Would $400,000 help the Haines Borough administration with staffing issues? And would that be worth a slight increase in property taxes?

Those are questions that the Haines Borough Assembly is weighing as it approaches a final decision about next year’s budget.  

The assembly voted 4-1 this week on an initial proposal to set aside $400,000 for personnel matters, such as hiring a planner and deputy manager. Assembly member Debra Schnabel suggested the idea at a Tuesday meeting. 

“This way we’re saying we are committed — we are committed to hiring a planner; we are committed to fixing wages; we are committed to having a deputy manager; and we are so committed that we are going to raise the funds to do that,” Schnabel said. 

Assembly members proposed raising those funds by increasing the mill rate — the number that determines how much residents pay in property taxes.

The borough could draw in $400,000 with an increase of roughly one mill, according to the borough’s finance director Jila Stuart. A mill equals $1 for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. 

“We’ve got to get better help, that’s all there is to it. And it’s going to cost money,” said assembly member Craig Loomis. [1:09:05]

Staffing has been a challenge for the borough over the past year. The administration doesn’t have a planner, went months without a police chief, and clerk Alekka Fullerton is leaving her post in early June. No one has applied to succeed her, borough manager Annette Kreitzer told the assembly Tuesday. 

Assembly member Gabe Thomas was the sole vote against the $400,000 proposal, but it’s not law yet. The assembly will make a final decision about that spending — and the rest of the budget — at its next meeting, on June 11.

  Another key budget question for assembly members is how to spend $125,000 intended for economic development. 

Kreitzer initially allocated that amount for the Haines Economic Development Corporation, but the nonprofit withdrew its request for borough funds. 

Director Cindy Zuluaga Jimenez said HEDC is focused on creating a more sustainable funding model — one that’s not at the annual whims of the borough government. 

“In the history of HEDC-borough relations, the borough has pulled funding from HEDC and it has resulted in a loss of momentum for the organization as well as the loss of their executive directors to the loss of job security,” Jimenez said. [2:18]

She added she intends to work with borough officials to develop a three-year funding cycle, instead of an annual appropriation. 

Schnabel proposed using the $125,000 to contract a project manager to accelerate the transfer of so-called “entitlement lands.” Those are state parcels — adding up to thousands of acres — that the Alaska Department of Natural Resources has long intended to convey to the borough. Kreitzer said the process has been delayed partly due to state staffing turnover. 

Assembly member Kevin Forster suggested reallocating nearly a quarter of the economic development funds — $35,000 — to design a loop for bicycles called a pump track. That’s a circuit that has rollers and banked turns and is designed so that cyclists can ride around it without pedaling.

Forster said he thought it could help make Haines a cooler, more attractive place to live.   

“I think it would be awesome here. It would jumpstart the notion of a bike community.” 

Assembly members unanimously backed Forster’s idea, proposing to set aside the other $90,000 for the project on entitlement lands. 

In other news, Haines’ elected officials also heard a request to limit the number of marijuana stores in the borough to two. 

Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton told the assembly that there’s preliminary interest from someone who wants to open a third store. 

Brad Adams brought the idea of a limit to the assembly. He’s the owner of Winter Greens, one of the two pot shops in town. 

Adams said adding another retailer to the mix might destroy his business.

“This is something that needs to be done because Dandelion, myself, I don’t know if we’d survive it,” he said, referring to the other marijuana store in Haines. “It would be a real hardship on both of us because this town is not big enough for a third operation to open.” 

Assembly members expressed hesitation about limiting competition and didn’t act on the request. But they left the door open to revisiting the issue in June.