Thread by @HollyBell8

A thread. People are asking why I left #Alaska a place and people I had grown to love. There were several reasons & as people preparing to transition to retirement we needed to make a go, no go decision. What follows is a list of some of the why.

1) State Budget. The fiscal situation in the state is unsustainable & there doesn’t seem to be any will to actually fix the problems until there’s nothing left & then options get ugly quickly. Rank & file citizens have all sorts of perceived quick fixes like an income tax,lottery

more taxes on oil, etc. As someone who actually worked on the problem & proposed some comprehensive solutions in 2015, I can tell you there are no quick fixes. Taxing a declining population alone won’t fix it, no one solution will. I felt like we had moved beyond the

tipping point in some ways because the solution was all of the above plus more including developing new industries in the state & the needle wasn’t moving. I genuinely believe it’s going to get ugly unless Federal spending increases in the state, but that’s not real economic

growth, it’s just living on transfer payments & not a controlled long-term fiscal solution. I did my part to try to fix it, no one cared. Needed to go before things got worse & we couldn’t sell our house & the other reasons below got worse.

2) The state of the university. The U took massive state budget cuts over 5 years (while budget $$ given back to other state budget areas). The budget is what the budget is, but I didn’t believe the U handled the budget cuts well. They punished campuses like ours that had been

proportionally more self-supporting than the main campuses. They did this by “taxing” us for services in order to move more $$ back to the main campuses. They also limited our campuses to hiring term faculty only. They wanted us to be completely subordinate.

When I retired, I was already doing the work of 3 1/5 people due to no budget to hire people. They should have closed campuses & focused on maintaining (or in some cases improving) quality of education.

3) Quality of medical care. I found the private healthcare system to be expensive & terrible. There’s a shortage of doctors & facilities. People in FL complain about healthcare here & I laugh. It’s so much better.

If you’re young & healthy Alaska is great, but we didn’t want to age there and risk having to travel Outside for medical care.

4) We couldn’t get work done. Over the last 3 years we were there we couldn’t get contractors to show up to do work. We couldn’t even get estimates on a retaining wall & other projects. When we did hire someone, they’d suddenly disappear to go hunting for a week or they

would only be willing to work 3 days a week every week so they could snow machine and would then beg for advances on payment because they were “short.” We did many projects ourselves when we could, but we knew we would need more help with projects as we aged.

4) Our friends. A significant portion of the people we were close to moved for better jobs or were making their own plans to retire Outside. Since we have been in FL 2 AK friends have come down to check it out & 2 more are coming this winter.

5) Losing Businesses. We were losing restaurants, contractors, & other businesses we loved & there were no replacements. We were watching our world get smaller.

To a lesser extent:
6) Winter & darkness. Being retired we could get out for extended periods of time so we could have managed this. COVID changed this somewhat though. It’s going to be around for a long time & travel is no fun. We can zip around in our RV here,

which is much more pleasant than flying an entire day (or two) to get somewhere. We have more control over our schedule & environment in the RV if we want to chase seasons. TBH, last winter being retired & having a closed gym & all the things we enjoy cancelled confirmed

our decision. It was a long, dark, & depressing winter. I couldn’t wait to get out after that & was grateful for our decision. Knowing we were leaving got me through it.

7) Grandkids. We have six, but they are still spread out around the country. We are closer to some, farther away from others. Again, planes go everywhere, we could have overcome this. But, see Item 5.

There were other factors, but those are some of the highlights. We’ve kept our remote cabin & our airplane is still there so we can visit. Great place to visit, I just don’t want to live there anymore. Fin.

I realize many of you don’t care & are happy to see me gone, but if you don’t care that people are bailing out of the state, that’s part of the problem.