Author: alaskaadmin

Editor’s note: This year the Chilkat Valley News partnered with KHNS on its election coverage in addition to hosting two candidate forums. Due to scheduling conflicts, the candidates for the mayor’s seat could not meet on stage at either of those forums, a Q&A with them will be published at a later date.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.

Will Steinfeld: Doug Olerud, thanks for joining me. You’re running for mayor again this year. You were last mayor, was it three three years ago at this point?

Doug Olerud: Correct.

Tell me tell me why you’re jumping back into it.

When I didn’t run in 2023, I was worn down just dealing with the emotional impacts from the slide. Still recovering from COVID, needed a break. I’ve gotten that break and I’ve been able to sort out some things in my personal life that allow me some more time to reengage. And I think with some of the issues in front of the assembly now, I’ve got with my life experience, I’ve got a skill set that can help move some of those things forward.

The thing I’ve been observing with (Tom Morphet) is, I always see his truck parked outside his office all the time, and it got me thinking, being mayor, it doesn’t really have a job description. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of jobs in your life, and I would guess mayor has the least clear job description out of all of them. Tell me what you picture the job being for you.

By code, the job of the mayors is to run assembly meetings and represent the borough to state and federal agencies and elected officials, and just be the spokesperson for the borough.

But a big part of that is you’re also the conduit between the assembly and the administrative staff that are in the admin building. You’re in there many hours a day in non-public meetings and bringing that information back and sharing it not only with the assembly but also with the public. So helping the administrative staff in their job, but then also being a conduit and sharing that information with the assembly and the public is a big part. That’s where you spend most of your hours as mayor.

I honestly didn’t realize that, that you felt like your first term was mostly in that admin building. Is that what you expected going into the job the first time?

That is what I expected. The part that I didn’t expect was dealing with the landslide. None of us expected that. Nobody knew that was going to happen. I knew it was going to be abnormal, just because we were still in the recovery from COVID. You know, fall of 2020, still deep in that. So I knew it was going to be a little abnormal at that point, but then when the slide hit, that changed so much of what I’d hoped to do as mayor.

Things like working with staff, trying to improve things in the way that the borough deals with and interacts with the public, looking at economic development ideas: How the borough can be more efficient in the way they do things? How can we generate more tax revenue by increasing economic activity, not raising new taxes, not increasing the taxes we have, but just generate more economic activity? And as soon as the slide happened. I knew none of that was going to be happening because for the next three years, it was FEMA and Lutak Dock.

You had COVID and you had the slide. Do you feel like you have unfinished business that you started to work on, maybe on the economic development front or anything like that?

I don’t think I have anything that’s unfinished. I think there’s stuff that I didn’t get to start because the slide happened a month after. I was just still trying to figure out what the job entailed. It was my first time as mayor, and I was still learning that role when the slide happened. I remember one, I think it was February or March after the slide, and I had some idea that I thought was just brilliant that the borough should do. I went in to see Aleka, who was the clerk and also the acting manager at the time, and I said, “Hey, listen, I got this great idea,” and explained it to her, and she just paused and she’s like, “Yeah, that’s great, but who’s going to do it? Where’s the staff? I mean, she’s doing two to three jobs at the time, and doing all the FEMA paperwork, and that’s when I realized, like, yeah, nothing on a normal level is going to get done in the next three years because everybody’s resources and efforts are being put elsewhere.

What’s the breakdown for you in terms of thinking the borough government should be focusing on short-term stuff, like get the roads plowed, be solid on efficiency in the admin office, versus some kind of twenty, thirty year vision for turning the borough into something or turning the economy into something?

You have to do both. You can’t choose one or the other. You’ve got to make sure the day to day stuff is getting done, but then you also have to be planning for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road. That’s one of the things we do in our business. You’re trying to get the basic stuff on a daily basis done, but you also have to think, what’s this going to look like in five years, 10 years, 15 years, and be open to having those conversations, and then also looking backwards: what did we do in the past, and is that still effective now, or do we need to change the policies and procedures that we’re doing because of new technology, new population dynamics?

Do you feel like you have one of those twenty or thirty year visions in your head, enough to be able to describe?

No.

Are there parts of it that you (could describe)?

In very general terms, yes. I don’t have a complete roadmap on how to get there, but making sure that all the kids are getting a great education out of the school. Making sure that our seniors have resources necessary, that the young kids that want to come back have a job, have an ability to get back here and earn a living that allows them to buy a house, put down roots, and fill that school with kids.

Make sure our infrastructure is well taken care of, that we’ve got clean water, we’ve got a sewer treatment plant that works and serves the needs of the community, that our roads are in good shape, and that people feel like they can come to the borough office and and have a conversation about their needs and be treated in a kind and respectful way. I mean, it’s just general things that I think we should be looking at all the time.

Some of them are easier done than others.

What do you think are the easiest done, and what do you think are the hardest done?

Just the way you treat people, just have that respectful conversation with people, and make sure that when they come into the borough office, that the information they’re being given is very clear and precise.

There’s a lot of ambiguity in code. The way two people can interpret the same written word differently is a big factor in why we have some of the issues in front of the assembly, especially going through the planning commission. People interpret something in the comprehensive plan or in code two different ways, and you can get a lot of harsh words based on that.

I think getting through the permitting processes and trying to make that’s as clear and forthright as possible for people. So if they’re planning on building a house, building a business, it’s easy for them to understand what the procedures are in front of them. And as somebody that’s filed for building permits and looked at some of those things in the past, it’s not always as clear as I think it could be.

When I came to town, people all told me Haines has this reputation for the assembly being at odds with each other, for having it be a tough environment in (the assembly chambers). Have you ever seen a time when it wasn’t like that? When you saw the assembly working civilly and productively, like people hope it would?

Oh, without a doubt.

When was the last time?

I thought the three years that I was mayor, people got along very well.

What do you think was the difference between then, and before and after?

I think it’s just setting a standard for how you expect people to behave, and if people realize that this is the standard that the meetings are going to be conducted by, I think that’s the role of the mayor is to set that standard.

My three years weren’t the only time that’s happened. It’s happened numerous times in the past, but just making sure that the people that are on the assembly understand that they’re all equals when they’re sitting there, and that they need to treat each other with respect. They need to treat staff with respect, and they need to treat the public with respect. And it’s the mayor’s job to make sure that happens. You’re going to have times when some people get out of line a little bit or go overboard, and it’s the mayor’s job to rein that back in and also to set the example, set the standard that this is how we’re going to treat people.

One of the hard parts of the job I’ve observed is, they have the assembly code of conduct, but it’s not like middle school. You can’t send someone to the principal’s office. So if someone feels like someone else is violating the code of conduct, they might bring it up. But there’s no way to enforce it in any strict sense. What does it look like when you’re sitting in the chair when you say set a standard or rein it in? What does that actually look like in practice?

Well, the biggest thing is how you, how the mayor, how I engage with people. You address them respectfully. You listen to them. You’re engaged in their conversation. I think a lot of times when you’re looking down, you’re not paying attention to people that are speaking. I think it’s disrespectful, and I think by setting that standard to start with, if other people follow that, that helps. And then when you have somebody that is speaking disrespectfully, you interrupt them and let them know that’s not how we’re going to engage with people here. 

If you want to talk, you have a right to talk, but you’re going to do it in a kind and respectful way. You can have a disagreement with somebody and still be respectful and kind. It doesn’t have to be shouting and name calling, and so I think just if you keep modeling that and you keep calling people out that aren’t meeting that standard, eventually people get the idea that this is how it needs to be done.

Yeah, in a funny way, I feel like that’s like the issue that has the strongest consensus behind it: trying to get the assembly to a point where it doesn’t always get as nasty in there as it might (currently) sometimes.

That’s a good goal to have. And not just at the assembly, but I see it in the community too. That there are times that people — the best way to put this is they just don’t treat people as respectfully as they should, just because somebody has a different opinion from them. I think a lot of that is with social media. It’s really easy to get siloed into areas, and you can sit behind a keyboard and you can type out nasty stuff about somebody that you disagree with and just hit send and and post it, and there’s no repercussions.

I just enjoy talking with people from a lot of different perspectives. I feel it gives me a better idea of the situation and looking at different ideas on how to move forward with it.

I’m curious about a kind of different thing. I think it’s more clear how a mayor has an impact on the kinds of things you’ve been talking about. When you were talking about young families, good schools, those more policy and assembly oriented things, what are the levers that you think you can pull on, what are the actual ways that you can have an impact on that process?

I think one of the biggest things is engaging with state and federal officials, whether elected or now just your government workers that are on those levels, on what are options out there? How do we change the dynamics? Take education. How do we look at that? I was reading an article in the Seattle Times this last week that there were teachers were going to go on strike before the first day of school, but in the last year, they and the superintendent of schools said that they had they were going broke, and the the columnist wrote that in the last year they had approved $3.2 billion in tax increases to fund the schools. He goes, how are we paying an extra $3.2 billion in our? We still don’t have enough to fund the schools, and I’ve got a great working relationship with Superintendent Boron, and having those conversations with her. That first of all, I think how do you get enough kids in town? Because the more kids you have in the school, the more money you get from the state, and so that helps offset the local contribution on that. So how do we make sure that the curriculum is the best for everybody? How do we make sure we got more jobs in the community? But a lot of that just comes back to I can’t change the number of people moving to Haines. There’s no magic button to say, okay, we’re going to create 10 new jobs this next year. But as mayor, I can have conversations with our state senator, state representative, our national senators, national representative, the governor’s office, people’s like, how can we work on policies that, at those levels, that help the borough achieve those ends?

Are those conversations you had in your first term as mayor?

Yes. 

What did that look like? Were you going in person to to the capital?

I made one trip to Washington D.C. We made a couple trips down to Juneau. A lot of those were on fundraising trips, trying to get money for Lutak Dock, Public Safety Building, but a lot of it also we’re talking about education. Also at Alaska Municipal League, you have a lot of people there that you can talk to from other communities and representatives from different agencies. 

You have a lot of times you’ll have fact finding groups coming from Washington D.C. from our delegation and having those conversations with them and saying, listen, these are the challenges we have. How are other communities dealing with those? And then, and and again, getting back to the same thing that I’ve talked about from the beginning, having conversations with the community. What is that? Because my idea of what a successful school looks like could be totally different than yours. So, how do we bring that whole? Community viewpoint into making the school district the best school district we can have. I think it’s already really good, but let’s improve it.

Did you ever see anything specific come out of those conversations? Like, is it as simple as you have a conversation that translates into 10 million bucks?

Yes and no. We did have conversations that led to money getting passed at both the state and federal level for the public safety building. Not so much because we and also I think they got some. Can’t remember if we got anything for increased. I don’t think they did anything while I was mayor to increase the base student allocation, we talked about it with them, but it depends on the makeup of the legislature and what they’re because we only had one vote in the Senate, one vote in the in the state house, and there’s a lot of others to talk to down there as well,

Yeah, just building those relationships and and continuing to have that dialog because there’s a lot of things that go beyond just the dollars, as far as how good the education system is.

Yeah, this is kind of speculation, but I would guess that there’s some part of those conversations that are you being an advocate and speaking strictly about the grant at hand or whatever the issue is. But I would also guess when you’re in person in Juneau and talking to legislators, you have other conversations, and at least when I spent some time in the Capitol, people ask about, you know, what do you think about this issue in Haines? Where do you think Haines is going? So I would guess that you have some ability to have a broader conversation…

Absolutely

When you’re there, whichever capital, DC or Juneau, it’s usually much more focused on a couple issues. But when you get their staffers, or when the elected officials are in Haines, and you have a chance to take them on a windshield tour or something, then you can be much more broad based on the things that you can talk about. You’ve got more time with them. They’re not rushing to their next meeting. They don’t have a floor vote to get to right away. They don’t have a committee meeting to get to. 

You’ve got them for an hour or two, three hours, whatever the time is in Haines, and then it it can be much more impactful because you can show them the public safety building, and they can walk in there and like, oh my God, this thing’s falling apart, and so being able to engage in that, and then while you’re driving between places, you can talk about Fort Seward, some of the issues that there’s that happen in Fort Seward. You can show them some of the transportation issues we have with roads. We can talk about what education should look like in ways that we can combine local, state, and federal resources to improve education. Yeah, so it happens in a lot of different ways.

Those kinds of interactions with elected officials at higher up levels, I wonder if they take on so much importance because we’re so reliant on outside money for our water sewer infrastructure, schools, hard infrastructure, docks – you name it. Do you think that’s a sustainable revenue mix for the borough?

No. You look at the amount for our major infrastructure needs, how reliant we are on the state and federal government-it’s pretty scary, and especially when you look at the state budget and the federal budget, and how both of them are fairly strapped at the moment. They both seem to, especially the federal government, continues to spend a lot of money, but with $40 trillion in debt, I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last, and for a lot of our big projects, it’s where a good chunk of the money comes from. And so, trying to figure out ways that we can supply more of those funds locally is a key thing for me. 

Going back to what I said earlier, it’s not raising the level of taxes; it’s getting more people invested in the economy. Whether that’s more tourists coming through, how can we create more jobs? Like you know, Harry Reitze out at Haines Packing Company. He’s done a great job moving the amount of fish that he does through here. If you look at where we’d be if he hadn’t started that up, and that raw fish tax was going to Sitka or Petersburg instead of Haines Borough, a significant amount of income. 

You look at Zen Bath Works, and they’re hiring people and shipping stuff all over the world. The brewery, the distillery, just these people that have these ideas, Woolhaven. You know, they’re making products here. How do we get that entrepreneurial spirit into more people and be able to support them as a community as they push forward with that? Because each one of those small little nuggets of economic development helps all of us.

How do you think that translates into borough revenue directly? Is it a sales tax thing?

It’s a sales tax thing. It’s a property tax thing, and the people that are here, they’re charging sales tax on the stuff that they sell retail. But then, they’re also buying stuff at the hardware stores, grocery stores. Yeah, it’s both of them. They’re improving their buildings so their building’s worth more, so you get more property tax off of it. They’re building a house, increased property tax, and more times you get that. And then if they’re able to grow it, and then they start hiring more people to help them, then it just keeps ramping up with more revenue.

Do you think that there are other things stopping other barriers between Haines and having more of those year-round jobs, besides just you know, you talk about encouraging entrepreneurial spirit.

Transportation is the biggest thing. You’ve spent winter months in Haines. You know how hard that can be, and so if you’re trying to get people to move here that want to be flexible, they want to take a vacation. Just the barriers to getting in and out of Haines for five six months out of the year is a real chore, and a lot of people don’t want to endure that. I know several people that have left in the last six, seven years, and that was one of the main reasons that, for medical and travel reasons, visiting family, having their family visit them, it’s just not sustainable. 

They didn’t want to deal with that anymore, and they went south where they can take care of all those things much quicker, and so trying to come up with what does that new transportation system look like? Since the the state doesn’t seem to be wanting to invest in ferries, we got some the state got a bunch of money from the federal government for ferries, but who knows how long it’ll be until those ferries come online, and whether how suited they’re going to be for Southeast Alaska, and so being part of that conversation to make sure that what they’re building gives us better access in and out of here.

Are there types of economic growth that you’re worried about? Like some people are worried about various types of heavy industries. Some people are worried about various types of tourism growth? Is there anything you want to steer the borough away from?

I wouldn’t say steer the borough away from, but I think just evaluating the cost-benefit ratio of all of them. I mean, there’s there’s a ton of different industries out there that they can they can provide a lot of income to the borough, but they also, with anything, there’s going to be costs associated with it, and so making sure we’re we’re not heavy on the costs and light on the revenue, and making sure that it’s still anything that we do on economic development is still something that supports the way of life that those of us that live here for now and for a long time. 

We still want to go out and hike. We still want to be able to fish. We still want to get our berries. You know, we still want to have that somewhat quiet and tranquil community. But you have to give up if you want more revenue. If you want more economics, you have to give up something. An economy is not a zero-based game. You’re exchanging one thing for another, and so it’s trying to figure out what we’re willing to give up in exchange for more revenue. And that’s a large community because what I would be willing to give up is different than what you would be willing to give up, or Joe down the street is willing to give up. And so we need to have those public conversations to make sure that the direction we’re going in is one that benefits the most amount of people and disturbs the least amount of people.

When you need to figure out what people’s individual cost benefit analyses are, how do you have these conversations? I feel like I’ve sat through a lot of conversations about things like the dock, the mine, whatever it is, that are productive. But when it comes down to actually making decisions, people have their interests, and it becomes a lot harder than just the initial dialogue.

Oh, without a doubt. Yeah.

Have you seen anything at the assembly level in the last three years, last six years, where you felt like there was legislation that was written that had that kind of middle ground that you’re looking for?

Probably, I can’t name anything off the top of my head.

One thing I think about is the safety belt ordinance, and I don’t know enough about the specifics to say, but how they were pitching it was a lot like what I’m hearing from you: that there needs to be an understanding of maximizing revenue and minimizing costs.

It ended up being kind of getting stuck in some ways. Severance tax is on the ballot this fall, but you know there were legal challenges that the lawyer had to comb through… the biggest thing to me was they had a plan for a big public comment period, and almost no one came in to comment on it. 

The hard part of that is the way borough meetings are set up, whether it’s a town hall, whether it’s assembly meeting, committee meeting, that there’s never a chance for a conversation. You get to say, Will gets to stand up and give his opinion. Joe gets to stand up and say his opinion. Everybody gets to stand up and share an opinion, and then after a month, two months, whatever, at the end of the meeting, the assembly gets to share their opinion, and then they vote on it.

There isn’t currently a forum where you and I can have, or you and somebody else, me and somebody else can have a back and forth dialog where you state your opinion, and I can say, “Well, Will, what about this? What about this? Have you thought about this? And you can do the same with me. So right now, there there’s there isn’t that form of dialog, and trying to figure out how we can do that, I think would be very helpful in moving some of these things forward, because you could have that open discussion with people about what their fears are, what what they think is positive about it, and why why they don’t like it, and because it could be because you used to live down by the dock in Ketchikan, and you saw five six ships coming in every single day, and it was loud. It was noisy all summer, and it totally ruined your life. That’s a very valid reason for not wanting cruise ships in Haines. But then you have the other person that wants to start a gift shop, but there’s not enough people coming into town to support the gift shop, and so like, okay, maybe I’m going to have to leave because I can’t make enough money to pursue my passion or as an artist or whatever. There’s not enough people here selling it, so they move to another place where there is more economic activity. So that’s but having those conversations, and I don’t know. One of the things I thought about is if the borough would sponsor, I don’t know, having kids from the debate team, or just having two people, and have it here at the Chilkat Center, and just like, okay, this is the topic. Let people come in and have two, four people, or whatever, have a back and forth conversation, and then take questions from the audience and have somebody. Well, I was wondering about this, and have the people up there debate it. I don’t know if that would make a difference or not, but I think having more of those in-depth conversations rather than you have three minutes or six minutes, whatever it is, to state your opinion and then move on, I think that would be more effective if we could find a way to do that and still have that at a at a public meeting where people get to have their say. I think that’s very important.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do that. Haven’t figured it out. So if anybody’s got any ideas, love to hear them.

I feel like you seem like a big believer in positive dialogue getting us somewhere. And I wonder if you ever feel like there are issues where people just have different interests. That no matter how much they talk, they can agree to disagree, but they’re not going to find common ground.

Oh, absolutely.

How do you address that?

People have different motives in life. Some people are happy to live in a dry cabin and haul their water and have firewood as their main source of heat, and they’ve got a garden and subsistence fishing, and they don’t need a lot of a lot of money to sustain that lifestyle. They’re extremely happy with that. Absolutely, have at it if that’s what makes you happy. 

There’s other people that want to have a 5000 square foot house, and they want three or four vehicles and a bunch of ATVs and snow machines and stuff, and that requires a much higher level. Those two are probably not going to agree on economic development in Haines, but there should be spaces for both of those people in the community, even if they don’t agree. How do we, how do we take the concerns and desires of both of those groups of people, and meld them into something that works for us. 

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s got to be the hardest challenge of government. Like, helicopters, for example.

There are people who don’t want them, people who do, and it’s just hard to live right next to each other if you have those different viewpoints.

You look at our community, and we have to figure out ways to communicate better and develop a plan moving forward. All of our costs are going up. Everything’s going up. The school costs are going up. Electricity is going up. That’s going up for the borough too. And so the borough needs to, we either need to cut services, which some people want to do, or we need to increase the amount of revenue coming into the borough to afford the things that we become accustomed to. 

I don’t want to raise taxes. I don’t want to raise the level of taxes at all. The best way to do that is to have more economic activity taking place in the borough. That brings you more sales tax. That brings you more property tax, and that helps if you have more economic opportunities happening in the same footprint. So you’ve got the same sunk costs on that footprint, the more money you have to pay for these rising costs.

Do you think there’s anything the borough is doing right now that’s inhibiting more economic development? Like, why don’t we just have more economic development right now happening?

There’s several things with that. First of all, we are limited in the kind of economic development that’s going to happen in Haines, and we don’t have a large flat spot for a data center. Thankfully. I don’t think a data center would fit in Haines very well at all. 

You have the transportation issue. You have the high cost of doing business here. A lot of these things are outside the control of the borough, but if we can have a great community that people want to live in, that is responsive to the needs of the residents and the businesses, and have a straightforward permitting process that stays consistent, so people know what they’re getting into when they’re when they’re moving here, when they want to start a business, I think there is room for economic growth. 

If you would have told me, getting back to Zen Bath Works, if you would have told me when they started that, seriously, you’re going to sell hot tubs if you’re going to sell these all over the world. Shut up, that’s never going to happen, and it did. 

How do we support the people that some people would say they’re a dreamer, or people, but the entrepreneurs, the people that have that small idea, and they want, then they just gonna grind at it, grind at it, grind on it, and they build it into something that’s amazing. And it’s you look at the brewery, you look at the distillery, you look at these businesses that people are starting here in Haines and have slowly grown over the years, and now they’re center points of our community. How do we find the next person that wants to do that and give them that nudge and support to follow their dreams and to make that happen?

I have two last questions for you. The first one is, do you think that there’s anyone currently being underrepresented in the borough government in the assembly? Anyone that you want to go in there and advocate for specifically?

I wouldn’t say any specific group because the thing that I’ve always told people, and this goes back to when I was in assembly. As soon as you get elected, you’re representing everybody in the community. You need to be open to hearing from every person in the community, and it drives me crazy when somebody in a meeting is saying, “my constituents want this.”

It’s like, shut up. Once you get elected, you’re not in a district like when we’re sending senators to Washington D.C. Here, since it’s area wide that you’re being voted on, you have no idea who voted for you and who didn’t vote for you, and so you represent everybody that comes to every meeting, everybody in the community. And I hope people look at it that way when they do get elected, who represent everybody, and you have to listen to all of them.

Last question I have for you: You’re running against Jan Hill. I asked her this as well. What’s something that you admire about Jan?

Jan has done so much for the community. She’s been on the assembly. She’s been mayor for three terms. I think just her desire to help the community and her willingness to give of herself, you know, with her leading the dancers, greeting all the cruise ships and stuff. She’s just a terrific ambassador for the community, and I’ve got the most respect for Jan

Doug, thanks for joining me. 

The post Watch: An interview with Douglas Olerud, candidate for Haines Mayor appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Editor’s note: This year the Chilkat Valley News partnered with KHNS on its election coverage in addition to hosting two candidate forums. Due to scheduling conflicts, the candidates for the mayor’s seat could not meet on stage at either of those forums, a Q&A with them will be published at a later date.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.

Jan, thank you for joining me in the KHNS Studio. You’re running for mayor this year. Introduce yourself and tell me why you’ve decided to run again.

My name is Jan Clayton Hill, and I’m a lifelong resident of Haines. I have a lot of history, family history, in this community on both sides of my family. My father was our native side, and we have generations of history there. My great grandparents on my mother’s side homesteaded Mud Bay in 1898, and I am fourth generation McCray at Mud Bay. So I have a lot of history in Haines. 

I’m running for mayor because I like to serve my community, and this is an opportunity to do just that. And I know the job; I’ve done it four times. In my first experience as mayor, we were a third-class borough, so it was a (strong mayor) form of government at that time. I’ve stayed in tune with what’s going on in our community. I care dearly and deeply about what happens here and how we move forward. I see there are some opportunities. Maybe I can help with some lingering issues that were issues the last time I was the mayor, and sometimes we seem to hang on to those things for a while. 

I have spent most of my adult life serving in different ways in this community. Years ago when I received my Lingít name, I didn’t know exactly what it meant. Over the years, I had asked many, many people, elders in Klukwan, and finally, I was in a discussion with Ed Warren, who actually was one of the people who gave me my name, and he told me that my name is interpreted to mean “one who serves.: So I thought that was very appropriate, and I like serving. I like volunteering in my community. I like participating. I like representing the community, and I believe I do a good job of that. I’ve maintained contact with many people that I’ve worked with over the years, and we’re all excited that I’m running for mayor again, and looking forward to an opportunity to work with some of those people.

You do have so much experience serving in borough government, and before, when we were third class borough. Do you think since you last served, do you feel like the town, this borough, has changed? Either with interpersonal dynamics or challenges we’re facing? Have you seen a different place?

I’ve seen some changes, and I’ve certainly seen challenges. You know, we’re all aware of certain challenges that we’ve had on different projects and things going on in our community, and some of them are what I’ve been referring to as lingering issues. These are things that I was dealing with six years ago, and we’re still dealing with it. And we need to figure out a better way to resolve those issues so that we move forward because we have many other things that we need to be working on. I just feel like my experience is valuable. I’ll use a little analogy of, I am just not ready to be put out on that iceberg yet. I’ve still got a lot of energy. I have the time to serve. I have the experience, and I just love this community that much.

Give me an idea of what some of those unfinished challenges might be. 

The Lutak Dock is probably the main one. You know, when I left six years ago, we were ready to start building and had money. Then we had some changes. And granted, we had to deal with COVID. We had the slide. You know, tragedies in our community. Some of these delays were not able to be avoided, I guess, but I think that’s the main one. 

Every term I’ve been mayor, I’ve had engineers tell me that that dock is going to fall into the bay at some point, and one engineer about 10 years ago even said to me, “It won’t take a big earthquake; it’ll just take the right one.” So I’m very concerned about that. 

We have bear issues. We have conflicts all over. We have childcare issues. We have issues at our school, and these are all things I care about. I was raised here. 

I went to school here all my life, and when I left Haines High School, I was ready to go to college, and I had a good background, and that’s what I’d like to see here. You know, our school numbers are down where they were in the 50s. There’s a reason for that, and part of it is we do not have year-round good-paying jobs for young families to be able to afford to live in Haines. I’m retired, and when I go to the grocery store, or I buy gas, or I go to the hardware store, I wonder how people with families are making it, and it concerns me. 

We need to do better. We need to bring our young people home. Most of my family doesn’t live here anymore, and that’s very sad. This is not the community I thought I’d be retiring in, and I’d like to maybe help turn it around a little bit. I’ve got nieces and nephews that don’t live here because they can’t make a living here and raise their kids here, even though they would love to do that.

I hear you talking about these issues that I think a lot of people feel: Childcare, schools, jobs, Lutak Dock, you name it. We were talking before we started about the role of the mayor. What do you see as the job description of the mayor, and where can you put yourself into the process to make a difference?

The way I interpret the role of the mayor in this form of government is representing the community, running meetings, working with the manager to carry out the wishes of the assembly, and being that conduit between the assembly and the manager. And participating in the community and being an active member in, I mean, everything. 

I think the mayor should be at ball games and be at all the community events and help with those events and we have a lot of opportunities here to celebrate our community. We don’t have to dwell on those lingering issues that we keep talking about. We need to find ways to celebrate the place that we live, and we’re blessed to live here. Trust me, we’ve all been somewhere else, and we all come back. 

So I think that from my experience, I know that I represent our community well. I know this community. I have friends in every part of this community, which might surprise some people. I have worked in numerous different jobs, and one of the one of the proudest things I accomplished, I guess, was bringing Head Start to Haines, and that was a college project. And I just smile every time I drive by and see Head Start open and kids playing, and I go to graduation and all the fun things. Yeah. So I’m just an involved community member. I’ll help you do whatever you need help with if I can.

Do you have any dreams for things you want to see celebrating the community in the next couple years?

Well, a couple of times we had some pretty good celebrations, and I think that we might need to have a big community barbecue again on Main Street, where we closed it off, and we had live music. We took a community photo, which you can see in many buildings around town, and I think that we need to do more of those things. I think that we have new staff at the fair now, and there are some of us in this community that have been and participated at every fair since it started, and the Strawberry Festival before we had a fair. So I think that there are ways we can make our Southeast Alaska State Fair more of a regional fair again, and get other communities involved. And when you have people from all the communities in Southeast hopping on the ferry to come to the Hanes for the fair, that’s a celebration. I want to see that happen again.

I think we wrote about that in the newspaper. How you might be believed to be the most experienced fair goer.

I have never missed a fair. 

Inside the assembly chambers, have you seen in the past year, or past three years, a way of legislating, a way of talking about things that you’d like to change? Are there things you want to hold onto that the current mayor has done?

My style in the assembly chambers is very strictly adhering to Robert’s Rules of Order, and that’s what I would do. It helps you run efficient meetings. One of the main reasons Robert’s Rules was created was to ensure that the minority at the table has an opportunity to speak and be heard, and I think that I think we need to go back to following Robert’s rules a lot closer than sometimes I have observed.

What about the types of topics the assembly has been spending time on?

I think the types of topics are okay, but I think that sometimes there is way too much discussion and it should be stopped. And similar to even this interview, if we were just going to sit here for the rest of the afternoon and talk, pretty soon we’re not really making good points. We’re just talking, and you know, many of us zoom into meetings or go to meetings, and those of us that are born and raised with Robert’s Rules of Order, it gets frustrating because meetings need to be run more efficiently.

I’m curious, especially for people who don’t know or aren’t as familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order, what does that look like for you as the person presiding over the meeting? What do you have to do to make sure the meetings move? 

One of the best compliments I got when I first started being involved in community things: I was the president of the Chamber of Commerce, and we had a luncheon meeting at the American Legion. And after the meeting, John Schnabel came up to me and shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, you run a good meeting.” And I’ve hung on to that. That meant a lot to me. 

I just think that the assembly can talk about any topic, and something that’s important to one particular assembly member might not matter to the rest of us, but it’s important to them, and we need to listen. But we need to listen appropriately, and not go down rabbit holes. I think everybody kind of understands what that means. I think Robert’s rules is difficult for people that that don’t practice them. Some of us have, you know, in different venues in our lives, been raised with Robert’s Rules of Order, and you’ll see them used in different ways. The basic rules allow for people to talk twice on a topic, and then you need to move on.

What do you mean by raised with Robert’s rules?

Well, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood are famous for Robert’s Rules of Order, and they are the strictest users of Robert’s Rules of Order. They, the people that run those meetings, especially the conventions when they’re statewide, they keep those meetings in order and they follow them directly. There are no exceptions, and I was raised going to those kinds of meetings, and then you know we we had drama and debate in high school, and we ran meetings and we practiced things like that. I’ve participated in other organizations, you know, Southeast Conference and the Alaska Municipal League, and all the different things that you do when you’re involved in community affairs, and everybody uses Robert’s Rules of Order. I’ts not all the same, but I’m fairly strict with it, and it’s frustrating when people aren’t. But I understand everybody has their own style, that’s just mine, and I’m glad that I kind of grew up with strict meetings.

When you talk about all these different seats you’ve held, it reminds me you were, correct me if I’m wrong, you were recently elected as the Chilkoot Indian Association SEARHC delegate. Is that correct?

Well, I was. I have been in the past. I’m no longer okay. But I’ve been on the SEARHC board, I think total, probably 16 years. In the 80s I was the chair of the SEARHC board for several years. During some difficult times, one of our presidents had a heart attack as he was teaching a motorcycle safety class, and I was commuting back and forth to Juneau to help keep things moving forward. 

Having held an elected position in the Chilkoot Indian Association — one thing I’ve kind of been following this year is, the borough has been trying to schedule these, I don’t know the official name, but some kind of intergovernmental meeting to coordinate between the three governments in the valley. Do do you have a vision for how shared governance works in the valley?

Years ago I was on the (Chilkoot Indian Association Tribal Council, and President for several years. Tribal government is different, even though we use Robert’s Rules in tribal government also. But I think it could be an advantage to get the two governments to, you know, talk more than they might. 

I think I’ve seen some improvements in some areas and some collaboration, and I think that’s a good thing. It’s always a good thing when different groups of people in a community will talk and communicate, and you can walk away still disagreeing respectfully, and that’s okay. We learn from each other through, I think, conversation and disagreements. And if you and I disagree on something, Will, I might try my best to change your mind, and it may or may not work. And that’s okay. You can have your opinion. I have my opinion.

I talk to people from all walks of life in this community, and sometimes we agree, and sometimes we don’t. And then you just agree to disagree respectfully. 

This is maybe a broad question, so let me know if it’s tough to answer. But when you talk to people around town, and you talk to people from different walks of life, do you hear people talk about a vision for where they want? You know, I think the economy is a big part, but just in general, you know, life in town, how people make money, how people spend their time. Do you hear a consistent vision for where people want this place to go in, say, 20 years?

Well, I think everybody here wants Haines to be successful. We want to be vibrant. We want to be able to be self-sufficient and take care of ourselves. It’s always been that way. 

Growing up here, this was a blue-collar, hard working town. We were loggers and fishermen, and we were created in the gold rush too, and so mining is a part of our town. And I think everyone, everybody here, we need to get along. We need to work together. 

We need to make our community so that people can afford to live here. First of all, I mean, right now that’s our huge challenge, but I think I hear a variety of ways to do that. People have their own idea of what a thriving community is. You know, for me, we need year round employment for people. One of my goals is, we need to provide so our young people can come back here. You hear so many kids graduating from high school and coming home for summer jobs, and wishing they could develop their career and come back here. Unless you’re, I guess, in the healthcare sector — with our new hospital, there’s going to be a lot of jobs available, and those are good paying jobs. We need to bring our young people back. This is a retirement community. We need to create a Haines, or recreate a Haines, that young people can come back to with their education and their skills and their families. We need to fill our school. You know, when I graduated, there were 18 graduates. Right now, we’re back down to that. That’s about how many kids we have graduating, and we should be thriving more than we are.

It’s interesting you bring up the age of the town. I wrote it down here. It’s the oldest median age of any borough in the state. Haines’ median age is 50.9, in the last census. Do you think the borough government can play a role in changing that, if you think it needs to be changed, and then what needs to happen?

I think this is a wonderful place to retire. And there are a lot of people that retire here, you know, even from Juneau that have spent their working lives coming here for recreation and for various events and reasons, and then when they were able to retire, they move to Haines and retire here, and I think that’s great. 

But we need to find a balance between the fixed income and — there is nothing better than having retired people and young people living together. In Juneau at the Pioneer Home, they used to have a preschool in the building of the Juneau Pioneer Home. That is a wonderful experience for kids and for the elders that are in those places. 

We could find that same balance here, and get our young families to come home. I’ve got nephews that would love to be living here and would have loved to raise their kids here, but couldn’t do it when you’re facing three or four kids and they’re all going to want to go to college or trade school. You got to make a living, and so I’d like to help find that balance, so that retired people are happy and comfortable and having a good life here, and young people are here also, keeping this a vibrant community with good-paying jobs and childcare available for working families, and good programs for our kids. I think this community does a great job with kids. You know, we have a lot of activities. And if you ever say you’re bored in Haines, I don’t know what to tell you because there are times when I have to juggle what I’m going to do every day, because there are so many things going on in this community, and that’s what makes it vibrant, it makes it alive, and hopefully attracts people to come here. 

We have the fair, we have Dalton City. That’s an alive place. Now, some of us lived here when that was a movie set out at Jones Point, and that’s where I worked at the time. But I think that we just need to celebrate the things we agree on, and the things that will keep this community alive. And you can do that with old people and young people living together.

Why do you think the area, the community, doesn’t have more of these well-paying year-round jobs?

I think some of it is some of the people that have moved here don’t want some of the resource extraction jobs, or they’re nervous about those kinds of things. 

Some of us, the ones that do support those kinds of jobs, I think a lot of us are the ones that grew up here with logging and fishing and even mining. I support responsible resource extraction, and I think that we can do it. And you know, the Palmer project isn’t even a mine yet, and it’s constantly getting beat up, and they offer tours. They want to meet with people. They want to show people what they’re doing, and sometimes they meet resistance. And we just need to figure out a way to support responsible projects like that. When the state of Alaska opens up areas for timber sales, we have a lot of logging families, a lot of families living here that came here when this was a logging community. Many of us grew up loading logs onto ships. I walked on logs in the water in Hydaburg for crying out loud. So, we just need those kinds of jobs back, and we need to do it responsibly. I care as much as anybody about the environment and the water and the rivers, but I believe that we can do these kinds of things responsibly, and I won’t support them if they’re not being responsible.

Do you feel like the main obstacle you see between where we’re at now and having more of those logging jobs and mining jobs is community opposition?

Yes, I do, and I understand it. I get it. But we’re not living in 1918 when bad things were happening in those industries. We’re all pretty dependent on electronics right now, and those materials come from mining, and I’d rather have mining being done in areas that have oversight and regulation and control than in places that don’t.

If it is community opposition, as opposed to say some kind of policy problem, it almost seems like a bigger challenge because you can’t just pass an ordinance to change people’s minds. Like you can with a policy problem. If you see that as a barrier to overcome, how do you start working on that problem?

I’m not focusing on any one industry, but I think education is critical. And many people will remember years ago we were doing mining forums to educate people, and we had people from all ideas coming to those, and I think they were valuable, but it takes a lot of work to put things like that together. I just think education, and again, sitting down and talking with each other over a cup of coffee, or you know, down on the beach, or wherever you’re comfortable, but taking advantage of things when these new industries come here and want to talk to us. 

Let’s treat them respectfully and talk to them, and not poo-poo them. We had an opportunity to have really good cell service in this community, and that isn’t happening now. And that’s pretty sad to me that we can’t work together on things that are going to benefit the entire community, and I guess the challenge is to figure out how to have those conversations, and I’m going to put a lot of thought into that.

If for whatever reason these resource industry jobs don’t pan out, we don’t get more timber jobs or mining jobs, do you have hope for another option, another route for this community?

I will never give up hope. There is always going to be a future for this community, and I think we learned long ago that we have to be diversified, and right now we’re not real diversified. We’re pretty dependent on our visitor industry, which is okay. I worked in that industry also, and I love hanging out at the dock with the visitors. And I plan to do it again, but I think that we need to broaden our scope and bring in some other kinds of work. This year we have a boom in construction work going on on the highway. Those are good paying jobs. People are happy and they’re making good money. Well, pretty soon they’re going to be done working on the road, and those jobs will be going away again. So we need to start. We need to get creative and figure out ways to diversify, because tourism could go away tomorrow, and then what would we have?

I like your sentiment that you will never give up hope. I think people will be on board with that.

I am an eternal optimist for this community. I love it that much.

The other candidate for mayor is Doug Olerud. What’s something about Doug that you admire?

He’s a good businessman. 

Thank you for taking the time. I know it’s a lot of effort to put yourself forward to run for office. So thank you for that, and thanks for joining us here. 

The post Watch: An interview with Jan Hill, candidate Haines Mayor appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Kimani Johnson

An Anchorage jury found the Alaska Department of Corrections negligent in its handling of inmate Jonathan Pace’s care, awarding roughly $800,000 after hearing testimony about a traumatic brain injury, an excessive-use-of-force incident and delayed medical care following a broken jaw.

A full-scale aircraft emergency exercise took place at Helena Regional Airport to test how airport teams, airlines and emergency responders work together during a crisis.

On the day that his campaign announced it had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from employees of a California-based artificial intelligence company, Democratic governor candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins said that if elected, he will seek to temporarily ban new computing data centers in Alaska.

As Americans grow frustrated with artificial intelligence software and concerned about the side effects of data centers, they have become a major issue in this year’s midterm elections. Alaska’s gubernatorial race is no exception, particularly since the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority announced plans for a development that could include data centers in Southcentral Alaska. 

All four candidates — Republicans Dave Bronson, Treg Taylor and Bernadette Wilson and the Democratic Kreiss-Tomkins — have staked out different policy positions before Alaskans vote this fall.

Data centers need reliable connections to the internet, cheap electricity and a cooling method. Currently, the North Slope is the most promising location for all three. 

One $500 million proposal on the North Slope intends to burn local natural gas for power and use the natural cold air of the Arctic. 

Another shipping-container-sized plan involves a gas-powered data center processing Bitcoin.

Current Gov. Mike Dunleavy has backed data centers, saying they could be an economic driver — they would create construction jobs and demand for infrastructure that would enable further development. 

Dunleavy is term-limited and cannot run again this year. Four candidates remain in the race to replace him.

“I’m a big believer in data centers. I know that might be unpopular with some folks here,” said Bronson at a candidate forum hosted by Commonwealth North in Anchorage on Thursday.

A former Anchorage Mayor, retired Air Force pilot and former director of the state’s largest airport, Bronson said he sees economic opportunity if data centers are built in Alaska, and he would like to encourage them.

“The logistics (are) minimal, and there’s a lot of money in data centers, but you’ve got to deal with the noise. You’ve got to deal with the cooling, and you’ve got to deal — certainly — with the electricity. And the groups that I’m talking to, they said we’re not going to take your electricity because it’s not reliable. … We will produce our own, and we will move, and we will build our own data centers. That’s good for us. That’s a very strong revenue source,” Bronson said.

At a Sept. 8 forum in Anchorage, Taylor — the state’s former attorney general — offered a similar perspective.

“I think we need to embrace it,” he said of data centers. 

“We have all the makings of a great place for a data center to thrive and produce good-paying jobs for Alaskans,” Taylor said.

He added that electricity costs are his biggest concern. Any data center must “bring their own energy,” he said, and if a data center then sells excess power it generates, it could be a benefit to Alaskans if it is cheaper than other power available nearby.

“It doesn’t have to drive up costs if you do it correctly. It can produce a net savings to the ratepayers in Alaska,” he said.

Bronson and Taylor each said they see data centers as the future and fear that Alaska will miss out if it doesn’t embrace them.

“It’s a service everybody’s using and everybody has to adapt to and use, or you’re going to get left behind,” Taylor said.

Kreiss-Tomkins is advocating a temporary pause on data center development in the state.

“I support a moratorium on data center development in Alaska until the Legislature can pass a comprehensive regulatory framework for that development in Alaska,” he said during a Sept. 8 forum in Anchorage.

Any limits on development would be decided by negotiations between himself and the Legislature, he said.

While Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign has received large donations from people employed by the AI company Anthropic, those employees have tended to recommend restrictions on AI development as well.

This year, the Alaska Senate voted 14-5 to pass a data center bill, but the House failed to take it up before the end of the legislative session. That bill would have regulated how data centers can use electricity from public utilities and would have required them to create decommissioning plans. 

The sponsor of the bill, Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, will return to the Legislature next year, and the coalition majority that passed the bill is also likely to return, meaning that the next governor will likely be confronted with similar legislation.

Kreiss-Tomkins has also endorsed legislation that would ban AI-generated fake images intended to mislead the public and a bill that would require political advertisers to disclose AI-generated content. 

Wilson, asked about her position by text message, criticized Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign for accepting large contributions from AI company employees.

“Unlike Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins — better known as Chat JKT — our campaign is not funded with hundreds of thousands of dollars from California AI companies hoping to own our governor and exploit our state,” she said before explaining her position. “Our administration will make independent decisions that are in the best interest of Alaska, not big donors from the Lower 48. I will never allow Alaska to be littered with hyperscale data centers that take our resources and spoil our lands. Our natural beauty, environment and quality of life matter to every person who calls Alaska home and my job is to represent them, not big tech liberals.”

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