 Candidate for Ketchikan Borough Assembly 3-year term seat - three seats open Published:
Candidate For: Borough Assembly Address: PO Box 7603 - Ketchikan, AK 99901 E-Mail Address: mikesallee@hotmail.com Phone: 247-3828
Background: Born 08/02/46 in Ketchikan Mother - Jean Sallee Lifelong Alaskan Graduated from Kayhi 1964 Bachelor of Science degree in General Science from U. of Alaska, Fairbanks 1971, majored in math, minored in chemistry and PE US Army 1972-1975 -- Stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage then transferred to NWTC at Fort Greely where I taught skiing, mountaineering, rock climbing, glacier travel, mountain rescue, winter survival and riverboat handling for the remainder of my enlistment. Member of US Biathlon Team 1972-1976 Current Membership in Non-Government Organizations: Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fishermen's Association (SARDFA) Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) Tongass Conservation Society (TCS) PATCH (Planned Approach to Community Health) Vision Team Kayhi PTA Ketchikan Outdoor Recreation and Trails Coalition (KORTC)
Occupational history: Employed seasonally by Laland Daniels on fish packers for about a decade starting in 1961. The "Urania packed gillnet fish from the Tree Point area during summers and sold fresh produce in Ketchikan, Metlakatla, and many of the other towns, logging camps and villages of Southeast Alaska. Later the "Christian continued packing produce and expanded fish packing travels to many places in Southeast, and west as far as Bristol Bay. The "Christian traveled as far south as Monterey to fish tuna in the early 70s. Worked for El Paso Natural Gas at their mineral exploration activities at Seal Cove for several months during the early 70s. Student taught at Dimond H.S. and substitute taught in the Anchorage bowl schools for a couple of school years in the mid 70s. In the late 70s set chokers and other logging work for most of two logging seasons for Revilla Log in Neets Bay. Began operating a Mobile Dimension sawmill, long-line deck-handing for halibut, black cod, and rockfish, and harvest diving about this same period, late 70s to early 80s. I'm still employed at these occupations presently.
Other interests: I've an abiding interest in outdoors beginning with a passion for hunting in my early teens when wild game and fish played an important part in our family's subsistence economy. I've since hunted most of Alaska's big game species. Obtained a pilot's license before I had a driver's license and owned a two-seat Citabria wheel plane for several years. My background in cross-country skiing and other endurance activities since the mid 60s at UofA meshed well with mountaineering and other outdoor activities. I was on a climbing team that made the first ascent of Mt. Kimball in the Alaska Range. A year later (1970) I climbed Denali with a six-member team. I was also a member of numerous other climbing expeditions in the Alaska Range and to Aconcagua in Argentina.Skied the Iditarod trail in 1980 (45days). Placed first in the Iditaski its first year (125miles), placed 2nd its second year (200miles). Have run several Alaskan marathons, some more than once; Equinox, Resurrection, Seward, Midnight Sun. I've rafted the Tatzenshini, the Unuk, and Chickamin Rivers. I've kayaked several interior Alaska rivers as well as South central and Southeast Alaska Inside Passage waters.
List any experience that qualifies you for this elected position:
At least three reasons why you are seeking a seat on the assembly: I bring the pragmatic viewpoint of the small business owner and working person to the assembly table. I've a lifetime of connection with and an abiding respect for the natural attributes of this place we call Southeast Alaska. The value of those attributes is constantly threatened by pressures to inject a human element into them in radical ways that profoundly change and cheapen the attributes. I seek an assembly seat to be an advocate for conserving as much as we can the rich and delicately balanced legacy we inherited. The assembly needs input from a broad cross-section of the community in determining and planning for the future. As a long-time off-the-utility-grid resident of the borough, I bring an element of independence and self-sufficiency to the table.
Why should voters re-elect you? Besides the three reasons mentioned above, I've gained three years of experience.
List local, regional and/or statewide issues that you believe are a high priority and state your position on each. Ward Cove:
Intertie: We've parted ways with the
FERC mandate that local qualifying facilities should be used
to provide electricity, in order to accommodate a region-wide
power grid. As an off-the-grid resident, providing my own power
through a combination of diesel powered generators, solar cells,
windmills and energy conservation, I'm very apprehensive about
this move. The blackouts, brownouts and other energy woes of
the intertied Pacific Northwest have not I'm hearing of a local hire issue going on with the intertie r.o.w. clearing.
Shipyard: As a lifelong mariner living in a maritime community local ship repair and maintenance makes sense, but largely to the extent that those repairs cannot be done more cheaply for equal quality and acceptable timeliness elsewhere. It doesn't help us much if the shipyard has to rely largely upon non-resident labor and substantial government subsidy in order to remain competitive. For the shipyard I have more questions than answers:
Sewage: We need a sewage disposal system that rewards people who manage their septic systems well. We're currently in a mode of penalizing the conscientious in order to pay for the mistakes of the not so conscientious. The issue of centralized vs stand alone systems still exists.
North Tongass Fire/EMS: Communal fire/EMS protection is probably the best way to go for north enders. Fire spreads too quickly and medical aid is too time sensitive to be quibbling over who's paid for protection and who hasn't. PRFD got eclipsed by GFP as far as getting disaster funds to tide them over until some kind of service area can be established and revenues generated. Also, an imbalance between accountability and need appears to have played a role in Pond Reef's current crisis. Ambulance service should be
like schools and library services in that all borough residents
should share some of the costs. Even people off the road system
will occasionally need to be medevaced. Fire protection on the
other hand is less likely to be of much benefit to households
off the road system with the possible exception of fireboat service
to households on Pennock and Gravina that are near town. I guess
I'm hinting at areawide emergency service powers with the understanding
that those who are served less should
Bridge: This project is going to be very disruptive to our fragile economy and existing infrastructure. Cruise ship, air taxi and other maritime traffic will be hampered. People currently walking on the airport ferries will pay more than $4 when they have to travel the bridge route by bus, taxi, or private auto. The timing is wrong with the State's current and not-to-be-soon-resolved fiscal crunch. The scale is inappropriate. Proposed options call for a bridge only a few feet lower than the Golden Gate for a community a tiny fraction of the size and tax-paying population of the San Francisco area. Juneau, Sitka and Kodiak's bridges are not spanning travel corridors that come close to rivaling Ketchikan's Tongass Narrows in historic volume of traffic. The vision is nebulous. Ketchikan is a gateway community, a stepping off hub to Misty Fjords, other undeveloped areas, and fishing grounds that have become so highly valued to the rest of the world. To quote "Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities (Howe, McMahon, and Propst, c1997):
A Chamber of Commerce, several Gravina property owners, realtors and other developers, an elected body, a newspaper editor and a congressional delegation are hardly a "broad cross-section.
Timber Ketchikan has for decades been a beneficiary of large-scale alterations of landscape created by logging in southern Southeast. We are now in the often-painful process of weaning ourselves from our dependence upon that industry. According to a quote in an article in "Alaska Law Review (June 2000,Vol 17, #1) "dispute over timber harvesting in the Tongass and the national forests in general [is] the single longest-running unresolved conflict in federal public land law and policy, (p128). I will continue to advocate for smaller scale value-added cottage industries and away from industries that require large volumes of our wood to be round-log exported.
Transportation I will continue to advocate for ferry service between Ketchikan and other communities in SE Alaska as well as with ports in British Columbia and the Puget Sound area. If the private sector can step up with reliable and cost effective service, more power to them.
Borough expansion No
How do you determine your position on an issue? Input from constituents, researching the issue from data and seeking out those with a historical perspective or using my own historical perspective. I urge anyone to contact me either by phone, Internet or boat.
What would compel you to change your position? A well reasoned argument that addresses my concerns with new and pertinent information presented in a timely manner that allows me to act upon it.
If a dozen people speak at a public meeting on a controversial agenda item with the majority of speakers opposed and the minority for how would this impact your ability to form a decision on what is best for the community? It would suggest that I need more time to deliberate and follow up with moving to postpone any action in order to research the pros and cons of the information presented. I would hope and encourage people to come forward with their concerns not only to me but other borough assembly members prior to the issue being addressed at the table.
Where would you most likely obtain more information on agenda items? Staff recommendations
People in the community
How would you deal with people whose views oppose your beliefs who want to talk to you about an agenda item or issue? I listen to them - opposing
viewpoints present alot of information perhaps even more than
like viewpoints In a public meeting discussion, what would you likely do? Tell others my position; Listen to positions of others; Try to reach a compromise
How do others view you?
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