politics

2016/08/24

Little Village, Big Decision

As a relative newbie to life in Alaska I’ve tried to keep my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut across the last three years with some success.  I still embrace this concept and attempt to keep it foremost in my mind as I continue to experience life in semi-rural south central Alaska.  But sometimes there are issues or situations which just beg for some analysis; recognizing such instances often leaves me wondering if I should input my ‘two cents’.  Such a situation formed the foundation for this piece.  My interest was piqued when my on-line news source summation presented me with the following story:

http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/mat-su/2016/08/20/beset-by-summer-crowds-talkeetna-looks-to-clear-tourist-congestion/

I was impressed to find someone from Anchorage even bothered to report on the tourist situation; normally their interests stop at Wasilla sixty plus miles to the south.  This article took, in my opinion, a fair and equitable look at the growing problems with tourism in Talkeetna.  And, for the most part, laid the blame for the situation right where I feel it belongs; upon the local population.

Anyone following this blog knows I’ve complained about the increasing numbers of tourists since I moved up here although I’ve also recognized the positive impact their dollars have on the village.  But this article brought up some impressive numbers which I feel are at the foundation of the situation.  If it is true that 300,000 tourists come through Talkeetna every year – to be accurate it’s not a full year but rather the five months from May through September – then this number is astounding especially given the number of year round residents in the Talkeetna area is 750!  That number of annual tourists is the equivalent to 40% of Alaska’s total population and figures down to 60,000 tourists a month or 15,000 per week!!  Is it any wonder the village is overwhelmed each summer by the masses of people wandering around its few blocks?

 I was particularly interested in the many potential resolutions for our tourism issues.  Incorporation will almost assuredly bring in more politics and will just as assuredly mean an increase in money we locals will have to shell out.  However, as the story highlighted, the village is getting desperate.  I’d prefer to see we work to get some very loud and prominent representation on the Mat-Su Borough’s Assembly.  Right now if you visit their website everything is about Wasilla and Palmer; I saw nothing about Talkeetna.  And that’s the real issue as noted in the article; Talkeetna has very little presence in the Borough’s collective consciousness.  There are state and federal funding’s available for a lot of the work we need done but the borough assembly often designates such monies for ‘lower valley’ projects.  This drives the thinking we should support a ‘Susitna Borough’.  This does make some sense as the Mat-Su Borough, while relatively small in area by Alaskan standards, does encompass 101,095 people which is a bit less than 14% of the state’s population.  If you figure Talkeetna has 750 year round people then we are just 0.74% of the population of the Mat-Su Borough; this highlights the fact virtually all of the population of this borough is in the Palmer-Wasilla area.  Given this it’s no surprise most of the attention and money goes to that immediate area.  But incorporation would most likely mean Talkeetna would lose even more of its ‘funky small town’ feel and without question politics would really take hold as we’d need a mayor, assembly and additional political manpower.  My question is would any benefits we’d see from incorporation over-ride the loss of our ‘unincorporated, small village feel’ and the inevitable increase in taxes and similar?  My answer at this point is a solid; “NO!”.  However, we cannot afford to just continue ‘as is’; part of the unwillingness to face these challenges in the past is what has caused us to be in this position in the first place.  And everyone living here knows darn well the tourist issues have only been growing since the mid to late 1990’s; that’s 20 years ago.

Here is another very divisive question; does everyone share in the tourist money?  I’d say without question the people living within the actual village do see some benefit; only they can tell you if those benefits outweigh the grief.  I would guess very few folks living outside the village proper feel we are getting much, if any, benefits from those tourism dollars.  There are a number of prominent business owners in this area and most do not want to see tourism decrease although many would also acknowledge something has to be done regarding the current situation.  But painting crosswalks and even adding some sidewalks will not resolve the real issues.  Talkeetna residents, and probably those in its immediate surroundings, have to decide if they favor returning to a quiet, historical village or want to go with continued expansion through increased tourism.  I, obviously, favor the former but I also know from sitting on the Upper Susitna Food Pantry (USFP) board if we went that direction our support numbers will sky-rocket as there just are not a lot of job opportunities in the Talkeetna area but there are a lot of folks too poor to even move out of this area.  Every lost job means at minimum another person on welfare and often means an entire family has to go on the dole to even survive.  All around this is not a good situation but is one we locals have to face and resolve sooner rather than later.

A number of the resolutions are just nonsense; restricting traffic in the village is a non-starter as we have no ability to enforce such regulations.  In my mind it all boils down to numbers; if we truly do see 300,000 total visitors in a given year then it is no surprise such numbers are causing many problems for the village and the immediate area.  Cramming this many people through little Talkeetna cannot help but cause serious issues even if the village was prepared and laid out to handle such throngs of ‘summer people’.  The whole sewage situation has always boggled my mind; it’s been an issue since long before I moved up here and the ‘fixes’ are not brain surgery.  But somehow it takes breaking the state’s potable water regulations or running afoul the EPA’s requirements for treated water release before anyone does anything.  Both the flood dike and the sewage issues could be fixed in a year but it will require outside monies and someone to shepherd the entire process to completion.  Previously it was politics and the borough focusing on lower valley issues that stalled any action; now it’s the state’s fiscal crisis based on oil’s floundering prices.  Sadly, the latter will put a stranglehold on making any progress because there just is no state money.  Unless something dramatic happens regarding the oil prices, as in they suddenly double if not triple, we are going to have to endure this situation, and probably see worse, for the foreseeable future.  What so many locals seem not to understand is that even if oil suddenly jumped to $100/barrel the state wouldn’t feel the positive effects for years as oil is a commodity and its price is regulated by futures contracts that often extend forward in time one or more years.

 While I have my own feelings regarding this situation I’d be the first to admit I lack the perspective of life long Talkeetnans.  But I do know this is not a situation which we can continue to ignore.  In many ways it parallels the current federal immigration issue; just look at what 35 years of ‘kicking the can down the road’ has given us!  I firmly believe we Talkeetnans must decide very soon this fundamental question; in what direction do we want the future of Talkeetna headed?  Do we want a bucolic historical village or do we want increased growth based upon expanding tourism?  This is the fundamental question we, as a community, must answer before we can move forward.  I’m sure we can work out a question or questions upon which to vote regarding this decision.  But just as assuredly I know there will be a lot of very unhappy people regarding the final decision…

Tourists In Downtown Talkeetna

A rather ‘light’ day in terms of tourists on Main Street in ‘downtown’ Talkeetna

2016/03/25

The Cheapening of America’s Polarized Culture

As this hellishly long election process grinds painfully to its conclusion I, for one, am both disgusted and exhausted by the process!  Not only has it already been underway for more than a year but the overall atmosphere of the campaign continues to mine new levels of repugnance and revulsion.  Civility is nowhere to be found nor is a substantive discussion of truly pertinent topics like the economy, terrorism, immigration and entitlement reform.  Instead, the candidates of both parties would rather sling mud and bait each other with abhorrent personal attacks; in addition said attacks are now targeting family members!  Just what has happened to the concept of gathering to discuss issues employing decorum and respect?  Apparently this approach has been discarded in favor of rancor and vitriol.

Without question there’s plenty of blame to go around starting with the candidates themselves.  Somewhere along this process the need to be truthful in one’s dealings fell by the wayside; indeed, the need to be truthful at all seems a lost concept.  Apparently it is much more important to make a large impression with one’s ego and bravado than be truthful.  And the lame-stream media fuels this fire by affording the most coverage to the most outrageous actions and comments.  In a culture where few have an attention span longer than 30 seconds and most want information spoon fed to them along with how and what they should think the media willingly panders to such guilelessness as it generates ratings.

But neither of the aforementioned are honestly the root cause of this heinous situation; no, sadly the main reason we’re seeing such coarse and childish behavior is ‘we the people’ want it.  Over the past sixty years there’s been a steady decline in morals and values within the American culture all in the name of ‘social progress’.  Progressives point to this with pride as examples of the advancement of the American people while all the while continuing to willing chip away at so many of the virtues which allowed this country to both grow and prosper.  They view conservatives as Luddites clinging to past behaviors rather than embracing new social miens.  Yet without continued social development and growth our culture will definitely become stagnant and eventually fail.  Conservatives all too often view progressives (aka ‘liberals’) as crazed, morally bankrupt maniac’s hell bent on destroying anything ‘good’.  Those of a more conservative bent will not at least consider, let alone embrace, the idea that as we evolve we must continue to adapt and that implies change.

So our culture has reached a point at which we are fundamentally polarized to extremes.  Neither faction appears willing to just try to undertake a civilized dialog with the other regarding even the most basic of concepts like immigration.  This, by itself, is a recipe for deadlock and thus we find ourselves embroiled in our current situation.  Far too many people have embraced the ultimate lunacy of ‘political correctness’ which is a guaranteed killer of honest, open communication at a time when we truly need clear, concise conversation.  But there’s more as well; it seems that with the advent of electronic communication in the form of email, tweeting and similar we lost the notion of civilized communication.  It’s almost as if because we do not have to face someone we feel we are free to say anything regardless of how disgusting or vile.  Just visit virtually any chat room or forum and you can see endless examples of a total lack of common courtesies and civility.  Apparently many folks have taken the old adage ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me’ to a new and despicable low.

Given all this I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise we have candidates willing to stoop to crass, bathroom humor and insults the likes of which most of us left behind on the grade school playground.  In a very real sense we are getting exactly what we asked for or at least what the majority of Americans appear to desire.  But does this do anything constructive for our political process let alone our culture?  In a sense it really does seem to be one of the polar opposites that defines today’s America; we have this willingness to forgo all aspects of civility and politeness in favor of crass, boorish behavior juxtaposed against the prim and proper miasma of political correctness.  And this is but one example of how polarized American culture has become.  At this point I have to ask; “Is this the kind of ‘social progress’ we desire as a nation?”.

My sense is most folks would prefer not to continue down this path but are either unsure how to redirect our ‘advancement’ or are too overwhelmed by what it takes to maintain a satisfactory lifestyle to care.  But regardless, we are experiencing the unfolding of this situation so we shouldn’t be surprised when our political race turns into an all-out free for all with the candidate most willing to plumb the lowest depths of acrimony and rancor most likely to get the most media attention and, hence, come out a victor.  Yet there is a relatively simple ‘fix’ for this situation; if ‘we the people’ refused to sit enchanted in front of our media source of choice vapidly soaking up such behavior the media outlets would soon stop running the imagery on an almost 24/7 basis.  If we all chose, instead, to read about the campaign from the outlet of our choice as versed with being spoon fed the mindless video superimposed with some equally mindless talking head providing foolish and irrelevant commentary we could affect an eventual change for the better.  But for most people this would mean unplugging from the continual information bombardment of our technological time and instead investing in reading and making up our own minds.

With respect to the larger issue of a dramatically polarized population the answers are not so forthcoming.  Obviously we need compromise but this cannot happen until we are amenable to conversing in a civilized and cultured manner.  And we must put aside past issues and grievances!  History can and will be an important part of any such discussions but a desire to dwell on perceived past wrongs and/or injustices will only poison the well of good intentions.  But perhaps most importantly we must communicate in an open and honest fashion and this means dropping any use of political correctness.  It is far too important to resolve this issue rather than allow such efforts to be torpedoed by concern for a few people’s overly sensitive perceptions.  We have the power and means to begin bridging this polarization but we really need the will!

2014/05/07

Open Question…

A recent comment from a good friend of mine is the basis for the following question which I’m putting out to any and all readers of my current blog.  But first a little background.  I created ‘talkeetnatraces.com’ with the idea it would be a collection of thoughts and observations on the experiences of a sixty year old man newly relocated to rural south central Alaska after living his entire life within urban settings in the lower 48.  I entertain the vague notion of using these observations along with other writings in the form of emails and similar to one day write a book on my experiences.  Initially I was true to this idea and wrote mainly about my experiences and learnings regarding my new Alaskan lifestyle.  But then topics off this theme began to creep into my writings.  At first they were few but have been increasing in frequency of late.  The aforementioned friend suggested I might think about creating a separate blog for topics like politics, philosophical discussions or evaluations of current events and cultural leanings.  Initially I thought this might be too much but now I am not so sure.  Without question doing so would keep my existing blog ‘cleaner’ in the sense it would truly focus on my life, experience and learnings in rural Alaskan living.  So with this in mind I’m seeking any feedback regarding creating a second blog site to deal exclusively with my wanderings in the political and philosophical arenas.  Please feel free to offer up any thoughts; as always I welcome all serious, civilized comments…