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Over the past several years, the harbor board has expanded parking in Auke Bay, Douglas and Amalga; built a new harbor office building in Auke Bay; proposed a new $1 million harbor office downtown; paid $400,000 over the appraised value for DeHarts; and paid $250,000 over the appraised value to buy land by the ferry terminal. This summer, a $16,600 hand-laid brick sidewalk was built from the top of the ramp at Harris Harbor to the $200,000-plus bathroom facility that was closed since April due to "vandalism and staffing cuts."

At the same time, water doesn't work on floats, the grid was removed from Auke Bay, the electricity is down in Douglas, Aurora Harbor has some downright dangerous floats, the crane was removed from Harris Harbor, and harbor fees are going up 250 percent over five years. Why don't we fix what needs fixing instead of building new infrastructure while the old falls apart? What has the harbor board done to keep the commercial fleet here in the past five years? The past 10 years? The commercial fleet pays 3 percent of their gross income to the state in raw-fish tax, and half of that comes back to fund our harbors. Yet we have no say in how our money is spent.

The current system of an appointed harbor board, with a port director hired by the board, has not and will not work. We cannot vote the board out of office. Anyone who attended the initial round of harbor-fee-increase meetings two years ago knows that testimony at those meetings fell on deaf ears and will do so again at the upcoming meetings.

It's time we had an elected board, with qualified staff accountable to the city manager and Assembly, not the harbor board. The Assembly should also allow voters a choice to fund the full capital repairs costs of the harbors with the 1 percent sales tax to control harbor fees. Just about everyone in town uses the harbors in one way or another - if you eat local seafood, you're using the harbors.

Unlike land-based businesses, the commercial fishing fleet is mobile and will move to the port that has the best combination of services and harbor rates. Juneau has the highest rates and poorest services - not a winning combination. The harbor staff can continue to call the fleet exodus "anecdotal," but official state data is not. The only thing keeping more vessels, their families and incomes from leaving town is that Hoonah, Sitka and Pelican can't build new stalls fast enough. And fees for those who own a skiff and just want to set a crab pot are quickly becoming unaffordable.

The mine is projected to produce about $60 million in gold for 10 years - about the same as the fishing industry produced last year and can continue to do so for generations. The question for Juneau is, do we want to keep that money and those families here in town, or will we allow a broken system of harbor funding and good-old-boy management continue to "anecdotally" drive our fishing fleet elsewhere?

• Mark Stopha is a Juneau resident who owns the Alaska Wild Salmon Co. and Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats.