The Haines Public Safety Building is home to the community’s first responders. It’s a modular building built on top of a swamp that dates back to the 1970s. And borough officials say a replacement could cost around $15 million. 

The borough released a video back in March to demonstrate to the people of Haines that one of their most important government buildings was on its last legs. In that video, Haines Borough Facilities Manager Eddie Bryant talks about the poor state of the building’s electrical systems.

“The building offers a lot of electrical violations. That’s why we can’t find an electrician to work on the building. It’s is just maxed out. We have panels and sub-panels and sub-sub panels all over the building. Electricians, they don’t like this building and they won’t touch it,” said Bryant.

On Thursday, Borough Mayor Doug Olerud told KHNS that the electrical problems aren’t the only issues with the building.

It’s rotten. There’s water, they’ve been having water issues in the walls, we can’t paint it, paint won’t stick to it because there’s so much moisture in this in the siding of the building.”

The Borough has spent about $100,000 so far with Bettisworth North TCA, an architectural and planning firm to develop plans for repairing or replacing the building. The original estimates of about $20 million have dropped significantly since the initial estimate was released in March.

According to Director of Public Facilities Ed Coffland, that’s because several services the current building struggles to provide have been removed from the newest plans. He says the newest designs include space for Fire, Police, Jail, Dispatch, and EMS. But new Assembly Chambers and a morgue have both been eliminated from the plans.

The Borough hosted a virtual town hall meeting on Wednesday, during which Bettisworth North TCA laid out three options. They included constructing a new building, renovating the current structure, or buying and renovating the nearby Floreske building, all with similar cost estimates.

Mayor Olerud agreed the borough’s estimates are pretty high. 

“At $15 million, that’s going to be a hard one for us to budget 100% out of Haines. And so getting creative, trying to figure out different ways to do this, we can bring that cost down and make that manageable for the residents is going to be the only way that we’re going to get this across the finish line,” said Olerud.

The mayor acknowledges that there are limited funding options through federal or state funding, but is hopeful that the community can leverage pandemic relief from the American Rescue Plan Act.   If the outside funding proves inadequate, he says it would then land on the citizens of Haines to get it done.

“The main source we have for paying off a bond, If we were going to bond this completely ourselves, it would be property tax. And it would be a substantial increase in property tax to pay off $15 million,” said Olerud.

That’s an increase Olerud says that he doesn’t believe the voters of Haines would approve. The video is available on the Haines Borough website. This project will be discussed at future Haines Borough Assembly meetings.