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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: Kim Rosado, thank you so much for joining me in the studios at KHNS. 

Kimberly Rosado: Thank you for having me. 

On this wonderful Labor Day that we’re having. You said you spent all day working? 

Yeah. Not really a holiday. 

We labored today. 

Right.

I’m curious. You know, this is the second time that I’ve profiled you. You know, covering a race or or running for office. What made you decide to run again this year?

 Insanity, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t like this part of running. I don’t like the interview. The interview. I feel uncomfortable. I don’t mind having a conversation with people, but this kind of atmosphere is nervous. It makes me nervous. I don’t know why.

Are you campaigning sort of individually with people, or how are you getting your message out there?

I’m just talking to people because I’m not on Facebook, so I have a couple signs and I’m just talking to people that if they say something about me running, I tell them yeah, and this is why. And I see a lot of things going on that I don’t like, and that’s usually what propels people into running for office or of any sort. So, here I am.

How many times have you run for office in Haines so far? 

This is twice.

Okay, both times for the planning commission, right? Yes. 

Did you learn anything last year when you were running that you are trying to apply this year?

No, not really. Other than that, I just feel the planning commission shouldn’t be political. That’s my strong belief.

What do you mean by that? What does it mean? 

When it’s being voted on. It’s political. If you’re if you have a lot of experience in the planning field with construction or otherwise engineering, any of that, then that is your core. That’s the people that should be planning our community. That’s how I feel.

Okay, so and you have a petition to that effect on the ballot this fall that you want to return the planning commission from being an elected position to being an appointed position.

Exactly. And I’m still running because I know it’s a lot of work for the planners. I know there’s a lot of code to read. I’ve read a little bit through [Title] 18, and it’s frightening. There is a lot of code, and there’s a lot of – it will take a lot of time. I consider it a job and am not prepared, but I’ve talked to so many people that I thought would be great as planners, and nobody wants to run for office. They don’t want to be political.

Why do you think that is?

Because they wouldn’t mind volunteering their time in a position. We have so many other groups that are all appointed, and I think it’s great. Like the Ports and Harbors [advisory committee]. They take a little section of everybody to be in this group and –  I believe I haven’t heard the history. I wanted to ask somebody about the history of the planning commission – because there’s seven seats, and that’s kind of like Ports and Harbors. So I’m guessing it originally was the same way, either from different areas of the community and different expertises, because they’re the only ones that have seven. And so I’m really curious about that. I think that would be a great way to have the planning commission. That way, it’s a little bit of everybody in different areas. You know, one person in each area, and then people with expertise in planning.

Okay, and absent that, you know, what is it that you think has happened at the planning commission level since it’s been elected?

I know it’s a lot of work, and I get that, but I see a lot of favoritism, and maybe they were saying the same thing before, and so I don’t know what the exact answer is, but I’m seeing the favoritism right now, strongly, and I don’t think that’s fair. I think it has turned very political, and it’s not right. Our planning of our community should not be political; it should be structured and it should be with expertise, not political. “My friends want to do this, so I’m going to let them do that. But these guys, I don’t want to do this” and “no.” I don’t want them to do that. You know, and that’s what I’m seeing, and maybe I’m only seeing certain things and not all of it, and not everything is a big picture. But that’s just how I feel.

And I might be the same way. That’s maybe why I don’t really want to be there because I don’t,  I don’t want to be political. I don’t want it to be a political thing.

You know, I heard a lot of people, when I first moved to Haines in 2024, that you know say that it was exciting to see a planning commission be elected because we were the sort of first community, definitely in Southeast Alaska, to do that, and maybe one of the first in the state. I was pretty interested in seeing how it worked too, because I’ve worked in other communities where sometimes the planning commission can be, you know, all from people from one specific sector, and people feel like. 

That’s not fair either. 

But I felt like I heard a lot of candidates say things like, “I’m gonna follow the code. It should be fair. It should be applied apolitically.

Absolutely. 

But we also know that the code can be inconsistent. There are sections of it that are competing with each other. 

Then fix it. 

There are things that require interpretation. I think it’s a little bit more complicated than just following the code, and I’m curious if you feel like that’s the part of the process that’s being politicized, or where you think that politicization is coming from.

I’m just seeing it on what’s getting voted on, what’s not, as a whole. Back to interpretation. I think you know, just like our constitution, it’s “what did our what did the guys in the beginning,  what was their intent?” And that’s the same with our code. What’s the intention, not the interpretation? What’s the intention? Why did they do this? Why is the code written this way? That’s where you have to really get in, and sometimes you can interpret it differently and wrongly, but I think it needs to be fair.

How would you do that if you were elected?

I wouldn’t go in with a set mind. I would read the code, read what’s going on, do my research, take that week and do it every night. And I don’t have, I don’t have that time. But I will make that time. That’s a lot of work, and I understand that.  I have so much going on right now… We’re all crazy busy right now, and so I understand not being fully prepared. But I understand this is a position, especially elected, it needs to be – even if it’s appointed – you have some grasp because you’re not coming in there with eyes closed. You’re not coming in to not knowing anything, like looking at a plan of a piece of property. I don’t, I don’t know what that means, you know. That’s a lot of work for you to learn all that, you need that expertise. That’s why the planning commission, the seven seat planning commission, tells me that they had it set up, possibly just like the ports and harbors: people from different sectors, people with different expertise. That’s the way I think it should be.

So I’m curious. You, when you and I first met, it was because I had just gotten here and started covering the assembly, and you’re at every meeting. And then you had started attending planning commission meetings too. And I remember last year we were talking about the sort of time commitment required to do that. I’m curious if you feel like you have sort of a good grasp now of how to deep dive into the code on certain things.

I just I’ve just started reading it, and it’s and you would you would yeah it’s frightening, and and I and what I’ve come to the conclusion of is you would have to wait till something comes up, read it [and say] okay this pertains to this code and go read the code and know what that is, know what they’re asking, And know what the intention of the code means. Not try to interpret it so much, but try to figure out the intention. There’s got to be an intention of everything.

You were telling me that That you’ve just been sort of picking up the code and reading through it, and you’ve realized that it’s actually sort of case by case that you need to just refer back to it.

Yeah, there’s no way you can read the code. It would be trying to memorize the Bible, is what I felt like. I was like, oh no, this is something that needs to be case by case – by whatever you’re looking at. Even if you have to go through the different codes and different, you know, if there’s several different codes you have to look at, that’s the way you need to look at it. You can’t try to memorize Title 18. It’s massive.

Now that you’ve seen how the assembly is sort of doing its business, and then you’ve seen how an elected planning is doing its business, I’ve seen a couple of cases in the last few years where those two bodies have disagreed with each other, maybe on permits or how a permit is decided, or you know, if there’s a settlement, deciding a permit again, like it seems like they’re not always in agreement with each other. And I’m curious if you were elected, what would you do to sort of deepen the collaboration between the two bodies and communication between them?

Well, again, I think the assembly is going to really dig into the code, and go by the code. And if they felt the code wasn’t being followed, they’re going to disagree. That’s how I feel. If it’s not being followed, or if they didn’t follow direct instruction from lawyers, whatever, that’s why they’re going to have disagreements. I feel if you do your diligence and they still don’t disagree and they still disagree, then that’s the problem with two elected bodies that you can’t, whatever the planning commission does, the assembly is going to look at anyway. And so if you were just appointed, it might not hurt so bad if the assembly didn’t agree with you. Does that make sense?

I’m curious if your if the voters decide that your ballot initiative should go through, and they decide that the planning commission should be appointed instead of elected again. And you spend all of this time campaigning, and you get elected, and then maybe it gets reversed. I’m sort of curious if you’ve had a thought experiment in there about what might happen.

What my thought was is,if elected, I would do my term for however long. I guess it would go for a year. I’m not sure. I thought it would happen immediately. I didn’t talk to the borough about that specifically, but at the same time, there were a lot of hurt feelings of the prior planning commission when they were. Dropped, and that’s why none of them ran. They were very upset, and why a lot of them won’t run for office. They don’t mind volunteering all that time as appointed, but they don’t want to run for office, and so I don’t know how it’s going to… It takes a lot of time, especially seven people, to get appointed onto a board, and I would be right there to help support that and make sure that the seven people were seated. And if that meant me taking a seat there as appointed, I would.

And what expertise do you bring to the planning commission?

I can build stuff. I’ve been working on my cabin for eight years, and I can tear stuff apart, and I can figure stuff out and build stuff. But that’s all I have. That’s why it’s pretty frightening for me when I look at code and what I’ve seen that they have to decide on, it’s intense. There needs to be some experience in that room. There needs to be some experience on that team. You know,

Do you feel like there isn’t currently?

I don’t know experience as – far as people with planning experience, engineers, people that work on roads that can read those plans, those property plans. People that can read house plans. People, that kind of experience. I don’t know if there is that there. Maybe one person. That’s what I think. That’s what I feel is missing right now.

What role do you think that the planning commission plays in helping the borough grow?

So, this is what I see in Haines, in the city of Haines, is the industrial parts of Haines that there is, which is not very much, is being encroached on by homes, and people buy in general use areas or industrial areas close to industrial areas, because the property’s cheaper. I get that. I understand, but then now you have houses next to industrial, and then there’s complaints of noise. That’s part of the problem, and I don’t…and it’s almost gone so far you can’t fix that, and I think it’s really, really important for anything else to be developed. With some, we have to have industrial use areas to survive. We can’t survive without it as a community. You have to have it. You have to have stuff that makes noise, and it needs to be planned accordingly, and it needs to stick that way. It can’t. You can’t let houses be built next to industrial.

So you think some changes to the general use zoning so that industrial and residential property types are kept farther apart from each other? 

Or leave the general use alone, so they can be industrial. And if you’re in a community with houses all around you, make a residential.I don’t want to tell my neighbors they can’t do something, but at the same token, I don’t. I understand people moving in and then saying, “Oh no, you can’t do that. You’ve been here for a long time, but you can’t do that any more.” You know that’s not fair, either. So it needs to be it does need to be looked at because it’s going to turn out to be what it’s going on in Haines, which is not right for the industrial people that are trying to make it work here.

A big thing, sort of, in front of the planning commission, and they sent that survey out. Actually, two batches of that survey out to kind of talk about the general use zoning. And I’m curious, you live in the area that’s you know the first place they were looking at in the upper valley. Did you respond to that survey, and what were your kind of thoughts about?

Leave it alone. But I understand. What I wanted to say is “leave my area alone.” I’m good with general use. I’m on a homestead property that’s been homesteaded back in the 1800s. It was 360 acres. I want to be able to do what I want to do on my property, and I don’t feel my neighbor can tell me otherwise – that just moved there 20 years ago even. Does that make sense?

So, are you saying? I just want to make sure I understand. Are you saying there shouldn’t be zoning changes so that some areas that have a lot of homes are rural residential and some areas, just say general use, or it sounded to me like you were saying there should be. 

It should be separate. It should be, but if you’re already in a rural, if you’re already in an industrial-type area, leave it that way. Don’t bring houses in there. If you have a little neighborhood over here and you want to make it real residential. Go ahead, but leave the industrial areas alone. Either make it industrial. It’s hard now already because you can’t really make it industrial when there’s already houses there. So leave it general use. That’s what I’m trying to say. If you’re in a neighborhood and everybody agrees, let’s make it rural residential. Then, but by all means, do that. But leave the general use areas that are truly general use areas where there is a big mixture. Leave it be. We were told by the group that came through that we had to change. That we could not stay general use.  So we tried to come up with a plan, and it’s not even being looked at. Every time it’s brought up it’s “oh yeah, we have it,” but they’re not applying it, and that’s that’s part of why I ran too.

Like a plan for what to do if general use zoning isn’t. That’s part of the reason that you ran?

Right.

Okay. It sounds a little bit, if I understand you correctly, like you’re sort of saying because we have less industrial use land in the valley than you would like that you’d like to see it be prioritized when it comes to zoning changes, so that we don’t lose more of that land. How do you think that that could impact the expansion of the Chilkat Valley if more people were to move here, or more people are trying to build homes? Like, how do you balance the needs of industrial users against the needs of residential uses or recreational uses?

It needs to be clear to people that are buying property that you’re buying in a general use area. This is what could happen. If they don’t understand, they need to know that. If they want a nice quiet neighborhood, they need to buy in a residential area that’s meant for residential. People buy in the general use areas because it’s cheaper property. I get it. I understand. Mine was given to me, so I get that. But you have to, you have, you have to know what’s going to happen. What could happen next door, if you’re in a general use area, and we need to have that capability as a community to grow. We’re losing people. We’re not growing. We’re expected to lose a lot of people out of the state of Alaska because there’s no businesses here anymore. They’re leaving. It’s kind of frightening. And as long as we just keep throwing houses in the middle of – that’s why we can’t change it now to industrial because there already are houses out there, in the middle of industrial, so it needs to stay in general use. I’ve already looked at it. You cannot have houses in industrial areas, but if it’s general use, you can.

What does responsible development of the Chilkat Valley look like to you?

Well, just what we’re talking about is planning as much as you can, or working around, like I said, it’s a neighborhood, and you want to be rural residential. Do that, but know that if you’re next to general use areas, it could be a little loud sometimes. If you’re buying in a general use areas, there is going to be construction in there because that’s all we have left. We don’t even have just the few pieces of property that are industrial or light industrial. 

I don’t think we even have heavy industrial besides maybe four mile. You know, I don’t know. I’m not sure that even is anymore. And you have to have some. You’ve got to have people that are running equipment, plowing our roads, building our roads, fixing our roads, those machines are noisy. They’re loud. They haul gravel. They tear up roads. We need that. We need to. We need to be able to fix our roads.

You know one one other sort of thing that came up I thought at a kind of contentious in a kind of contentious way at the planning commission level in the last year was the you know development and expansion of a 5G network locally and I’m curious when you’re thinking about you know kind of that tension between neighbors, like what goes up on your neighbor’s property and how it impacts you, and what they should be able to develop, like how do you think about? And actually, you know, as I’m asking that question, I remember that I read a public notice at one point because wasn’t your property being considered for a 5G tower?

We actually have a permit. 

You did get all the way through the permit. So is there a new tower?

I don’t know the status because it’s actually in my son’s and my nephew’s name, and I haven’t heard anything yet.

How do you think about? You know, it seemed like maybe did you have any neighbors that were sort of upset? 

One person called me. Yeah, at work. 

They called you at work. It’s very Haines. So, so how do you sort of, yeah, how do you think about that? When it comes to some people in town having really strong feelings about you know the potential health impacts, and it seemed like it was sort of, it sort of crossed political lines too.

It did very much. So, I lived in Tucson for 15 years. Cell towers right next door. I don’t know. I don’t know if there were any side effects. I think my whole side effect of being in downtown areas was the side effect. I don’t know if there was anything coming from that tower, but I see it. Everybody has a phone. Everybody has a cell phone. I think I know one person that doesn’t. One person in all of Haines that I know of. Maybe two, two people have no cell phone. That’s a lot of people, and I see a lot of people complaining. No service, no service. I’m one. I complain sometimes because I can’t get my phone to work. I use a lot for work, so taking pictures and sending pictures and that type of thing. It’s really hard to do when there’s a cruise ship in town, you know when there’s so much going on. So, I get that side. 

I also understand the feeling of people being that [they] have side effects from cell towers. I’m not saying they don’t. I’m not saying that I didn’t. I’m just saying I don’t, I don’t know. And I’m not worried. I guess I  feel it’s safe to be able to get a hold of somebody when you’re in the middle of nowhere, because you have service, if you need help, there’s a lot of people that come play up by my house, way up into the mountains, hunt. There’s a lot of things that can happen. Even myself out getting firewood for some reason I don’t have much service from Klukwan at my house, but not very far from my house where I’m getting firewood, I have great service. So it’s that’s what I’m trying to say is like that’s when I have my phone on me, and if something happened, I would be able to text for help at least to get help. 

So I I feel it as a safety issue. It’s hard to call when you don’t have a service. If you’re stuck in a snowstorm between here and 40 Mile, and you can’t get there, can’t call for help. That’s kind of scary, but if there’s a tower and you can call for help, somebody’s going to come help you. So I I’m more siding with the safety part of the cell service.

If you were elected and an issue like that came up where you felt like this kind of development seems fine, but maybe you heard from a lot of constituents that they weren’t okay with it. Like, how do you think you have to balance? How would you balance constituent feedback with your own personal feelings about the matter?

 You would have to listen to everybody, and I’m not. I’m not promoting cell towers all over town. Trust me, I think they’re ugly. That’s not what I’m promoting. I’m promoting one tower on my property that would cover a huge part of the highway very well. You know, and upper up past my property, even down towards Mosquito Lake, it’s a perfect location actually for a big large area. I don’t think I want to see cell towers everywhere. I’m not. That’s not what I would ever promote, even for safety, but strategically planned areas where they can reach a large amount of people. Then I think it’s a good safety issue. 

I wish Tony would have had a cell phone on her. It would have been probably a lot easier for her to call for help where she was at. The resident who was attacked by her recently, then having to walk all the way home.

I think I was more asking one thing that I’m pretty struck by as a journalist is how often when we have like, you know, community members volunteering or getting elected onto boards, you run into these issues where maybe you don’t think a thing is a big deal, but a bunch of people do, or maybe you do think it’s something’s a big deal, and no one else seems to care about it. And it seems like we have these conflicts sometimes where you kind of have to separate yourself from your own personal feelings on something in order to serve the community. And I’m curious how you feel like you would navigate that.

I’m going to tell you the first time GCI is meeting, the very first one that came to town. They said there’s fuel. There were crickets. There was nobody saying anything, and I know how people feel. I know how people, some people feel very, very strongly, and so I spoke up about it on their behalf because I know how they feel about it, you know. Like, why can’t you guys share towers, or why do we have to have so many towers from so many different people from so many different companies? Why can’t you guys share a couple towers here and there? 

I was trying to like what I’ve just been saying: a couple towers to make it worthwhile for everybody’s benefit, but not to have so many towers that it’s scary and harmful to everybody. 

If it is, you know, which I believe there’s people that swear that it’s bothered them, and I believe that to be true to them. 

So I don’t want to see Hanes with cell towers on every block. You know that’s not what I want to see, and I feel there’s more of a majority of the Haines people that feel a couple is okay as long as you’re not killing people with all these rays going everywhere, you know, just a few for safety. You have to find a middle ground. You can’t just listen to one group and not the other. You got to listen to both and come to a middle ground, or we’ll never get anything done in Haines to be honest. 

Because everybody has their own opinion and everybody has their own feelings, and you have to take it all in, in all in. And I feel the middle ground is a couple towers strategically, you know, placed than having none, where you don’t have any service, or thousands or hundreds all over the place. You know, there’s. We are so extreme. This town is. Everybody wants to have it all their one way, but if you can’t, you have to compromise some. Everybody does. That’s that’s life.

I’ve heard from candidates from pretty much every seat in town that sometimes that extremism in Haines is really wearing on them. That you know, I was just hearing this weekend from some folks who were saying like. It’s hard to grow up in a place and then serve in public office, and then suddenly some people that you’ve known your whole life don’t talk to you anymore, or you know people are coming after you in the grocery store when you’re trying to eat at a restaurant, you know. And I’m curious now that the planning commission is an elected body, so people maybe feel a little bit more entitled to share their opinion about that seat they voted for. I’m curious how you navigate conflict and how you think you’ll navigate that side of Haines that has real big feelings about a lot of the stuff that you’re going to be dealing with.

I’ve already seen it, just from my speaking my opinion at the assembly meetings, I’ve already felt it. I’ve already been approached, not even on planning. And you just basically have to say, “I can’t talk here. You know, I’m at my work. I’d love to talk to you somewhere else. 

People come to you at the grocery store and try to talk to you about while you’re working?

Yes, and so I already know, I’m already aware. And I do most of my shopping at Mountain Markets, so I don’t run into people very much. I haven’t had that problem, but I have seen people that used to be friendly with me just because of my feelings on the Lutak Dock, it’s like “okay.” Or my feelings on nonprofits. I’m not a big nonprofit person. I feel if the cities, if the community is going to support it, then they should be there. If the community doesn’t support them, then why should we be using taxpayer money? And that hurt a lot of people’s feelings too. But that’s my personal belief. It’s not, not anything other than that. You know, I mean, and that hurt a lot of people’s feelings. And I’m sorry they feel that way, and I get when you’re on a public [forum], you have to listen to everybody and and take that all in. But that’s why I said you have to find a middle ground. You have to somewhere, somehow, some way for it to work. You can’t be one-sided.

And I think you know one of my last questions is like, can you tell me about how you approach that conflict with a coworker or a friend? Like, how do you resolve those things? 

It has to be in the right setting, and if it needs to be without tensions being high, it needs to be even if it’s the next day, and then a one-on-one talking, and just talk, talk it out. If it’s a really extreme situation, then you need to, just it needs to be … you need to wait, calm down, then speak and talk it out. If you don’t talk, it’s not going to ever go away. It’s always going to be there.

I’ve heard from some other folks. In fact, it’s like former planners, people who are currently on it, on the commission, and that you know maybe when they got elected, they had some bigger ideas about shaping the future of Haines, and then when they got on the commission, they realized that so much of it is like permit, permit, permit… I’m curious, which of those types of work you’re interested in doing, and if you do have a bigger vision for the future of the community that you’d like to share? 

I think making the general use area all rural residential is going to bring more of that kind of work to the planning commission,

More permits?

Yeah, because you gotta have a permit for everything, you know. And I think planning it out, like I said, if there’s already industry there, leave it. And if you have to leave it rural or general use because there’s houses nearby, then leave it general use. Let’s not complicate it and make it harder for people to do their business. The worst thing that we can do is to cripple the people that already have businesses here, and you’ll never get more if you cripple those areas, if you tie their hands, if you make it where we have to spend more more money on more people at the borough office to do all these permits, more time for the planning commission to just go through permits instead of trying to plan out those areas. You know, if you do too much government, it’s going to cost everybody more money and more time.

Is that sort of the big issue for you this election? Is this potential of rezoning?

Yes, it’s huge for me. I don’t want to feel tied to anything right now because I live on homestead property, it’s family property. I’m not going to be there forever. I don’t want to tell my kids, “Oh, you can only build houses here. I don’t want to tell my kids, “You can’t build any houses here.” You know what I mean? I want to. I want them to be able to do what they want because it’s it’s family-owned property, and they should be able to inherit what and do with what they want. I don’t want to tie their hands. I don’t want them to. I don’t want to tie their hands.

Okay. Any other big issues that are on your mind when it comes to the planning commission and what you would like to do if you’re elected?

Just follow the code. I just want to follow the code and get into the code. And if the code’s wrong, if it’s too messed up, then we take it to the code review. Don’t make decisions if you can’t. If there’s conflicting codes, take it to the code review first. Even if it takes longer than trying to make a decision on what could be wrong. That’s what I would like to see with the planning commission. I know the code is messed up. I’ve heard it over and over and over again from a lot of people, and so don’t keep making decisions on the wrong codes. Fix the codes. We have we have a code committee. That’s what they’re supposed to

Rashah Mcchesney  41:52  

do. Do you feel like you have a pretty good relationship with staff at the borough, or being able to work with staff? I think so.

Kimberly Rosado  41:57  

I think so. I’ve gotten there pretty upset, but they, you know, they take it they take it well. They’re they’re strong strong people, but they know me by name. I know them by name, and I enjoy almost it. I mean everybody in there, I really do. Chen, they’re all very friendly, and and I have to go in and apologize sometimes. I’m really sorry. I was so upset because I can go in there heated. I I’m a very emotional person, and I can get I because I care about this community. I strongly care about this community. I don’t want to see families leave. My family’s left. They’re not going to come back any time in the near future. I’ll be. I’ll hopefully my grandkids will come and take the property, and that’s why I don’t want to tie their hands, and I don’t want. I don’t want to see other families leave. It breaks my heart when I see 20 kids leaving the school, moving out of town. That’s not helping our community. I want to. I want to make changes where it brings people back, and people stay. I think it’s very important. You can’t grow a community that’s Dying.

Okay, Kim. Anything else you think is important for people to know about you?

I think I love Haines. I I think it’s a beautiful place, but it’s heartbreaking when when you’re when you can’t when you can’t when you see people leave as often as I’ve seen in the last 10 years that I’ve been here lately, my whole family’s gone, and we had at 13 families living on my piece of property in three different structures, and it’s now it’s just me, and we just need to change. We need to communicate. We need to talk. People that are willing to come together, make plans together on both sides, or or it’s not going to work.

Okay

We all have strong feelings, but we need to come together.

Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. 

The post Watch: An interview with Kim Rosado, candidate for planning commission 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. 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.

The post Watch: An interview with George Campbell, candidate for planning commision appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

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.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

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.

Rashah McChesney: Nick Szatkowski, thank you so much for joining me here in the KHNS studios. I really appreciate it. 

Nick Szatkowski: I’m happy to be here. Thank you for for doing this. I think it’s a good service for the community.

Yeah, it’s a lot of things at once. Also, did you tell me you used to be the news director here, so people are hearing you for the first time?

 I was the news reporter, and for some time, I was the only news reporter. So that made me the news director at that time, but I wasn’t like an official position. I wasn’t ranked above any other person in that role. But yeah, I did some reporting though. 

Some day, I’m going to get every former journalist in this town to do an April Fool’s edition of the CVN with me. 

It may not fit in one edition.

Shall we jump right in? I’ve got a whole list of questions, and I’ll leave a little bit at the end for you to tell me anything I’ve missed. I’m so curious. Since I got here in 2024, the planning commission-that was the first year they were an elected body, or they’d become an elected body-and I’m curious in your time watching the difference between an appointed planning commission and an elected planning commission, if you think the fact that it’s an elected body now has changed the way that land use is being regulated in the borough,

I think so, but I don’t have a super strong opinion about that exact comparison in a way that could be corroborated or shown evidence for at this time. I mean, I definitely think it’s better. There’s no question that the role does have some importance in the community. It’s appropriate that the community can select who those people are. So I do think that that’s fair, and I do think that not using that system previously did sometimes lead to some problems. So, it doesn’t mean you can’t still have problems in the current system. Of course, you can, but I do think it’s more fair and it’s more democratic.

Okay, so you’re in favor of an elected planning commission. I bring it up because I thought it was a really interesting move for the community to make, and in some other committees I’ve covered in the state that have struggled a little bit with land use regulation and sometimes boards being weighted in favor of one industry or the other, this seemed like kind of a novel potential solution to that problem. But what I haven’t really seen from people is whether the upsides of having it elected are outweighing the downsides, or how if the system is shifting, what change are you seeing over time?

Well, you know the downside of it to me, you know, I don’t. I have not studied game theory, but I understand. I think the basic concept that you look at “what are the pro and pros and cons of this scenario? What are the pros and cons of this scenario, and how do they add up?” So, what is the negative side of having elected commissioners? I think that it’s a little extra effort.

It’s a little bit of a drag having extra people have to go on like me sitting here and taking up time. So you know it’s a small burden, but it seems like a very minor problem to have to bear. The positive side is that the people that are there making those decisions, which do have some bearing on our lives, are people chosen by the larger community. So I think that benefit far outweighs the potential burden of a little extra time taken up during election season. Maybe there’s some other. If there’s some other downside or burden, then I’d be happy to learn about it.

Well, it’s interesting to me both as a person who moved to this community as it was happening, but also we have that ballot initiative, basic that question on the ballot asking if we should go back revert to a an appointed planning commission instead of an elected one, and I was sort of curious how people were landing on that issue and if they preferred one or the other. But one thing that I’ve heard from people who aren’t supportive of it is that they feel like it means there’s less industry expertise or just less expertise in general in irrelevant expertise. to planning on the planning commission when you elect folks. 

Well,I would say just in response to that, I’m not trying to make. I’m just only responding to what you’re saying. I’m not trying to make a precise description of any individual on the commission. But if there’s expertise needed, the public can vote for that expertise. But having the entire community choose which people with which expertise are appropriate makes a lot more sense. The reality is, planning involves all land uses in the borough. It is not specifically, do you know how to build a highway. It’s not just industrial resource extraction or industrial road building. That’s not the only thing the planning commission has responsibility for. You need people who understand a lot of other things besides that. And so, if it’s too heavily weighted toward people whose only area of expertise is heavy industry. You’re not going to get a well-balanced commission. What that you know, I’m not trying to claim what the perfect balance is. I want the community to decide, and they’ll pick the people that they feel match that best. But people need a lot of different areas of understanding to make good land use decisions.

Okay, one thing that I’ve noticed is that there is sometimes some tension between opinions that the planning commission gives and decisions that the assembly ends up making at the end, or sometimes permits get decided and then sent back. There have been a number of these back and forth [situations] between the two bodies since just in the short time since I got here, and I’m curious if you were elected, like what you would do to deepen collaboration and communication between those two bodies.

Yeah, I mean, I will just try to be as open and communicative with the other bodies as possible. I don’t have, like somehow the golden solution [or] what will solve that issue, but it does seem like there’s a problem right now, and that the two bodies don’t seem to have a very good working relationship.

I don’t think the planning commission seems to have a lot of control over that, but it does seem that the assembly doesn’t. Yeah, I don’t know. Again, I would veer away from trying to make any specific criticism. I don’t want to… I’m not because I can’t tell you a specific event that this person said this or did that. 

The general sense I get of it is that the planning commission is not getting a large amount of respect from either the borough assembly or the borough administration currently, and that’s a dysfunctional arrangement. And this shouldn’t be that way. They should all work together to cooperate to have a good running municipality. 

A poorly running municipality is actually financially inefficient. It doesn’t operate as effectively, and that means our dollars are getting lost because we’re wasting time through decisions that then don’t go forward. You have staff time that isn’t resulting in a you know a result because there’s back and forth or pulling back or blocking each other or all this stuff and it just doesn’t work very well and it burdens up the whole community every every aspect of it you know every doesn’t matter what your political leaning is having a municipal government that doesn’t actually function efficiently is just bad economics

I suppose that that question to me specifically was born from the fact that the borough has been sued several times since I got here, or maybe not several, a handful of times relative to not being sued at all. It has been sued, and you and another candidate for the planning commission have been involved in lawsuits with the borough, and to me, what that says is that there’s some part of the process for people that’s not working. I think you could litigate all day what part of the process is, but but as an outsider, without getting into the weeds of you know those lawsuits, I’m mostly curious what you think you could bring to the planning commission that could help change situations that end up in lawsuits or where people feel like they have no other recourse but to go to court because they’re kind of bouncing between two bodies. 

Well, so one of the issues, and I don’t know if this is exactly what your question is, but it seems to somehow be relevant between the different questions you’ve asked. I think formerly the appointed commission and the individuals that were appointed to those seats often had an extremely poor understanding of borough law. I can’t tell you the number of times that I attended borough meetings and would read the actual wording of the law to make sure that they were aware, because sometimes it seemed like they’re, from their discourse, they did not seem to understand it. I would make the law completely clear, and they would make a vote blatantly in violation of that. Now, of course, me saying that in public, someone’s going to get upset, but they’re going to have to face that, and I’ve got evidence to prove it. Like it’s not, it’s not like really that. It’s not, it’s not. It shouldn’t even be a controversial idea because it’s happened, and it was egregious. Like there were multiple people who were appointed to those positions, and they repeatedly made decisions that were clearly in violation not just the general spirit of the law, but the outright literal letter of the law as it was written. It was seemingly that they didn’t think they had to follow that if it meant if that’s what they had to do to get the decision they wanted. So I don’t want to see that happen anymore. If the community actually feels there’s some aspect of the law as written that’s inappropriate for us, then there’s a procedure for changing the borough code. But the commissioners do not have the authority to just abandon that if they want to, you know, make a decision in a certain direction.

I’m really glad that you brought up borough code. Because this has been something that’s come up in almost every single planning commissioner interview that I’ve done so far, is this idea of like people wanting to get on the planning commission and follow the letter of the code, and what I’ve heard from people who’ve been on the commission, either elected or appointed is that what they found is that it’s not always that simple. Sometimes it’s as simple as reading a sentence and saying, “Oh, yep, this is clear. “This shall means shall and may means may,” and that’s what we do. But I think there’s some other decisions that require a little bit of subjectivity on the part of a planning commissioner, either because the code’s incomplete, or in the last year we’ve run into a situation where you know we didn’t really have a permit that applied to the situation that was coming up, or maybe it should have been applied for a different permit. And so I think that there is both knowing and learning the code, and then I think there’s what do you do when the code stops and you have to make a decision past that? How do you think you would handle that situation?

I mean, obviously it’s a hypothetical, so I can’t give you… You know, we’d have to see about the exact situation when it occurred. But maybe what would be helpful here is I could give you a bit of background about myself and what I bring to making a decision on this. So I grew up in a very small town. I didn’t grow up in Alaska, but I grew up in a place on the Canadian border down south. That’s one of the more remote places in the entire Lower 48. There’s 300 people in a town, and there’s no city to drive to anywhere. And back then, like in the 1970s, there’s no internet. We couldn’t even get radio from anywhere, let alone television. It was a very different thing. 

What town is this? 

It’s called Robbinston, Maine, northeastern Maine. It’s right on the Canadian border. It’s Passamaquoddy territory, Passamaquoddy people, and you know it’s beautiful, beautiful land, beautiful forest, lakes, a lot of lakes. Similar climate to here. It’s transitional between the temperate zone and the boreal zone, like here. 

But anyway, the point is, it’s a very small town, and the culture of small towns operating has been on going on there for hundreds of years.

Here, I feel like often people… it’s like we’re in a vacuum. There’s just like a void around us, and we don’t know what to do, and they’re just making it up from scratch. A lot of people, I think, live here, have come from places that were maybe cities or very different kinds of communities, and so they have an image of what they think a small town would be, but they haven’t necessarily experienced it very much. So I grew up in this very small town, very poor, single mom, six kids. That place where I grew up-it’s got poverty in a way that no people. I don’t think anyone around here is familiar with, honestly, because we certainly have poverty here, and that’s part of the population that I’m very concerned about helping. But even here, there’s also a lot of wealth in this town that you see all around you, and it was not like that where I grew up. So you want to know what it’s like-a place that doesn’t have a strong functioning economy that provides jobs for people. I already know what that’s like. I’ve seen what steps led to that, and one of them is excessive reliance on a single large industry, and it collapses, and the town collapses, and it’s really harsh. It’s not a wise course forward for the economy of any small town. 

But there’s also stuff about the procedure, how a town operates, like holding a valid town hall meeting. You can’t call it a town hall meeting if you just schedule a PR session for some private business to come and give you their spiel. That’s not called a town hall meeting. Town hall meetings should have an avenue for the public to get to discuss an issue, not cut off at three minutes. 

[You] get to actually discuss it, and doesn’t mean every assembly meeting is not the same thing as that. The assembly needs to get through their business, so you don’t want to bog that down with having people talk on and on and on, but there needs to be a role for something like a town meeting where people can really have, as citizens, still have their voices heard and recognized and and work through some issues. 

Just because someone gets elected to the assembly doesn’t mean they’re the only perspectives that need to sort out our issues. You know, I respect those people in those seats. It’s a lot of work to do, but it’s too much to expect that they can hold the decision-making power for everybody in the community for years. So there needs to be a lot of input from the public, and you know, at a lot of the assembly meetings, there are people who come and speak, but it’s usually a very small number of people, and it’s usually the same people every meeting. It’s not really representative of the community when it’s just the same half a dozen people that are doing the public comments at every meeting. 

So anyway, I feel like I had a perspective in seeing the way small towns operate… I call it a small town. It’s not even a town. Forests, really, just people living in the woods in different little areas and dirt roads. But anyway, I’m very familiar with that. 

At the same time, I also had the advantage of getting a full scholarship to college and getting a degree in political philosophy. And I have studied a lot about how governments operate and what’s the relationship with the population that they are ostensibly representing? And so, I think that with those two perspectives, if I’m looking at interpreting something about borough code for the planning commission, I’m gonna consider what does this mean for the everyday people?

Is this in the interests of everybody, or is it in the interests of a specific business owner? Not that that means it is inherently bad, but that shouldn’t be the predominant thing that you decided on. And at the same time, I’m going to reflect on what does this mean about the relationship in a more philosophical way. I’m going to think about the relationship between the community, the municipal government, and where are we going? What are we? Is this serving the interests? Are we helping us move forward in a constructive way? 

I’m curious what role you think the planning commission plays in helping the borough grow or stay stable.

I saw that question on the sheet, and I would my response to that initially is just, what do you mean the borough grow?

I suppose I don’t mean to expand. I mean help the borough evolve into whatever it’s evolving into, and maybe it should guide the borough. What role does the planning commission play in guiding the borough?

Yeah. Well, clearly, the planning commission’s role is more specifically oriented toward land use decisions. Obviously, specific kinds of permits, conditional use permits in particular, but other other decisions too that involve a lot to do with how people are using the land that’s within the municipality, the municipality I don’t think is going to grow. I don’t think that’s going to happen. 

There’s a notion many people think that economies can just grow indefinitely, and it’s actually just a physical falsehood. It’s not correct. That is, we do not live in an expanding earth. Everything on the earth is finite, and I know some people think, well, if we just get all the resources exploited, then we’ll keep growing our economy. And even if you did do that, it’s gonna stop growing at a certain point. 

That’s what I grew up with. Where I grew up in northern Maine, there’s no old growth forest anywhere. Almost all the land base is owned by private timber companies, paper companies, in fact, and they already logged everywhere across the entire state of Maine, basically, with a few tiny, tiny exceptions. And it’s not; it doesn’t make the economy keep growing. Actually, the economy hits a plateau and then it hits a downhill. 

So it’s I think wiser for everybody to look at how much can you grow, how much can you exploit, without damaging the … I don’t like comparing it to a financial situation, but like a bank account, it’s much smarter to use the interest that comes off it, and that could potentially continue on indefinitely into the future. If you take away the capital every year, you get less and less and less to earn your interest, and pretty soon you end up poor. Okay, so the same thing applies for a community, same thing applies for our relationship with the land. We have to be very careful about paying attention to what, how much surplus there is from the land that we can harvest and live from. And not everything, not all of obviously the entire economy of this area is not based only on resource extraction, some of it is, and some of that I think is pretty sustainable. But we still [have] to keep in mind what is the level that is sustainable because it doesn’t help the whole community to use more than that. There are lots of effects that start to accrue once you overutilize the resource base.

Okay, and so what I’m hearing from is maybe that there needs to be some kind of balance in different kinds of land uses, so that there isn’t one type that sort of extracts too much or or causes the borough to not have resources in the future that it needs.

I wouldn’t disagree with that. I don’t know if that is summing up what I said. 

Well, you got to correct me if I got too it wrong.  I think what I’m trying to loop it back around to is the context of that question, which is that I think. Everybody sort of joins the planning commission or wants to be on the planning commission for maybe their own private reasons or maybe because they want to be a public servant. But  I want to know what you think the role of the planning commission is as it comes to sort of helping the Haines Borough with what it’s going to look like 25 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now.

Well, I’m excited. Whether it’s me or other people, I’m excited to have people on the planning commission that do have a vision of what a long-term sustainable community could actually look like. And in order to do that, you have to have people that actually understand ecology, right? That might sound shocking to some listeners. They might not understand that ecology itself is a scientific discipline that’s older than the combustion engine. It’s older than powered flight. It’s been around for a very long time. It’s an actual discipline of science, and it has to do with what are all the relationships between all aspects of the physical world, living and non-living, and including human beings. 

So, to not be well versed in those issues would just make you make poor decisions if you don’t know what kinds of impacts you’re going to have, whether it’s on biological, you know, factors or other physical things. “You’re eating into the side of a mountainside. Is it going to relate to having a landslide or collapse or affecting groundwater or other things?

[It] is just nonsense to think that you wouldn’t think that it’s smarter to somehow not be aware of those things. We can’t be aware of every single detail, but the more we can be aware of that, the better. The same thing applies with interpersonal, interhuman dynamics. If somebody’s thinking something is creating wealth, is it… is it helping everybody? Who’s it the wealth for? 

And so, a sustainable community means it’s got to be lifting everyone together up along the way and helping. And if some park gets far ahead, what do you do? If you’re hiking on a trail, you wait to make sure the other people are coming along with you. You don’t just take off and say,  “I’m the best. I’m the first. Yay! At least you might do that, but you’re not probably going to have a lot of hiking partners for very long. So, I think it’s common sense. If we think we can create some wealth, that that could be great. But let’s make. What are we going to do to make sure that is is available also to the other parts of the community who maybe aren’t the big landowners, aren’t the big, you know, owning big, you know, profit for profit businesses or whatever? You didn’t ask about housing, but I think that that’s relevant in that area as well.

It is. That actually plays right into my next question: What does responsible development look like to you?

Yeah, yeah. So, and I, I mean, I think what I had just said addresses that question to a large degree, but I do think that housing is one of the resources that isn’t distributed very equally around the community right now, and I feel like for quite a few years I’ve been watching decision makers in the borough do things or make decisions that seem like they think they’re addressing the housing issues, the shortage of of low income or you know low cost housing. They seem to think they’re addressing that by making decisions to benefit the largest landowners.

That’s the exact opposite…that’s not how you do that. You don’t just make it really profitable for a huge developer to make lots of like for-profit developments. That’s not you know you go to any place that actually has low-income housing. That’s not how they do it, right? And so I can understand. I was even willing to be like, hmm, that doesn’t seem right, but maybe I’m missing something. I’ll watch for a little while. I’ll see what happens. And I have watched, and it doesn’t seem like it’s resulted in an increase in low-income housing available to the community. We still have the same problem, but there’s just more. There’s some subdivisions, but it still costs a lot of money to buy into those subdivisions. It’s not really addressing that issue. 

So I don’t know why people, you know, maybe it has to do with like growing up in the 1980s and the talk of like trickle down. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like getting trickled down on, and I don’t know anybody who did like it. Honestly, it again, it’s one of those things that sounds like it in theory. Maybe that could work, but watch what actually happens. You benefit the richest people. Is that the best way to help the poorest people? I mean, it doesn’t seem intuitively like it would be correct. Then you watch, observe, and over time you say, “Oh, indeed, it’s not. It’s not correct. It does not work. Actually, I’m not saying that no rich person has ever helped other people. Sometimes they do. I’ve known some very, very wonderful, very generous, rich people, or people who have resources, whatever you want to say, call it. But it’s not; it’s clearly not the best way to help disadvantaged people. Some people with wealth sometimes spread that around, but it is not universal, and they’re not required by law. To do so, and the idea that that’s somehow more egalitarian than actually just spreading it around to everybody just doesn’t. It’s just sort of, I think, it’s nonsense.

Are there other parts of the Chilkat Valley or just sort of the Haines Borough in general where you see a need for different kinds of development? I mean, you’ve just brought up affordable housing. I think you’ve articulated pretty well what that need is. But are there other things that the planning commission would maybe have a role in recommending that you see a real need for?

Well, yes, probably. 

Do you want to articulate any of this?  That’s kind of putting you on the spot. I’m just curious if you sort of see a gap in … you mentioned that there was some that you saw a fair amount of poverty here, and so I’m curious when I think of poverty, I usually think of low income housing. I also tend to think of, you know, availability of food and food resources. And there’s a lot of people in the valley kind of trying to address food availability. So I’m curious if there are some other needs that you see that you’d like to sort of tackle. 

I do think the mental health services would be really valuable to get a stronger foundation here. I know there is counseling and there are some services available, but I think that that’s all small communities everywhere. It’s a really big need that usually gets proportionally way less support and funding because it’s a small community, but that doesn’t mean there’s proportionally less of that issue there. So I think that’s something that could really make a difference. I think honestly, I think a lot of things that are perceived as being law enforcement or criminal issues often have at least partially a role with a mental health issue, and I don’t want that to be misconstrued. I’m not in any way saying people with a mental health challenge are inherently going to do anything criminal, or that criminals are necessarily people with mental health issues. But sometimes there is a way that something could get resolved through services and therapy and other things. And if you have to have the police be the one to come and pick somebody up because they’re acting, you know, in their aberrant way or something like that, that’s not very helpful for that person. You know, we don’t have any facility for a person with a mental health issue. They have to go to jail, right? Do you think that’s good for their mental health? Like, so I think that’s an issue that, just out of you know, I mean, I don’t I don’t have any big answer for things like that, but I think if people are feel compassion, if they want to things to be helpful for others rather than just trying to get for yourself, and you just approach any issue with that mentality, hopefully we would make kind decisions.

On a totally different note, do you support the development and expansion of the local 5G cellular network?

I feel like I would need to learn first off more information about, like, show me show me that there’s a need. I want somebody to and I and not I don’t want it to be. What’s the need for that 5G for us here? What the purpose of that? And I don’t want to have the case for it made by the company that’s going to make a profit out of doing it. So other people need to make it clear. And again, that same concept, whether it’s called game theory or whatever it is, what is the pro and what is the con? Right. Like, I’m not convinced there’s a need for 5G here, and I also feel like there are health issues that are in my mind not resolved around it. 

I’m not trying to assert any specific thing. I don’t know that much about it, honestly. I do know that electromagnetic frequency can be very damaging in certain situations. Then I don’t know if that applies in this kind of tower and this kind of thing or not. I don’t know what proximity, or where it is going to be. Different populations can be more vulnerable than others. So I feel like there’s a bunch of that kind of stuff that should be made more clear before we have any opinion about that, or before I do anyway. 

It’s one of many topics that’s been in front of the planning commission this year, but that one’s kind of interesting to me because it seems like it sort of gets a lot of threads in this community. Like you know, people will say if something satisfies the conditions of the permit, you have to give it the permit, and then other people will come and say, “Okay, but my viewshed. If you put one of those in my neighbor’s backyard, sure, that’s allowed in my neighbor’s backyard. But you know, am I safe? Am my children safe? 

It seems like there’s a sort of lot of overlapping values.” Issues involved in a piece of infrastructure that could otherwise be just a cut and dry permit, and so I guess I’m I’m curious when you consider it from that perspective, if you were to become an elected planning commission member, how you kind of balance the the rights of a private landowner to do what they want on their own property, particularly in an area that’s like use by right, because of the zoning that’s where it is versus what the neighbors need. Like, how would you make that decision for yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I would have to, I’d have to research whatever the issue would be extensively because I’m not aware of anything right now in borough code that would clarify that. If you’re saying it’s a situation where it’s a use by right, I don’t think the planning commission has any role in making a decision about that action. So I don’t think that it would even come before the [planning commission], as far as I can understand. And so if there is some other avenue or some other way that can be addressed. Is there a clause anywhere in the borough code that says no matter how legal an action is, if it causes some other kinds of consequence in some way, whatever that would be, people decide, then the otherwise legal action will not be allowed. I don’t. I’ve never heard of anything like that in borough code. Any kind of across the board thing that says, “Oh, nobody’s viewshed, or no, you know, it does seem like impacting people’s health with electromagnetic frequencies against their will. That seems like it should be something that should not be allowed. 

But how do you determine that? I don’t know. So I think we need a lot more technical information first.

Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you think is important, or you know, some reason that you’re running that you want to articulate?

You must want to talk about the Lutak Dock, don’t you? I’m just joking.

I’ve been letting people bring that one up, I feel like I don’t need to talk about it. Honestly, if you feel called to by all means, no, I don’t. I mean, there’s obviously issues there that could be talked about, but I don’t think it’s necessary to get into it for this. I don’t think it’s for one thing. The planning commission, as far as you know, any time in the upcoming year or two, I don’t see any they’re going to have any role in that anyway, so it’s not really relevant. Yeah, I don’t. I would just, I guess, repeat if I didn’t say it clearly enough before that what I what I’m looking forward to is seeing a planning commission that has a wide range of expertise with people who do understand a lot of different dynamics about how communities operate, economic issues, ecological issues, social and community issues, and in fact, actually knowing the specific details of how to do an industrial development is actually less important. That’s not the role of the planning commission to be the technical engineer of that project. We can find out the details as necessary.

I feel like I’d like to see a planning commission, whether it includes me or not, that has a group of people that have expertise and experience and personal experience. In a wide range of issues that are important for planning, so that means social issues, cultural issues, ecological issues, economic issues are all necessary to understand to make appropriate decisions. And as I said before, to some degree, we need to understand the technical side of some industrial activities, but you don’t have to be an industrial engineer in order to make forward-looking decisions for the benefit of your community.

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

Anchorage Superior Court Judge David Nesbett has rejected speedy consideration of a lawsuit seeking to put a disqualified Anchorage state House candidate on November’s election ballot.

That means Republican Sarah Short will not be a listed candidate for House District 13 and Democratic candidate Lisa Keller will run unopposed.

Short’s case remains open but is largely moot. Nesbett’s decision, issued Sept. 18, was followed a week later by rejections of various temporary restraining orders and emergency hearings requested by Short. 

The first absentee ballots were sent to voters on Sept. 18, and Short had requested actions that could have disrupted mailings. 

“I should’ve been given a chance for arbitration or something like that,” she said.

The Division rejected Short after she failed to submit a Public Official Financial Disclosure form ahead of the June 1 candidate filing deadline. 

That form, required by state law, is supposed to list all of a candidate’s income and financial links in the previous year. The disclosure is intended to prevent corruption.

Short said she completed the form but technical problems prevented her from submitting the signature page. 

“Yes, I did file late, but that’s because I waited on the stupid Republican Party,” she said. “I won’t do that again.”

The Division of Elections does not immediately disqualify candidates who file blank or incomplete forms, but it does disqualify those who file no form at all. 

Short has said that she attempted to file the form on time but was stymied by technical errors. 

The Alaska Public Offices Commission, which collects the forms, informed Short on June 2 that it had not received her form. 

She said she submitted the relevant documents on June 3 but was still rejected. State law allows 30 days for revisions, and Short said she should have been covered under that law.

Short didn’t file a legal challenge until September, and Nesbett concluded that her delay in filing was an important factor in determining whether or not to take up her legal challenge before the first general election ballots were sent to voters.

“Plaintiff’s asserted urgency … stems from her own delay, not from any new circumstance that would justify shortening the court’s normal briefing schedule,” he wrote.

Short had previously said that she would register as a write-in candidate if her lawsuit failed; as of Monday, the Division of Elections did not list her as a write-in option. 

In Alaska, only registered write-ins are allowed to participate in general elections.

By phone, Short said she has the paperwork but has not yet turned it in. 

“I don’t believe I’m going to win, but I believe the problems that I’m having with APOC and the political parties, that’s the story,” she said. “We’re worried about ‘get out the vote,’ but I can’t even get on the ballot.”

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A national organization has put $650,000 into an Alaska political group, saying it aims to boost the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.

Alaska political experts say Kreiss-Tomkins, a former state representative from Sitka, stands a strong chance of winning the general election after finishing first in the primary election in August. He faces a divided field of three Republicans who are likely to split the GOP vote in the general.

The Democratic Governors Association disclosed Saturday that it had contributed $650,000 to a newly formed Alaska independent spending group called “Forward Frontier.”

“Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins is running a strong campaign focused on driving down costs, supporting Alaska schools, and bringing people together to get things done,” DGA spokesperson Johanna Warshaw said in an emailed statement Sunday to the Anchorage Press. “The DGA is proud to help ensure JKT is elected governor this November so he can deliver the change Alaskans are looking for.”

Kreiss-Tomkins, in an interview Sunday, said that campaign finance law bars him from coordinating with the DGA-aligned group and that he only learned about about the contribution Sunday. “We’ll see what they do,” he said.

The $650,000 represents a significant sum in Alaska’s gubernatorial race, given that most candidates leading up to the primary struggled to raise more than $1 million. In addition to Kreiss-Tomkins, the field includes former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, conservative activist Bernadette Wilson and former Attorney General Treg Taylor.

GOP groups have not disclosed similar national fundraising or spending in the gubernatorial race, though Republican-aligned political consultants from outside Alaska formed their own new independent spending group last week.

“Kodiak PAC” was registered by Casey Phillips, a Virginia-based consultant who describes himself as the “Carrot Top of political ads.” Kodiak PAC’s aim is to “support the election of a Republican governor in Alaska,” the group said in its state registration.

Phillips didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. The Republican Governors Association, which has financially supported GOP candidates in past Alaska gubernatorial races, also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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New research reveals the psychological impact of the war that began when Russia invaded in February 2022.