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||| FROM ELISABETH ROBSON |||

Many of us in San Juan County have noticed the same thing over the past decade: life here keeps getting more expensive.

Electric bills have climbed. Property taxes have climbed. Groceries, insurance, transportation, building materials—almost everything costs more than it used to.

Our local electric cooperative, OPALCO, has approved roughly 6% annual rate increases, with projections of continued increases in the years ahead as the utility replaces aging infrastructure like submarine transmission cables and substations.

Those increases may be necessary, but they add up. Compounded over time, they mean electricity will continue to become steadily more expensive for households across the islands. My own electric bill has doubled since I moved here just over a decade ago.

At the same time, many residents have seen their property taxes rise dramatically over the past decade, reflecting soaring property values and increasing demands on local government budgets. Now San Juan County is discussing a significant new levy for 2026, while additional levies—for schools and recreation facilities—are also being considered.

Each of these proposals may have merit on its own. But taken together, they arrive at a moment when larger forces beyond our control are beginning to push costs higher across the entire economy.

The global picture

Events thousands of miles away can have surprisingly direct consequences for a small island community like ours.

Conflict in the Middle East has already pushed oil prices higher, and energy prices ripple through the entire economy. Diesel powers trucks, ships, trains, fishing vessels, and farm equipment. When diesel becomes more expensive, transportation, agriculture, construction, and manufacturing all become more expensive as well.

That means higher prices for nearly everything we buy.

Global supply chains are also vulnerable to disruption. Modern manufacturing depends on “just-in-time” logistics, where components arrive exactly when they are needed rather than being stockpiled.

That system is incredibly fragile. It works efficiently until something breaks.

One current example of the system breaking is the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping chokepoints. A significant share of global oil and gas exports passes through this narrow waterway every day. It is a major route for petrochemicals and industrial materials, including polyethylene products used to make everything from our clothes to car tires, toys, packaging, trash bags and more, and fertilizer, used to grow crops in the industrial food system. Roughly one-third of the world’s traded urea, along with significant ammonia, phosphate, and sulfur supplies, originate in the Gulf.

Sulfur is a by-product of refining heavy crude and used to produce sulfuric acid, an essential chemical for refining metals like copper and cobalt mined in countries like the DRC and Zambia. These countries rely on a steady supply of sulfur from the Gulf to do this. These metals in turn are critical for electronics, power infrastructure, and batteries. 

When supply chains are disrupted at one link in this chain, the effects ripple outward across the global economy.

What appears to be a distant geopolitical conflict can and will eventually show up in the price of tools, electronics, vehicles, and the cost of building local infrastructure.

The fragility of abundance

For decades we have lived in a global economy built on the assumption of cheap energy, abundant resources, and frictionless trade.

But the materials that underpin modern civilization—oil, natural gas, copper, lithium, cobalt, and many others—are finite resources extracted from a finite planet. As they become harder to obtain, the costs of the systems that rely on them inevitably rise.

The disruptions we are seeing may not be temporary anomalies. They are likely to be early signals of a more constrained economic future.

Back to the islands

San Juan County is a remarkable place to live, but it is also an expensive one.

Many residents here are wealthy enough that rising costs barely register. Their bills are paid automatically each month, and the numbers hardly matter.

But that is not the whole community.

We also have teachers, carpenters, restaurant workers, caregivers, fishermen, artists, and families raising children here. Many are already struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living.

For them, another levy or another rate increase is not an abstract policy decision; it is a question of whether they can continue to afford to live here at all. With prices rising everywhere, the cost of moving is high. Where else are people supposed to go?

A time for prudence

In uncertain times, the most responsible course, for households and governments alike, is the same: we must tighten our belts and focus on essentials.

That does not mean abandoning important community investments. Public services matter. 

It does mean recognizing that economic conditions are changing and that many families are already stretched thin.

Before asking residents to shoulder additional financial burdens, we should ask whether there are ways to manage more carefully within existing resources.

Communities that navigate difficult times successfully usually do so through honesty, restraint, and cooperation.

San Juan County has always prided itself on resilience. Islanders understand better than most that living on an island requires preparation, mutual support, and a willingness to adapt.

The years ahead may test those qualities.

Now is a good time for all of us to start tightening our belts.

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