  Responses By Mike HarpoldAbout Mike Harpold
Gateway Human Services is one of the largest departments of the City of Ketchikan. As employees of the City they travel to and provide services in communities outside of the City and Borough (Metlakatla and Prince of Wales Island). If elected, would you support this practice to continue and expand or do you believe that more focus should be placed on providing services to City and Borough residents?
I am curious about the reason for your question. Have you had difficulty getting services from the Gateway Center? If so, please contact director Ron Adler or me. The Gateway Center is a regional mental health and substance abuse treatment center administered by the city of Ketchikan. I believe it is almost unique in Alaska in combining mental health and substance abuse programs within one facility administered by a municipal government. The relationship has been an unheralded success. Although the Center receives fees from individuals for treatment and some hospital sales tax revenues, the largest single source of support is state grant money. The state grants require services to be provided throughout Gateway's service area which now includes Metlakatla and POW. I chaired the Gateway advisory committee in the late '80's, early 90's. At that time Gateway provided services to Petersburg and Wrangell, but not POW. Serving a broader area means more funding which translates into better facilities and more staffing in Ketchikan. It also means outlying communities get services they would otherwise be unable to provided. Everybody wins. I am for that.
Question #2 For City Council Candidates: Published Tuesday - September 10, 2002 - 7:00 pm What is the most serious challenge facing the City Council and how would you address this challenge?
Trying to figure how city government can contribute to providing good year-around jobs in Ketchikan. The city is already the largest single employer on the island, employing over 330 people. First off, the city needs to be a model employer and I've worked hard on that. City employees contribute to our economy too. Next, the city can help by providing, within its means and the availability of state and federal grants, a year after year flow of needed public works projects. Construction is about 20% of our economy right now. City projects include the construction of a new harbormaster building this fall and a new long term care wing for the hospital. Work began this summer on the Swan Lake - Lake Tyee electrical intertie, a $70 million project. As part of the Community Legislative Liaison team, I have traveled to Juneau during each of the past three legislative seasons as part of a community effort to secure funding for Ketchikan projects. We have been successful. Four million dollars have been secured to refurbish Bar Harbor South and more funds are included in the state bond initiative on the November ballot to pay to refurbish Thomas Basin and the remainder of our area dock facilities. Construction has resumed on the Third Avenue by-pass and soon the borough will begin construction on a replacement for White Cliff school. While these projects will help our local contractors, the city may need to step up to the plate to help two other areas of our economy, the shipyard and commercial fishing. I sit on the joint city/ borough committee that is trying to come up with the solution for keeping the shipyard and the skilled jobs it provides in our community. Given our location astride the inside passage, the shipyard is a natural industry for our community. I am convinced that if properly developed it can be a commercially successful operation. In the shortrun, the city and/or the borough must consider the purchase or long term lease of the property. Recently, a commercial fisherman told me ruefully that if present trends in the market for Alaska pink salmon continue, commercial harvesting of that resource in Ketchikan will end within the next three years. It is difficult at this point to determine what city government can do. A community cold storage plant which will facilitate the year around marketing of salmon seems like a good idea. Last year, when tours to Alaska were being canceled right and left because of 9/11, the council gave an extra $25 thousand to the Visitor's Bureau for increased marketing in the lower 48. I believe the community would support doing that and more as its share of an effort to increase marketing opportunities for Alaska salmon.
Question # 3 For All Candidates: Published Wednesday - September 18, 2002 - 7:40 pm During the interviews of the school board candidates on KRBD, the issue of violence in our schools was brought up as a reason that some parents are seeking alternatives to education other than public schools. I'm concerned about the level of abuse that seems to occur in the schools and wonder what thoughts the school board and borough candidates have about adopting a policy of zero tolerance in our schools for any form of abuse including verbal as well as physical and sexual.
I'm for zero tolerance of any form of abuse, but principals and teachers must be given both the authority and the discretion to deal with individual situations, particularly at the elementary school level. We teach our daughters not to tolerate abuse directed at either themselves or others.
Question # 4 For All Candidates: Published Thursday - September 19, 2002 - 2:30 pm Our community focuses on the importance of 'Youth Asset Building' - I would like to know that our elected officials set a good example. Have any of the candidates been charged for any serious violations of the law other than for minor traffic tickets.
No
Question #5 For All Candidates: Published Sunday - September 22, 2002 -3:50 pm Would you recommend to all the citizens of Ketchikan that they support building a bridge to Gravina? If so, what would you say to community members about the short-term and long-term benefits to the community as a whole? If you support building a bridge, will you or your family personally benefit monetarily from bridge construction or do you or your family own property on Gravina?
Our problem in this community is the loss of long term sustainable jobs after the pulp mill closed and the woods shut down. Developing Gravina is not going to solve that problem. Construction of a bridge will provide only a short term "boom." One of my concerns is the impact of a bridge on aircraft and vessel operations in the Tongass Narrows. The Federal Aviation Administration has already warned that construction of a bridge across the narrows would cause the loss or modification of the special visual flight rules exemption that governs the use of the narrows by floatplanes thereby restricting aircraft traffic on low visibility days. Tests have confirmed that all bridge alternatives will impede the manuvering of large vessels in the narrows which will result in a reduction in cruiseship visits. Ketchikan is Ketchikan because of the unimpeded north-south waterway and sheltered harbor we call the Tongass Narrows. It is our most important infrastructure, the reason for all of our development into what we are now, the principal transportation, retail, service hub of southern Southeast Alaska. Restricting travel in the narrows, whether it be by vessel or aircraft, means increasing the cost of transportation which will mean fewer customers and less commerce. Given the strong winds and rain that blow up the narrows, it is likely that there will be days that no traffic will move across a bridge built 200' above the narrows. The potential loss of business by building a bridge will not be made up by development on Gravina. The state study concludes that most of the development will come from movement of residents and businesses from this side of the narrows to the other, resulting in no net growth to our economy. Industrial development on Gravina, if any, will be at the expense of the 50 acres of developed land the borough already owns in Ward Cove. Development most likely to occur, residential and recreational, can be adequately served by the existing ferries. Another concern is funding. This bridge is not "free." It is not a "gift" from our congressional delegation. It will be paid for from federal gas tax receipts, the eight cents per gallon tax that everyone who purchases gas in the U.S. pays. Federal gas tax dollars are a zero sum proposition. Our $200 million bridge, the largest public works project in Alaska since Anchorage's Ted Stevens Int'l Airport, will compete for funds with the Intermodal Transportation Plan now being promoted by our neighboring communities through the Southeast Conference. That program calls for allocating $200 million through the Forest Highways program to pave existing Forest Service roads and establish supplemental ferry systems. Those roads and ferries will not only benefit our neighbors such as Wrangell and Prince of Wales Island who are hurting worse than we are, but they will ultimately bring customers to Ketchikan. Funding for the bridge will also compete with the $200 million needed to refurbish our aging Alaska Marine Highway System ferries. If funding our bridge is approved, the state must put up 20% of the total, $40 million, as a match. I do not want to speculate where Alaska, which this past spring debated adopting an income tax and capping our Permanent Fund dividend, will come up with $40 million. It is a safe bet, however, that the Gravina Bridge will be the only new DOT project we will see in this community for a decade. The businesses and workers in our community who depend on a steady flow of DOT projects will suffer over the long term. Building the bridge would be a boom, but it will be followed by a bust for construction workers and contractors, forcing them to look and move elsewhere for jobs after the bridge is completed. Building a bridge is an idea
whose time has past. Communities that laced their downtowns and
neighborhoods with freeways to move traffic, such as San Francisco
and Boston, are now tearing them up in favor of open space and
beautification projects. Next year one million visitors are expected
to visit Ketchikan, people who will shop in our stores, take
our tours and fish from our charter fleet. The attraction is
a scenic Alaskan town in the natural setting of the Tongass Narrows,
the same vistas that brought us here and keep us here. Even if
it were a smaller version of the Golden Gate Bridge - it will
be more on the order of a freeway overpass - it will not enhance
the beauty of this place or make us a more attractive destination.
Nor is driving there in a car likely to improve the experience
of an afternoon spent on Black Sand Beach.
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