Luke Hopkins

Interview date: Oct. 19, 2009

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

NM: What do you see as your most significant actions during your years of service on the assembly and Planning Commission?

LH: In general it’s making decisions where people live in their neighborhoods… Seven years on the Planning Commission: we have zoning issues that are always about what happens in your neighborhood and how that affects where people live. But the biggest piece of that probably was working on the revision to the comprehensive land use plan. We spent weeks and weeks and weeks working on that and building what that should be, and then forwarding it to the assembly.

On the assembly, the most significant… the budget is the biggest thing that the assembly deals with, and I think that there’s been responsible budgets moved forward all along. That’s what I’m proud of.

… Issues of what happens with people’s property taxes and keeping property taxes low at the same time working on trying to make sure that, for example, Alyeska pays a fair share of what their property taxes ought to be.

NM: Are there second-tier issues?

LH: For example, quality-of-life issues. I’m saying that those are very important and we need to keep them strong. Parks. Winter recreation. Trails. These are very important to people… One of the major pieces is early on on the assembly establishing Isberg Recreation Area and the Tanana Lakes Recreation Area. These are ways to advance our quality of life.

DIFFERENCES

NM: List for us three major differences between you and Tammie Wilson.

LH: I think the issues for me start off with experience and vision. I’ve been here 43 years, raised family here, I’ve been involved in the community. I think I have a fairly good feeling about what the community is. And being involved in the Planning Commission and the assembly — that’s 12 years of making decisions for what happens in neighborhoods. Also the piece that I have in terms of experience is in my working career. Working with large budgets in the millions of dollars, a large workforce, having to manage that work force both union and non-union. That to me sounds a lot like local government and what the mayor needs to be doing.

The other piece is the vision... I want to keep the community moving forward… We also have to address our air quality. And a concern for me is the cost of energy. And the cost of energy in this town is very critical to fostering economic growth and working with our partners. The military, our businesses, and the university and native organizations. So in doing that along with the quality of life issues, make sure that we address how our community is growing. We grow every year…

If you look at my support of schools, I’m a very strong on supporter of our school system here… My involvement with local transportation. I want to make sure that our transportation system is functional. And that includes our transit system.

LABOR UNIONS

NM: Campaign finances for you show a lot of contributions from PACs and from Democrats around the state. Some point to that as thinking you might be beholden to unions, for example. What do you say to that?

LH: The issues that the unions are concerned with and I’m concerned is local hire. We need to be working on local hire in this community. If we look at what I understand is occurring out at the military base at Fort Wainwright right now with Actus (housing), there is not the expected local employment that we were anticipating… So the groups that are taking that charge forward about “I thought we were going to get more local hire” are many of the unions and the businesses in this community that would be selling materials to that operation out there…

NM: The mayor’s administration is in charge of negotiating with employee unions. Are you going to be able to be fair in those negotiations?

LH: Yes. The mayor doesn’t sit in those negotiation processes. As you know there are executive sessions between the administration, as negotiations start,… and the Borough Assembly where they discuss what the needs are from the point of view of the adminstration…

NM: Let’s refine the question. People might wonder whether you will be aggressive enough with the unions during negotiations.

LH: … Yes, I have to represent the local government concerns and make sure that we’re managing that workforce well in terms of benefits, in terms of what we pay, and in terms of what we want.

NM: To focus this exactly on the criticism: Because of contributions from labor people and Democratic activists you are going to be in the pocket of labor unions and Democratic activists.

LH: I don’t think so… I don’t think so. Fair wages, good wages, are important for people… when I get contributions from the PACs, they ask me are you in favor of fair wages, living wages, whatever that whole discussion is. Yes, people need to be making an adequate wage here.

…I’m not in the pockets of unions, whatever those people think.

FEDERAL FUNDS

NM: Do you have any worries about the school district and borough accepting federal funds?

LH: I don’t have worries about it. What will happen is that when that federal funding runs out, and depending on — as it says in the newspaper today — there are staff and people being put on the workforce from that money. When grant funding runs out that’s the decision at that point whether we’re going to continue that program... We are going to start things and will they be able to be continued or are we just racking up the budget? There’s not money to provide for those actions, those projects, those things will have to fall by the wayside or something else has to fall by the wayside. That’s what the assembly gets to do. Would I bring forward some method to continue? If those things are wanted by the community, if those are successful, I would bring them forward in a budget. How I would manage that budget, I’ll have to wait and see.

NM: Are we getting too much federal money? Not enough? The right amount?

LH: We are not getting enough federal money in terms of transportation issues in this community. We have a huge list and a huge need for federal money… we are fortunate to get grants, but for our transit activities, but I’m concerned that those grants are going to start falling away. And then its going to become an issue of we’re going to have to choose about what we want to do.

If we are going to start having less money, I’m going to say we need more money. I would be going to our congressional delegation. But federal money is always an important piece of what happens in this community. Military funding: Right now the construction going on on the bases. That’s very important. Do I want to see less federal money coming in here? No. I think it’s very important for what happens in our community.

BAG TAX

NM: You changed your vote on the bag tax. Do you deserve the flip-flopper label?

LH: I thought you were going to ask that. OK, the bag tax is gone, OK. It’s not with us anymore. Now recycling can move forward, I think, without what I thought was, after listening to groups, a chain around its neck. I had asked… to postpone the vote of the assembly until, I think, next April so that the recycling commission would have an opportunity to weigh in on this… That failed 4-4. So at that point I said yes on this action of a bag fee, thinking, well, if we don’t have anything else maybe we’ll have something there in terms of a fee.

After I voted, I heard from more people in the community who are involved in recycling saying it’s not the best way to restart a recycling program…

NM: If you are mayor, do you see yourself recommending a bag tax?

LH: No… I’m hoping that the recycling commission comes forward with an idea of how to get recycling going… I don’t know what they are going to address.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

NM: Your opponent says she would eliminate funding for the Fairbanks Economic Development Corp. What would you do?

LH: I’m on the opposite side of that fence, and I’ve said that in my candidate forums. I think the role that FEDC plays here in terms of involvement with the military, involvement with components of economic development both with the university, with projects coming into this community, it’s necessary. It’s $400,000 a year and, as we’ve said at the assembly meeting when we had the discussion and the vote about FEDC funding, our borough is worth $7.5 billion. This is a reasonable amount to make sure that certain components of economic development are followed through on…

GAS LINE

NM: You are on the AGPA board. Can you talk about the Alaska Gasline Port Authority’s “bridge” project to supply gas to Fairbanks until the main gas pipeline arrives from the North Slope?

LH: …because of our signed agreements I can only say so much. To be able to get the natural gas to this community, I don’t see a pipeline on the horizon. For me, it’s still over the hill and I can’t see it. The port authority’s plan is to get natural gas here, as you’re aware, we’re hoping within two years. Two construction seasons. And the first big component of that is going to be getting gas, a long-term contract with Golden Valley for a set cost per (million cubic feet) for their turbines in North Pole…

ADVISERS

NM: Who are you considering for your chief of staff and who are your most influential advisers?

LH: I don’t have anybody in mind for chief of staff at this point…

My transitional individuals are going to sit down and say how are we going to pick up where this mayor left off?

NM: Who are some of those folks, your transitional people?

LH: I have not asked people from the community, but there would be finance people coming, natural resources people coming, there would be issues from those people that deal with some of the quality of life issues in our community. I don’t have a list. I haven’t been out calling people saying are you interested in being my chief of staff?

NM: Who are your closest advisers? Who do you turn to for help, for advice, on a tough question?

LH: My family. So, my son, Grier Hopkins, he’s my campaign manager. We’ve discussed those issues… I have discussed issues with John Davies, I’ve discussed issues with our local representatives, including Joe Thomas on issues of energy. When there’s particular issues that I want to see what’s important, for example, I go and talk to (University of Alaska Fairbanks Chancellor) Brian Rogers. He’s not on my staff. It’s going up to the people that are players in the community and speaking to them. I don’t have a group of people that I assembled and say this is Luke’s coalition…

AIR QUALITY

NM: Give us the snapshot view of the difference between you and Tammie Wilson on how we are going to deal with the air pollution problem.

LH: I’m not coming into people’s homes to take their wood stoves away. I’m not going to be registering their wood stoves… We need to be doing a lot more measuring of our air quality components. We don’t know enough about it yet.

Yes, we understand that wood smoke is a big piece of it. In talking to commercial firewood suppliers, they tell me the amount of cords of wet wood that they deliver in mid-winter. We need to figure out a way to get dry firewood to our wood burners. Fairbanks burns wood. I burn wood… People are going to keep burning wood.

Let me get back to the issue. There is a public education piece on how we need to really burn wood properly. The pollution control commission has outlined some of these things. I agree with what they are coming forward with. A volunteer program is what I think somehow we can make it work. I don’t have all the answers yet. I want to hear from them. I want to find out what are we gong to be doing with our oil stoves.

I say that we have challenged (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencye) and we have had results with our method of presenting scientific information to EPA that they considered and they reduced our non-attainment boundary by two-thirds. That’s an example of working with EPA but yet not rolling over, representing them with scientific relevant information…

The borough should be taking the lead in developing an air quality plan with (the state Department of Environmental Conservation)… and I'm glad that the voters voted it the way they did. There was an advisory vote and they said go forward.

BOROUGH BUDGET

NM: Are you happy with the current level of services and taxation?

LH: Yes. Let me just talk about this year’s budget. I’ve said this in the forums: it’s a responsible budget that the assembly put forward. We’re $7 million under the legal tax cap. Our actions on the assembly have… provided the existing taxpayers as a group, their taxes did not go up… The five years that I’ve been on the assembly, we’ve left $20 million under the cap in our spending levels. Our mill rate is the lowest it’s been in 21 years. Now, that’s because our valuations went up, but our spending is held down. We have obligations to meet in our borough budget. That borough budget increased, if I understand the figures that I have, less than the rate of inflation. We took care of obligations. We took care of making sure that existing property taxpayers as a whole did not pay more in property taxes. Why is that? We had growth in our community. I’m going back to it’s important that our community keeps growing… We have new businesses coming in. We have new construction… That’s why existing property taxpayers did not have an increase as a group in their property tax.

NM: As construction slows and growth slows, would you be more inclined to trim the budget to preserve that gap under the cap or would you run up to the cap?

LH: … There’s various things that are going to be hitting us. Making sure that when you talk about growth that is going to slow, I want to be saying I’m going to work hard to make sure that growth continues, things like fighting to bring (the Alaska Federation of Natives convention) back here again. That gives an image for our community, our competitiveness, saying that we’re a viable community, come on in here.

JOBS

NM: What specific things could you do as mayor to promote jobs in the borough? Unemployment in the borough is up about a percentage point this year compared to last year.

LH: Yes, we are in a slow time, but our community is pretty stable. You just had the article about housing stabilized off again. Yes there are tough economic times, when the railroad says it’s going to be laying off 145 people or whatever the amount was. Some of those people are here…

You sit down and you talk about what kind of projects can help the railroad move along in terms of more revenue, getting people back to work. Military: … I just recently spoke to (congressman) Don Young about the importance of the final piece of the funding for the railroad for the bridge across the Tanana…

UAF: As you know, UAF is the flagship. I’m concerned with what’s happened with Anchorage grabbing construction funds for new items and our deferred maintenance here. We need to fight hard for that.

BUDGET CUTS

NM: Does the borough have any services that are not essential, that can be eliminated?

LH: Can we cut back on things? Sure we can cut back on what we do with transit. Some transit functions come out of the general fund. It’s not all grant work. Parks and rec. But those are quality-of-life issues that I say are important in this borough. Going back to our budget: I say it’s a responsible budget, what we’re spending. We get some people come in, and this year was probably one of the more vocal groups in number of people, 12 against and six in favor of how we were spending money. The year before that we had one person give testimony on our budget.