Longtime Northwest Arctic elected official challenges current borough mayor

Incumbent Dickie Moto and longtime local politician Nasruk Carl Weisner are running for mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough, a region that includes over 7,000 residents.

Dickie Moto

Incumbent Dickie Moto has been borough mayor for three years. Before that, he has worked for the borough for about six years. Moto said he did not have time for a phone interview about his candidacy but he spoke about his priorities this week on air at KOTZ-AM 720 radio.

“I feel good to continue to serve our people,” he told Desiree Hagen at KOTZ radio. “I don’t make no promises. When we have problems, I work on these needs for the people.”

Before Moto started working for the borough, he was a village public safety officer in Deering and other villages for 7 1/2 years. As mayor, Moto has been improving the borough VPSO program, housing for the officers and their equipment. He said that now, when a borough VPSO works in the region for 20 years, they can get a retirement plan “as good as state troopers.”

“Our program has been getting better and better,” he told KOTZ radio.

The borough aims to have about 22 VPSOs and has recently hired a new VPSO coordinator, who previously worked for the Tanana Chiefs Conference.

“Every village has been struggling without public safety. We’re finally making that big step to provide safety for our region,” he said. “Everything takes time, but we’re getting there.”

The major funding source for the Northwest Arctic Borough, the Red Dog Mine, is expected to run out of existing developed deposits six years from now. Teck has been considering exploring new areas for production, but even if those efforts are successful, there still might be a gap in production — and revenue.

To address the borough’s economic challenges, Moto said that the administration has been putting money aside into savings “so that the borough (can) provide services after the Red Dog goes away.”

The prospect of the controversial Ambler Road project could potentially improve economic opportunities in the region, but the development has received a substantial amount of criticism from local residents and organizations. The project was rejected by the federal government last spring.

Moto said that he is ready to support residents’ decision on Ambler Road, whatever it is.

“It’s up to the people,” he said. “Once a people decide, what do you want to do, we’ll make sure they’re supported.”

In the radio interview, Moto acknowledged that borough residents have been facing a multitude of challenges such as high fuel and utility prices and difficulties in getting barges upriver.

He said that to bring the energy process down, the borough has been developing alternative energy sources, such as solar. Last spring, a federal grant was awarded to the region to allow every household in the Northwest Arctic Borough to receive a heat pump, and every village — a solar energy system.

[In Northwest Arctic, federal grant will bring heat pumps to homes, solar energy to villages]

“We’re trying to get the cost down for, you know, utility with solar, you know, the solar heat pumps,” Moto said. “If we could do that, that would be a big plus for every village.”

He said the borough has been also looking at water and sewer needs in the region and evaluating potential grants for landfill relocation

“We used to get money for a lot of things in our villages. It’s hard to find that funding because of the state’s deficit,” he said. “Everything takes time.”

Nasruk Carl Weisner

Weisner, who works for the Native Village of Kotzebue’s housing department, grew up on the Kobuk River and said that his upbringing gave him an appreciation for “what it takes to live and thrive in the village, with all the inherent challenges, including the higher cost of living and extreme conditions.”

He moved to Kotzebue in middle school and attended college in Colorado, receiving a degree in business administration. Upon his return to Alaska, Weisner worked as a manager for OTZ Telecommunication for 15 years and served as a borough assemblyman for 13, five of which were as assembly president collaborating with the borough mayor.

After that, he worked as a director at the borough’s Department of Public Safety and at the Department of Public Services, where he helped local governments across the region prepare their financial records for grant eligibility.

Assisting municipal governments in fiscal management — whether it’s budgetary or grant management, legal or accounting support —is something Weisner sees as one of the borough’s main long-term goals.

“As a mayor, I would like to be able to see the borough be more supportive to local governments,” he said. “They need help ... so that they can improve conditions in the community and for the public good.”

In light of the Red Dog Mine revenue expected to go down, one of the biggest challenges for the mayor is to sustain a healthy economy in the region, Weisner said. Even a combination of borough taxes — bed taxes at the hotel, marijuana tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax — is not enough for effectively running the borough “as people have come to expect it to be run and how people are expected to be provided for,” he said.

“When we make big decisions, like where our revenue comes from, I think that we should receive input from all of our communities,” he said. “We are all in this together.”

Weisner said that, if elected, he wants to make sure the borough has an efficient and transparent financial plan, whether it’s a new agreement for PILT (payment in lieu of taxes from Red Dog Mine) or changes to borough taxes.

“Without a healthy revenue source like the Red Dog Mine provides to the borough and to NANA, it’ll be hard for us to have a local government,” he said. “We’ll be challenged to provide for our legally required contribution to education, and we want to make sure we meet those obligations.

“The borough needs to support all of its communities and all of its people,” he said.

When it comes to resource extraction, Weisner said he believes in a balanced approach between economic development and sustainability for subsistence lifestyles and activities. For the Ambler Road project specifically, he said it is possible to address environmental concerns associated with the project and it is crucial to include the communities of Amber, Kobuk and Shungnak into the decision-making process.

“They need to have a seat at the table,” he said.

Another crucial role the borough has is supporting regional infrastructure, such as providing water and sewer and landfill services, maintaining energy infrastructure and upgrading community and youth centers and winter trails.

Weisner said it is important to cooperate with other entities such as NANA Corp. to fund improvements and construction of roads and bridges. He also said that housing infrastructure such as residential units for VPSO officers can help the brought address the longstanding lack of law enforcement in the Northwest Arctic villages.

In his interview with KOTZ radio, Weisner said he wants to prioritize hiring VPSOs locally, support those who are coming from other communities or state with a cultural orientation and provide support for them to live in borough communities comfortably.

Weisner, who has three children, 4, 8 and 12 years old, is also passionate about education, recreation and career opportunities for youth. He said the borough could collaborate with school district leaders and sponsor more summer activities, internships and camps to help keep children and young adults occupied between school sessions.

“My passion is to make things happen and to help people and to do all that the Northwest Arctic Borough can do, within reason and with the support from the assembly, to ... improve the quality of life in this region.”