Tommy Haugum has filed to run for a three-year term on the Ketchikan City Council.
There are three council seats up for grabs. Two of them are for three-year terms, and one is a one-year term. This is Haugum’s first time running for city council.
KRBD’s Sydney Dauphinais sat down with Haugum to talk about his priorities and decision to run.
Tommy Haugum: I’m Tommy Haugum, and I am running for a three-year seat for city council. I’ve lived here almost two years now, and I’m looking forward to serving the community.
Dauphinais: Why did you decide to run for city council?
Haugum: I’m pretty active in the community, and so I get to have a lot of conversations with different residents. One thing that I’ve heard a lot of is a desire for some change in our local government leadership. So when the open seats were announced, I got a lot of encouragement to run for one. And after a lot of consideration, I finally decided to put my name in the hat and try to be one of those voices of change.
Dauphinais: What are your main priorities?
Haugum: I believe very strongly that the local government can support infrastructure and services for year-round residents as well as tourism, and try to provide the best experience that tourists can have when they visit this town. So one of the things that I hear a lot of is we have too many tourists, and why can’t there be a cap on tourism? And then when I have deeper conversations with people about it, I find it’s not necessarily the cap that tends to be the desire. It’s a fear that we don’t have the policies in place to support the amount of tourists that we have. Crowd control is a big issue. I hear a lot about maintenance. You know, can our docks and ports handle the amount of tourists that we have coming in? Can our boardwalks, can our stairs, can our trails handle it? I think these are important issues that local governments should be reviewing and discussing and implementing policies to help with.
Dauphinais: So, if elected, what is something that you would like to accomplish on the council?
Haugum: I hope there will be enough like-minded people on the council that we actually can make change. And then for those changes, I would like to see services and policies that really help our year-round residents feel better, and I would like to see a lot of changes in the policies that we have that address tourism and the amount of tourism that we have. I’d like to see if we can address, especially crowd control is a big one. I think if we were able to figure out a way to get a handle on that, it would make vast improvements in the quality of life for the residents here.
Dauphinais: What kind of community engagement or leadership experience do you think could be helpful in this position?
Haugum: I don’t have any government experience yet. But I have worked in leadership roles in behavioral health for many years. I have a master’s in business administration that I think would be beneficial for me in this role as well as the council. I’m a veteran, and my whole life has been working in industries where I’m helping people and serving.
Dauphinais: Awesome. What is something that you want listeners to know about you?
Haugum: Well, one thing I think is important to know is that I can’t promise that any change is going to happen. I don’t think any individual candidate can. It takes a group of like-minded individuals working together to make that change. So, I think that residents and voters should really listen to these interviews or read the transcripts and learn the names of the people that most align with their views, and get to the polls and vote, because that’s the only way real change is going to happen.
