[Dxbase] Alaskan counties

[Gary AL9A]

Point of order and a bit of history.  There are no counties in Alaska. 
Instead we have boroughs, which are the functional equivalent of counties. 
My understanding is that this came about prior to Alaska statehood in 1959. 
The big three industries up here then were fishing, mining, and logging. 
Oil wasn't on anyone's radar yet.

These three industries lobbied Congress to preclude the new state of Alaska 
from organizing into counties, so as to prevent the imposition of local 
property taxes on their operations.  Congress agreed and the law creating 
the State of Alaska forbade the forming of counties.  So the new State of 
Alaska Legislature created a State Constitution that, instead of counties, 
authorized the creation of Boroughs, which do have the power to levy 
property taxes!

There are now 18 boroughs in Alaska, mostly in the more populated areas of 
the state.  However, despite what the Census map indicates, the borough 
system does not cover the entire state.  Most of the bush communities are 
unincorporated and wish to stay that way.  They are cash poor and live 
largely on subsistence - hunting, fishing, trapping and government handouts, 
state and federal.  They do not wish to have an organized borough government 
that would inevitably lead to property taxes to support the local government 
and schools and drain their meager cash resources via taxation.

So this leaves Alaska with vast areas that are not organized in any form of 
local government.  I believe the solution used by the County Hunters is to 
use the four Judicial Districts of the State of Alaska Court System instead. 
The Judicial Districts do cover the entire state, even out to the end of the 
Aleutians.

The "County" names you see in DXBase are neither counties, nor boroughs, nor 
Judicial Districts.  Rather they are regional names descriptive of various 
geographic parts of the state.  For example, I live in the Matanuska-Susitna 
Borough which is in the Third Judicial District and the South-Central 
Region.  Which one would you prefer to use?  Maybe someone could check with 
the County Hunters to verify the Judicial District use.  If that is actually 
the case maybe Neal can change the current regional names to First, Second, 
Third and Fourth JD or something like that for AK counties.

73,
Gary AL9A


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Parry" <bparry at rgv.rr.com>
To: "'Jack'" <lennoxj at bellsouth.net>; "'David VE3VID'" <ve3vid at hotmail.com>; 
<dxbase at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: March 21, 2011 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Dxbase] Alaskan counties


> Jack,
>
> The problem with doing this is that none of the Alaskan Counties ever get
> counted in any way.  Basically when you import from LOTW it errors out all
> the Alaskan Counties....as well as the Canadian counties! So what good is
> it?
>
> Bill W5VX
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dxbase-bounces at mailman.qth.net 
> [mailto:dxbase-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
> On Behalf Of Jack
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 2:46 PM
> To: David VE3VID; dxbase at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Dxbase] Alaskan counties
>
> DXbase bases its selections in accordance with what the "County Hunters"
> award guidelines publish for AK.  They don't use the county names for AK.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David VE3VID" <ve3vid at hotmail.com>
> To: <dxbase at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 3:26 PM
> Subject: [Dxbase] Alaskan counties
>
>
>>
>> Hi,  I was just comparing a map of Alaskan counties,
>> http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/alaska_map.htmland the counties 
>> list
>
>> that appears for Alaska in a 'Previous QSO' window search.  DXbase
>> produces county names like Central, NorthWest, SouthCentral, and
>> SouthEast.  I'm sure there are other users who have found this, and 
>> likely
>
>> there is some fix or update that I missed sometime.  Can anyone shed some
>> light on what happened and how to fix it?
>> ThanksDavid
>>    VE3VID
>> Located in rural Canada
>> Solar power.  Wood heat.
>> Mosley tribander @ 22m
>> 2element delta-quad on 40m
>> Lots of space for dipoles,
>> bears and wolves......73
>>
>> http://www.ve3vid.webs.com/
>>
>>
>>
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>
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