assembly members that the budget errs on the side of under-projecting revenue and over-projecting spending. Stuart also pointed out that the amount of money the current budget proposal would draw from a savings account is about  2% of the total amount in that account. Fullerton noted that the borough is projected to have $5 million in fund balance – or savings – after this budget season. 

“So if the expenses come in a little low, which they probably will, or if the revenues come in a little high, we’ll be just about right,” Stuart said. 

She said the borough’s savings give it the luxury of budgeting to use some of it. 

“I’m not alarmed by the amount of funding that the manager has proposed using to provide services,” she said. “But I appreciate that you guys are being fiscally conservative and you’re careful with the people’s money and you don’t want to spend recklessly.” 

Fullerton also pushed back against the idea that she should be tasked with identifying staff to cut. “With all due respect, my job is to bring you guys a budget and then I need to defend my budget choices that I made. If you guys want to cut staff, I think that’s your job to do,” she said. 

Sargent countered that the reason management jobs are highly paid is to deal specifically with these kinds of issues. “I would like to take this to the people of Haines and say, reduce your government or fund your government,” he said. 

In the end, Sargent’s proposal was voted down 3-2 with Sargent and Loomis voting in favor of the idea. 

AMG Lutak boat tour permit

A new type of tour will be joining others that take visitors to the Chilkoot Corridor to see bears and other wildlife. 

Alaska Mountain Guides applied to run boat tours in the Lutak Inlet, which has faced opposition from some residents who said they were concerned about everything from boat noise, to crowding, to poor behavior by AMG guides, the prospect of a new tour adding pressure to an already stressed population of bears in the area, and the potential for environmental contamination. 

Owner Sean Gaffney originally submitted the tour permit request along with another giving the company the ability to run tours to Eldred Rock Lighthouse.  The Lutak Inlet tour, Gaffney said during Tuesday’s meeting, is in part designed as a backup for days that the boat can’t make the 17 mile trip to Eldred Rock. 

The company’s proposal is for a 44-foot vessel that will take up to 26 passengers at a time on a maximum of two tours a day. The company also proposed a number of restrictions on the boat’s movement including that it would remain “mid-channel,” at least 1,000 feet from shore and go a maximum speed of 7 knots in the Lutak Inlet. 

But members of the public pointed out that the wildlife in the Chilkoot River area are already stressed by the volume of people who travel there to see them. 

“The tourism impacts at Lutak and Chilkoot are already too high,” said Ann Myren. “At what point will our community say ‘enough is enough’ and protect the wildlife and the sense of the Lutak area as well as protect the safety of visitors and the quality of life of the residents along the end of Lutak Road and Lutak Spur road. Please keep the inlet tour-free, so at least one area is not impacted by tourism.” 

Some commenters, like resident Cori Stennett, asked that if the assembly chose to disregard their concerns that it identify an obvious ‘do not pass’ boundary for the boat. Stennet also asked that there be a clear pathway for reporting violations of the permit. 

Others, like Barb Nettleton and Haynes Tormey, said they supported the permit and asked that the assembly prioritize economic development. 

“I take issue with using wildlife to prevent commerce or commercial activity,” said Nettleton. 

Cindy Jones, who also supported the tour, said she didn’t understand the complaints of residents who said they were concerned about the potential noise of boat tours. 

“Never once did I hear [about] the subsistence fishing rodeo that goes on during the fishing season up at Lutak. I guess tour boats are louder than fishing boats? Or do they go closer to the shore than fishing boats? I don’t know, it seems like they wouldn’t,” she said. 

Assembly member Craig Loomis said he was concerned that giving AMG the permit would spark interest from other operators looking to move into the area. 

“We’re going to end up with the same problems with cars in Chilkoot without any regulations. There has got to be a set standard or we’re going to end up with another fiasco like on the beach,” he said.   

Gaffney, who up until recently chaired a working group trying to find solutions for the hotly contested and congested Chilkoot Corridor area, said he agreed with Loomis that there should be set standards. But he said he thought that was a different conversation than the one the assembly was having on his single tour-permit application. 

“I think it’s one that we should look over.  We dance around it all the time with the Chilkoot specifically but it’s increasingly a concern and we should make it a different level of conversation,” he said. 

Assembly members mulled over a number of restrictions, but ultimately settled on keeping the boat a half-mile from the mean low tide mark at the mouth of the Chilkoot River, mandating that the company keep its GPS coordinate data for each trip for a year and make it available to the borough by request. The body also voted to require that the permit come back to the assembly for consideration in two years. 

A motion by Craig Loomis to keep the tours from starting until May 20 to protect the eulachon run failed with Forster, Stickler, and Thomas voting against it. 

The tour permit was approved by a 5-0 vote. 

A cop on call

Police chief Jimmy Yoakum was in the room for most of the meeting. Before public comment began on Tuesday night, Mayor Tom Morphet said he asked Yoakum to attend after obscenity and disruptive behavior interrupted the last assembly meeting. 

“I ask folks to be civil and to keep their comments positive and helpful but if we lose decorum I’m going to ask police chief Jimmy Yoakum to remove disruptive people from the assembled group,” Morphet said. “We’re going to try to keep a tighter meeting.” 

The incident Morphet was referring to happened during the April 28 assembly meeting when Fred Gray was giving public testimony on the Lutak Dock. Gray said “bull****” as he was wrapping up his comment and Morphet gaveled him down. 

But as Gray was leaving the podium and returning to his seat, Gray ignored that gavel and continued talking. 

Gray said Wednesday that when he continued talking after being gaveled, he was calling out Morphet for having used obscene language in the past and the hypocrisy of gaveling him down for doing it. “He has no grounds to say anything about my behavior,” Gray said.

But he also said he doesn’t think he’s a threat and he was not intending to be threatening with his profanity.

Both Morphet and Gray said they couldn’t recall a recent time when a mayor called in the police to keep order during a meeting. But Gray said he did remember a time when it happened in the past. 

“That was years and years ago,” he said. “We had people threaten people at the borough assembly. There was a direct threat.” 

When asked if he felt Gray’s actions were threatening, Morphet said once someone is ignoring the gavel, they don’t have respect for control of the room. 

He said his decision to call in a police officer to keep the meeting civil is supported in code. 

“I think it’s important for people to remember that they don’t necessarily have to respect the mayor or the assembly members but they do have to respect the forum,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “No one owns that forum, it belongs to the community and when you step beyond the rules of the meeting, then we have an issue.” 

He also pointed out that people don’t have absolute free speech in the assembly chambers. “You can’t get in there and yell f***, f***, f***, f***,” he said. “You can do that on the street corner.” 

Morphet said he doesn’t necessarily think the police will have to remove anyone, but that people tend to behave better when an officer is present. 

“Once I can’t gavel order in the room, I’m out of options, other than me jumping over the dais and grabbing the person. I’d rather Jimmy (Yoakum) do that because he’s trained.” 

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A new direction in the Tongass management plan gathered more than 300 comments from Southeast Alaskans, who asked the U.S. Forest Service to manage timber and mining, along with recreation, in the forest they call home.

The Coeur Alaska Kensington Mine said the revised plan should recognize the Tongass National Forest as a mining district, not solely as a timber or conservation reserve.

“The revised Forest Plan should affirm that responsible mineral exploration and development are fully compatible with ecological stewardship, subsistence values, and multiple use when properly planned and regulated,” wrote Steve Ball, general manager of the mine. 

He also wrote Forest Service’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule prohibitions should not be applied to mining operations.

Others criticized the Trump administration and made a plea to protect old-growth forests and the wildlife that live there. 

Some criticized the Forest Service itself for a rushed process.

“The rushed plan timeline threatens all other uses and important worthy and cherished treasures, especially every creature on the Tongass, including humans,” wrote James Clare. “Please provide more time for plan development, as done in the past.” 

Barb Miranda, deputy forest supervisor for the Tongass National Forest, said the Forest Service is being open under a quick timeline to receive “as much public input as we can.”

“This is the Tongass,” she said. “It is our backyards. It is also a national treasure. So there’s national interest in the outcomes here. So I think the public feedback periods are really important, and we want everybody to engage in them.”

What is the forest plan and its timeline?

Forest plans set the overall management direction and guidance for national forests. During a presentation at a Juneau community workshop in April, Miranda compared it to a city zoning plan. She said the forest plan “helps guide future land use in the same way a city designates where and how future residential or commercial development is allowed.”

She said forest plans do not make site-specific decisions, such as where to put a recreation trail; rather, they aim to guide future uses of the forest by creating standards for projects and activities.

Only desired conditions and goals have been identified by the Forest Service, Miranda said, and they are not set in stone. In the past 45 days, the agency sought feedback on how to refine them. Spruce Root and the Juneau Economic Development Council assisted the Forest Service in public engagement. 

Miranda said the last time public engagement took place was in April 2024, when input was gathered from 20 communities for the assessment. The assessment was developed over the course of the last two years and showed a community emphasis on recreation, protecting functioning ecosystems and sustainable timber management. The 1997 forest plan is the basis for planning documents. 

“But we are in a new world with an economy where the biggest employer is tourism, and the biggest impact to communities and how we develop communities is tourism,” Miranda told workshop attendees.

“While we don’t control the cruise ships arriving or the numbers of the people on the cruise ships, we do special use permitting for the activities that occur on the Tongass off of those cruise ships,” she said. 

During the assessment process, more collaboration with state, local and tribal governments, and encouragement to consider subsistence and Indigenous knowledge was also identified, according to the notice of intent. 

“There might be other things that need to change, and you are welcome to share those with us too,” Miranda said.

“This is not your one and only time to provide input on the Tongass plan,” she added.

Public comments were accepted following the publication of the notice of intent in the Federal Register. The comment period for the preliminary draft plan is closed, but the Forest Service is seeking input during all phases of the forest plan, which is set to be finalized in 2028. The most recent feedback period also focused on the proposed species of conservation concern list.

A 90-day comment period will follow the publication of the draft plan and environmental impact statement this fall, according to the Forest Service. A full timeline of the revision is available here. It states the draft environmental impact statement is estimated to be published in the Federal Register this August. 

The 45-day comment period for the preliminary draft plan included a series of community workshops held across Southeast Alaska.

Perspectives from Juneau’s workshop and online comments

More than 60 people attended the Juneau community workshop last month at the Juneau District Ranger Office.

April’s workshop attendees could engage in three activities: a survey on preliminary directions, maps identifying potential management areas and 14 “feedback frames,” which provided a range of alternatives for the plan. 

The 2016 plan amendment includes 19 management areas, which the Forest Service is trying to narrow down, Miranda said. 

“It’s very complicated and difficult to implement,” she said, adding part of the reason why the current forest plan has complexities is because of its multiple revisions. 

Miranda said the new plan will provide standards for the entirety of the Tongass, but management plans may have their own specific standards and guidelines. She called the new plan “less prescriptive,” saying it allows rangers more discretion to determine paths forward for projects.

“We’ll have standards and guidelines and a vision for the entire forest that we’ll have to follow forestwide, but then areas that need to be managed differently, because they are different,” she said in an interview. “What needs to be managed differently and special? Right now, we have the old-growth areas and the watershed areas pulled out as protective areas.”

Jordynn Fulmer is a cultural ambassador at the Mendenhall Glacier with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. She said she came to Juneau’s workshop “to stand strongly against clearcutting.”

“Once we take the environment away and our lands, we have nothing to depend on,” she said. “We have nothing to harvest from. We have no sources left that have been protecting us for thousands of years and multiple generations throughout.”

She added that old-growth is vital for protecting salmon streams.

In Tlingit and Haida’s online comment, the tribe wrote “a significant concern is inconsistent definitions of old growth across the plan.” 

It states tribes define old growth as “as integrated cultural-ecological systems characterized by multi-century development (450–700+ years) and structural complexities overlain with layers of relationship-based tribal, clan, and family relationships,” while the Forest Service “utilized definitions based on timber-based age classifications (~150-250-year-old trees).” 

The Alaska Forest Association asked the Forest Service to ensure the document is accessible to the public, and stated that old-growth forests do not need additional acres of protection. The organization added if old-growth management areas are included, they should be used to manage the timber in the Tongass “more effectively.”

“The existing industry requires durable sources of OG, and OG selections should be made in areas of the Tongass where economically viable stands exist,” wrote Tessa Axelson, AFA’s executive director. “Further, The Plan should outline how such stands can be harvested to provide sufficient timber volume to meet the demand from the forest.”

AFA also asked that all proposed alternatives “that culminate with the timber industry being dependent on YG timber should be excluded from consideration due to the NO ACTION alternative,” adding there is an insufficient volume of mature young-growth to support the industry. 

Other public comments asked that the plan focus on second-growth, a shift made in the 2016 amendment, which AFA called an “error.”

In the notice of intent, the Forest Service stated it won’t “substantially alter” the old-growth conservation strategy, which was developed with scientific information in 1997. Likewise, key fishery watersheds identified in 2016 are also protected in the management area proposals.

“That’s a no change from what we’re currently doing,” Miranda said.

She added she thinks the community priorities of protecting ecosystems and managing timber production sustainably can be compatible. She said the Forest Service conducts active forest management activities to create wildlife habitat.

“By thinning young growth stands, we can create better forage for deer and better habitat for wildlife species,” Miranda said. “Whenever we’re doing a timber sale, we look at opportunities for restoring aquatic organism passages, old culverts. So I think that there is some compatibility with our active management timber production and habitat restoration and protection programs.”

An online comment submitted by Kathy Hansen, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Fishermen’s Alliance, said the plan does not adequately address protections.

“The preliminary draft plan does not adequately elevate the protection of fishery resources and habitat for consideration, instead it appears to be more managing the people’s access to the resource,” Hansen wrote. “The Tongass National Forest Service should not be managing or allocating the fishery and wildlife resources, that is the job of the State of Alaska, Board of Fish and Fishery Subsistence Board.”

Steven Grunstein worked for Wrangell Forest Products as a mechanic from 1987 to 1989. In an interview at the workshop, he said he was not a logger, but did tree thinning for three years as an independent contractor across Southeast.

“I agree that we need to protect a lot of the old growth and not put roads into it,” he said. “But at the same time, I also think that we can manage the second growth harvest responsibly.”

Grunstein said “we can do smaller mills and still not equal what we had in the past and it would give the forest a chance to recover between areas to be logged for third harvest.” 

He said it’s possible by making sure mills are big enough to run and support themselves, but not so large that they have “unfillable supply.”

Nate Arrants, executive director of Haines Huts and Trails, attended forest workshops in Haines, Skagway and Juneau. He said he thought it was unhelpful the Haines and Skagway workshops only included maps for those management areas of the Tongass. 

At Juneau’s workshop, maps were provided for the northern and southern Juneau Ranger District and Admiralty Island National Monument.

“I think in general, people in Southeast like Haines, care about the whole Tongass, and so they weren’t able to see on the big maps and provide feedback on those things, which was a huge issue,” Arrants said. 

The map of all 19 management areas was available online, but Arrants said it would have been beneficial to have more thorough, well-explained maps in person. The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council requested the same full maps in its online comment.

Arrants added participants were generally confused by the statements posed on the feedback frames, which made it more difficult to engage. Attendees were prompted to drop chips for “agree” or “disagree” in response to the provided statement, and also had the choice to leave an additional comment. 

“I think the biggest feedback is just hoping that they really are able to put a lot of time into the zoning of it,” Arrants said. “The forest is far, far larger than most of the other forests around the U.S. in such a vast, complicated landscape, so it’s something that should be taken very seriously if the plan’s going to have a lifetime of 30 years. I hope they put a lot of time into it and it seems like everyone’s been thinking the rush is pretty rushed at this point.”

He said he felt like people didn’t have enough information to help the Forest Service develop its draft plan and was concerned about missed perspectives. 

Residents at the workshop and in online comments said they felt the community use areas and high-use recreation area zones didn’t accurately reflect what Southeast Alaskans want. James Taggart expressed his objection to the preliminary draft plan online.

“The area is [sic] around Barnoff Island, and Krusoff Island are designated as commercial use. These are public lands and should not have such a designation,” Taggart wrote. 

The next step is for the planning team to compile responses and provide a range of alternatives for the draft environmental impact statement.

“One of the things we’ll find out from this outreach is, do these make sense?” said Michael Downs, Juneau District Forest Ranger, pointing at the zones on the map. “It may be that we didn’t come up with the best management areas. It may be that through the input, the high rec and low rec isn’t something we should do. That’s why we’re doing this, but you have to have a starting point.” 

Southeast Alaska residents were encouraged to sign up for emailed updates from Erin Matthews, the plan’s coordinator at Erin.Mathews@usda.gov, and to keep checking the Tongass Plan Revision website. Other opportunities for public engagement are listed here. 

• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.

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Growing up in the Chilkat Valley, there was always talk about energy challenges, Chandler Kemp said. Talk of fuel prices going up, debate about Haines and Skagway’s joint hydropower system, disagreement over a proposed hydropower plant at Connelly Lake. 

For a kid who had “always been interested in science and engineering,” those were natural topics to gravitate toward, the 2008 Haines High graduate said last week. Now, he’s a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, an engineer working on sustainable energy.

“I love Haines and I always wanted to find a way back to Alaska. It’s felt like a way to do something that felt meaningful but was in that discipline,” Kemp said in an interview last week.

Kemp is now back in the news, right alongside those longstanding questions of how to power Southeast, its residents, and its economy, newly relevant following skyrocketing fuel prices.

Earlier this year, Kemp was one of the main science brains on a team that overhauled the F/V Mirage, a longtime Sitka-based longliner, with a hybrid electric-diesel propulsion system. 

The pilot program, an initiative of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, has the Mirage able to haul pots or slowly cruise on battery power, switching back to a standard combustion engine for longer motoring legs. 

That kind of hybrid boat propulsion isn’t groundbreaking in and of itself, particularly over the last decade, as battery technology has improved rapidly; for instance, the state’s ferry system plans to begin shifting a large portion of the ferry fleet over to hybrid systems, including a planned shuttle ferry that could run between Haines and Skagway. 

The technology, however, is novel for this application: Kemp believes the Mirage is the first boat in the country fishing commercially with that sort of hybrid propulsion. 

Fisheries like Sitka’s longline fleet or the Lynn Canal’s gillnetters pose unique challenges for hybrid propulsion, Kemp said. 

For one, unlike a ferry or a tugboat, commercial fishermen don’t necessarily dock every night, making battery recharging more difficult. On top of that, the boats are mostly their own, one-boat floating small businesses. That makes it a harder proposition for owners to take risks on new, unproven systems.

News of Kemp’s work seems to have not yet made its way up Southeast. Members of the Lynn Canal fishing fleet this week largely said they hadn’t heard about the work in Sitka. 

Some expressed skepticism, like Karl Johnson, who pointed to the high initial costs of converting to hybrid technology, though he said he didn’t know the details of the work. 

“I really can’t see it being economical here for what we do,” he said.

Some were more open to hybrid technology, like Brian O’Riley, who said that given current fuel prices, “an electric boat sounds better and better.”

“I wonder if one can get long-term (horsepower) out of such a system,” O’Riley added. “Trollers operate at slow speeds and we gillnetters need access to more HP at times.”

Gillnetter Jeff Klanott said that if the Sitka fleet was open to the new technology it “might be worth looking into.” 

Kemp emphasizes that he welcomes and agrees with much of the skepticism.

He’s an academic working on solutions, not someone selling a product, and skepticism is healthy for any new technology, he said. 

“These pilot projects, we hope to show you can have an electric-powered boat and you can save some fuel, but I don’t think we’re at the point of saying this is the solution that everyone should be adopting.”

For one thing, he agrees with Johnson that the technology needs to become cheaper before it can be more widely adopted. It also needs to be more reliable: for now, he and his team members continue to be in touch with F/V Mirage captain Jeff Turner to troubleshoot problems in the system as they pop up.

Those are all challenges to tackle now that the proof of concept is floating and catching fish.

“I think there’s often an expectation that some projects are going to solve all these problems at once, and that’s not the case here,” Kemp said. 

“But now that we’re getting on the water, we can think about if people want to do this and what needs to be done to make it practical without support in the future.”

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