On Tuesday night the Haines Assembly met to discuss some wet topics like the pool, fly fishing, and Lutak Dock upgrades. There were also some dry topics like concrete and the budget.
The Haines swimming pool has been a boon for local residents for years. It’s a place where locals can rehab in a low-impact environment, plus it offers indoor fun for the family during those long Alaskan winters. The pool costs the borough about $25,000 per month to operate.
Interim Borough Manager Alekka Fullerton says the borough had started closing it during the summer years ago as a cost-saving measure because user rates dropped significantly during the warmer months. This year, however, they are opening it up in August, a month earlier than originally planned, in partnership with the school.
“They’re starting a high school swim team, which we have not had before. And in order to do that they need to be practicing earlier than school starts, in order to be as competitive as they would like to be,” said Fullerton.
Fullerton says the school board and the borough are looking to split the cost for the month of August.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Greg Schlachter’s fly fishing business, Fly Guides LLC, was granted a license to operate in the Chilkoot corridor which runs between Lutak Road and Chilkoot Lake. The operation has been in business since 2013, so this decision was in response to new borough regulations that required guided fly fishing tours to be permitted.
The ruling led to a longer discussion about a temporary moratorium on new business in the area that was established in 2018 to ease congestion between tour operators and independent travelers. That moratorium has prohibited new businesses from operating there and prevents existing businesses from selling to new owners, but Fullerton says the assembly has opened the discussion about how long that moratorium should last.
“The assembly allowed some changes to that moratorium last night to allow transferability of the permits to allow people to go into the Chilkoot. So that was the first step in talking about the moratorium,” said Fullerton.
A series of town-hall-style meetings were announced on Tuesday where the borough will lay out options to upgrade the ailing Lutak Dock. The first of those is scheduled for June 3 and will feature a discussion of a phased approach to dock repairs. Fullerton says it’s easier to secure money for portions of the plan individually than to secure one massive grant covering the entire project.
Also discussed on Tuesday night were the sidewalks Hamilton Construction poured last fall by Haines’ small boat harbor. Fullerton says the weather was too cold for the concrete to cure properly, so construction crews put blankets over them to aid in the process. But they laid the blankets down too early and were left with blanket imprints on the sidewalks’ surface.
“When we pointed out this deficiency, they said, you know, it’s not a structural thing, but it doesn’t look good. So, Hamilton had offered to give us a credit for the cost of the sidewalks if we would accept them in that condition, and we agreed,” said Fullerton.
This means the borough got some free sidewalks.
Finally, next year’s budget was up for approval on Tuesday. Assembly members made several amendments to the spending plan, but the final budget failed to pass. The assembly has until June 15 to settle on a spending plan for 2022, if they don’t, the Manager’s Budget will be used.
The assembly is set to take up the budget again at its next meeting on June 8.
