You may have noticed that I don’t editorialize on
this blog. I keep things pretty light.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the purpose of this blog is basically
twofold: 1) It’s meant to keep our student-athletes’ friends and families in
the loop about what their Skiwolf family member is up to. I don’t know if it’s
the same with our current skiers, and perhaps modern interweb technology has
completely changed things, but the one thing my parents could count on when I
went off ski racing was that they would not
be hearing from me for a while. I had
neither the patience nor the inclination to write letters home, and I didn’t
have the money for phone calls. So it
was frequently many months between the times my folks would hear from me. If our skiers are anything like that, at
least their parents can look at this blog and see photos of the fruits of their
loins at UAA ski practice for confirmation that all is OK with their offspring. 2) It’s a recruiting tool. Some of our
skiers grew up in Alaska and some did not. I can imagine it could be pretty
intimidating to pack up and ship off to a place like Alaska with no concept of
what life as a Skiwolf will be like. On this blog, potential UAA skiers can see
that we have some fantastic training venues, that we compete on a very
competitive and robust NCAA racing circuit, and we have some laughs along the
way. After perusing a few blog posts, I think a potential Skiwolf ought to be
able to get a feel for whether this place will suit them or not.
Another reason that I don’t editorialize on this
blog is I don’t have the time for it. I’ve got a lot of things to do and a
limited number of years in which to do it. I don’t want to spend by time typing
diatribes. A few photos can say a few thousand words.
But today is different. For one thing, I’m on a
plane back to Alaska from Hawaii, and the captain says we’ve got about seven hours’
worth of blog-writing time ahead of us. Secondly, there’s some heavy stuff
going on with the UAA Ski Team right now which deserves attention. This is probably
the time when I should state once again that this blog is not officially affiliated with the University or the UAA Ski Team. It’s mine. I’m not a UAA
staff coach. I’m a volunteer helper, and my opinions on this blog may or may
not be representative of the UAA coaches’ views. I don’t know. It’s not
something we talk about much. Usually, we talk about skating technique, training
plans, and the snow forecast.
First things first: If you’re reading this blog then
you know the UAA Ski Team is on the chopping block. If you care even the
slightest bit about this team then you need to get all over the SaveAlaskaSkiingFacebook page, the petition to Board of Regents, the letters to the NCAA
Division II Committee, the letters to the UAA Board of Regents, the picket line
on Thursday at UAA, the phone calls to the Regents, and everything else. And
you need to get all over it fast! Mobilize
your friends and family members. Make nice with your enemies and get them on
board too. This isn’t a great, long, drawn-out time commitment. This thing might
be over by Thursday. The movement to save the team needs to be explosive and
it needs to happen now!
I’m not going to get into the particulars of the “Strategic
Pathways” decision to recommend elimination of the UAA Ski Team. Of course I
think it’s a shortsighted and very poor recommendation for many of the same
reasons you do, and probably more. There are plenty of resources on the
internet where you can see the many reasons why so many people think
elimination of the ski team is a lousy idea. But today, I’m going to talk about
broader philosophical issues. To write about the Strategic Pathways’
recommendation here would be to repeat what’s already all over the internet.
Alaska is sometimes referred to as a “resource
extraction state”. For centuries, people have been coming from other parts of
the world to Alaska to get their paws on something valuable and bring it back “home”
with them. The Russians came to fetch animal pelts and furs. Thousands showed
up 120 years ago to dig a bunch of gold out of the ground and cart it back to
the mainland. Folks came from the Pacific Northwest to catch salmon in Bristol
Bay and cut down trees in Southeast. College students from around the USA come
for summer jobs in the tourism industry. And Texans and Okies showed up in the ‘70’s
and ‘80’s for oil, and they’re still here. None of these groups have been
particularly concerned with building infrastructure and amenities here in
Alaska – the things that enrich our lives, our culture, our cities and towns –
because their goal has been to amass wealth and take it back “home”. I see it
all the time at my “day job”, flying around the state and appraising the homes
of people who are getting their kit together for their migration back “home”
after “putting in their time” in Alaska. I frequently sit next to people on
airplanes who say things along the lines of, “I figure I’ve got just a few more
years up here and then I should have enough saved and I’ll move the family back
to ________. I’ve already bought a parcel of land down there. It’s been a good
run, but of course there’s nothing to do up here during the miserable winters.” And I hear the same thing from people selling
their homes to move “back home”. Do you
think these people want to pay taxes in Alaska and invest in local amenities
like libraries, city parks, elementary education, and the state university
system? Of course not. They’re extracting resources. They’re
extracting wealth. Their priorities lie elsewhere.
All you need to do is take a quick look at the
comment section at the bottom of any Anchorage Dispatch news story about astatewide economic issue and you’ll discover lots of people who think we’re “overtaxed”.
This, despite the fact that we don’t pay any broad-based state taxes. No state
income taxes. No state sales tax. No personal state taxes. In Anchorage, the
City has a real property tax. My house
in Anchorage is worth around $245,000, according to the City Assessor. That
means I have a City property tax bill of around $3,400 or so (if my memory is
correct). But I get between around
$1,000 and $2,000 in the form of an Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend check from
the state each year just for breathing. If I don’t blow it on booze and
cigarettes, I can put that money toward my City real property tax bill. But I’m a
household of one. If there were two of
us living at my house, we’d have between $2,000 and $4,000 to pay our $3,400
local tax bill. If we were a family of four… It doesn’t require a lot of complex math to
figure out that taxes aren’t too high around here. And yet if you ask around
you’ll have no problem finding heaps of people to tell you we’re being “taxed
to death”. And why not? These are people who don’t have any real vested
interest in Alaska infrastructure. They’ve got their departure date marked in red
ink on the calendar.
Oil prices are low. It’s having a big impact on the
Alaska economy. Our state income comes primarily from oil. We need to make some
big decisions and some tough choices. This is the job of our elected
representatives; our legislature. But our legislature is comprised of children.
This past year, they were unable to do anything about the budget. Nothing at
all! They were unable to make any directed, specific cuts because it was
politically untenable. They were unable to even utter the words “statewide
taxes” because it was politically untenable. They did nothing at all because our
legislature is not comprised of leaders. They are a collection of followers. They
follow the will of the constituents in their gerrymandered districts, and of
course this means that there are enough representatives of districts where
their constituents are primarily concerned with wealth extraction that any attempt
to talk about a way forward or an investment in state infrastructure would
result in an immediate and overwhelming loss at election time. So what we get
from our legislature is broad talk of “cutting the fat”, the “need to
streamline”, the need to “cut until it hurts”, but nobody – nobody – will suggest a specific cut. The
state is able to pass down the responsibility for specific cuts to local
governments by cutting revenue sharing from the state, which forces local
governments to try to figure out how they’re going to keep things running with
less money. Here’s a little experiment you can try sometime: Ask a proponent of
“broad cuts” what specifically they want to cut. If you don't get a specific answer, you can make some suggestions: How about cutting a fourth grade teacher who
works with two other fourth grade teachers, each of whom has 26 kids in their
class, so that you’d have just two teachers instead of three, each with 39 kids
in their classroom? Not acceptable? How about cutting the school nurse? How about selling off 30% of the city’s
snowplows? How about eliminating the Alaska State Troopers? How about closing
the local fire station? How about shutting down the city’s sewer system on
Tuesdays and Thursdays? Ask your legislator these
questions, and what you’ll get is “we just need to cut spending”. But good luck
getting a more specific answer than that.
The legislature says to the university, “You’re
getting less money next year. Figure it out.” So the University of Alaska has
been told it’s time to make cuts. Big ones. Tuition needs to go up – a lot. It’s
time to pare things down at UAA. “Strategic Pathways” has made the
recommendation that the UAA Ski Team needs to go. I think it’s a poor move for
a bunch of solid reasons – the same reasons as you do. It’s critically important
that we get up and yell and scream about this – now – but there are bigger questions.
What’s wrong with investing in nice things?
What’s wrong with putting our energy and resources into something of
good quality, like a state university system that offers a good quality
education, and student resources, and student quality of life amenities, and
college athletics? Are we so selfish
that we won’t reinvest some of our earnings into the place where we live? Are
we so shortsighted that we won’t invest in an educational resource for our
young people, allowing them to get a good quality education here in Alaska? Do
we want to live in a place that only provides the bare minimum – a job that
provides some money, and the streets for the commute to and from work? If we cut the
ski team and the track team and raise tuition and cut educational programs,
what are we left with? A bare-bones
community college. The type of college you’d find in Sheridan, Wyoming or
Nampa, Idaho. Nothing wrong with those educational opportunities, but is that the
scale of campus life and the “college experience” that we want to offer in
Alaska’s largest city? Are we not willing to say, now that our free ride is
apparently coming to an end, that it’s time to start paying for nice
things? Can we not afford it? My job as a real estate appraiser takes me
into peoples’ homes, to assign a “market value” to their stuff. I see the places
where we Alaskans live. I see the cars we drive. I see the flat screen
televisions, and I’m here to tell you we can afford a few dollars for the nice community
amenities that we, the people of the "civilized" western world, have become
accustomed to since World War II. And in Anchorage, that means having a college ski team, among
other things.
And what will our current and future UAA skiers
bring to Alaska? I was talking with one
of our freshmen a week or so ago during training. When I asked her how she was
liking things in Alaska so far, she gushed that she was constantly amazed at what
the state has to offer. She told me she’d never seen anyplace like Alaska, and
had had a bunch of adventures already that had made a big impression on her.
She told me her dad had worried that if she left the Midwest for Alaska, she’d
never return. And of course his concern
is well-founded. This place snags a lot of UAA skiers who find Alaska to be
heaven for people who are drawn to the outdoors – to wild places. I really
enjoy these conversations because they remind me of my first experiences in
Alaska, first as a junior national competitor in the mid-80’s, then as a
college racer in the late-80’s and early-90’s and then finally when I moved
here straight out of college, driving my little pickup truck down the Glenn
Highway into town on August 10, 1992 at about 3 o’clock on a drizzly afternoon. I remember that date because it was a very
important date for me – the day I arrived in Alaska. And I suspect others have similar
recollections of their arrival here. Driving down Fifth Avenue with my little
pickup full of skis and my friend Jeff in the passenger seat, I thought to
myself, “I think this is the place. This feels like home to me. I don’t think I’m
ever going to leave.” I remember it as if it was yesterday.
Here in Alaska, a state synonymous with winter, a
state that puts out some of the best skiers in the world including Olympic medalists
Tommy Moe and Hilary Lindh, and World Cup Champion Kikkan Randall, a state that
has gained a reputation as having the best backcountry and “extreme” skiing in
the world, we are talking about cutting our college ski team. Our ski team! Our
ski team, with the best GPA at the university, with more NCAA All-Americans
than any other team at UAA, with the best and most consistently excellent
results of any athletic team at the university. The team that attracted local
standout skiers like Jaime Bronga, Mackenzie Kanady, Karl and Paul Schauer, Nicole Deyong, Max and Lex Treinen, Sarah Hansen, Davis
Dunlap, Andrew Arnold, Brandon Brewster, and so many before them. The team that lured people like Tom Jantunen, Reini Neuhauser, Edda
Mutter, Zuzi Rogers, Tuomo Latva-Kiskola, Morten Kjerland and Toby Schwoerer to Alaska to stay and get married and
raise families here and make big contributions to our state. Are we unwilling
to invest in something like this? Are we
really so short-sighted and selfish as that? Perhaps we are.
Sometimes I find I have to dig really deep within
myself to find the optimism to think that maybe, just maybe (to channel Bernie
Sanders) the people of Alaska will pitch in for the good of all of us and
contribute to things that enhance the richness of our common experience during
our short time here on earth. That we will ask ourselves what it is that we’re
striving for. Is it all about gathering our clams and leaving the table with
them? Or is life about participating,
interacting with fellow humans, striving for excellence, sharing common experience?
My “day job” as an appraiser provides me with the funds
to pay the rent, but my real passion is my volunteer job with this ski team. My
other obligations keep me from spending more than a few days a week with the
team, but those hours training with and traveling with the team are precious to
me. I feel the passion that our skiers have for what they’re doing, and the
energy that they put into it. And it inspires me. I see how hard the coaches work, and the
passion that they bring to “their” team. If we lose our ski team, I will
personally lose a thing that’s very important to me.
We have our work cut out for us this week if we’re
going to convince the Board of Regents to reject the “Strategic Pathways”
recommendation to cut the ski team. Get your letters written. Call your
favorite Regent. Hound your estranged relatives to get involved. Gather your coworkers in a
rented bus and drag them down to the rally on Thursday at the library. This is
important. And it’s a one-time thing.
And I promise that by the end of this week, I’ll be
back to writing blog posts with titles like “Here’s What We Did At Practice
Today”.
