Name: Jack Finnegan
Age: 49
Occupation: Business owner
Where are you from? How long have you lived in Ketchikan?
I grew up primarily in the Upper Midwest, but first came to Ketchikan in 2013. It’s been my permanent home since 2015.
What is your community involvement, past and present?
In addition to concluding this term on the City Council, I serve on the board of the Ketchikan Agricultural Producers Association, and the board of First City Players. I have hosted the Arts Council’s monthly Story Slam for over a decade. I’ve worked with our community youth, in roles ranging from substitute teaching to leading arts workshops to announcing the Spelling Bee to giving public speaking workshops, among other initiatives. It was my great honor to join the team of Voices on the Land for two years.
Have you previously run for public office? When and what office?
I was elected to a one-year seat on the City Council in 2022, and then re-elected to a 3-year term, which I am presently concluding. I also put my hat in the ring for an appointment to a vacant seat on the School Board, where I was the runner-up. I believe that was in 2021.
Why are you running for city council?
Service on the council is one way for me to give back to a community that has given me so very much. I also believe that my nearly four years of service on the council have provided an excellent education into the workings of our city; I’d like to apply these lessons to another term. I think the city’s residents were wise to vote in favor of limiting council members to three consecutive terms before mandating at least one year off—this can help to bring new minds and fresh perspectives to the council–but I also see the value in putting to use the institutional knowledge that develops when a person serves for several terms. I hope that my neighbors will instill their trust in me again.
What are your top priorities if elected?
There are two, and they both relate to our quality of life in Ketchikan: addressing our infrastructure needs, and finding balance with cruise ship tourism. Our infrastructure needs—especially with respect to critical utilities like water and electricity—are well-documented and long-discussed, with no obvious easy solutions. Our town’s provisional approval for a Limited Alternative to Filtration is a huge relief, and a major achievement by our city staff. Significant grants are being sought by the Electric Division, among other departments. But we have seriously outdated and under-maintained equipment; limited staffing to address pressing needs; and a slightly contracting population of rate-payers. These won’t be easy fixes, and it will require shared effort to solve. I’d like to be part of finding those solutions.
With respect to cruise ship tourism,. I hear from more and more residents about the need to find an equilibrium between keeping those dollars flowing without allowing our city, our beaches, and our trails to be completely overrun. No one who speaks to me about this matter is ignorant to the necessity of tourism as an economic engine; all of them speak to me with genuine concern about feeling overwhelmed and boxed out of our own hometown. This is true even among many of my colleagues who work in cruise ship tourism. Even though different parties have different perspectives on how best to achieve that balance, I think it’s important to recognize that the concern is widespread and persistent. People are weary of the level of visitation that we already receive, and wary of more. We want to feel like hosts, not hostages. Preserving our economy while protecting our way of life means asking hard questions. This too will take shared effort. and, like most complex issues, there is no simple solution that will please all people. Still: that’s no reason not to try.
What is your stance on the ballot proposition asking for the transfer of library powers?
I’m leaning “No.” I say “leaning,” because I don’t yet have a clear sense of what the long-term impact will be on the library, whose services I want to see remain at current levels—especially in view of the fact that our school district has drastically reduced library services for our community’s students—if library powers are transferred to the borough.
I am a regular user of the library and am constantly impressed with the number of services they make available, and the professionalism of their staff. I am a staunch believer in the community value of libraries, which are much more than book repositories: they are public spaces where people at every level of need can secure critical resources, from internet access to tax forms to tech guidance for seniors. Libraries are living monuments to our freedom of speech.
The funding mechanism for our library could be less complicated, but overall, I think that it has worked fairly well. No one is charged to use the library, and the borough’s contribution roughly tracks with library usage by borough residents. I am also mindful of the fact that city taxpayers have sunk tremendous resources into the beautiful building that houses our library.
Whether the powers are transferred or not, the funding question is still up in the air, since the borough has notified the city of their termination of our agreement. If the powers stay with the city, then the negotiations that follow may yet negatively impact the library’s budget.
This is perhaps the first issue where my mind has turned toward the slightly absurd reality of having these two separate governments! While I know very well that costs have risen at the library, they’ve risen everywhere. I don’t believe that anything at the library is broken…that is to say, I’m not convinced that it needs fixing. Hence, I’m leaning “No.”
Do you think the city is doing an adequate job keeping up with infrastructure and community needs that come with increasing tourism? If not, what steps should be taken to address it?
It’s telling to me that there is a question here that is specific to my two top priorities! Please refer to my answer to that question above. I’ll add here that any solutions will not come from any one individual; it will require a collective effort. If any resident out there has ideas or prospective solutions, I hope that you’ll share them, and not just with me—though I welcome your correspondence—but with the council as a whole.
What are ways the city council can address the housing affordability crisis?
Housing is a difficult matter to tackle, not least because there are factors beyond our immediate control, like interest rates on mortgages. We have limited land within the city to develop. One area where I think we can strengthen our effort is ensuring enforcement on tax collection for short-term rentals in units that might otherwise be part of our residential housing market. Perhaps we can incentivize landlords and building owners to prioritize the use of existing spaces, or the creation of new ones, for additional housing, much like the Borough has in the past with its Additional Unit Grant Program.
How do you think the city should continue to fund capital improvement projects?
I think that the aggressive pursuit of grants that is presently underway is a step in the right direction. The city has also given past consideration to having a dedicated grant writer on staff; I think that that’s an expenditure that is worth pursuing. If it’s a role that can indirectly pay for itself by grant funds won by multiple departments, then it’s more of an investment by the taxpayer than it is a cost.
Given the fact that our rate-payer base is not currently growing, we can’t continually wallop our residents with endless rate hikes. If we continue to operate at a deficit, we may face the difficult decision about which services to reduce or cut, if any. That may be one of the paths we have to travel in order to bring our infrastructure up to speed.
Describe one piece of legislation you would like to bring forward as a council member, and explain how you think it should be funded.
I’ve done some research and had some discussions around the concept of a fee for fish boxes, the vast majority of which are purchased by non-residents. I welcome visitors fishing in our waters—in fact, that’s the business that I’m in—but I see this fee as a prospective revenue stream that would come almost entirely from those visitors, and would be small enough (in the $5 to $10 range) to not have a negative impact on the charter fishing industry. There’s a similar program in Sitka, but I don’t like the way that it’s implemented—it’s essentially a guessing game by charter captains—and if such a fee were to become a reality here, I’d like to see the revenue that it generated being used to support our harbors, which run on a tight budget and whose users have also seen significant rate hikes.
