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Mr. MacKIE. People are very concerned. They are concerned for 

 their families. They are concerned about their ability to make a liv- 

 ing. We are a natural resources State. We do not have Boeing and 

 General Motors and Bechtel and other corporations. We have tim- 

 ber and fishing jobs in Southeast, primarily, with some tourism in 

 the larger areas, and people cannot survive without having an op- 

 portunity to work, and when you lose 40 to 50 percent of your jobs 

 over the last five years, people have a reason to be very, very con- 

 cerned. 



So, in terms of this particular bill, some of the concerns that 

 have been — questions I have been asked are: What is it going to 

 cost? Can the State actually do it, or is the State going to be as- 

 suming new financial obligations at a time when we are having to 

 down-size our own State government, and can we handle that? 



And, as I mentioned in my testimony, I do not have the answers 

 to that. I am interested in seeing what those numbers are, but in 

 terms of whether or not we should control our own destiny here in 

 Alaska, I have had very few people tell me that they did not believe 

 that Alaskans should have the opportunity to make the decisions 

 for ourselves and not have outside interference. 



Of course, there are many issues that remain unresolved in 

 terms of subsistence and some of the other things that may fall in 

 the opposite view of timber harvesting, but there are courts and 

 other avenues that those things are being dealt with right now. 

 This is a philosophical thing with me as to whether or not we 

 should control our own destiny. 



The Chairman. Both of you mayors, have you seen decline in 

 your population or has it stabilized or what are you finding? 



Mr. Shafer. Thome Bay is losing people. 



The Chairman. Are they families or singles? 



Mr. Shafer. Well, it is both. You have both the temporary, 

 maybe the transient type of workers, but we are losing families 

 that are leaving here because of the uncertainty. They have to basi- 

 cally get out while they can to find work elsewhere. 



The Chairman. I was just curious. I was talking to the super- 

 intendent of schools, here. I was just wondering what the enroll- 

 ment here was and how it is affecting the school. This is an awful 

 big plan 



Mr. Shafer. I do not have the numbers on how much the enroll- 

 ment has dropped. 



The Chairman. How about you, Elaine? 



Ms. Price. With Coffman Cove, I got some numbers from KPC 

 about a month ago, and last year they had 71 hourly employees 

 employed at Coffman Cove, and this year is it is 29. 



The Chairman. 71? 



Ms. Price. 71 versus 29. And this is a community that has 85 

 families, approximately, about 250 people. So it has made a big im- 

 pact on our community. We have families that are leaving. It hurts 

 the community because the school will have less enrollment. It is 

 the possibility of one less teacher. The way the grades are broken 

 up, this year we are going to have sixth through twelfth grade in 

 one classroom, which is not really a good situation, and it hurts the 

 community because there are not people to help with the commu- 

 nity activities. The uncertainty of the logging industry right now, 



