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. A playlist of these profiles, as they are posted, can be found here.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.

Rashah Mcchesney: George Campbell, thank you so much for joining me. Where are you? You were just telling me you’re somewhere not in Haines.

Yeah, I’m outside of King Salmon at a fishing lodge on the NaknekRiver.

Okay, all right. Have you been there all summer? You’re going to be there fall? 

I leave the 25th. I got out here in the middle of August. They called me up and they needed a pilot, and so they called me up and asked me to come back and work for them for the remainder of the season.

Okay, well, thank you for taking the time to chat with us about your planning commission candidacy. Can you tell me first: when did you decide to run? What made you decide to run?

About a week before the deadline, there was a conversation happening, and I made the proverbial comment to somebody about certain things, decisions the planning commission has made over the last few years, and how things have been handled. And somebody said, “Well, we need a bunch of planning commissioners. Why don’t you run?” And I sort of said, “oh no, I can’t really run because my wife won’t let me.” And they went and talked to Lyn[nette Campbell], and Lyn was like, “I don’t really want you to, but you probably should.” So I decided about a week before the deadline.

Okay, and this isn’t your first go round in serving in public office in Haines. You’ve done it at least twice before, I think. I know I’ve seen your name all over the archives on the assembly.

I did one term on the assembly, and then I have been on the board of equalization since it became a citizen board.

I’m curious. I moved here in 2024, and one thing that I was really surprised at, one thing I was interested in reporting on when I first got here, was the fact that Haines had just switched to being an elected planning commission, which is different than anybody else in Southeast, and I think most of the state is doing it. And I’m curious if you think that since it’s been an elected body, that’s impacted like land use regulation or the other things under its purview in the borough during that time.

Okay. So the planning commission body previously was an appointed body, and at that time … well, the planning commission is based should be basing decisions on code, land use code. We can recommend, as a planning commissioner, we can recommend codes, and we can recommend changing of codes, but we can’t pass codes. So we actually are just taking codes, and we’re supposed to interpret them evenly across the board for all to the public, and have the assembly make the codes. As an elected body, now it’s essentially a popularity contest. 

A lot of people, you know, [think] “this is my friend, so I’m going to vote them in,” and they may or may not have experience in things like land planning or construction and things like that. So, as an appointed board, one of the things that happened was that the mayors or the assembly people, when there were openings, would go search out and find people that had construction experience. And as an example, when the dock they were looking at plans of the dock, there was some serious effort to get some people that had experience looking at plans, constructing, doing heavy construction, to try and get people that could balance out other people that were citizens that may or may not have that experience, because respectfully, when you drop a 300 sheet set of plans in somebody and a 250 page contract document. If you haven’t ever seen that stuff before, it’s entirely daunting, and it’s not something that when you’re trying to deal with a $20- $30 million project, it’s not something that you can just learn instantly. So, as a group, that one of the things the planning commission needs to do is review plans of projects the borough is involved in, and we had a lot of big projects recently, and I don’t feel that they were treated fairly by the planning commission just because we elected people that were not of the construction. They don’t have the experience to see that, and so I do not agree with the elected planning commission for those reasons, and again, we’re supposed to read code and administer that code levelly on a fair playing field to all. We’re not making, we’re not making up code. We might suggest it, but we aren’t making it.

If you were elected, what kind of expertise are you bringing to that position? That’s similar to what you just described to me. That you’d like to see on it. 

I’ve had 26 years now of contracting in the civil world. Mostly, it was landscaping, wetland restoration work, but I’ve built driveways. I’ve been on. I worked on phase one and phase three. I’m a subcontractor on the highway project, so I’m around the heavy civil contracting, and so I’ve got lots of years of reading contracts and figuring that stuff out, and I do this also. But I fly also. I’ve also been involved in subdividing land. You know, built a few houses, built buildings. So I’ve had to deal with different forms of government to make those happen. And so I’ve got a lot of experience dealing with agencies, including the Habitat Department of Fish and Game Habitat, the EPA, DEC. So I’ve got a lot of experience in dealing with those sorts of things. And although I don’t, I don’t profess to know it all, what I do know, as I kind of know how to go about finding the people that can explain it to me, so I can understand. And like anything, it’s more important to know how to get the information and how to learn what you need to know to make a decision than it is to try and know everything yourself.

Okay, and you know, one outgrowth that I’ve seen of there being an elected planning commission has been that there’s sometimes sort of tension between the planning commission and the assembly, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily because the planning commission has been elected, but I have seen since I got here that there are sometimes decisions that the planning commission makes or recommendations they make that the assembly doesn’t agree with, or you were involved in a sort of tangle between the two bodies, and there’s been lawsuits that have come out of things coming back from the assembly to the planning commission. Like it sort of seems sometimes like there’s some tension between which body is supposed to be doing what, and  I’m curious if you were elected how you would go about deepening communication and collaboration between two bodies, or if you would at all, or how you see that tension?

Like any form of government and any governmental body, there always seems to be a little bit of a fiefdom defense, and you know everybody wants to have their ground where they’re supposed to do stuff. But I will submit that since you got here since the elected body you missed some of the big fireworks that we had back when it was an appointed body and one of them was the vote on the assembly in code — they have to have a vote of four even. If there’s four people sitting at the dais, you have to have a vote of four. The planning commission and it might have changed. I will have to go back and review if it got changed. But the planning commission had that belief for many years, and finally somebody went, “No, you just have to have a majority, and that became a very upsetting thing for the planning commission, even when it wasn’t appointed, and there was a big shakeup back then. So I’m going to say that that has been a point of contention in a lot of places.

Not just because it’s become an elected body, but just because the bodies have been tangled with each other for a while. Okay, that’s interesting.

And a lot of that is because of personalities and ideologies. Some people really like blue houses, other people don’t like blue houses, and at times I think that our borough has got themselves tied up with not adhering to what the code says, but trying to insert extra words or meaning that aren’t written in there, and they try to interpret it. And I think one of the things that I would try and bring in my belief is read what the code says. And when you’re sit, when we sit at the dais, I think it’s important when we start trying to say that well, code says this. What we really should say is here. Let me read what the code says and read the code right from the code, because one word, one word omitted, one word added can completely change the meaning. 

When I was on the assembly, we had a couple of these situations where I’m going to say long arguments would ensue, and so I’d go back and you know I’d read the code, and then I go excuse me, let me read what the code says, and you know the question gets called and the vote happens because what we were arguing about, we didn’t, you know, really had no, no bearing because of what code actually said. So I think as a planning commissioner, one of the important things is to go back and read the exact code. When we put anything before the assembly, we need to base our stuff on code, or if we are suggesting a code change, have a very easily understandable reasoning for why that code change will be good, and also talk about what the unintended consequences are going to be, and then have a free form of communication back and forth that you know when it goes before the committee of the assembly, I think the planning commission really needs to have representation that can talk about it, so that the assembly can understand it instead of at times I’ve seen where the assembly brings up a change and the there’s no commissioner there to stand up and represent the planning commission and and have a dialog in a public forum. So I think those things, changing those things would help an awful lot.

What I heard from you there, and we had kind of a wide ranging answer there because I had a wide ranging question, but what I heard from you there was that that there needs to be sort of a planning commission representative when maybe available to answer questions or at least explain why the decision was made when the assembly is taking up something that the planning commission is recommending.

Yeah, that’s part of it, but yes, correct, and that representative needs to be appointed by the planning commission to be the representative, not just well. There’s a planning commissioner here, maybe they could answer the question. The person needs to be there specifically at the behest of the planning commission to represent that subject.

Interesting. Sort of like the assembly has a liaison to the planning commission. You think the planning commission should have a liaison to the assembly?

When you’re talking about important stuff, yes, I do believe that because again, every one of us has a filter, and every one of us has a view. But having the body itself that has taken a vote. Having them represent themselves, I think, is very important. For just this is what the planning commission talked about. The liaisons are fine, but if you want to get into the fine points of why does the planning commission believe this or this or this, I think a member of that body should be Representative of the Planning Commission in that meeting.

I see. Okay, I want to go back for a second. You were talking about reading straight from the code because a lot of times that that pulls you out of rabbit holes you’re down that maybe have nothing to do with you know conceptually what’s actually in the code. I’ve heard. From a lot of planning commission candidates in the last few years, that you know they’re gonna they’re gonna follow the code. They’re gonna get on the board and they’re gonna follow the code, or they’re gonna get on the commission. They’re gonna follow the code, and I think that there have been some situations where it’s not as cut and dry as that. There’s some subjectivity either because the code’s incomplete, it’s missing something, or maybe in the case of I think it was the cell towers, there was a permit type that there was one permit they could get, or another permit they could get, and I’ve seen it come up a couple times with that body where it’s not a complete answer to go see what’s in code, and you have to bring some kind of subjectivity to bear, and I’m curious if you have also encountered that, and if so, how you would approach a situation where the code isn’t the be-all, end-all; it’s just a guiding document that helps you figure out which direction you were supposed to be going in.

Well, that’s an interesting question, and I, I somewhat feel like you might have some motivation for that particular question towards me. But in some ways, you’re right. There are codes that are lacking, and I understand that. However, as a community, we are not the only community that deals with this. And so, if you have a code that seems to be lacking, one of the first things that a human being should do in an office is sit back and think, “What is common sense, you know? 

And I’m just going to throw an idea out here: if you know in our community we are a small community, we have low levels of traffic. We have low levels of pedestrian traffic and all that. So if the code says something like you know crosswalks will have crosswalks at you know for on every street, and suddenly we get a plan that we’re now going to move the crosswalks from the corners, we’re going to move them into the middle of the blocks. It meets the code. We’re going to have them on every street, well, sit back and ask yourself common sense. Why do we have crosswalks on corners? You know, what are the advantages of that? One is you’re not bringing people out from in between cars parked. You go to a corner and you can cross two streets and , you know, get to the block kitty corner from you instead of having to walk half the block down. So a lot of times I feel like our borough says, “Oh, this code is confusing, or it doesn’t outline this, it doesn’t outline that. But we don’t sit back and first ask what would common sense dictate. 

Then the next piece of this is that we are Haines, and I understand we’re Haines. But guess what? You know there are national standards on many things. There’s national standards. There’s acceptable methods and means for many things that we discuss. Instead of trying to recreate the world, you know the whole world for our own little fiefdom here. Let’s go look at what other places do. What standards are there? And you know, examples in traffic laws and traffic codes and building codes and all that. You know, there’s the United Building Codes. There’s federal highway codes. There’s things like that. So, as a planning commissioner, there are resources out there that will explain a lot of these questions in common sense. There are times where, okay, yeah, you’ve got an outlier that we have as an individual that wants to do something that’s not in code. Well, you know, remember the government is not there to run people’s lives. If there isn’t something in code that says someone can’t do that or it’s not allowed, it is allowed. We’re free, you know, we’re a free country. So this idea that we have the right to regulate everything someone does on their property, I disagree with. I think that the borough should be trying to do less infringement on humans, or on our local people. And if we don’t have a code that specifically says you cannot do that, I’m sorry. You get it’s your right to do it on your property. So you know. But again, go back to common sense. Look at what national standards are. Look at what other organizations, national organizations, do as a standard, and maybe try and do that instead of recreating and creating a lot of strife with our community. 

I think what I’m trying to get at there is I think there are these sort of situations, and I’m I think the 5g conversation is a really good example of it, where you have a permit that goes in front of the planning commission, and there’s the permit specificity, and and the the things you can do in the permit. Then there’s private property. Someone may want to contract with the company to have an allowable use of a cell tower on their land. And I think a lot of people here prioritize private property rights. But then there’s also people who are neighbors who are worried about everything from their viewshed to their health, and there’s kind of a there’s a tension there between both, like what the code allows and what a value set might be around what a person can do on their private property versus how some people perceive it might impact them or how it might actually impact them. So it seemed like a recommendation or a decision-making point that sort of straddled a lot of kinds of personal philosophical things for people and what’s in code and how to follow it. So what I’m curious about is how you approach decision making with an issue like that where it’s not cut and dry and the value sets of people vary so dramatically about each of those things.

My father used to say that your rights end where my toes begin, and you know a pretty simple statement. But again, you’re talking about private property use, which you know is a lot of what the planning commission is going to do. Property owners who are paying property tax and have a lot of them have been paying it. They bought the land. They’re paying property tax. They have the right to do anything on their property that is not restricted by code that says you can’t do that. 

Okay, so if a person has a piece of property and they want to build pink houses on it, and there’s nothing in the code that says you can’t build pink houses, but all the neighbors around it don’t like the color pink. I’m sorry, people. That’s that person’s right to do on their property, and quite often, again, our borough has spent a lot of time, a lot of money, and created a lot more strife by instead of telling the neighbors, “Hey, folks, you moved into a zone that allows this. You’ve had the opportunity to change it for however long you’ve been here. The new property owner has read the code. What they’re trying to do is within code. If you don’t like it, you have the option of moving. You have the option of buying the land. Get together, buy the person’s land from them, and you know, so that they don’t build their pink house. And this is again not just the cell towers. 

There’s been a lot of other issues that have come up, and this is where, personally, as a planning commissioner, I don’t think I have a lot that can have much impact. But a lot of these issues have come because of people, again, the borough. When the first call comes into our borough offices, the borough management needs to look at the code, read the code specifically related to that. Maybe have a conversation with a property owner. Why do you, you know, if they if the borough thinks that they’re out of line a little bit, you have a conversation, and because I’ve done this at times, I’ve had conversations, and I’ve said, “Well, okay, you’re reading this code, but you didn’t read far enough down, and right here, this says I can do this. Well, that needs to happen. You know, it instead of people jumping into the fray without reading all the codes that oversee it.

 So again, if a property owner is within their rights, the borough doesn’t have the right to step in and do anything. And you know, I’m sorry. And yes, I know that that may upset people, but again, we are a free society, and until our government stops trying to get involved and trying to stop people from the free use of their land, which within the codes, you know, we’re going to have these conflicts. And my particular area, as you’re well aware, right now there’s been – the  borough that has begun a rezoning project out in 26 Mile, and this rezoning project was not requested by a petition of the local people. It was dreamed up by our – whether it be the administration, or the planning commission or the assembly to start doing this rezoning project, and it has not been a comfortable situation for the planning commissioners. But the problem with it is that out at 26 Mile, people buy land out there so that they can have a dog team if they want a dog team. They can have their sawmill. They can, you know, have a firewood business. They can have a shop and run snow machines and, you know, race car engines and heavy equipment. Well, you know, and there’s been other activities that people have been objecting to, and they like, well, we don’t want our neighbor doing this. If you don’t want businesses and firewood cutting and heavy equipment and all this stuff. If you don’t, you know, and heliports and all that.

If you don’t want that, that’s why Lutak went through and they rezoned their area to restrict businesses and restrict all that stuff. Mud Bay did the very same thing. So there already are zones in our community that you’re not allowed to do these things, so if that is what, if citizens don’t want certain things, they need to choose where they purchase a house. Just like people that want to do certain things purchase land and purchase houses out the highway or in the general use zone.

Yeah, I had a question about that, but I’m glad that you brought up the heliport because I think a lot of people are probably familiar with you as having this long-running kind of legal dispute with the borough and neighbors weighing in on it. 

And I know that was the very first planning commission meeting I ever covered, or maybe it was the second, but it’s been something that I’ve known that you’ve been grappling with for a while, and it sounds like you pretty firmly fall on the side of like if it’s an allowable use on the property, the planning commission’s job is to enable someone to have that allowable use. 

Is there a point at which you consider if code needs to be changed as a planning commissioner, or if there’s an allowable use that does end up impacting people in a way that you’re not personally supportive, is there a decision-making point in which you think you would approach like potentially changing the code, or is that something that you think the planning commission should be taking up?

When you say the code, I’m assuming you’re talking about land use code here, specifically land use

Code, permitting. Process just in general.

Well, yeah. So there are many codes. I just want to make sure that we’re talking specifically about planning, planning, zoning, and land use codes. 

First of all, as a planning commissioner my personal views — and I am going to give a shout out to Rob Goldberg, who to me was one of the best planning commissioners to ever listen to and watch — My personal views should not, and my personal ideology should not be involved in it

I believe a planning commissioner is beholden to what the laws, what the codes say, and laws say and we need to follow those. Should those laws, codes be changed? By all means, we should always be willing to review that. And again, as an assembly member, I remember one time something was extremely unpopular amongst us, the assembly members. But the question came before us: Should this go on the ballot for at the next election? And I voted yes. And a whole bunch of people called me up and said, “Why did you vote yes for that? 

And I said, “Well, the question was, should the people get to make a decision? Of course, it should not always be on us, the “us the elected official.” 

It shouldn’t always be on the elected officials to make a decision. At some point, the citizens have the right to petition and get something on the ballot. And any time a citizen petition comes forward, I believe and it qualifies under code, I believe that should immediately be put forward to a vote of the people that are supposed to be in there. Are there code changes I think need to happen? Yes, there are. There are a couple. 

In fact, the whole planning and zoning change, I believe that the code should get changed to where a zoning change can only happen by a vote of the citizens. I think the citizens need to petition and then vote on it if they want. And when I say the citizens – I also believe it should be the property owners within an area because they’re the people that are tasked with making sure they pay property taxes and have the ownership of that land. And I think those people, anytime you want to change their zoning, they should have the right to vote. Whether or not they agree, but the short answer is yes: code code changes should always be considered.

And on that sort of vein, like what role do you think that the planning commission plays in helping the borough grow? Does it play a role in helping it grow?

Well, of course they do, and I mean there’s some obvious ones with the reviews of all the projects, street projects, any street project, any borough project, they review that. One of the things that the borough can do again, or the planning commission again, is get people that can actually look at a set of plans and specifications and make heads or tails of it to make a decision of is this a good idea or not. Another thing that the planning commission can do that, and as a borough assembly member, we missed this one when Front Street was being done or Beach Road was being done between the harbor and the Quick Shop, that all was being redone, and it was brought to us about, “Hey, do you want to spend an extra $100,000 and put the power lines underground? “And that was the question that was posed to us. And at the time, money was tight, and we decided not to do that. And this is where I believe that the planning commission could have stepped in. 

It wasn’t until it was all built and the power lines were up and finished, and everybody looked around and went, “Oh shoot, the power lines cross the road in two places, which means fishing boats are restricted to taking their masts down, being pulled out. Whereas, had we put that all underground, it would have made it much easier for the fishermen to move their boats out of the harbor and to other other locations. And there were two or three boatyards that were within three quarters of a mile that they had to pull their masts down at that point. So, just that right there, the planning commission having people with great ideas or listening to great ideas and bringing them forth, we can help in there. 

As far as community growth, I think one of the important things for the planning commission to remember is is that there are there’s a lot of natural resources we have in our community, and since before most of us were here in town, the you know that has been a lot of our income, you know, and a lot of our our stable base, and I think that we sometimes forget that if you don’t have industrial land, you can’t have a lot of this stuff, and maybe that’s some people’s goal. I don’t know, but I think that when we when we build plans and we look at future planning and zoning, we need to consider that you know how where are we going to put our heavy equipment yards so that people can have snow plows, you know, and snowplow equipment, and and have them closer to their snowplow jobs because, you know, moving a grader 10 miles to go do three hours of grading just doesn’t make sense. 

So if you’re with the heavy equipment we need, our needs in the winter time are a lot more than people realize downtown, so you can’t restrict all those industries to five miles out of town.  You get out the highway, you need industrial land if you’re going to, you know, even timber of any kind at some point. You’ve got to have logging trucks and stuff like that. We’ve got a lot of small sawmills happening. So thinking ahead and thinking about how our people can can what they will need to have employment, and look at our youth. You know, when a young person graduates from high school here, what can they do for a living? How can they make a buck in this town? Commercial fishing, we’re less than half of the gill net permits than we were in I think the 1980s. So we’ve been losing ground as far as what I’m going to say. People that haven’t gone to college, you know, people that have gone to work apprentice schools and stuff like that; those jobs are decreasing, and I think that it’s important that we look at that and make sure that our that we don’t plan and zone ourselves out of the ability for people to make a living.

I think what I’m trying to understand there too is I heard from some people who were elected to the planning commission, and that first crop of folks that got elected, that there were some things that they wanted to address that maybe weren’t that sort of long range planning. I’m thinking about light in the townsite, or not to call anybody out specifically, but just some future growth opportunities or future issues to address that would be generated from planning commissioners themselves and not necessarily from the community. 

And then the reality of being a planning commissioner is that you spend a lot of time on permits that people have applied for for development of their own, and there’s not as much time to like to sit and think ahead about what your priorities might be as a body. And I’m curious if you think that that is the role of a planning commissioner to be planning for a future that nobody’s talking about yet, or if you how you think about what the planning commission can do as part of that long-range planning when it isn’t as simple as a company coming in and asking for a permit to do something?

Naturally, we should consider the long-term plans, and I believe I was at one of the meetings, and it might have been that first one you were at where somebody brought up light pollution issues. We’re a small town, we we have extremely high electricity rates. Our water and sewer rates for seem to be high. Our freight rates are high. There’s not a lot of what I would call attractive factors for any large scale industry to come in that isn’t already here in some way, shape, or form, you know, I I don’t really see a major manufacturing company to come in for anything because just the freight rates would kill them, and you know, or if you’ve got electrical machinery of any kind, the electrical rates would just would make it unpalatable for almost any any company, and so the idea that we’re worried about future growth of any size, when you start looking at the size of our community, and I’m going to go to the U.S. Census, 

I’m not going to go to the the Haines Borough numbers – 

And the state. 

So you go to our census and you start looking at where we are, and then also go look at our school numbers. We’re not a growing community. We are an aging community that is, you know, frankly, we’re aging ourselves out, and what we’re turning into is we’re turning into a summertime. We’re a summertime community where our winter community has very few people. 

And if you’ve tried to go eat out during the winter time, I’m sure that you’ve been challenged a few times. And even in the summertime, there are times where you’re very limited to what you can do for anything entertainment. So some of this stuff that people start talking about, where you know you’ve got big cities with lots of land and lots of potential for growth of some types of industry, you know we are the end of the road, and so you know maybe you get some freighting that happens through here, but you know for for large scale, I don’t see anything that’s going to bring in hundreds and hundreds of people that is going to impact downtown very much. 

If you walk down Main Street, you know last I looked we had two stores that were selling secondhand type stuff. I think one of them is now closed, but you know when some of your main business district has a secondhand store, you have to consider where your income of your community is. But I, when I was a kid, from what’s now Mountain Market all the way, you could go down to what was Wallace Garage, but now Mountain Market and Third Avenue didn’t happen. It wasn’t there. Nothing on that side was there, but it was pitch black to get to what’s now the Outfitters Sporting Good. That area there was pitch black, no lights, no nothing, and there was Port Chilkoot. 

None of the development behind what’s now the Parts Place between there and the clinic and all that, none of that was there. Our, what I’m going to call the downtown area, has spread out now all the way you know to the fort, all the way out to the ball fields, and so we’ve spread stuff out, but we really haven’t increased the businesses as much as people think. We know Main Street used to be a thriving business district all winter long, and it has kind of changed, and a lot of places close in the winter time now. 

So when we’re talking about planning, one of the things I, again the red face test common sense, I don’t see a lot of potential for some huge impact of people coming in that will even take us up to the 2,500 people year round that our borough seems to think that we have. So, yeah, we need to think about it. But some of this stuff, I think, also is stuff that’s to me, it’s big city concerns, and in a small town. And I, again, I’m going to go back to the freedoms of people. I am trying to tell people that they can’t turn on their Christmas lights or have lights on all winter long. I just don’t, I don’t see the need for that, and I think our electricity rates probably will help dictate bright lights more than anything.

Okay, well, we’re about wrapping up on the amount of time that I was hoping to take for this interview, but I’m curious if I missed anything that you think is important or anything that you want people to know about what you would like to do if you were elected?

Well, I don’t really have something I’m bringing in as far as we need to do this or we need to do that as far as code. What I hope to bring is I hope to bring some experience and bring in a reminder that “let’s read code. What does code say?”  You know, stop the conversation. “Let’s not get into an argument. First, read the code. What codes apply to this. Let’s read those, and now let’s see how this decision, you know, goes out.”

Because as you talked about the rabbit hole, you know, mentioned that you’ve heard some of these rabbit holes. A lot of these conversations are cleared up in code, and it’s only when the code is a little bit hinky that these discussions, I think these discussions should happen. But I would hope that I could bring a level-headed approach, following code, following laws, and not make stuff, insert words into code, or try and warp the code, or warp common sense to fit the desires of myself or or other people that are are feel that they need to have it a specific way.

Okay, George, thanks so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

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Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, site of the world’s biggest sockeye salmon runs, produced a total harvest this year that was a bit smaller than the 20-year average but fetched more dollars for fishers, according to a state summary.

The 2026 sockeye salmon run totaled 45.7 million fish, making this the first year since 2014 that the run was below 50 million, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game preliminary summary, released last week. While the total run was 4% above the preseason forecast, the total catch of 30.1 million sockeye was 7% below the preseason forecast, according to Fish and Game.

“This is by no means a small run,” said Stacy Vega, a department biologist. Massive runs cannot continue forever, she said. “Eventually, it’s got to come down,” she said.

Additionally, Bristol Bay commercial fishers harvested 10,700 Chinook, 457,100 chum, 55,100 coho and 666,700 pink salmon.

The total price paid to harvesters for all salmon species harvests, an amount known as exvessel value, was $264 million, the department said. That was 21% above the 20-year average of $207.8 million, the department said in its preliminary summary.

The total sockeye run was 8% below the 20-year average of 49.6 million fish according to the department. The total harvest was 3% lower than the 20-year average, the department said.

But those 20-year averages reflect some years of huge runs, including the record run of 79 million sockeye in 2022, said Vega.

That puts the 2026 salmon season into perspective, said Vega, who focuses on the Egegik and Ugashik rivers, which are among several Bristol Bay salmon rivers.

In many ways, it was a very average year for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon.

The sockeye in that region generally range from 4 to 6 years in age, splitting their lives between freshwater and ocean habitats, and there was a fairly even distribution among age groups this year, Vega said. The most common age groups are those that spend two or three years in the ocean, she said.

The average sockeye size was 5 pounds, about equal to the average over the last five years and above the record-low average size of 4.53 pounds reported in 2024.

Salmon in Bristol Bay, other parts of Alaska and around the North Pacific have been declining in size over the past decades.

For Bristol Bay, the shrinking size has been correlated in part to big runs, Vega said.

“Usually, when we have a really big run, the fish are smaller,” she said. More fish in the ocean competing for food tends to result in smaller fish, she said.

The season’s run and harvest totals came very close to the department’s preseasons forecasts, a gratifying result for biologists who know that preseason predictions are difficult and always different from reality, Vega said.

Biologists say early indications are that next year’s Bristol Bay sockeye run will be similar in size to this year’s run. But the department has not yet released its official 2027 forecast.

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Editor’s note: This year the Chilkat Valley News partnered with KHNS on its election coverage in addition to hosting two candidate forums. A playlist of these profiles, as they are posted, can be found here.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.

Rashah McChesney: Zeke Frank, welcome. Hello.

Zeke Frank:  Thanks, Rashah. Good to be here.

Great. Thank you for taking the time to meet me here. I want to just first ask you what’s on your hat.

Oh, well, this is Vote for Zeke in a maybe familiar to some font from a kind of quirky movie back in the day, and yeah, it’s about the extent of my material campaigning.

No, no lawn signs. You’ve not done any lawn signs? 

No lawn signs. I think I wanted something that was more permanent. You know, it’s not going to end up in a landfill. Maybe it’ll end up in someone’s closet, but on a sunny day they can put it on and think back on that time Zeke ran for the planning commission.

And I, you were showing me earlier that you put the caveat language, the paid for by yes on the inside of the bill? 

Yes, they are APOC [ Alaska Public Offices Commission] compliant. 

Did you know what APOC compliance was when you first made those hats, or did you catch up with that?

I mean, it kind of brought to light some questions about what that means. So yeah, that ended up going inside the headband.

Yeah, I’m delighted with that.

Yes.

Well, I’m glad that we sat down. I was hoping to just kind of pick your brain a little bit about why you’re running for planning commission. So let’s just start with that real basic one. Why are you running?

Well, so I guess I can get into a little bit of background about myself. So I grew up in Haines, I’m a Haines High School graduate. I graduated in 2014, and then afterwards worked my way into the maritime industry. So for the most part, I’ve worked for a company called Lindblad Expeditions. They operate expedition cruise vessels, you know, ecotourism. They have ships that operate all over the world, and I’ve had a focus on our U.S. ships for the past decade. So [I] worked my way up there. I eventually sailed as chief engineer on one of our newer U.S. flagships. [I] did that for a few years, stepped away for some personal projects, and then kind of worked my way back in as a project manager in  shipyards doing project planning in advance of shipyards. I dealt with a vessel refit, a lot of capital expenditure. A lot of, basically,  maintenance planning and then this past year I transitioned to an actual full time position –  that was all contract – a full time position as a ship superintendent for two and now three of our U S flagged ships.

What does a ship superintendent do?

That’s a great question. I get that a lot, actually.

Not a title you hear that often. 

Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. Well, kind of an antiquated title or a similar title that was more common just a decade or two was a port engineer.

Okay.

So it’s a little bit similar to that. Basically the one sentence answer to that is keep the ship functioning and revenue generating. So that’s not as simple as “oh we need this work done right now. It’s strategic. It’s “well what regulations are going to pop up in the next few years that we should get ahead of,” “how can we improve efficiency?” Whether that’s operational efficiency, what the crew are doing on board, or or the efficiency most people think about fuel efficiency. So, yeah, a ship superintendent, you’re in charge of all forecasted maintenance, any kind of dry dock planning, any kind of regulatory changes that come up, you need to be aware of and collaborate with other stakeholders to make sure that it happens and whatever changes need to happen do happen effectively. And beyond that, I manage the engine departments on board, so I manage a team of about 24 across the three ships that I currently am superintendent over. 

And that’s a job that’s had you based in Haines?

Yeah, I work remotely, and so yeah, I’m here at my remote office as much as possible. I do get called to the ships on occasion, especially when we’re in Southeast Alaska. It’s literally just a quick hop over to Juneau or maybe a hop to Sitka or something like that if if I’m needed or if we have a new engineer who comes aboard and I want to meet them and give them some type of training or if there’s any kind of friction that needs to be settled on board,  I like to be present. I think that it’s pretty difficult to lead from behind a screen and it’s much much easier to connect with people face to face. 

Okay. And when did you decide that filling your time like that working from home and things wasn’t enough? You wanted to also pack it with planning commission things.

I feel like I’ve been a part of this community, but maybe a little bit more behind the scenes. I have some property out the road that I spend most of my time at.

How far out the road?

It’s actually at Chilkat Lake.

Okay. Are you working remotely from Chilkat Lake?

Yeah. So it’s definitely very, it’s been a game changer, Starlink has, and I think that many people around the state and any rural areas know that. But yeah, obviously we’re completely off grid out there, and so just putting up a dish and paying a monthly fee has been pretty convenient. Beyond that, I’ve wanted to essentially just get more involved in a way that I could see. I wanted to take the opportunity to utilize the skills that I’ve developed over the past decade in my career path to the betterment of this community, and I mean, I think forward-thinking, that’s a big part of my job. 

Well, as a planning commissioner, you’re making decisions that will impact the future of this community, and these are decisions that people my age are going to be living with [in] 2030, 2050, years down the line, and so you need to be very conscientious and really think deeply about a lot of these decisions. And of course, some decisions aren’t going to be as heavy-handed as that. But it all – every … okay when you’re building a house right out of brick, every little brick that you use to build every one of those walls turns into the structure that someone’s going to eventually live in or work in or whatever. Well, every decision that comes across the assembly or the planning commission is one of those bricks, and some of them hold more weight than others. 

And had you been sort of watching planning commission meetings or watching assembly meetings, like where did you start to? When did you start to come to understand how these elected bodies play a role in our daily lives?

Well, I think the CVN’s been a pretty valuable source for that.

I did not ask him to do that. 

I’m not a paid sponsor here. Then, yeah, I have listened in on some planning commission meetings, and of course, in advance of this, I wanted to see a little bit more about how that decision making process goes. But, I will have a lot to learn about these processes, and I’m not going to hide that. I haven’t been very involved so far, but I want to change that, and I think this is a great place to start. And I wish that more young people were willing to put themselves out there and do something like this.

Do you feel like you have the sort of time and capacity to put into kind of digging into some of these meatier decisions? 

Yeah, I do feel I have that time and capacity. I mean, technically, I work a 40-hour work week. Sometimes that is not the case if things are happening. But  I don’t sleep the other hours of the day. I have the time to put forward, or dig in and take community input. And review Title 18, see how any of these potential decisions align with our comprehensive plan. So I do feel I have the time and the bandwidth to take on the planning commission.

Have you read the comprehensive plan?

I’ve read the executive summary and I’ve parsed the comprehensive plan. I haven’t read it in in its entirety yet, but

Well, other candidates have told me, and I think experiencing Haines – I moved here in 2024 – pretty often, we refer to these big documents like the comprehensive plan or you know borough code, and I did try to sit down and just sort of read through big chunks of the code that I knew were coming up at assembly all the time, but I think that can be kind of a heavy endeavor. I’m curious, you know, did you start going through Title 18 or go through the comprehensive plan? Like, like, what’s been your process for kind of getting a handle on these big things? 

Yeah, I think I’ve done a lot of Title 18 review, and I mean, yeah it’s code. It may come off as dense, but I mean, I think I was pretty amazed at how easy it is to navigate on our borough website. But yeah, it’s definitely as I’ve gone through it, I’ve looked at past projects that have happened here in town, and I’ve thought about, “oh, how did how did the the commission at the time come to the decision that that conditional use permit was was was valid or within the guidelines of Title 18?”

So I think for me, kind of applying what I found in there to projects that have maybe been controversial in the past, or all of these different discussions that I’ve just been around and I’ve heard people talk about was a better way to connect with it. But yeah, I mean, for my job, I deal with CFRs a lot. Chapter 46, the Code of Federal Federal Regulations for our listeners here. 

So the U.S. Coast Guard has primary oversight of the U.S. flag vessels that I manage, and so knowing how to read and how to find the regulations that apply the most is a critical aspect of my job, and I’ll say the CFRs are far more dense than Title 18 is, so which is good. I mean, I think  there’s a lot more nuance and and minutia when you’re talking about something as vague as ships all over the world, but yeah. So I think that  code and regulations don’t scare me. It’s nice actually. It’s nice to have that kind of … someone already made this decision for me, and I just need to see if this aligns and it’s a guideline, of course, and and well, maybe guideline is not the right word. It’s just cut and dry. It is what it is, you know?

Yeah? I’ve heard that from some candidates in the past, and I think at both the assembly and the commission level, and I’m curious. I think it’s never as simple. Well, that’s not true. Never is not the right word. Sometimes it is as simple as saying, “Is this thing allowed in this place? Is this use something that the code allows for? But I think a lot of people have come to realize that in some places we don’t have permits for that kind of use, or the code is incomplete, or we just ran into something a few months ago where there were actually sort of two competing portions of code, and we realized, oh, something here has to be adjusted. And I, I’m sort of curious how you approach navigating a situation when it isn’t cut and dry, when there isn’t a “step one, step two, step three, boom, here’s the permit.” 

Well, I would say that if so, I mean, when a decision needs to be made at the planning commission, it’s “the code is the code at that moment,” right? There’s no changing that. There’s no bending it. There’s nothing you can do to make the code align with the decision you want to see happen. Like a condition use permit: there are some items in there that are a little bit subjective [in the] requirements for for a conditional use permit.  And so, in my opinion, a planning commissioner should be a human calculator to a certain degree, right? You’ve got this equation, all right? Is it in line with Title 18? Yes, but maybe there’s some subjectivity in some facets of whatever is being presented. So okay, how does that align with our comprehensive plan? And beyond that, it’s really, really important to get community input. I think beyond anything, we need to make sure that we are well. First and foremost, it needs to be legal, right? That’s the cut and dry aspect of it. But like you said, yeah, some things aren’t just a yay or a nay. It’s there could be some opinion that’s that’s put into play there …

Or at the very least, there’s subjectivity when interpreting what a shall versus a may versus…

Exactly and so yeah, I mean that’s essentially what a planning commissioner does. You’re interpreting code, and you’re presenting your interpretation of that code. But beyond all that you need to be willing to listen to others in the community. I think that someone always has an opinion about something.

In Haines? 

Yeah. Everyone’s opinion has something to add to the equation or to the conversation, everyone has their own viewpoints, and those viewpoints are the result of many different aspects of their life and their experiences, and they all add something of value. And so you can’t just write off any opinion right off the bat. So yeah, I think that you need to be as objective as possible. But when there is subjectivity, does it align with the comprehensive plan, our community’s, basically, vision for the future, and what is community input on, in particular, people most impacted by those decisions?

You grew up here, but were you sort of around and kind of paying attention when the planning commission became an elected body?

I mean, I heard about it. Yes, and, yeah I mean, I think there are pros and cons, right? And I mean that’s why there’s a ballot measure. There’s never a ballot measure without there being pros and cons to it.

When I first moved here in 2024, I thought it was going to be really interesting to cover. It’s actually one of the things that I identified as, “oh, I’m stoked to go to and write about this elected planning commission,” because in these other communities that I’ve lived in in Alaska, land use planning is sometimes ends up in front of a planning commission that’s been appointed and has one particular point of view. Maybe it’s like all realtors or it’s all heavy industry folks or something. And it felt like Haines was doing something sort of dramatically different. And I’m curious now that you’ve been reading about what a planning commission does and thinking about the sort of future that it, the role that it plays in the future. Do you think it’s a good idea for it to be elected? 

Yeah, I think if you want to get a good representative or representation of the community you would … It’s a better representation of the community as an elected body, in my opinion. When you have appointment up to the mayor, like you said, you’re going to have a little bit more a group that maybe aligns with a certain you goal more so than a hodgepodge of folks from all different walks of life. But like I said, there are pros and cons. I think that it’s important in a planning commission to keep it as apolitical as possible, and by making people run, you do invite some type of you politicize it to a certain degree, But yeah, I at this point in time I think that it is good to have an elected commission. I mean, I think we’re in the process right now. You know what? This has only been a few years. 

Exactly.

I think for me I would have to see where it goes, and perhaps we don’t have an elected planning commission after this upcoming election, so maybe we won’t get a very good data set for it. But as far as its impact on land use in this community I personally couldn’t say I really have the visibility to what that impact might be.

The jury’s still out? 

Yeah, I think it’s something I’ll need to think about a little bit more. I mean, got a few weeks to come up with a decision on that.

Okay, I know you’ve never been on an elected body before.

Yes. 

But I’m curious, like one thing I’ve noticed is that there’s sometimes tension between how the elected planning commission and the elected assembly make decisions on individual permits or you know settlements from permits and things. I’m just curious, like how you would go about navigating that conflict or that you know what your conflict resolution skills are, particularly because both bodies are elected, right? So there’s not an easy answer there. 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think with with any conflict, it’s the result of two things: either assumptions that have been made or a lack of communication, and so breaking down those two barriers being willing to have a conversation with someone who you who you may not see eye-to-eye with is something that I have done many times. It’s something that I think is incredibly useful in making any kind of progress towards a common goal. At the end of the day, everyone who’s serving in an elected position in Haines has one common goal: the success of this community. What that is, or what those people think is success, may vary, there’s no doubt about that. But, at the end of the day, we love this place and we want to make it better. And so, without having these conversations and talking through things in a calm manner, and keeping the heat down without doing that, yeah, you hit a wall. So, I would say in the past, I’ve dealt with a lot of conflict resolution managing a handful of people, and you know on ships, things get pretty feisty because you’re in tight spaces. You have to see the same person over and over. There’s no getting away from them. 

What I’ve found that works is really just having a cup of coffee and talking about it. So now, obviously, we’re talking about something very different here. But at the end of the day, we’re all people, and I think that just leveling with each other is the best way that we can find some type of common ground. And once you are planted on common ground, you can walk towards something. But yeah, there needs to be compromise. And some people say compromise means no one’s happy. Well, it means you’re better off than you were without anything happening at all.

I’m curious, was there one specific sort of issue that made you think, “Oh, I’m going to run for planning commission,” or what was the thing that sort of tipped you over the edge to think that you should step in and sort of throw that hat in the ring?

Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty strong maritime focus, just based on where I’ve been the past decade or a little over a decade, and I think that I want to see our community support what I see as a very renewable and sustainable industry, and that’s our fishermen. At this point, I have friends who I grew up with, went to high school with, etc. They’ve been on waitlists for stalls for years, and it’s not… my intention here is not to come across as if I have an agenda. I really don’t, but I do think that we need to be cognizant and approach this competently in a way that serves for the betterment of our community and the people who are here. 

I would say that that’s essentially what kind of spurred me onto this is, I just want to see…I don’t really like the friction around things that there really shouldn’t be friction. Like I said earlier, we all have a common goal here. Ultimately we just want this to be a great place to live, and so figuring that out together is the only way that we’ll actually see that through.

What are some of the things, you know, that you think have seen friction that you feel like should have been relatively straightforward decisions?

I mean, our harbor improvement. 

I wasn’t here for that, but I’ve read all about it. What, in your opinion, could you tell me a little bit about how you thought that could have gone differently?

Well, if you go into our harbor master’s office there, you’ll see a pretty awesome looking plan for a harbor. 

A bigger [one]. 

Yeah, you should check it out. And things like a drive down dock and all these additional fingers and stalls for all these people who are trying to make a living out here, and as it stands currently, we have added maybe slips for six boats. So that’s something that I think, and I know that there’s reasons behind how it evolved and everything, but I think that there wasn’t much common ground there. I really think that the conversation and the decisions that were made should have … could have been made to the betterment of our harbor and to the benefit of all of the folks who use it, yeah, that’s that’s one that comes to mind.

I’m consistently struck by how contentious a lot of the conversations happen here, and how they can get to contention really fast. And in some ways, I always tell people. I think it’s kind of charming because I feel like you don’t fight for things that you don’t care about. I tell people all the time. This town has like a sibling relationship with itself, and then when it matters, you know, they band together. 

But I think it’s a different thing to be sitting in a position where you’re a decision-maker and people are that contentious with you. And I’m curious how you think you’ll manage sometimes being on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol. Other planning commission candidates specifically have told me that that was like one of the harder parts of being on the planning commission was just like getting cornered in the grocery store. You’re trying to have dinner or you’re just sort of out and about being you, and people are sort of coming at you and making the kind of focal point for conflict over something. Have have you thought about how you might manage that or how have you managed it as a person who grew up here?

I think it’s a good question. I’ll give you a quick little story. I had a mentor who, when I became chief engineer on a ship, he told me, “Zeke, every day when you get up you must put on your Teflon jacket. You can’t let things stick to you. You learn, you acknowledge if there’s fault, and you move on with that new tool in your toolbox.” And yeah, I think as far as potential vitriol, as you put it, in my interactions with people, well: “Why? I want a good explanation for what I said or I decided that they don’t like, and give me your opinion.” I really think that a lot of times people just need to be heard, and I think that if or when I’m ever in a situation like that, yeah, I’ll listen. I think that’s what you have to do as a person on an elected body.  It’s just a part of the game. There’s no avoiding it. You can’t appease everyone with every decision you ever make. We’re all different. We all have different desires. So, at some point. Someone you may have even elected will decide something that you disagree with. So, yeah, that’s how I intend to handle that.

There’s a question that kind of goes hand in hand with that, which is you mentioned how important it is to listen to people’s public testimony on things, particularly when you’re making a decision that you know maybe requires a little bit of subjectivity, how do you go about finding people? Are you chatting with all your neighbors at Chilkat Lake, or where do you picture yourself going to hear from those constituents?

Well, I think that it would depend on what the issue is at hand, and who you would reach out to. Growing up here, I have a pretty good network in town, and so if there’s something I need to know more about, well, then I if I don’t know who to who to ask, or I know who knows who to ask. I think that it’s work to find this public opinion outside of an actual survey or anything that’s actually officially presented, but that’s the difference between someone who’s putting the effort in and someone who isn’t. You need to be willing and not just go to the people who you think will agree with how you’re viewing it. You need to ask the people who you may expect to be against the decision that you’re thinking you’ll make. So, that is a good question, and I’m sure if if elected, I’ll have a group of people who will be able to assist with finding these folks or assist me with proper methods of seeking public input.

I suppose one other thing that I’ve been struck by in this town is how partisan things can get. And you mentioned that sort of the planning commission decision making needs to be pretty apolitical. But do you also feel like it needs to be nonpartisan or have you been sort of aware of that conflict in this town for most of your life, and how do you kind of manage that?

Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, as a planning commissioner if you’re being political, in my opinion, you’re doing a bad job. You should be, as I said, a human calculator. You’ve got your baseline: “Is it legal? Is it up to borough code?” And then you’ve got –  where any kind of subjectivity can guide your decision – you’ve got the comprehensive plan to basically vet, make sure that this decision and or this proposal is in line with what’s been approved to be our community’s vision, and then, as we just discussed, seek that public input. So, I don’t really see a place for any kind of partisanship in those three essential facets right there, and I think that a planning commissioner with an agenda is one that’s probably not going to be very effective, or or will represent their constituents effectively.

Okay, and I’m you mentioned also sort of thinking about how the planning commission makes decisions that are going to impact, you know, people your age for decades to come. Do you have a vision for what you’d like to see in the Chilkat Valley, or how you’d like to see the Chilkat Valley develop, particularly in the land use arena?

Yeah, I mean, I think as as I’m getting more into this, there’s definitely a lot of opinions on what what that should look like, and there’s got to be a happy medium somewhere there. 

Between what? 

I guess between having zero economy and a spaceport here …

A spaceport!

Yeah,  ultimately, I think that we have a problem here. We don’t have very many young people in this town. Of my graduating class of 26, there are five of us still here. I would I would like to see more young people stick around, and for that to be the case, there needs to be opportunity for them. So, what that opportunity may be? Well, if you create an atmosphere that can invite entrepreneurship or or something. If you basically present an environment that encourages, you know, that basically encourages business growth. It’s not like right off the bat I’m saying, yeah, just yes, everything ‘yes this, yes that.” 

It’s like, well, if you have an environment that encourages someone to start up a woodworking business or a boat building shop or something like that. Then, of course, before they get started, we have our checks and balances in town. You know, [it] need to go through our – depending on what they’re doing to the land –  planning commission up to the assembly level. So it’s not like you can just open the gates, but as long as we have a playing ground for these folks to pitch these ideas, and we encourage some type of economy here, then I see possibilities there. And at this point, we have tons, we have amazing small business owners in this town who are doing great things. 

But I think foot traffic is down in some regards, and and beyond that, what happens once fall hits. There’s not much going on here. So how do we have something that’s going to last through the winter? How is there going to be something to keep people around and maybe more just full-time residents here. And I don’t have the answer for that right now, Rashah. 

I think that as I get more involved, and whether or not I get elected here, I still want to become. I do want to continue to think, and my thoughts will always evolve on the subject. I think you need to be flexible, and new opportunities may present themselves. And as long as you’re willing to evaluate all of those opportunities, and not just presenting this, as long as you’re not just saying no to everything, well, there’s a lot of possibility.  So, so yeah, I don’t have the answer. I don’t know exactly what will be perfect for this community, but there’s got to be something there. 

That sort of stimulates the economy? 

Yeah, something that’ll keep our Haines High School graduates here in town. I really loved our [vocational education] program and I know a lot of people who still utilize those skills that they developed in that VocEd program. I think that skilled trades are essential. I mean, I think there’s tons of opportunity there. They’re high-paying jobs and as long as we continue to promote folks in the skilled trades in this community, I think that that’s a good basis. I mean, who doesn’t want capable people around, right? So I think that that’s something important and something that we definitely shouldn’t lose sight of. 

You mentioned that development has to be somewhere on a spectrum between none at all and a spaceport. I’m not sure why you picked a spaceport. I’d be super into space. Conversation for another day, but you know,  what does responsible development look like to you? How do you think you would get to that?

Well, I think that I would encourage initiatives that I see staying power in. Something that is both feasible from a current infrastructure standpoint and also produces something that could be deemed –  I don’t want to say tangible – but something that… I’m currently in the tourism industry, right? That’s my job, and I think that from a tourism standpoint it’s great. Especially the the small ships. These small ships have a lot of –  your per passenger money into the community is far greater with these small ships, and and they are presenting this business model that is all about teaching people about the communities and about natural history and local history about … basically how we subsist. I mean we have local presenters come aboard, etc. I’m kind of getting off track here, but I think that it’s important to have operators here that value what we have here, and beyond that what I view as sustainable is economic development. 

The big thing is staying power here. We need to have something that someone’s kid or their grandkid could do, and there are many ways to go about that. Of course I’m very pro-commercial fishing. I have been a commercial fisherman. 

I’ve fished on a few bodies here in towns, boats, and on a boat, boats elsewhere in Southeast Alaska, and I see that as like an amazing renewable resource here, and I also think that there is opportunity in, I mean, I already touched on it, but in the skilled trades. I think it’s so cool what some of these small communities around Southeast Alaska and in Southcentral Alaska are doing with these boat building outfits. They’re building these beautiful aluminum boats. You know, one notable company is this company, Bay Weld. Why can’t we have a Lutak Weld or something like that here? it’s really cool. They’re high-paying jobs. There’s some portion of the service industry there where you have office jobs for folks who want to work accounting, but you also have this opportunity to start at the K-12 level, make these amazing welders right out of high school, which we do have in town here. Some folks who went through the Haines High School [Vocational Ed] program and are very talented. So, there is the capacity there, and I see something that’s ground up as something that’s sustainable. 

You’re gonna have people who are already right off the bat invested in their community, and then their kids will be right off the bat invested in this community and so I think that the way that we build a strong foundation here is we have just this complete buy-in into some type of business or industry that is it touches on all those different possible [and] skill sets. 

Okay. There was one issue that came up this last year that for me really typified what a planning commission member has to deal with, and that was the issue of these like 5g towers, and it seemed like there was sort of like bipartisan teaming up for or against it. It seemed like it sort of transcended political lines, and it also seemed like it touched on a lot of things that are important to people. What can you do with your own property? Use by right. What kind of permit does this need? And I’m just curious when you’re approached with a big sort of Gordy and not thorny mess of a thing like that, how do you see yourself navigating that conversation, and how would you approach it?

Well you eat an elephant one bite at a time, right? You got to start somewhere, and where I’d start is compliance with code, and obviously with the example you provided, that wasn’t the end all be all for that. 

Right, there were two different kinds of possible permits. 

Right and then again, what’s step two? All right. Conformity with the comprehensive plan, and then again in this case that didn’t really answer the question there. So then, yeah, I would seek public input, and with something so divisive, It’s the the big thing here is I don’t want my if if there is a decision to be made that is so divisive and so what what turned out to be quite challenging I think you need to rest on those three things, and then ultimately you need to make a decision that you feel is best for the community, but most importantly the people directly impacted.  I mean there definitely will be some quagmires, that is always the case. That’s why we have a group of people who we – as a community–  trust to decipher and potentially make unpopular decisions. 

I think there’s something similar that’s probably going to happen with this conversation about rezoning in the Upper Valley. Which, as a person who lives in the Upper Valley, I’m sure you have had conversations. I know I’m also there, so I’ve had a lot of conversations with folks who sort of fall on a lot of parts of the spectrum of what they’d like to see happen there, and is that a conversation that you’re interested in tackling if you get elected?

Yeah, I mean it is. I think, first and foremost, we need to talk to the people most impacted. People like you, people like me, people like … any other folks out there around the Mosquito Lake area. And see what their thoughts are on it. What benefit do they see from it? And start ther in any big change. We need to be … first and foremost, we need to ask the why. Why are we doing this? What improvement do we see here? And then also the how. Is this going to add a lot of bureaucratic burden to our borough office? So, there are a lot of questions to be answered, and and so before I can give you like a “yay” or a “nay” on this, you need to gather the facts, and at this point we’re still in infancy here on what this may become.

I heard from some people who were the first elected crop of planning commission members that when they joined the planning commission or when they ran for the planning commission, they did it with this thought in their minds that they were coming in to help fix something. Or I don’t really want to put words in their mouths, but when they ran again, they told me one of the big things – and I heard this from multiple people – one of the big things that they learned was like staff are just like doing their best, and and I think in this town there’s this perception sometimes that like borough staff are, you know, that they aren’t necessarily doing their best. Or this is a town that seems to love to beef with its staff. And I’m curious if you’ve spent any time with any of the staff, or what your thoughts are on like how you might manage your relationship with city administration as you are in this elected position, tapping them for their knowledge about a thing. 

Right. No, I mean, I’m definitely not afraid to ask questions of our borough staff, and I mean, they’re, they are they’re public servants. Its their whole job, and so there’s a sense of appreciation for what they do. I think it’s important that we avoid an “us versus them” and focus more on an “us versus the problem.” I do see where you’re coming from there, and I mean, I have every intention to collaborate as much as is required and and remain civil. I think that sometimes things get a little out of hand, and … I get it. When people are passionate about a problem, they tend to get fiery. Passion is good to a certain degree. But you need to rein it in because at some point it can become quite blinding.

Is there anything I miss that you want to make sure people know about you, or that you are excited to do if you get elected to this office?

Yeah, I mean I’m excited to be forward thinking. I have every intention to live the rest of my life in this community, and so my goal is to make decisions that’ll be for the betterment of the people that I care about, and as well as the rest of the community at large. So, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to run for this commission, and if all goes well, I’ll be all ears and have an open mind to any thoughts or or passions that people may present to me. Thanks for putting this on, Rashah. 

Thanks so much for coming in, Zeke. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely.

The post Watch: An interview with Zeke Frank, candidate for planning commission appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.