Back in 1989, Cordova High School students held a dockside rally over cuts in ferry service that would have eliminated travel for activities.
The September protest happened to take place at low tide. To emphasize that they would swim to Valdez for athletic events if necessary, five Wolverines, including members of the CHS diving team, made the 15-foot plunge off the guard rails into the chilly seas.
Clad in wet suits, Tim Flynn, Dea Church, Linda Van den Broek, Rob Mattson and Ed Vlasoff all received loud cheers, as they bobbed in the briny while hoisting signs of protest, with squealing sea otters joining the fray.
Signs included slogans “Cordova High Left High-N-Dry,” “The State is Unferry to Us!” and “Dept of Trans” with a big red slash across it to mean “not.”
Doesn’t it all sound familiar?
With a recent bombshell from the Marine Highway Service announcing that next year’s ferry schedule will include seven months without service from Oct. 1 to April 30, Cordovans are being urged to contact their legislators, the governor and the Marine Highway offices in protest.
It is sadly ironic that many of the same slogans from that rally 30 years ago still apply.
As do all the reasons locals will use as logical arguments to justify marine highway service to Cordova, a frustratingly repetitive exercise that somehow is deemed necessary annually when it’s time to hammer out another schedule.
Or non-schedule, in this case.
Of course, cuts in marine highway service that impact countless small isolated communities are just one small part of the budget-slashing approach being proposed by the administration in Juneau to resolve dollar problems.
The list goes on and on, with 182 line-item vetoes by Gov. Mike Dunleavy as an exclamation point.
In reality, most Alaskans probably don’t realize there actually isn’t a big state financial crisis. In fact, a budget almost identical to last year’s, with almost the same amount allocated for ferry services, could have been funded, without drawing from the Permanent Fund principal, if the PFD had been set at around $1,000.
What we have is not a financial, but rather, a philosophical crisis. Do we want all these massive cuts, supported by the governor’s vetoes and a conservative minority of the legislators meeting in a junior high school gymnasium in Wasilla, to control the fate of these programs?
Do we need to realize that the days of big PFD’s are over, and we should be happy to be the only state in the Union with no state sales, income or property tax?
Do we understand that our governor’s insistence on a “full” PFD of $3,000, combined with a promise of no taxes, has put us this predicament?
On July 11, the Anchorage Daily News ran an article featuring input from six former Alaska governors about the state’s budget crisis, and here are a few excerpts worth considering:
- “Sheffield (Bill) said the problem is that Alaskan’s have been ‘spoiled’ by the dividend, and they like politicians who promise big ones.”
- “Dunleavy’s goal of paying a full $3,000 Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend, an entitlement, threatens core services Alaskans need such as health service, public safety, and transportation, (Frank) Murkowski wrote.”
- “Steve Cowper said the state is on track to become the nation’s ‘laughingstock. People in other states will look at a $65 billion (Alaska Permanent Fund), and say they are shutting down their university, they’re wrecking their school system. They refuse to do anything about it, and they’ve got $65 billion in the bank. Cowper said Alaska is in trouble partly because people have ‘taken refuge behind their deep beliefs’ that they’re entitled to a $3,000 dividend.”
Lest one think Cowper was off-track, and the rest of the country is not watching, consider the headlines from the July 18, 2019 Los Angeles Times, “Alaska is reeling from budget cuts, even as governor wants to pay each resident $3,000.”
Ain’t it great to be in the news? For the wrong reasons?
Ah, as none other than the great Shakespeare penned in Hamlet, “To be, or not to be?”
To PFD, or not PFD? The time has come for us to decide.
In a feature several months ago, I mentioned my favorite Pogo cartoon included the line: “I have seen the enemy, and he is us.”
No kidding, and no laughing matter.
Of course, all Cordovans should be online firing off protests. Thanks to the power of Facebook, maybe they will have more impact than phone calls, letters and a dockside protest with five CHS students jumping off the dock back in 1989.
Yet in reality, it’s going to take a change of mindset by all Alaskans to resolve the ferry cuts, and so many other issues, now before us.
I’m not convinced all 2,200 Cordovans jumping off the dock at once would make the difference.
But I’d be willing to line up and take the plunge.
