tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1250901657222376351.post3273211972854476329..comments2023-03-26T03:04:34.486-08:00Comments on freshwrestler's reprieve: Nature-Based Tourism in Seldovia Or NotFreshwrestlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12478494522693612257noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1250901657222376351.post-22448391069543935672007-11-15T11:53:00.000-09:002007-11-15T11:53:00.000-09:00Salt you are the only other person reading this po...Salt you are the only other person reading this post. The wife says she only skimmed it to find incorrect grammar. She does like to find fault here, because in so many other things I approach perfection.<BR/><BR/>I can't disagree with points you have made and agree with most of them. It is always good to get more history and I find it supporting my thinking about the whole situation. It is not a government(city) to government(tribe) situation but a municipality (weak-underfunded understaffed with a small uninvolved population) v. a corporation(well funded and capitalized with various ventures and federal grants). As we all know the tribe and corporation are hand in glove. I can't image a situation where the tribe might oppose an action of the Corporation. It would be like punching onesself in the face. <BR/><BR/>So we are expecting a government with limited resources and even more limited regulatory abilities to work with a corporation that may even see the city as aninterference to greater profits. <BR/>The point is Corporations are selfish institutions, especially in the current political and economic climate. All our retirement funds are now tied up in corporate performance. (how smart was wall street in pulling that one off) For Beale to say anything other than "their obligation is to the shareholder/Tribe member, even if that obligation is contrary to the public welfare" would be CEO career suicide. <BR/>So the City has struggled to find some power base that it can use to influence SNA's decisions. But it ends getting involved and then regretting involvement later when SNA acts like a corporation. Of course SNA is going to try and tuck the ferry under the SVT umbrella, of course they are going to find that the best landing spot for the new ferry happens to be on SVT owner property. Of course they are going to pare down the ferry project to a business operation, instead of an infrastructure asset benefiting the original communities designated. Of coourse they aren't going to provide Senior meals to everyone (that one might be personal. It is all corporate behavior. And they can afford a sharp, politically connected,CEO and boards that brought in the pork grants and profit. Another big contrasting point!<BR/>It is an unequal relationship and I am trying to think of it in terms of tit for tat gaming strategies. I believe the city has screwed itself, but SNA maybe close behind. Karma baby!Freshwrestlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12478494522693612257noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1250901657222376351.post-25783524087771549562007-11-14T15:56:00.000-09:002007-11-14T15:56:00.000-09:00me and my two other readers! I feel so special. Do...<I>me and my two other readers!</I> <BR/><BR/>I feel so special. Do we gain extra points for re-reading?<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the link to the study and for the analysis. Without having read (the study) beyond what you've said, I've replied to some of your comments below.<BR/><BR/><I>this total does not include sales tax revenue to local government</I><BR/><BR/>And keep in mind that anything done by the tribe is outside this potential city government revenue stream, even while it may raise costs for city infrastructure. Given that there are only about six of us left inside the city young enough to pay property taxes, this is a ticking time bomb of fiscal disaster the city has wholly failed to address.<BR/><BR/><I>taxes seem to be complicated here</I><BR/><BR/>You know, I'm not sure whether it's truly more complicated or simply more personal. The curse of small town government is that every opinion has a face. For example, the council didn't just vote to rescind taxes on airplanes because private planes bring us such a huge amount of our local revenue (something I've not particularly observed, but then, the councils powers of observation are, to be charitable, <I>different</I> from mine); the council voted to remove taxes on their friend XX. That's not specific to taxes, entirely--when the city manager told the council to raise harbor fees "because we can get away with it," what he was saying was that you and I should pay to run this city so we can let friend XX off. So long as no one presents any given tax as part of a comprehensive overview of how they all fit into a well-though-out, responsible municipal budget, it's inevitable, I feel, that they will be judged solely on personal grounds of I win/someone I dislike loses.<BR/><BR/><I>Maybe it will be exclusive contracts with the “Daily Ferry Company”. This is where we will all benefit from the good communication</I><BR/><BR/>Communicate all you want, but it takes both sides to generate joint action and that seems no likelier now than it has for the past decade. <BR/><BR/><I>Seldovia will have to worry about that if we ever have more going on here.</I><BR/><BR/>Um, I see it differently: Seldovia <I>has</I> to worry about that since we <I>have nothing</I> much going on here now. The fact is that most tourists want to be led by the hand. Just turning them loose to enjoy the area flummoxes them--an observation based on many many hours behind a gift shop desk answering the question "but what is there to <I>do</I> here?" Right now, there's not much here to entertain those tourists, and I'm not sure where that business expansion is going to come from given our demographic shift to retirees/seasonals in recent years.<BR/><BR/><I>We have to compete with Homer and Halibut Cove.</I><BR/><BR/>Exactly, and until Seldovians engage in creative thought, rather than just copying other local communities (as has characterized both the council and the chamber in many decisions of the past few years), we're not going to be competitive. <BR/><BR/><I>People have been mining, logging and riding those damn ATV all over the pristine environments recently and for years</I><BR/><BR/>Keep in mind, though, that "pristine" is relative to <I>their</I> experience, not ours. A moose standing in the midst of a clearcut is still exciting to someone from NYC and for someone used to living with highways and busy streets, an ATV track can be a mysterious path through the wilderness rather than SOMETHING THAT CAUSES OUR BRAINS TO BURST WITH RAGE. <BR/><BR/>*ahem*<BR/><BR/><I>We have better weather than SE.</I><BR/><BR/>True. Unfortunately, it's still less clement than many visitors find palatable for outdoor activities. I get a lot of whiners on my historic walking tours who seem personally aggrieved by the rain, even though they refuse to carry a raincoat or umbrella. <BR/><BR/>And then, too, there are few non-business places they can go to get a break from the rain. For example, those who bring a picnic used to be able to go to the lake to eat under the shelter. But now that the city has essentially forgotten about the strollway (and since none of the council walk anywhere or have kids who do, that's understandable, I guess), they're missing the tourist bet. I haul lost tourists out of that bog on a constant basis all summer: they see that lake/walkway/picnic spot on the map and end up in there up to their knees in mud and mosquitoes and boy are they pissed. So, yeah, swell visitor activity there.<BR/><BR/><I>For there to be significant capital invested locally, other people, corporations need to have access assured. That would be a lawyer thing to have looked at. Maybe SNA is looking at developing all this infrastructure themselves and the jobs that are developed will be of benefit to the community.</I><BR/><BR/>SNA has been pretty clear about stating that there will never be access other than that they develop for profit--the 17b right-of-way up the Seldovia Valley is a prime example of this (and Mike Beal has clearly and frankly stated that their objective is to tie things up legally long after everyone else is impoverished and/or has lost interest, no matter what is determined to be legally correct). And given the example of the "ferry" project and their in-town holdings, it seems to me that there is no disincentive for them to continue to turn anything profitable or taxable over to the Tribe to avoid both normal corporate laws and any tax debt to the city. Once a business is so incorporated into the Tribe's assets, then, it quite properly does not address the needs of the non-Native community (unless specific grant terms specify otherwise), and indeed <I>should</I> not (again, Beal has said, quite openly, that their obligation is to the shareholder/Tribe member, even if that obligation is contrary to the public welfare). So while it would be nice to hope that there is some slop-over from Native business activities into the general populace, that is by definition going to be as limited to their own members as possible. Or, to put it more briefly, this is me not holding my breath. <BR/><BR/>So does that mean I'm against nature-based tourism or any other kind of tourism? No. I tend to take a fairly pragmatic view that any community has to make the best of what they have to sell, and that's one of the few things we do have here. I don't feel that either the tribal or city governments have done a particularly effective job of this yet--the city's premise that we can simply demand that a business be established here (see: cannery at the waterfront property "project") and the city's economic policy (best summed up, to my observation, by Councilman McInnes' statement several years back that "it's not important that a business make a profit; what's important is that it employ people") don't seem to be rooted especially well in what I understand of economic theory.<BR/><BR/>Like you, I kinda cringe at being the entertainment that's being sold at the same time I'm hustling, myself, to make a few bucks off of those same tourists who are peering at me with such bemusement. <BR/><BR/>And there's a real limit to how much traffic that "nature" and "wilderness" are likely to bear up under and still remain as attractive as they were when they drew me here, especially under a city government that comes out in favor of <I>any</I> form of business over <I>any</I> form of conservation OR the quality of life of local residents (read the city's comprehensive plan, ever, that specifies that the major focus of city government be Main Street tourist-oriented businesses?). Think I'm being too harsh? This is the city that asked for a separate GRS for the Outside Beach because it's a priceless marine resource, but endorses the ATV destruction of that same resource for the sake of their children's amusement and has allowed all of the driftwood to be carted off for private profit or to be burned.<BR/><BR/>So while done "well" (whatever that is--but that's part of what the study's about, of course) this could be an asset, I'm not sure I have the faith in the local power structures to believe that they will do it either effectively or tolerably. In the end, I guess, I take the most faith in their demonstrated ineffectiveness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com