Robert Woolsey, KCAW, Author at KCAW: Recent Episodes
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Members of the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board, Sitka Assembly, and city staff pose for Daily Sentinel photographer James Poulson, at the future site of Sitka’s marine haulout. (KCAW/Woolsey)Members of the Sitka Assembly and the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board gathered on the afternoon of November 8 for a photo op with a golden shovel on the site of the former Northline barge ramp where the new facility is to be constructed.
Then the group moved into the former Northline building, which will be repurposed for use in Sitka’s future boatyard.
Garry White is the director of Sitka’s industrial park.
“I envision this will probably be the office area in the back,” said White. “We’ve got a large shop that can have multiple different uses. This will be a good addition, and it’s right in the center of our whole development here. And of course, the hall out piers will go right out here, and our wash down path will be right there. So yes, this has good synergies for the whole project.”
Despite the fact that the city was ceremonially breaking ground on the project, White was clearly frustrated with the lack of movement in obtaining the necessary government permits to develop in the intertidal area. Most of the $8.2 million dollars on hand for Phase I of the project involves placing fill for piers to accommodate a 150-ton travelift. The intent is to expand the project to eventually handle a 300-ton travelift, but – at least for the moment – White says the work is on hold.
“So now here we are, when we were supposed to start October 15, they’re telling us that we’re not going to be able to get their stuff down until at least November 26, so then it has to go through the Army Corps process,” said White.
Municipal engineer Michael Harmon is overseeing the project. He was confident that the facility would be ready by spring next year. Although there’s very little upland work involved in Phase I, Harmon said it would begin on schedule. The upland work includes the construction of a temporary washdown pad and wash-water pre-treatment facility. There is partial funding for a boat work and storage area.
Overall, with Phase I, Sitka is building a way to haul most of the local fleet out of the water for basic work and emergency repairs. A full-service boatyard with vendor space and other amenities is still millions of dollars away. A total projected budget is just under $30 million dollars, more than three times the available funding.
Read the Gary Paxton Industrial Park Marine Haulout and Ship Yard charter.
Assembly member Thor Christianson was encouraged by the groundbreaking, and said he planned to be on site when the first boat came out of the water next spring.
“That was the whole reason why we put it on the ballot two years ago, just over two years ago,” he said, “was to watch boats come out of the water and get worked on.”
Two-thirds of Sitka voters approved the sale of Sitka Community Hospital in 2021; a year later, a ballot question to allocate the $8.2 million in proceeds from that sale to the construction of a marine haul out was approved by 80-percent of voters.
The post Despite permitting delays, Sitka officials break ground on new marine haulout appeared first on KCAW.
Author John Straley is unapologetic for modeling a gritty biologist/detective on his wife, noted humpback whale authority Jan Straley. “She’s tougher than James Bond,” says Straley of the character, “but not as goofy.” (Soho Press image)Alaskan author John Straley has a new novel. Big Breath In is a departure from Straley’s usual terrain of small-town Alaska mystery, and is instead a story about the intersection of science and crime in the Pacific Northwest. The novel’s protagonist is based on his wife, Jan Straley, a prominent humpback whale biologist. In Big Breath In, Jan becomes a part-time, motorcycle-riding detective named Delphine, who cracks an illegal child adoption ring in the Seattle neighborhood where she’s receiving cancer treatment.
KCAW’s Robert Woolsey recently spoke with John Straley about Big Breath In, and his decision to draw characters based so closely on his own life.
Note: Big Breath In is published by SOHO Press, and will be available in bookstores this month. Straley will read from the novel 4 p.m. this Saturday, November 16, in the Sitka Public Library.
KCAW: John Straley, I read your novel Big Breath In and I want to know how in the world did you get Jan Straley to agree to this?
Straley: Well, she wasn’t all that excited about it at first, but I just kept pestering her. I told her about this idea I had for a novel about a whale biologist who was looking for the commonality between animals with big brains and the ability to move freely in their environment. And then she gets caught up in a crime story, and I wanted to use her background as the basis for the main character, because Jan has led a pretty extraordinary life. And you know, I can have all kinds of opinions about extraordinary women, but it would be better to just write from observation rather than some fat-headed opinion about women. So I just used used the details of her life, and finally she relented. But she wanted to make up her own name, and so she chose the name Delphine. And I also didn’t want to write about myself, so that’s why I decided to have myself killed off in the novel. I killed myself off because I didn’t want to write a goofy memoir, and have my own life story getting it in the way of this of the story about Jan.
KCAW: She (Delphine) frequently reminisces about John and the things that he would have told her in certain circumstances. Did Jan participate in your work to the degree that’s sort of suggested in the story?
Straley: Absolutely. Back in the late 80s, we ran a business called J. Straley Investigations, when we both did science investigations and criminal investigations. And Jan was a criminal defense investigator along with me, and I helped her with her scientific investigations. Mostly, I carried gas cans and kept the outboard running and that kind of stuff. But then, as I wrote in the book, we went to a marine mammal conference in San Francisco, and Jan’s work in Seymour Canal in the early 80s was causing quite a bit of fuss, because people didn’t know about these large groups of humpback whales that were in Seymour Canal and Pybus Bay and around there during the winter. Anyway, we went to the Marine Mammal Lab, and I’m walking around with my beautiful wife, and scientists would come up and ask her about this, and I would answer, which just angered her no end. And so that night, we split J. Straley investigations into the crime division and the science division.
KCAW: John, it’s no secret that your protagonist in this novel Big Breath In is terminally ill. Jan is not terminally ill, by the way, but Delphine is. Are you kind of hitting your forehead a little bit because you’ve created a really remarkable character in this genre? I mean, this sort of biologist/detective/motorcycle-riding in a turnout coat filled with medical supplies badass person. And I want to read more stories about Delphine, but I have a feeling this is it.
Straley: Well, I could go back from the point she dies in near contemporary time. I could write about her in the past. And there are plenty more cases that she could be doing. Jan has had Parkinson’s for almost 20 years now, and Parkinson’s is just, to me, a frustrating and horrible disease. I had plenty on my plate with this book about marine mammals, about sperm whales, about goofy crimes and crazy people in the Seattle area, and I didn’t really have the emotional bandwidth to deal with Parkinson’s, so I gave her cancer. Yeah.
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CG6016 was salvaged following the crash on Read Island on November 13, 2023, and then shipped to North Carolina for examination. Its mission to aid the fishing vessel Lydia Marie was considered medium risk and high gain at the time of launch, however the boat was still floating the next morning. Air Station Sitka commander Rand Semke believes that finding fault with the crew for not turning back after learning that the Lydia Marie was out of immediate danger is “hindsight bias,” and that the crew was correct to proceed, as the Lydia Marie’s circumstances could rapidly change. “Real time risk is more art than science,” says Semke. (USCG photo)Note: The Coast Guard MII (Major Incident Investigation) report concluded that the November 23, 2023 crash was the result of “controlled flight into terrain.” Read the story.
Many remember the words of Logan Padgett, the skipper of the Lydia Marie, and his unusual role reversal: He and his brother rowed ashore on Read Island to help the members of the Coast Guard who had come to rescue them.
“It’s just people helping people at that point,” Padgett said.
The Coast Guard weighs every mission on risk versus gain. When it was thought that the Lydia Marie was sinking, and three lives at risk, the gain was clear, even on a stormy night in November.
Sitka Air Station commander Rand Semke, also a pilot, says this calculation is made prior to every flight.
“Every time we take off, we analyze the risk versus the gain of whatever it is we’re doing, whether that’s a local training flight here in Sitka, or a complex search and rescue mission,” said Semke. “And that’s really a whole crew discussion. Everybody’s dressed out, ready to go. We’re not running to the aircraft. We’re going to pause, even in the most urgent of cases, and talk about risk and gain for at least a few minutes.”
Coming to the aid of the Lydia Marie was determined to be medium risk, and high gain. But as Coast Guard helicopter 6016 flew toward Farragut Bay that night, that calculation changed.
“As this specific mission was unfolding, information was coming through that actually, the pumps are keeping up with the flooding,” said Semke. “When the crew received that piece of information, they did another risk assessment. Some of those during-mission risk assessment discussions are a little bit more conversational, a little bit less formal, because you’re in the mission. It really requires some maturity to take yourself outside of what is happening at that moment and think through ‘Okay, if we were back at Sitka in a warm and dry hanger, would we still be launching for this? But now we’re, we’re three quarters of the way there. Why don’t we just keep going anyway?’”
Semke says that CG6016 kept going, not because they were almost there anyway, but because the Lydia Marie’s circumstances could rapidly change. Cockpit voice recordings from CG6016 indicate that the crew had decided to lower a dewatering pump to the Lydia Marie as a precaution. Neither the Major Incident Investigation report or Cmdr. Semke faults the crew for continuing the mission.
“Real-time risk assessment is more of an art than a science,” he said. “As this crew, as the investigation notes, made it on scene, they observed that the Lydia Marie was still floating, and in their judgment, wasn’t in immediate danger of sinking. So this crew adjusted their mindset to, ‘Well, let’s try to just deliver a dewatering pump to the boat, which will help them keep up with the flooding.’ And that was ultimately what they were in the process of doing when the mishap occurred.”
The investigation determined that the four members of the CG6016 crew sustained their injuries “in the line of duty.” The pilots were able to walk away from the crash, one with a broken shoulder, the other with a concussion. The flight mechanic and rescue swimmer wore harnesses that allowed them to move about the cabin as they prepared to lower the pump to the Lydia Marie, but did nothing to protect them from the impact. Their litany of injuries was severe; broken vertebrae, broken femur, broken ribs, collapsed lung, and so on.
Cmdr. Semke says all are gradually returning to duty – even the pilots. Some incidents in the military are career-ending. Semke says this one wasn’t. It boiled down to a careful medical evaluation undergone by all military aviators.
“That’s a very careful and intentional process, for the aviation medicine enterprise to bless somebody for flying a $30 million public aircraft in some of the most challenging conditions,” said Semke. “So that process is ongoing. It was able to clear the pilots again to fly. The crew members are both miraculously having some really promising medical recoveries, and the doors are wide open for them too.”
The outcome for the crew could not be more different than the previous Air Station Sitka crash during a helicopter delivery flight in 2010 outside of La Push, Washington. In that incident, the pilot, flight mechanic, and rescue swimmer all died; the co-pilot survived and recovered, and was subject to military discipline that ended his career as a pilot.
Just as there was a lesson for Coast Guard aviators in that tragedy, there is a lesson in the loss of CG6016, and Semke says, a plan “to develop “actionable items to move forward.”
“We all know what happened,” said Semke. “We know that the aircraft hit the trees. We know that the Lydia Marie was floating the next morning. We know the outcome. So sometimes that hindsight bias when we’re analyzing an accident or a mishap can ultimately cloud our own judgment when we really want to put ourselves in the shoes of the mishap crew and figure out the reason why. Not just who was responsible, but why.”
Semke describes everyone involved in military aviation as high performing. The immediate consequence of the loss of CG6016 was to remind crews that high performing does not mean infallible. He believes transparency about this accident is beneficial, as is the humility that comes with it. In a 35-page incident report filled with data, Semke’s takeaway is “to make sure that we have protective factors in place for people when they do reach their limit, the person sitting next to them, … is ready to acknowledge that and back them up.”
The post One year after Air Station Sitka crash, assessing risk remains ‘more art than science’ appeared first on KCAW.
CG6016 came to rest inverted on the beach on Read Island, after striking the trees and falling approximately 75 feet, during a rescue mission on the night of November 13, 2023. An official MII (Major Incident Investigation) obtained by KCAW concluded that pilot “fixation” and “spatial disorientation” — rather than a mechanical or instrument failure — caused the accident. (USCG photo)Note: The Coast Guard MII (Major Incident Investigation) report found no fault with the crew of CG6016 for continuing the mission on November 13, 2023, even though the Lydia Marie was out of immediate danger. Read the story.
Often in Sitka, on the darkest, most dismal, stormy nights, the sound of the wind will seem to grow, and then begin to thrum with mechanical force. That audible shift from the power of nature, to the power of machine means a Jayhawk helicopter is launching from Air Station Sitka, on a medevac, search and rescue, or unbelievably, a training flight.
Practicing dangerous things until they become routine is the Coast Guard’s brand. On the night of November 13, 2023, a Jayhawk took off to assist a fishing boat, the Lydia Marie, which was taking on water in Farragut Bay, 22 miles northwest of Petersburg.
The helicopter, Coast Guard 6016, would not return. Cmdr. Rand Semke was the executive officer of Air Station Sitka at the time, and is now its commanding officer. He is also a pilot. He flew a second helicopter on a mission to locate the first. He says it was one of the most difficult he’s ever flown.
“It was incredibly dark night with high moisture environment,” said Semke, “and you just really cannot see much as you’re flying, even as you’re hovering low over the water.”
Semke found CG6016 inverted on the beach of Read Island. It had struck the trees on shore and plummeted about 75 feet. The crew of the Lydia Marie, which was no longer in danger, had rowed a skiff ashore to aid the helicopter crew, all four of whom were injured, two seriously.
Semke flew the injured to Petersburg for emergency treatment, and they were subsequently medevaced to Seattle for further care. The following day, the Lydia Marie was escorted back to Petersburg by a Coast Guard cutter.
All of these details were in the news at the time, but one detail was missing: What caused the crash? In the following months, the Coast Guard conducted an Major Incident Investigation (MII) which KCAW has since obtained. The investigator concluded that the crash was the result of “controlled flight into terrain.” There was no mechanical failure, no instrument glitch. There was also no warning. The cockpit audio reveals a crew going about the business of preparing to lower a dewatering pump to a distressed fishing vessel on a windy night with poor visibility. Then they hit the trees, and it’s game over.
How could a routine mission go so badly? It turns out that nothing about flying rescue helicopters is routine.
“Hovering a helicopter over water at night in bad weather when lives are on the line, is one of the most challenging things you can do in all of aviation,” Semke said.
Semke says that helicopters seem to defy the laws of physics, and that just keeping them airborne is a high workload for pilots. Even on nice days in daylight, when hovering over water, pilots perceive that the entire environment is moving. And then they have to lower a line, a pump, or a human to a moving target.
“The H60T helicopter puts out hurricane-force downdraft underneath of it – the rotor wash, we call it – which tends to move the vessels that you’re trying to deliver rescue devices to,” Semke said. “If a vessel is at anchor, they don’t move in a predictable manner. They’ll swing around their anchor when they’re impacted by the rotor wash. So now we’re putting it all together: We’ve got a helicopter hovering, which is challenging. Now it’s over water, more challenging. Now it’s at night, it’s even more challenging. A high wind environment, lots of precipitation in the air, which degrades your visual references. It was both snowing and raining north of Petersburg that night, and now you’re trying to deliver an item to a crowded deck on the Lydia Marie while they’re at anchor. There aren’t many more challenging situations.”
The investigation revealed that for 69 seconds, the pilots of CG6016 thought they were in one place, but they were actually moving. The helicopter was drifting right, and turning – or yawing – to the left, so the Lydia Marie was always visible over the dashboard.
Semke says having just a single reference point created an illusion broadly called “fixation” which then leads to “spatial disorientation.” The phenomenon comes in many different forms and affects other aircraft besides helicopters. Coast Guard pilots train intensively to avoid it. Semke himself has been flying for 17 years. That night he also experienced spatial disorientation, much as the crew of CG6016 had.
“And when we got on scene, at one point, I was flying and experienced something very similar, based on the the degraded visual environment, the heavy snow squalls, darkness, the somewhat disorienting light of the one fishing boat nearby, and at one point, I myself was drifting towards the island,” he said. “You would think we’d be hypersensitive to this.”
The MII (Major Incident Investigation) shows damage to the trees 65-75 feet above where CG6016 came to rest on the shore of Read Island. (USCG image)The remedy is teamwork, and trust in the aircraft’s instruments. We’ve all been relieved when flying commercially in Southeast Alaska when the jet drops out of the clouds and the runway lights are right there. For Coast Guard aviators on a rescue, there are no runway lights, nothing to see, even with night-vision goggles.
“We do have instrumentation that tells us if we’re drifting in a hover, our altitude in a hover,” said Semke. “But most of helicopter hovering is visual reference to the outside environment. So if you’re hovering next to something, you can maintain your relative position next to something, and you know that you’re not moving. Well when one of your primary references is a boat at anchor in a high wind environment, it’s moving. So if that’s your sole reference, then you’re going to be moving too, and you might not even realize it.”
The Major Incident Investigation (MII) doesn’t pronounce judgment on the crew of CG6016. In fact, as far as training hours and certifications go, everyone aboard was at the top of their game. To even become a rookie aviator in Alaska you have to be experienced elsewhere. No one died in this incident, thankfully, but that did not put every question to rest. Cmdr. Semke says the Coast Guard is invested in the nuanced human factors that contributed to the accident, and making corrections. “That is how we must operate,” he says, “even as technology is always seeking to take the human out of the equation.”
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Note: In-person tickets to the SeaBank Summit on November 13, 2024 in Sitka are sold out. The public is also welcome to attend via Zoom.
The premise of SeaBank is uncomplicated, and reflects a principle that is gaining traction globally: The value of a region is more than just the sum of its product.
Linda Behnken is the president of the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust, which created SeaBank. She says the program got an auspicious start.
“SeaBank was the brainchild of Richard Nelson and Sam Skaggs, who believed that if people understood the incredible value of this rich Southeast ecosystem in terms of the economics, of what dividends the system pays to people who live here and to the planet as a whole, in fish and in tourism, as well as the ecosystem services, that we would take very good care of that natural capital, which is the forest and and the ocean that supports and produces these products,” said Behnken.
SeaBank is not an abstraction. The project has been generating an annual report since 2019, filled with hard data.
“The annual economic value of just commercial fishing and tourism to the people who live in our Southeast communities is $1 billion,” said Behnken, “and there are 16,500 jobs in commercial fishing and tourism that are provided by this Seabank that we all call home. But beyond that, there’s also 2.7 billion metric tons of carbon that sequestered in our forest that not only benefits the people that live here, but also helps buffer the whole planet against climate change.”
Dominick DellaSala is keynote for the summit. DellaSala is the chief scientist with Wild Heritage, and a coastal temperate rainforest expert. He got his start during the 1990s working on what were then called “bioblitzes,” where researchers deployed to threatened ecosystems to quickly catalog their biodiversity.
DellaSala says that work led to an interesting realization.
“Some of the most exciting discoveries that are happening in the last decade is the role that these ecosystems now play in buffering us from the most extreme consequences of climate change,” said DellaSala.
DellaSala points to the remarkable interconnectedness of Southeast Alaska’s ecosystem: Ocean-going salmon depend on the forest where they return to spawn; the forest – and just about everything in it – depends on the nutrients supplied by the dying salmon. Critical to it all is climate, and DellaSala says the forest plays a major role here as well.
“Southeast Alaska has more buffering properties than other rainforests around the planet, and certainly compared to points farther south and in the interior of Alaska that are going to feel more of the negative consequences of climate change,” he said. “But we can only get the region through the climate storm if we steward it better, and that means protecting the old-growth forest, making sure that these cool streams are available for salmon to run and do their thing. So that really is the backbone of the regional economy, the cultural connections that indigenous people have with that resource, and the ability of Southeast Alaska to get through this unprecedented climate change that we’re on track to experience.”
The annual SeaBank report puts this all in a format useful for a variety of advocacy. Linda Behnken advocates often for Alaska’s fisheries in Washington, D.C.
“I’ve done a presentation back there to Senate subcommittees, and we have used the values and comments that we’ve made on various decision-making, whether it’s with regards to the Tongass or to fisheries management,” said Behnken.
And because thick reports don’t work for everyone, SeaBank has its own podcast, called The SeaBank Chronicles, produced by Beth Short-Rhoads, which is decidedly un-report-like…
Excerpt from SeaBank Chronicles: “The SeaBank forest is among the rarest because it feeds – and is fed by – salmon, a wild and silvery nation, endlessly bound for home…”
New episodes of the SeaBank Chronicles drop every Friday.
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Barkada translates to “group of friends.” Senior Julia Nabua told the school board that the Barkadas formed “to celebrate and promote Filipino culture, heritage, and traditions within our school community.”Max Osborne is with general contractor Tremco Roofing, which is working with Portland-based architects Certa Building Solutions, to determine the condition of the building housing the Blatchley Pool.
Osborne told the board that cores taken of the walls and roof back in October showed that the building’s basic structure was still sound, however there was such significant condensation in the walls and eaves that his firm recommended a major rebuild.
“The pool is still very safe to use this winter,” said Osborne. “You do not have a structural concern as far as the metal structural depth. However, there is a very much need to replace these walls, to go all the way back down to the framing, original framing, taking off the eaves taking off that old metal, and coming back with a complete air and vapor barrier in a spray foam process, and building that back out.”
Osborne said that the work could be done from the outside, preferably in summertime, in order to not interfere with the pool’s operation. The board will consider how to proceed at a future meeting.
In other business, the Sitka School Board heard from a new organization in the high school – one that is probably long overdue.
Sitka High senior Julia Nabua made the introductions.
“I’m thrilled to announce the creation of the Filipino Culture club at Sitka High School,” said Nabua. “This club aims to celebrate and promote Filipino culture, heritage, and traditions within our school community. We have chosen to name our club ‘Barkadas,’ which translates from Tagalog to mean ‘group of friends.’ We are a group of culturally-inclusive Filipinos and allies.”
Nabua said that the Barkadas had held a successful Salo-Salo in celebration of Filipino American History Month in October, with over 100 people attending.
Sitka families hoping to place their children in the district’s new tuition-based preschool program will have to wait a bit longer. Superintendent Deidre Jenson told the board that the district had hired a certified teacher to run the program, and was paying her out of Ventures funding. The plan was to use the teacher first to redesign Ventures, the district’s afterschool program, and provide staff with professional development, and then transition her to run the district’s new pre-K classroom in January.
“It’s a good, clean time to start a program,” said Jenson. “If we were to go November 18 (as a start date), you got three weeks and school’s down. So this just gives us a little more time to kind of do that and start in January with that pre-K program.”
The district plans to accept 10 students in its all-day preschool, and charge tuition of $1,500 per month.
Board member Tom William’s questioned the district’s decision to absorb the indirect costs of the pre-K program in the overall operating budget. Later in the meeting, he also challenged a decision to compensate non-certified staff, like secretaries and paraprofessionals, whose work hours are cut short on early release days, such as Alaska Day or before other school holidays.
The district drafted a memo to the non-certified staff’s union, SESPA, saying that personnel who lose a full work day because of early release, would be compensated with eight hours of paid time off during Spring Break. The district only recently implemented a time clock for hourly staff; in the past everyone – including salaried teachers – just got paid for a full day, even if school was dismissed early.
Williams argued that “crimes of the past don’t justify crimes of the future.” The remark prompted a tense exchange between Williams and district business manager Kathrynn Hollis-Buchanan.
Hollis-Buchanan: So what this is trying to do is have everybody okay with clocking out, and let’s just give you that time at another date when you already don’t have time being paid. The option would be ‘okay, even though we’ve done this for 50 years, we’re not going to do it anymore, because we don’t value you. So clock out and leave.’”
Williams: “That’s not what I said.”
Hollis-Buchanan: No, I know, but that’s how they will see it, because it somehow…
Williams: (interrupting) “You’re making an assumption. And I don’t think that that was a very fair comment to put me in that position… . And 50 years, you’re throwing these things out there. It’s hyperbole.”
Hollis-Buchanan: “I’m sorry. The opinion is that it’s supposed to be a nice gesture for them to allow them to leave early and spend time with their families. That’s all.”
Board president Phil Burdick pointed out that the memo and the policy have no impact whatsoever on the budget. He thought maybe it should be incorporated into future contract negotiations. Williams said he objected to the move on principle, and found it disappointing.
The next regular meeting of the Sitka School Board is set for 6 p.m. Wednesday, December 4. Burdick said he would try to keep it to an hour so that everyone could attend the Keet Gooshi Heen concert scheduled for later the same evening.
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Statewide, Donald Trump outpolled Kamala Harris on election night by 15 points – 55-percent to 40-percent – to win the presidency, but in Sitka the results were much closer.
See the complete unofficial election results from the Alaska Division of Elections.
Sitka’s two precincts actually split on the presidential election. Voters in precinct No. 1 favored the Trump/Vance ticket by 32 votes. In Sitka No. 2, the Harris/Walz ticket had a 70-vote edge.
Harris’s advantage was even greater in communities surrounding Sitka. In Angoon, voters favored Harris over Trump by a 3-to-1 margin. In Kake, it was 2-to-1 in favor of Harris. Likewise, voters in Tenakee Springs chose Harris by a 2-to-1 margin.
In Yakutat, the presidential race was a bit closer, with voters preferring Harris by only 26 votes.
In Pelican, Elfin Cove, and Port Alexander, the tables were turned with Trump picking up the win by a few votes in all three communities.
The story was a bit different in the race for US Congress. Incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola trailed Republican challenger Nick Begich by four points on election night, 49- to 45-percent. But in Sitka and surrounding communities Peltola did very well, outpolling Begich in both of Sitka’s two precincts by well over one-hundred votes in each.
In Angoon, voters preferred Peltola by a 4-to-1 margin. Kake chose Peltola by over a 2-to-1 margin; so did Port Alexander. Peltola won in Tenakee and in Yakutat by 3-to-1 margins.
Pelican and Elfin Cove were the outlier in the district – and perhaps in the whole state. Voters there gave zero votes to Mary Peltola, and 13 to Nick Begich – but the Republican probably won’t be holding a victory parade there since voters actually preferred dark horse Democrat Eric Hafner over Begich by a two-to-one margin.
The Legislative race in House District 2 was no contest. Rebecca Himschoot, an independent from Sitka, was unopposed in her bid for a second term, and she cleaned up 98-percent of the vote.
Sitka area voters were in agreement with the rest of the state on Ballot Measure #1, which raises the minimum wage to $15 by 2027. As of election night, the measure passed by a 13-point margin, 56-percent to 43-percent. Voters in Sitka stretched that winning margin even further, to roughly 70-30 in favor.
Other communities in the district voted with similar spreads.
Local voting did not track with state results on Ballot Measure #2, however. This measure will repeal Alaska’s open primary elections, and ranked-choice voting. Statewide on election night the “yes” votes favoring the repeal led the “no” votes by 2 points, 51- to 49-percent.
In Sitka, far more voters chose “no” by about 20 points, 60-40. Angoon, Kake, Yakutat, and Tenakee voters turned in similar results. In Pelican and Elfin Cove, Ballot Measure #2 split about 50-50, and in Port Alexander voters favored the repeal 60-40, with the simplest math of the night: 6 votes “yes,” and 4 votes “no.”
Lastly, there were no surprises in the judicial retention election. Voters in and around Sitka chose to retain all judges by wide margins.
Early voting was huge in Alaska this year, as well as in many other places in the country. All early ballots cast through October 31 were counted on Election Day in Alaska; all early ballots cast between November 1-4 have not yet been counted. That’s a total of 23,000 early ballots still to be counted, along with another 24,000 absentees still to count as well. Often, early voting and absentee voting are consistent with Election Day results – but not necessarily. Many early ballots are from Mary Peltola’s home turf in Western Alaska, and likely could affect the outcome of the congressional race, as well as some state house and senate races.
Also, election results in Alaska are unofficial for at least 15 days, to ensure that all eligible ballots are counted. Those include overseas absentee ballots for example. November 20 is also when the ranked-choice tabulation will take place, for any congressional or legislative race where the leading candidate has less than 50-percent of the vote. That seems likely for the race for the US House of Representatives, where Nick Begich has a slight lead over Mary Peltola, but doesn’t have 50-percent of the vote. In that case, the Division Election will begin to factor in voters’ second-place choices, until a winner finally tops 50-percent.
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Seven candidates are vying for four open seats on the Sitka Tribal Council (moderator Rachel Roy is at left). Also two candidates are challenging for the chairman’s seat. The group appeared in a candidate forum October 28, 2024, in Harrigan Centennial Hall. Election Day for Tribal Council is one week after the United States General Election, on Tuesday, November 12. (KCAW/Woolsey)Seven candidates are vying for the four open council seats, and two candidates are in the running for the chair, including the incumbent chair Lawrence “Woody” Widmark, and the incumbent vice-chair Yeidikook’áa Dionne Brady-Howard.
Unlike the divisive rhetoric of some national races, Widmark and Yeidikook’áa shared a common belief that the welfare of the Tribe’s 4,500 citizens was a top priority.
Widmark said that was achieved through building bridges.
“I think one of the things that that I’m really grateful this past year is building our relationships with our Native organizations, corporations, Sealaska, Shee Atiká,” said Widmark, “and challenging the Tribal Council to meet with them, and how we can work together instead of being adversaries for the past couple of years.”
Yeidikook’áa agreed, and saw another way forward through supporting education.
“I would really like to see more higher education and career and technical education support for students as well,” she said. “I think that we have a solid scholarship, but the scholarship in and of itself doesn’t do enough to help tribal citizens with their education when there’s so many hoops to jump through to be able to get that education.”
The seven candidates running for the four open seats on the council were a mix of incumbents, newcomers, and former council members coming back for more. Bob Sam is one of the latter. He’s well-known for his work restoring Sitka’s cemeteries, but he’s got a broader vision, and he’s eager to work on it.
“I got cataracts removed, and I have 2020 vision,” he said. “So my energy is coming back, and my energy really feels really good now. I’ve served on Council, Enrollment (Committee) and Historic Preservation (Committee). I decided to run this year to share my experience.”
Alana Peterson is one of three incumbents running for another two-year term on the Sitka Tribal Council. She’s the executive director of Spruce Root, a small-business development nonprofit. Peterson just turned 39, and supports opening council seats to citizens under 30, to keep the Tribe relevant and moving forward.
“You know, I really believe that the Sitka Tribe is doing such a great job in so many ways,” Peterson said, “but I also believe in continuous improvement. So I want to make sure we work to become a better employer with strong systems and structures in place to support all the really good work that staff are doing, and then also have the strong governance at the top. And the two things working really well together.”
Fellow incumbent Lillian Feldpausch also supported strong tribal governance, but as a means to support culture.
“Our Constitution, I feel is important as it helps guide us as we kind of move along governance,” she said. “I want to ensure that we sustain our rural status, our tribal sovereignty. A lot of this is our way of life, through culture, through language, through food.”
A third incumbent running for reelection, Louise Brady, was not present at the election forum.
Of the three candidates trying for a first term on the council, Blossom Teal-Olsen is a familiar face in local politics, having most recently served as president of the Sitka School Board. Teal-Olsen said it’s important for the Tribe – though sovereign – to remain involved at all levels in the community.
“I have an extensive history in public service, and I’d like to continue to sit at those tables to ensure that our tribal citizens do have a voice and we do have goals that we set out together and work towards,” said Teal-Olsen.
Candidate Sonya Smith would like to see more turnover on the Tribal Council, and is in support of term limits. Her top concerns involve the health and well-being of citizens, especially those struggling with alcoholism. If elected, she’d be new at the table, but she promises to be at the table.
“It’s pretty obvious that there’s a learning curve to it all I’m willing to learn, but I’m also motivated to admit that, as an artist, time is my greatest resource,” she said, “and I know what it’s like to make a commitment, to keep your word, to follow through and to show up.”
Candidate Steve Johnson has served three terms as president of the Southeast Alaska Cultural Center, but this is his first crack at elected office. He cited food security, housing, and economics as his top concerns, saying all three affected the quality of life of tribal citizens.
“If we have financial problems and problems feeding ourselves and feeding each other, then we don’t have time to perpetuate our culture,” he said, “and we don’t have time to do the things that we want to do as tribal citizens and do the things that we would love to do with our families: learn language, sing songs, have events, and so much of that I feel is in danger of being killed off by economics.”
Early voting for the Sitka Tribal Council is open now through November 11 at the Sitka Tribe of Alaska offices on Siginaka Way. Election Day is Tuesday, November 12, polls will be open 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. at the Sheet’ka Kwaán Naa Kahidi, and 4-6 p.m. at Sea Mart.
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The Army Corps of Engineers gave notice of its intent to do preliminary clearing at the former site of Ft. Babcock, but Jed DeLong wonders if Sitkans understood the extent of the impact on Shoals Point, a popular recreational area for campers, surfers, and hunters. (Jed DeLong photo)Before this September, when you visited Shoals Point, you’d never know the deep forest and grassy fringe was a former military installation until you came across a concrete bunker, or a rusted fuel tank. Fort Babcock once occupied this site. It was one of three large gun batteries built to defend Sitka Sound from a Japanese naval invasion during the Second World War. The area is windswept from the south, with big, surfable rollers crashing on the beach, and has a sheltered anchorage on the north.
Although it’s off the beaten path, many Sitkans love Shoals Point. Jed DeLong is one of them.
“I mean, (Kruzof) it’s like one of the most unique islands in Southeast,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite places in the world. The Shoals Point area is just awesome. We go out there all the time, and to have it just get mowed down with like no notice is kind of mind blowing to me.”
DeLong visits Shoals Point maybe a dozen times a year. Recently he and his dad went hunting there, and he was shocked at what they found. Contractors for the Army Corps of Engineers in September had cleared the half-mile long former military road, and three adjacent areas.
“Now it’s just a full-blown two-lane road,” said DeLong. “There’s probably three different clear cuts that are off of that road as well, that are probably one- to two-acres a piece, maybe even more. One of them was pretty big.”
Two of those three areas housed an above-ground fuel tank and “tar drum” storage area, which are both contaminated with POLs, or “petroleum oil lubricants” and related chemicals. The third site is the former power plant, which is contaminated with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, a class of persistent environmental toxin.
Next May, a crew of 14 contracted workers and two Army Corps of Engineers staff will set up field camp, bring in heavy equipment to harden the road, and begin the removal of an estimated 559 “super sacks” of contaminated soil – with each of those sacks weighing in at just over a ton – and barge them to a landfill in Oregon.
Michele Parker is the Environmental Program manager for the Tongass National Forest, which has jurisdiction over the area. She says these chemicals will remain hazardous for a long time if not removed. The Forest Service supports the Corps’ cleanup efforts. She’ll be the on-scene coordinator for the project.
“We’ve all been on site with the Sitka district and their natural resource experts, their ecologists and archeology folks, and everybody has weighed in on the plan,” said Parker. “And so we feel like we have a really good relationship with the Corps of Engineers, and look forward to this project happening and the site getting mitigated and cleaned up.”
The project will cost $2.2 million, and will be completed by Brice Engineering, an Anchorage-based subsidiary of Calista, the regional Native corporation of Southwest Alaska.
The project manager for the Army Corps, Beth Astley, didn’t want to be recorded for this story, but she told KCAW in an interview that the levels of PCBs discovered at Fort Babcock “are relatively high, compared to other defense sites in Alaska.”
A crew cleared a section of the old military road at Shoals Point. Next May, they’ll harden the road, bring in heavy equipment, and begin the cleanup. The Forest Service has required all improvements to be removed when the work is completed. (Jed DeLong photo)That’s troubling to Jed DeLong. He – and many others – often camp at Shoals Point. He knew it was once used by the military, but he didn’t know that it was toxic.
“If this was such a hazardous contaminated site, why haven’t they said anything to the public to allude to that before now?” he asked.
The Army Corps held an informational public meeting in Sitka in 2019, and the 259-page decision document has been available in the Sitka Public Library since 2021. (KCAW did extensive reporting on the proposal in January, 2022.) The project was noticed again to the public last August, just prior to the beginning of work.
But the reality is startling, and Jed DeLong believes that many people may not have understood that Fort Babcock and Shoals Point are the same place. Now, he’s concerned about the decision to clear so much of the area, and to disturb the contaminated soils. The question of “Is the cure worse than the disease?” will probably linger over this project for a long time.
The Forest Service asked that the Army Corps remove all improvements when the work is over, such as culverts, and rough-up the road to stimulate revegetation, use weed-free native seed, and return removed brush to cleared areas to reduce erosion.
Michele Parker has seen old landfills restored in the Tongass. She thinks Shoals Point will recover, too.
“So we’re only doing what is absolutely necessary to deal with the contaminated soil, and we’re going to try and restore it as much as we can, back to its natural state, and then it’ll be contamination free,” said Parker.
Will it be enough? Jed DeLong is a new father, and he’s disappointed that his child won’t experience Shoals Point as he has. This kind of environmental remediation is generational in its impact.
“The whole thing is disheartening,” said DeLong. “I still plan on going out there a lot, but the whole vibe of the area has just been totally trashed. I can’t see it. This (full restoration) isn’t going to happen in my lifetime. It’s done.”
Fort Babcock is not the only formerly-used defense site (FUDS) in Sitka. Astley, with the Army Corps, says Fort Rousseau, which once occupied the causeway next to Sitka’s airport, has already had some military debris removed, and is currently undergoing site inspection for possible contamination.
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Tad Fujioka was chair of the Seafood Producer’s Cooperative. Searchers found his body on Wednesday morning (10-30-24) north of Sitka in Nakwasina Sound, near where he had cached a partial deer carcass two days earlier. (Bethany Goodrich photo)Note: A GoFundMe account has been created to support Tad Fujioka’s family. Learn more here.
The call that Tad Fujioka was overdue could not have come at a worse time. On the evening of October 29, Sitka and the outer coast of Southeast were being lashed by a windstorm, with some gusts in excess of 50 miles per hour.
Fire Chief Craig Warren says Air Station Sitka launched a helicopter nevertheless, equipped with Forward-Looking-Infrared (FLIR), to search an area about ten miles north of Sitka in Nakwasina Sound.
“The Coast Guard did fly the night of the report, and kind of looked around the area,” said Warren. “It was dense forest, they couldn’t see much through the FLIR. And then the next morning, we deployed teams out of the Fire Department before 8:00 a.m.. The first team was on the ground there about 8:30 dropped in by the Coast Guard.”
Fujioka was believed to be returning to an area where he had shot a deer on Monday in much better weather, and had cached part of the carcass.
Warren says the department organized 25 members into three teams for the ground search, plus two Alaska State Wildlife troopers, and the state biologist.
The Coast Guard flew two of the teams to a high point above the area where Fujioka was believed to be hunting, and another team was landed on the beach. His body was found by a ground team at about 11:30 in the morning, not far from where he had cached the deer. Wounds indicated that Fujioka had died from a bear mauling.
The shock reverberated quickly around Sitka. Norm Pillen is the President of Seafood Producers Cooperative, where Fujioka was board chair.
“He was very involved,” said Pillen, “Our hearts go out to his family. It’s just… can’t even imagine. It’s a huge loss to them, to the community, to the fishing industry and to SPC. We’ll miss him.”
Fujioka came late to fishing. Before becoming a troller aboard his boat, the Sakura, he worked in Sitka’s municipal engineering department. He brought precision, and an attention to detail in fisheries allocation issues that made him a powerful advocate at Alaska Board of Fisheries meetings. The next is scheduled for this January in Ketchikan. Pillen says Fujioka’s absence will be felt.
“He really could dive deep, and had tremendous ability for recall and digging into things and pulling out information that he needed,” said Pillen, “and we really appreciated that about him. It’s going to be a huge hit for the industry to not have him involved.”
Fujioka’s outside-the-box thinking wasn’t limited to fisheries. He was a long-time member of the Sitka Fish & Game Advisory Committee, which in 2021 was reckoning with an extraordinary number of brown bears killed by authorities or residents in Sitka that year, fourteen in all. Overhauling Sitka’s entire trash pick-up system didn’t seem a practical solution, nor did shooting every bear that came into town, as some on the Committee suggested.
Fujioka’s analytical mind and understanding of bear behavior led him to suggest something small-scale and possibly effective, if it’s ever tried.
“What if you looked at it from the other way, and we had some booby trapped garbage cans out there, maybe it would only take one or two bad experiences for a bear to associate that big black thing with an unfavorable experience,” Fujioka told fellow committee members..
The bear that likely killed Fujioka was a brown bear sow with two cubs. She was seen by the Coast Guard helicopter in the area near where Fujioka’s remains were found, but ground searchers did not encounter her. Fish & Game biologist Steve Bethune accompanied searchers on Wednesday. He characterizes the incident as a defensive attack – rather than predatory – and the sow had almost certainly claimed the deer carcass and was defending her food supply.
Bethune said some efforts were made Wednesday afternoon to locate the bear on the ground, without success.
Tad Fujioka was 50 years old. His death remains under investigation by Alaska Wildlife Troopers.
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With no other competition for the seat, Paul Rioux’s appointment to the board was slam dunk. His nameplate was already on the table before the special meeting began. (KCAW/Woolsey)Paul Rioux has joined the Sitka School Board – again. Board secretary Dawn Georgia did the honors, swearing in Rioux for the third time.
Sitka School Board Secretary Dawn Georgia (r.) administers the oath of office to Paul Rioux — his third in five years. “Let’s hope this time it sticks,” Georgia quipped. (KCAW/Woolsey)Georgia: “…and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge my duties…”
Rioux: “…and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge my duties…”
Georgia: “…as a member of the Sitka School Board to the best of my ability…”
Rioux: “…as a member of the Sitka School Board to the best of my ability…”
Rioux served a full term from 2019 – 2022 but chose not to run again. Late last summer, when board president Tristan Guevin resigned to apply for a teaching position in the district, Rioux was appointed to the vacancy – which lasted all of one regular meeting in October.
With only one candidate on the ballot for two open seats on the school board in the municipal election, the next move for Rioux could have been to register as a write-in. However, he chose not to.
KCAW: “I have a feeling that people are wondering why you went this route instead of running as a write-in for the three-year term.”
Rioux: “Oh, I was just hesitant to make the three-year commitment at this point. I wanted to give it a chance, and I kind of waited and monitored to see if anyone was going to jump in, and nobody did. So I made a decision to go ahead and put in another letter of interest to fill in for a year, because I think the board can always use the help, especially when there’s an empty seat.”
Rioux will serve only one year, until the municipal election in October, 2025.
The other members of the Sitka School Board wasted no time appointing Rioux. They dispensed with the usual interview, since he was the only applicant, and had just interviewed for the job a month before. Rioux was a significant voice on the board during his previous full term, much of which was served during the peak of the Covid pandemic.
Rioux witnessed what the board went through last spring, as it confronted a major budget deficit and was forced to layoff fourteen teachers.
He didn’t suggest that he would have done anything differently.
“It’s a really, really difficult thing and, we’ve had a lot of people in this town that have served on this board that have had to do that,” he said. “Over the last 20 years, we’ve lost a lot of programs and a lot of instruction: librarians and different positions and whatnot. And it’s not an easy thing to do, to have to take something away, but we have no way to raise funds, so we have to build a budget around the funds that we’re given and it’s not an easy thing to do.”
Once the board was seated, the group chose officers for the year. Phil Burdick was voted unanimously as president of the board; Tom Williams as vice-president, and Steve Morse as clerk.
Board members also alternate serving as liaisons to the individual school buildings: Newly-elected member Amanda Williams selected Keet Gooshi Heen; Paul Rioux took Pacific High; Steve Morse, Xóots; Tom Williams, Sitka High; and Phil Burdick took Blatchley. Student board member Francis Myers will be the official student liaison for all grade levels.
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The Makhnati subsistence closure was created by two separate Executive Orders. (Alaska OSM image)Note: The Southeast Regional Advisory Council is meeting October 22-24 in Ketchikan. Written comments regarding the Makhnati subsistence review may be emailed to subsistence@ios.doi.gov. Information on how to conference into the meeting, by phone or Microsoft Teams, can be found here.
If you’ve ever been to Sitka, you’ve probably seen Makhnati Island. It’s actually connected to Sitka’s airport by a chain of gravel causeways between smaller islands that was built during the Second World War, and most people just call it “the causeway.” Although mostly overgrown now, there is evidence of Makhnati’s military past everywhere, complete with underground installations and gun emplacements.
That the waters around Mahknati have been set aside for subsistence herring is unusual, but explainable.
“Typically, the federal program does not operate in saltwater at all,” said Ashley Bolwerk, a subsistence fisheries biologist with the Tongass National Forest, Sitka Ranger District.
“Our jurisdiction really ends at the end of the National Forest, which doesn’t extend into the saltwater,” she explained. “But this area had federal significance. It was a highly important place during World War II. And so there’s sort of this holdover component because of those historical contexts.”
The Federal Subsistence Board first heard proposals for reserving the waters around Makhnati for federally-qualified subsistence users in 2007. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska was the moving force behind the effort. But it wasn’t until 2015 that the current closure was passed – with the condition that it be reviewed every four years. That review is coming around again when the Board meets in Anchorage in February of next year.
In the meantime, the Southeast Alaska Regional Advisory Council, or RAC, is taking testimony on the closure at its meeting in Ketchikan October 22-24, and will pass on recommendations to the full board. Bolwerk says the RAC is the go-to for people concerned about herring subsistence, both inside and outside the closure area.
“Our Regional Advisory Council here in Southeast Alaska is really interested in all subsistence issues, whether they’re within their jurisdiction or not,” said Bolwerk. “So I think herring falls in this unique category of there’s this very small space near Makhnati that is under federal jurisdiction, and the RAC and the Federal Board have an opportunity to regulate herring use in that space, so they’re within their bounds to do that there, but they also are very interested in helping support local folks in other regulatory arenas too.”
Sometimes, just the thought of the federal regulatory process makes people’s eyes glaze over. But the Southeast Regional Advisory Council – again, the RAC – is very local. There are nine RACs in Alaska – one for every region. I wanted to clarify this with Bolwerk, that residents play a large role in subsistence management in Alaska.
KCAW: “The RAC is not a bunch of bureaucrats back in Washington, correct?”
Bolwerk: “Yeah, the RAC is basically people from around Southeast Alaska. So our RAC is made up of 13 people. They live in southeast Alaska. They get appointed for three-year terms, and those all are appointments that come from the Secretary of Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, and these people care deeply. They’re volunteering their time to do this, but our RAC in particular, here in southeast Alaska, is highly involved. They, as I said, like to weigh in, not just on some things within the federal process, but also in other regulatory spaces, because they really view their role as making sure the needs of subsistence users in rural Alaska are being met.”
The US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Office of Subsistence Management has reviewed the Makhnati Herring closure and recommends retaining the status quo. Other issues before the Regional Advisory Council during its three-day meeting in Ketchikan include a proposed rural determination of the Ketchikan area for subsistence purposes, and new harvest regulations for salmon fishing on the Taku River.
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Municipal election officials (left to right) Sara Peterson, Jess Earnshaw, and Holley Bayne tabulate votes on election night, October 1, 2024. This year roughly as many early votes were cast as in each of Sitka’s two precincts on Election Day. (KCAW/Woolsey)Sitka voters returned incumbent mayor Steven Eisenbeisz to his seat for another two years.
Eisenbeisz decisively outpolled political newcomer Leah Mason, by a 2-to-1 margin, 1,156 to 551.
Two other veteran assembly members were also returned to the table, Kevin Mosher and Scott Saline, who won 1,082 and 1,055 votes respectively. Mosher will serve his third three-year term. Saline, who was elected last year to a one-year seat, will get a full three-years this time around.
Political newcomer Robert Hattle came in a respectable third, with 779. Austin Cranford, in his second bid to win a seat on the assembly, came in a distant fourth with 373 votes.
There was no race for the two open seats on the Sitka School Board. Only one candidate, Amanda Williams, appeared on the ballot. Voters gave Williams the nod with 1,498 votes. There were no registered write-in candidates for the remaining seat.
Williams is a former Science teacher at Blatchley Middle School who lost her job last spring as a result of unprecedented cuts to education statewide by the governor. Williams is also the daughter-in-law of current school board member Tom Williams.
The Sitka School District has already begun advertising the appointment of the vacant fifth seat. Letters of interest will be accepted through October 16. Applicants will be interviewed at a special meeting on October 23, when one will be appointed to serve until the municipal election in the fall of 2025.
And lastly, two ballot propositions – both housekeeping measures concerning the Sitka Charter (deleting the reference to Sitka Community Hospital, and aligning recall procedures with state law) – passed by roughly 9-to-1 margins.
A possible 78 absentee ballots will be counted in Harrigan Centennial Hall beginning at 2 p.m. this Friday. Absentee counting will not affect the outcome of the election, however. The Sitka Assembly will certify the election results at its regular meeting next Tuesday, October 8.
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During the second year of the “Our Submerged Past” expedition, the team used the SUNFISH® autonomous underwater vehicle to explore submerged caves and rock shelters discovered during the first year of the project. (Image courtesy of Jill Heinerth, Stone Aerospace)Note: You can watch Dr. Monteleone’s entire presentation on the SHI YouTube Channel, and find learn more on the NOAA project page called “Our Submerged Past.”
Archaeology is an easily misunderstood science. Indiana Jones didn’t really do academia any favors.
Indy: This should be in a museum!
Sure. Artifacts are an important part of the human story, but there is an even bigger story that archeologists in the Americas are still teasing out. Humanity did not originate on this continent. Everyone came from somewhere else.
“When push comes to shove, the question I’m trying to answer is: How and when did people migrate to the Americas? When did this happen?” asks Dr. Kelly Monteleone, an archeologist and a professor at the University of Calgary. Like many in her field, she’s come to understand that the earliest attempts by researchers to put together a theory of migration to the Americas were incomplete, or just incorrect. It involved nomadic hunters coming from Asia, on foot, in pursuit of megafauna like wooly mammoths.
Eh… maybe, but probably not.
“And then I have a strange feeling most of you were taught about people walking across the Bering Land Bridge and down the ice free corridor when you were in school,” said Monteleone. “I’m hoping one day that that’s not a true statement, and that I can say to a room that you weren’t taught people walked through an ice-free corridor.”
Monteleone calls that ice-free corridor a “deglaciation corridor,” and the timing when it appeared doesn’t fit the latest models of the populating of the Americas.
Over the last three decades, the Coastal Migration theory has emerged to compete with the Bering Land Bridge. Even today, Alaska’s oldest cultures are maritime, and the coastal environment is hospitable to life of all kinds.
Monteleone thinks the answer to Coastal Migration is here.
“And that’s where Southeast Alaska becomes so important,” she said, “because we then become this perfect location to identify where people were walking or migrating using boats, vessels of some kind, along the coast.”
Southeast Alaska is the perfect location, but for one problem: The coastline has changed dramatically in many places, due to a combination of rising sea level and glacial rebound. A lot of what Monteleone hopes to find is underwater.
Beginning in 2021, Monteleone worked around the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, where other evidence of coastal migration has been found in the limestone caves prevalent in the region.
Monteleone mapped potential cave sites with an underwater ROV, or remotely-operated vehicle – and examined other archeological evidence of human activity.
One site in particular in Shakan Bay – which she first found in 2010 while working on her dissertation – she believes is a fish trap.
“You kind of see some stacked rocks in a semicircular structure,” she said, referring to a slide in her presentation. “This is 11,400 years old on the ocean floor at 52meters.”
Monteleone’s examination of these areas is far more than visual. Divers on her team take core samples of the sediments, and they’re typically rich in pollen from terrestrial plants like spruce and hemlock trees. The samples also turn up material known as “micro debitage.”
“So whenever you use a stone tool or you sharpen a stone tool, little flakes like break off, and they’re very small,” she explained. “II’m working with stuff that’s less than a millimeter or around a millimeter and smaller in size.”
Kelly Monteleone’s project was funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration. She’s applying for additional funding to continue her research, and to continue combing the sea floor in Southeast Alaska looking for evidence of the earliest human migration into North America.
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Fiber optic cable serving Sitka has broken at least twice in the past (2016 and 2017), but those events did not disrupt telecommunications to the degree that the August 29, 2024 break did. “It’s a consequence of the fact that everything is sort of reliant on the internet these days,” says Joe Kane, director of Broadband and Spectrum Policy for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.The last time Sitka’s undersea fiber optic cable broke in 2017, the resulting outage lasted 12 days, but didn’t seem nearly as apocalyptic as the latest event.
We didn’t see stories about the social and psychological impact of the outage in 2016; business leaders didn’t put out a survey on its economic impact.
That’s because it wasn’t an outage in 2017 – it was a partial outage. The undersea fiber optic cable to Sitka was somewhat novel eight years ago, and the technological infrastructure it would replace was still in play. Everything worked, albeit a bit more slowly.
Not so when Sitka’s fiber optic link broke this time. At 11 a.m. on August 29, Sitkans found themselves without internet, without cell service, without texting, and unable to use credit cards. Even some landlines – depending on the type of phone – didn’t work.
“It’s a consequence of the fact that everything is sort of reliant on the internet these days,” said Joe Kane, director of Broadband and Spectrum Policy for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “Your wireless phone services. Those are getting signals from towers. But then the towers themselves are connected via wired backhaul into the backbone of the internet. Not just these undersea cables, like the one in Sitka, but also the ones that go all the way across the oceans, all around the world. And so any sort of weak link in that chain getting cut means that you lose sort of everything on the other side of it.”
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. It has a staff of about 40 people who, among other things, track the massive federal investment in delivering broadband to everyone in the country.
Kane suggests there are things we could learn from Sitka’s outage.
“Sitka experienced a microcosm of the overall vulnerabilities that we could see with undersea cables if there were more widespread outages,” he said. “So I do think it’s maybe highlighting the importance of securing them.”
Kane describes a tension between fiber optic cable and satellite technology. Fiber optic can be significantly faster than satellites, but that’s changing. An earlier generation of communications satellites were in high Earth orbit, had limited bandwidth, and were slower. Now, Starlink has put thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit, and as Sitkans quickly discovered, the speed difference was noticeable, but by no means a deal-breaker.
Kane believes that the best policy is to maintain both systems.
“There are satellite options now, and there are alternative cable options so that you don’t end up with only one point of failure,” said Kane. “But I do think that’s something where we should be looking: towards more resiliency and maybe more redundancy. A lot of times people talk about fiber as being future proof, but I think maybe we’re learning that it’s not Alaska proof.”
GCI is heavily invested in undersea cable, and is well toward completion of an 800 mile cable linking the communities of the Aleutian chain. In a response to an email from KCAW, GCI corporate communications manager Josh Edge writes, “Like all telecommunications networks, fiber is subject to outages, but it has long since proven itself as the most reliable middle-mile network technology available.” Edge says fiber optic has been the backbone of GCI’s network for 25 years, adding “fiber is unique in its ability to deliver orders of magnitude more capacity as technology and customer needs evolve.”
The United States is spending $42 billion on universal broadband for its citizens, with much likely to be dedicated to terrestrial infrastructure like fiber optic cable – even though GCI relied on a combination of microwave and satellite technology to maintain a minimal level of service while the cable was repaired. Joe Kane has no argument with universal broadband as policy, but as a practical matter, Sitka’s experience demonstrates that fiber optic cable doesn’t make sense everywhere.
“I did a back of the envelope calculation the other day,” said Kane. “If you took all the federal money that had been spent on trying to build broadband to Alaska, you could buy every household in the state a Starlink terminal and give them free service on it for multiple years.”
Joe Kane is the director of Broadband and Spectrum Policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington D.C.
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Three of the 10 existing cottages in the S’us’ Héeni Sháak Community. When complete in 2027, there will be 14 homes in the neighborhood, and six apartments. (KCAW/Woolsey)Randy Hughey is excited, and who can blame him? The Sitka Community Land Trust has made a calculated bet that it can preserve affordability in Sitka’s skyrocketing housing market, without much sacrifice on the part of owners or lenders, and it appears to be working.
One of the trust’s original seven cottages just changed hands – the first time the organization has put its resale agreement into play.
“And we were very relieved to see that it worked as anticipated,” said Hughey.
The secret sauce is that the land – the lot that the cottage occupies – is not part of the transaction. Only the building is sold. The land remains forever the property of the trust. That’s part one of affordability. The second part is that the agreement owners make when they buy a home from the trust limits their ability to profit.
Limits profit – but does not eliminate it, by the way. The original buyer of the cottage still cleared a large chunk of change.
“Just less than two years ago, the value of the home was appraised at $340,000,” said Hughey. “Twenty months later, it was appraised at $440,000. So the person selling their home kept 25-percent of that, or $25,000, plus the money that they used for a down payment, and any equity that they purchased each month.”
So before you start rolling your eyes at the affordability of a $440,000 cottage, remember that Hughey is only talking about the appraised value. The actual cost of the cottage, both to the original buyer and to the new owner, is far less.
“The real beauty of this model is that the initial home cost to the initial buyer was $275,000,” Hughey explained. “Now, because they took out $25,000 of ‘profit,’ we put the house back on the market for $300,000 plus closing fees. So it changed from a $275,000 cost to buyer to a $300,000 cost to buyer, even though the appraisal went through the roof.”
It’s hard for Sitkans to miss the new neighborhood of attractive cottages. Now, others are starting to see the numbers as well. At a recent presentation on the State of Sitka’s Economy, Meilani Schijvens of Rain Coast Data, called out Hughey and the Land Trust.
“That’s a great model that’s being used statewide, and I think even nationally,” Schijvens said. “The Sitka Model: everyone’s trying to replicate that.”
Hughey demurs. The Sitka Community Land Trust didn’t invent this model, but adapted from elsewhere. But it’s demonstrated – finally – that the model is practical in Alaska, and in Sitka’s housing market, where the price of an average home has just dropped to $500,000, down from a mere $629,000 two years ago. That dip is unlikely to continue. If it did, the Land Trust’s appraisal-based resale strategy becomes less attractive.
“So if the appraisal collapses because somehow or another, you know, the market takes a big dive, then you can, you can lose money on a community land trust home, just as you can on an on-the-market home,” said Hughey.
Despite the recent relief, the cost of housing in Sitka will probably start creeping up again, in lockstep with the rising cost of new construction. Hughey reports that the Land Trust is tackling that problem, too. The organization has just won a $300,000 grant from the Denali Commission that it will use as a revolving construction fund, which will spare its buyers from having to obtain a construction loan – a savings of about $20,000 off the top of a new cottage.
It’s a win for everyone except the banks, whose participation from the very beginning has made the Land Trust strategy possible. Nevertheless, Hughey is not concerned. “They’ll be okay,” he said.
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Rain Coast’s report is about generally positive numbers, and not an index of Sitka’s well-being. It’s a contrast Meilani Schijvens is aware of. “Yeah, I’m sorry to tell you that your economy is doing great,” she said.First the bad news. In casual conversation, people often say that Sitka is a community of about 9,000 people, or maybe 10,000 if they’re feeling generous.
But that’s far from accurate these days. Sitka lost 800 people in the last ten years. That makes just about 8,200 residents.
“The last time that you were at this rate was in 1987,” said Meilani Schijvens, with Rain Coast Data, “and the second-to-last year where you were this low was in 1980. So you’re really at a population level of where you were 40 years ago.”
Meilani Schijvens crunched the numbers for the Sitka Economic Development Association. She said that it’s not just a population loss, it’s a population shift toward more older residents, and fewer residents of “prime working age,” or 19-59. The over-60 demographic in Sitka has increased by 650. And it’s happening across the region.
“It’s not just you Sitka, don’t worry,” Schijvens said. “Other communities in Southeast are struggling even more with this, including Wrangell, Prince of Wales, and Hoonah-Angoon – all of which have an average age that’s older than yours.”
Also disturbing: Alaska Natives are leaving Sitka faster than any other demographic.
A shrinking population wouldn’t typically result in more robust economic numbers for a community, but Sitka is working against the grain. Employment, earnings – even the size of the workforce – are all up. The economy is diverse, and most sectors, including tourism, healthcare, and construction have all grown.
The only wrinkle is that Schijvens’s data are from 2019-2023, and available numbers for this year-to-date are spotty. Commercial fishing, for example, remains Sitka’s largest employment sector, with 1,000 jobs and a total of $91 million in wages in 2023, but prices for several species have tanked this year (2024), there’s been a sell off of major processors across the region, and this trend isn’t fully reflected in the data. The scales were starting to tip last year (2023) however, when the largest harvest in a decade in Sitka paid about $10 million less than the year before (2022).
Schijvens says other communities fared worse.
“So it wasn’t as tough of a hit in Sitka because you have high-value species that you’re also fishing for,” she said, “but it sounds like it was a tremendous amount of effort to get a lot less money. So obviously, very difficult on the seafood sector here.”
But as fishing is down, housing and construction are up. Per capita, Sitka leads the state in new housing units right now. All over town there is construction activity, but there’s also a story here that the numbers aren’t telling. Much of the boom is being driven by SEARHC constructing housing for healthcare workers, and some of it is summer homes built by nonresident owners. Nevertheless, these factors, plus the pressure of high interest rates, have tipped the housing market slightly toward buyers – sort of.
“And in the last two years the average value of a single family home in Sitka has decreased by 19 percent,” Schijvens said, “and you’re actually all the way back to 2017 values when it comes to the average value of a single family home – but it’s still a half million dollars.”
Only four new short-term rentals have opened in Sitka in the last two years, making a total of 137, which Schijvens says is about the Alaska average. The big pinch comes in summer, when Sitka’s workforce grows by 2,200 people. Schjivens says what once was Sitka’s year-round housing crisis, is now primarily a summer housing crisis.
There are plenty who might disagree with this assessment, however. First-time buyers don’t have many options in Sitka, and young families are frustrated both by the lack of housing and childcare, which has now become a priority issue in the business community.
These are just numbers after all, and not necessarily an accurate index of Sitka’s well-being. For example, the latest information from the state shows that the inflation rate in Alaska has dropped to 1.5 percent – below the national average. Yet a routine trip to the grocery store still stings compared to shopping in the lower 48, or even in Anchorage. This, Schijivens says, is Sitka’s “island economy,” and that’s not going to change, but it also shouldn’t overshadow a promising turnaround over the last four years. Schijvens was apologetic that she didn’t have more bad news.
“Yeah, I’m sorry to tell you that your economy is doing great,” she said.
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Rep. Rebecca Himschoot in a legislative floor session in 2023. In her remarks to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce, Himschoot noted that although the legislature passed a balanced budget, there were risks in going too far, especially with vetoes and other administrative decisions. “We’re not going to be able to serve Alaskans in the ways that they need if we keep trying to cut everything out of the budget.” {Image capture,KTOO Gavel}Rep. Rebecca Himschoot thinks the last legislative session had examples of both good and bad governance. Nevertheless, she believes the state government could be doing a better job serving Alaskans.
Himschoot spoke to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce late last month (8-28-24), running through some of the bills that passed that were most likely to have an impact on Sitka, Petersburg, and the other communities of House District 2.
At the top of her list of disappointments was the governor’s veto of the legislature’s near-unanimous bill to increase funding to public education, and to introduce so-called “forward funding,” which would end the annual cycle of budget uncertainty school districts face now.
The legislature failed to override the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 140 by one vote. For Himschoot, it still stings.
“As a former educator, I just have to own that that kind of – I’m going to call it mismanagement – is done by the legal standard, but not by a standard that actually works for Alaskans,” Himschoot said. “So I’m going to call it mismanagement on our side of the state, trickles down to classrooms, and it trickles down to the educators in the classroom. They feel it. They know that, if not their own job, their colleague’s job could be changed or completely taken off the books, and that kind of uncertainty does not make a person the best they can be in any field. So I would like us to improve the certainty around education funding in the state.”
The legislature was unable to rally to write another education bill, because it had to move on to other things. Himschoot said that with few exceptions, the legislature funded state agencies at the amount requested by the governor, only to learn that the money is insufficient to address some key problems, like the backlog in SNAP benefits for families who need food stamps, or the fact that the Department of Fish & Game has 100 fewer staff than it did ten years ago, and having to cut back on its research programs.
“My frustration has been, we put the funding out there, and then things still don’t work,” she said. “The constituents’ needs aren’t met. And who hears about it? It’s not the governor’s office. It’s me trying to help people get the services that they expect and should be getting. So I don’t want that to sound like I’m complaining. That’s what I’m here to do, and I’m happy to do it, but I would like our agencies to function better, and I’m a little concerned.”
Himschoot was pleased that major maintenance for schools was funded in Craig, Kake, and Petersburg, but she found it “heartbreaking” that a $600,000 hydro project for Pelican, which would have reduced its reliance on diesel-generated power, was cut by the governor from a list of six energy projects across the state.
Himschoot said the legislature took pains to pass a balanced budget, with no draw on savings, as has been common practice over the last decade or more.
But she was concerned that cuts without foresight would cost residents in the long run.
“We can always look for savings,” said Himschoot. “It’s the public dollar, we have to be really careful with it. But we’re not going to be able to serve Alaskans in the ways that they need if we keep trying to cut everything out of the budget.”
Rep. Rebecca Himschoot delivered a legislative update to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce late last month. In addition to running through various bills, Himschoot mentioned that this year’s Permanent Fund Dividend was expected to be $1,300, with an additional $295 in energy relief.
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Mental health counselor Melissa Marconi-Wentzel expected most Sitkans to be suffering withdrawal during the prolonged internet outage. That wasn’t the case, however. Many, she found, were relieved — like waking up to a “snow day” in school. (KCAW/Robert Woolsey) I went to see Melissa Marconi-Wentzel in her office to learn more about people’s struggles as they coped without the internet. Marconi-Wentzel, though, had a different take.
KCAW: “Some people have never felt more like they’re living on an island than they are right now.”
Marconi-Wentzel: “Or more free. You know, I had expected there to be more of that kind of internet withdrawal, the kind of stereotypical withdrawal from being constantly connected. But I actually didn’t really see that, which was a surprise to me. So from my little corner of the world, my practice, you know, my friends and colleagues and acquaintances, what I really noticed was a (not that slow) transition into a sense of relief, more so than anything.”
A sense of relief. I know I felt it – especially once we learned that the outage was limited in scope and would be of relatively short duration. I didn’t really mention it to anyone, since Sitka was already becoming a town of haves and have nots – those who have Starlink, and those who have not. But texting and cell phones – even landlines – were unreliable for a few days, with or without Starlink.
Marconi-Wentzel says being unreachable was a welcome surprise.
“What I kept hearing from adult clients and adults in my life was this sense of ‘this is like a snow day for us,’” she said. “Suddenly, we feel relief from this pressure of being constantly connected, and it feels good. And even among the adolescents and the children with whom I work, there was more appreciation for this experience than stress around it.”
So now what? A cable-laying ship is not far from Sitka, repairing our fiber-optic link to the rest of the world. Is everything going to go back to the way it was? Or will people live more intentionally now, after participating in an unintended social experiment?
Marconi-Wentzel says we don’t have to go back.
“This experience helped held up a mirror to our faces so that we gained insight into just how tied we feel to technology and how exhausting and stressful that is in our daily lives,” said Marconi-Wentzel, “and the less we had of it, the more people were starting to reconnect with other people: their families, their friends, pick up old enjoyable activities like playing the guitar, playing family games. And they realize, ‘I feel more alive, I feel more connected, I feel more human.’ And so then the question becomes, is this is something you value? How do you bring more of that back into your life once we’re reconnected to the internet? And those are the conversations I’m having with people.”
An important distinction is that out-of-touch is not necessarily isolated. The act of seeking out an available WiFi signal from someplace like Sitka’s Public Library actually brings people together, so does dropping by a neighbor’s house to download a movie. This is a lot different from the Covid Pandemic, which split communities. Marconi-Wentzel is overwhelmed by the generosity she’s seen, and the grace she’s experienced from people whose lives have been turned upside down just like hers.
“I’m just sort of buoyed by the humanity that this has brought out in everybody,” she said.
Sitka lost internet – as well as most telecommunications – on August 29 when the fiber optic cable serving the community failed. Limited service was restored by September 8, and full service could resume within a few days.
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Sitka-based filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein’s latest documentary, Cruise Boom, premieres nationwide on September 14 on PBS. The national debut culminates years of work on the part of Frankenstein and her co-director Atman Mehta, who explored both the potential benefits, and the possible downsides, of the explosive growth of cruise tourism in Sitka. The film will air on KTOO television at 7 p.m. Sunday, September 15. It can be streamed online at pbs.org. To learn about other ways to view the film, visit the Artchange, Inc. website.
Ellen Frankenstein and Atman Mehta began filming Cruise Boom in 2021, as Sitka transitioned from the 2020 pandemic summer of zero cruise passengers, and began a startling rebound to nearly 600,000 passengers in 2023 – roughly three times more than a typical summer prior to the pandemic.
Cruise Boom, however, is not a scathing indictment of the industry. Frankenstein wants the audience to think broadly about what’s unfolding, as communities react to the surging numbers.
“It is a really complex issue we try to cover in a very impressionistic film, because tourism, as we know, is super complex,” said Frankenstein. “Everybody loves to travel. We all love experiencing new places. The economic side is so amazing, because we have new food trucks in town, new businesses and all these good things. But globally, you can’t miss it in the news that over-tourism, or the saturation of tourism, is affecting places. And there’s pushback from Barcelona to Bali, there’s an upcoming vote in Juneau about ship-free Saturdays. So it’s just this interesting conversation that is not just pertinent to Sitka. So when people respond to this film elsewhere, they’re seeing it kind of as a case study.”
Frankenstein and Mehta intend the film to stimulate conversation. In fact, there are several scenes in the movie that are just conversation – Sitkans discussing how to confront, and possibly manage, the rapid growth.
No one is blind to the obvious benefits, as new businesses emerge downtown, and the municipal budget swells with increased sales tax revenues. But there are hazards, too.
Here’s an excerpt from the film.
Speaker1: “I’m either a fifth or sixth generation Sitkan, and in order for myself, my family, friends, to continue to be able to live here, there has to be an economic means for us to work and make money.
Speaker2: “I don’t want us to be a destination. I value our community, because we’re a community. You know, the pulp mill sustained the community for years, but had excesses in how much it logged and how fast it logged in the environment. Cruise ships is a similar thing.
Speaker3: “If we’re going to help shape tourism, we really have to be active and engaged stakeholders. That means talking to the cruise ship lines. It means asking the hard questions.
Speaker4: “The story is unfolding right now. So we can’t tell the ending because it’s happening right now.”
Frankenstein and Mehta shot the film over a couple of years, so Frankenstein describes it now as history, although Sitka is far from settled into the new volume of passengers. They released rough cuts early in the process, and have shown the final film several times, most recently for a group of students from Johns Hopkins University who are working toward Masters Degrees in Environmental Policy.
Frankenstein says the screening prompted an intense conversation about solutions.
“When there’s something like this that happened to Sitka in another place, who is responsible to help manage it and see how it all works out?” asked Frankenstein. “And we had this discussion: Is it the responsibility of the city and the government? Is it citizens? Is it tourists? Do we expect tourists to be more responsible in the way they travel?”
For everyone who’s not working toward a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy, Cruise Boom is a kind of mirror. The film is set in Sitka, but the same questions are being asked in other Alaskan coastal communities.
“We’ve also had community screenings in places like Skagway and Cordova and Homer in the state, and Juneau, and it’s been great,” Frankenstein said. “People have this discussion about their relationship to tourism and what they value in their communities?”
Cruise Boom will be available to stream on the PBS website or app beginning September 14. The film will be broadcast on the PBS television network nationwide – including Alaska’s PBS stations – beginning on September 15.
KCAW’s Darryl Rehkopf contributed to this story.
Listen to the full interview with Ellen Frankenstein.
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Student school board member Francis Myers reported that Starlink is available in school offices, “So the faculty is able to print paper, and so a lot of the students are now doing pencil and paper for a lot of their assignments.” (Flickr photo/Kim LoveSitka’s internet outage is inconvenient for residents, and affecting commerce in some businesses that were not able to make the jump to Starlink.
Students, however, are really going old school – literally. While Sitka’s school buildings have connectivity, there’s not the bandwidth needed to run classes as usual. As student school board member Francis Myers put it, he and his classmates are having to resort to historical methods.
“The internet outage has affected Sitka High pretty severely for the first few days,” Myers said. “It’s gotten a bit better. We got Starlink in the offices, and so the faculty is able to print paper, and so a lot of the students are now doing pencil and paper for a lot of their assignments.”
Myers was sworn into his seat at the start of the Sitka School Board’s regular meeting on Wednesday (9-4-24). He replaces his older brother Felix who graduated last spring. Felix Myers was a significant voice on the school board, and Francis appears likely to carry on that tradition, if only the broken undersea fiber optic cable had not taken down Sitka’s internet a week earlier.
“Because of the WiFi outage, I didn’t really get the papers for this meeting,” he said, “but that’ll happen later.”
The lack of connectivity affected others at the meeting. Superintendent Deidre (dee-uh-dree) Jenson had to deliver a report or two from memory. She expressed appreciation for classroom teachers who were “taking it in stride” despite the internet outage, and noted that students were rediscovering in-person communication.
“I think there are some positives to maybe not having internet all the time,” Jenson said. “I was in the high school on the steps on Friday morning, and I was hearing the hum among the kids, and I was like, ‘Is this a little bit of a more of a conversation buzz than we normally have?’ And someone said, ‘Yeah, I think it is.’”
GCI’s undersea fiber optic cable which serves Sitka failed on Thursday, August 29. A cable-laying ship is underway from Victoria, B.C., to make repairs, which are expected to be completed sometime after September 9.
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Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola (right) speaks with Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association director Linda Behnken during a meet-and-greet at Harbor Mt. Brewery in Sitka on Monday, August 5. (KCAW/Woolsey)Rep. Mary Peltola, on the campaign trail for a second full term as Alaska’s lone member of the US House of Representatives, met with about 100 Sitkans during a whistlestop tour of Southeast this week (8-5-24). Peltola has been elected twice to the US House of Representatives — first in a special election to serve out the term of longtime Rep. Don Young who died unexpectedly in 2022, and again in that year’s regular election for a full term of her own. Peltola is a Democrat, but has broken with her party’s caucus on several high profile issues, including support for drilling in the Arctic, and opposition to some gun control measures (becoming the first Democrat in the House to win an endorsement from the National Rifle Association since 2020).
Eleven other candidates are seeking the seat: Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, is running under the Republican banner with an endorsement from former President Donald Trump; Nick Begich, also a Republican (from a family of noteworthy Democrats), is returning to challenge Peltola. The congressional primary election is August 20, with early voting open through August 19 (see your community’s early voting location below). The top four candidates will advance to the Alaska general election on November 5, 2024, when voters will also choose the next President of the United States.
— With help from James Brooks of the Alaska Beacon.
Early voting locations (2024 Congressional Primary) in the KCAW listening area:
Sitka
Harrigan Centennial Hall
Monday-Friday, August 5-19, 10 am – 4 pm
Angoon
Angoon City Clerk’s Office
Monday-Friday, August 5-19, 9 am – 4 pm
Kake
Kake City Clerk’s Office
Monday-Friday, August 5-19, 9 am – 5 pm
Port Alexander
Port Alexander City Clerk’s Office
Mondays, August 5-19, 9 am – 2 pm
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, August 5-19, Noon – 1 pm
Pelican
Pelican City Clerk’s Office
Monday-Friday, August 5-19, 8 am – 4:30 pm
Tenakee Springs
Tenakee City Clerk’s Office
Monday-Wednesday, August 5-19, 10 am – 1 pm
Yakutat
Yakutat Borough Clerk’s Office
Monday-Friday, August 5-19, 9 am – 5 pm (closed Noon – 1 pm)
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The five justices of the Alaska Supreme Court review the “Hoverboard Dentist” case in February, 2024. Justice Pate (at right), from Sitka, climbed from law student, to public defender, to superior court judge, to justice — a path the Alaska Bar Association hopes to open to a diverse range of people both from within, and from outside, the state. (Alaska Beacon photo/James Brooks)Before his visit to Sitka in May, Alaska Bar Association president Jeff Robinson attended the swearing-in ceremony last February for eight of the 19 newest Alaskan lawyers.
In Alaska – as in most states – you can’t practice law until you’re admitted to the Bar, and that means passing an infamously difficult exam (although the passing score recently has been lowered by 10 points, from 280 to 270).
But for Robinson, watching US federal judge Sharon Gleason administer the oath was more than seeing a kind of graduation. He was seeing the future, and he was hopeful.
“And it struck me how many of those new members of the bar were not born in Alaska, but come up here for a clerkship for one year or two years, and then end up making connections, deciding it’s a great state, a great community to raise your family,” Robinson said. “Judge Gleason, who’s a federal judge, gave this speech to the members who were being sworn in. What she said really resonated with me, which is, (Alaska) is a very small community, but you still have to up your game when you’re practicing before Justice Pate or some of the other judges on our courts. And it’s nice to have those relationships, but we still have a very high expectation of practice.”
Justice Jude Pate came to Sitka as a law student, passed the bar, became a public defender, superior court judge, and last year was named to Alaska’s highest court by Gov. Dunleavy.
That kind of career track remains possible, but the pandemic really strained the state’s court system – and everyone who works in it, including the lawyers. Robinson says the Alaska Bar is committed to supporting its members as the system recovers.
“I think it’s really challenging for young district attorneys, young assistant public defenders, to navigate a caseload without proper training and supervision,” said Robinson. “And so again, what we’re looking for is to increase the number of people who come here, increase the diversity of our Bar, increase the access to justice that people have in the courts, so that people can get quality representation. And so that the public, including the jurors that sit on these trials, or sit on grand jury, can trust in the confidence of the system.”
Anyone who’s ever been a party to a court case knows that the paperwork – motions, briefs, filings of all kinds – pile up. Robinson is aware of the temptation to use Artificial Intelligence, not just in legal work, but in any profession that relies on the written word. He says AI will not replace attorneys, but it could help them.
“We would like to think of law as a very sort of flexible field,” said Robinson. “On the other hand, we have tradition, right? We have stare decisis (the legal doctrine of aligning with previous court decisions in similar cases), and we have case law precedent. And I would like to think in terms of the filings that our lawyers are making, the way that the lawyers in the Alaska Bar are representing themselves before the court, that they are conscientious – that you just can’t plug something into an AI-generated chat machine, and produce a result that will not be fact-checked by actual human beings. So I’d like to think that, as of now the human being is still smarter than the computer, but we’re mindful of the speed in which AI is increasing in our field.”
In addition to providing a board of governors for the legal profession, and making disciplinary recommendations to the Alaska Supreme Court for attorneys who may have violated ethics rules – or even violated laws – the Alaska Bar Association provides direct service to consumers. Pro bono Bar director Krista Scully says bar volunteers answer up to three legal questions a year for income-qualified residents (who are not currently incarcerated), on civil or criminal matters – with complete confidentiality.
The free service is conducted over email – and it’s popular, especially in landlord-tenant disputes.
“We have a volunteer that has answered 300-plus questions over the course of a couple of years,” Scully said. “And I see this as a really important tool, especially for people who don’t live in urban areas who can’t walk directly into an office to get help.”
Among their outreach in Sitka, Bar Association members visited Sitka High’s Mock Trial team, a perennial champion in the state competition. Both Scully and Robinson were hopeful that there were future lawyers and judges on the team. “One of our broader goals,” said Robinson, “is to make the judges who hear the cases to be more reflective of the population (the court) serves.”
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Rep. Rebecca Himschoot says HB230 is a step toward addressing Alaska’s education crisis, but it’s not the fix. “It is one part of the many things we need to do to improve education in the state,” she said. (APM/Eric Stone)Sitka, Petersburg, and other communities in Southeast Alaska are reducing staff or laying off teachers next year, but that’s not the case everywhere.
“Well in Sitka jobs are going away,” said Rebecca Himschoot, who represents House District 2, “and that’s been a really hard part of coming home and seeing sort of the fallout of our situation here in Sitka. But across the state, the increase in first-day vacancies has been something like 300% in the last five years. So there are lots of districts who haven’t had fully staffed schools for quite some time.”
House Bill 230 removes the limit on the number of years of experience teachers moving to the state can bring with them (six for a Bachelor’s Degree, eight for a Master’s Degree), when they enter the state’s Teachers’ Retirement System.
Himschoot says the limit is an artifact of outdated policy.
“That (the limits) made sense when we had a defined benefit system,” she said, “if you had a lot of 18-, 19-, 20-year educators coming in and you plunk them down on your salary schedule, it is going to be really expensive for our pension system. So this law probably should have been repealed when pensions were repealed back in 2006.”
But doing away with pensions also suddenly made an attractive retirement for teachers an outdated concept. Rather than a lifelong pension and medical benefits, teachers now have to save cash for retirement, because that’s all they’ll get. Unbelievably, Alaska’s teachers are disqualified from receiving Social Security.
Himschoot, a teacher herself in the Sitka School District for many years, says something has to change, and this bill moves the needle – but only slightly.
“This is not going to open floodgates of any sorts,” she said. “So this is not, this is not the fix. I think there are other tools out there that are going to be more impactful. But in combination with the other things that got placed into the bill, House Bill 230, it packs a punch. It’s not going to be the thing that changes the education landscape, but it is one part of the many things we need to do to improve education in the state.”
Two other teacher-legislators have joined Himschoot on HB230. Nikiski Sen. Jesse Bjorkman and Fairbanks Rep. Maxine Dibert added provisions that make it more attractive for retired teachers to return to the classroom, and incentivize national board-certified teachers.
Himschoot believes this is good policy, and good for students, but it’s cold comfort for younger educators who just can’t make it work in Alaska over the long term, when the prospects are significantly better elsewhere.
“When you have young teachers either produced here in Alaska, which tend to stick a little bit better, or young teachers who come from out of state, and you invite them in – a young teacher is a good teacher, but they’re not generally always a great teacher,” said Himschoot. “It takes time. It just takes time to find your way, to navigate your way into classroom success. So they spend that time here in Alaska, and then there’s nothing really holding them here. So they can go anywhere else they want to teach. Other states all offer something in the way of a pension or a hybrid plan or something more enticing than Alaska’s utter lack of retirement and no access to Social Security.”
The question on many minds in education right now is whether Gov. Dunleavy will sign off on a one-time appropriation of $680 per student next year, that could restore a few teaching positions in districts that have had layoffs. Himschoot is optimistic, having heard the governor make a “soft commitment” during a recent press conference. But that’s one-time money. Himschoot, just finishing her first term in the legislature, hopes to win reelection and take up education again in the new legislature in 2025. “The needs of the state are great,” she says, “and it’s a real honor to get to go there and try to solve problems.”
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What was originally the Chandera Trilogy is now – after two years of nonstop writing – the five-part Wilkes Chronicles. And the arc has evolved as well, from sword & sorcery into galactic science fiction. Gilbert is marketing the stories both online and directly to schools with significant indigenous populations, including Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka.
“I knew there were going to be a lot of fans, and there are now, all over the country,” said Gilbert. “I made phone calls all winter to mostly Native American schools. And my hunch was correct: They were all wow, really, really curious. Really, really interested. I’m probably going to get a big check this fall because five schools have already ordered class sets.”
Gilbert is by no means the only Indigenous science fiction/fantasy writer, but he’s the first to propel a Gwich’in protagonist across the galaxy far into the future, in a genre that’s now called “Indigenous Futurism.”
Gilbert realized that he had to finish the story, and settle his heroes back at home in village Alaska. But in fiction things don’t always go as planned. Gilbert says he heeded the advice of suspense novelist Stephen King and kept writing.
“He said, if an idea is sticking around and not leaving you alone, then write it,” said Gilbert. “He said it needs to be written, you know. And so that’s what happened with this villain. And book five was like an evil version of Max, and that was a perfect ending, too.”
By the fifth book, The Last Gron War, Maxwell Wilkes is studying to be a medical doctor, and raising a family with his co-protagonist Alexandra Parks. But the author has given the pair one final antagonist to vanquish. He’s Darkeen Staggon, who is also of Indigenous heritage – and a sociopath. Gilbert says many Native Americans have an inherent duality, a conflict between a desire to live peacefully, to work and raise families like everyone else, which is sometimes balanced against anger and bitterness over colonization and genocide. Even 300 years in the future, cultural trauma fuels Staggon’s desire for revenge – on the entire planet.
“For the last story I thought I’d tackle that duality,” said Gilbert, “so that’s how I made Darkeen Staggon the evil villain, like an evil version of Max, who wants to obliterate the Earth to avenge Native American people. And his dad was killed by Federation officials when they raided his farm, so I carefully constructed Max’s villain’s, character, Darkeen, and he has Max’s competency as a military leader. However, he’s using it for evil.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Gilbert says the hero’s journey has been recounted thousands of times since Homer brought Odysseus back to Ithaca after twenty years. Even modern-day epics like Star Wars are rooted in Homeric sensibilities. Gilbert’s stories don’t stray far from these ideas, but his heroes use a much different lens – one that is pointed squarely at Native culture.
“They’re tired themes, but they could be quickly reawakened from the perspective of a Native American person,” Gilbert said, “because we have our own attitudes based on our unique spirituality, the way we approach everything, and the way we do everything – it’s a little different, you know. We have nuances that aren’t really seen.”
Gilbert has pitched his ideas to publishers and to Hollywood, but frequently hears that an Indigenous lead is just too risky. His biggest bite yet was for a screenplay of a buddy film starring a pair of Native American policewomen, but the pandemic put the production company out of business.
So, Maxwell Wilkes’ last battle is also Gilbert’s. The 44-year old has published several non-fiction books on climate change and Gwich’in culture, in addition to the self-published Wilkes Chronicles. The writing has been rewarding in all ways but monetary. He says it’s time to move on creatively. In addition to being an author, Gilbert is a musician, photographer, and filmmaker, and hopes to build a career that capitalizes on his talents. “I will always be an artist at heart,” he says. Matt Gilbert’s Wilkes Chronicles are available on Amazon. His sci-fi pen name is Wolf Golan.
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Morgan Robidou poses with the Awakin in October, 2022. Coast Guard investigators believe Robidou was one of the first swept overboard when a wave broke and flooded the boat near Low Island in Sitka Sound on May 28, 2023. In the ensuing chaos and loss of control, the Awakin was quickly capsized, leading to the loss of Robidou and his four passengers. (FB image) The Awakin was a very typical charter boat for Sitka: 31-feet long, aluminum hull, twin 250-horsepower outboards, eight years old, and fully equipped with radar, radios, and other electronics for the kind of day fishing it was designed to do.
This type of boat is common in Alaska’s charter industry. Called a “well deck,” it has a big central cabin, and tall sides that allow passengers to safely walk all around the perimeter of the boat when fishing.
While the well deck makes for great fishing, it proved to be a conspicuous liability in the tragedy that struck the Awakin on May 28, 2023, at exactly 2:43 in the afternoon.
“We determined, based on all the evidence before us and an analysis, that the initiating event of the Awakin’s casualty was a sudden flooding of Awakin’s well deck by a large swell,” said Cmdr. Nate Menefee, who led the Coast Guard’s investigative team.
He told the standing-room only crowd in Harrigan Centennial Hall that the Coast Guard’s forensics lab was able to recover the data from the laptop on board the Awakin used for navigation. Investigators could determine position, speed, and depth of the water under the Awakin from the moment it departed Sitka’s Crescent Harbor at 6 a.m. until the moment it stopped recording at 2:43 p.m., when the Awakin was on a slow drift south of Low Island, its passengers jigging for rockfish at the end of a long day of trolling for salmon and halibut fishing.
The Coast Guard Investigative Team began its Casualty Report with a solemn recognition of those who lost their lives in the incident on May 28, 2023:
Morgan Robidou, 32, master;
Brandi Tyau, 56, and her partner Robert Solis, 61, of Canoga Park, California;
Danielle Agcaoili, 53, and her husband Maury Agcaolli, 57, of Waipahu, Hawaii.
On a good day, the shore of Low Island can be treacherous. The bottom is irregular – formed by lava from the Mt. Edgecumbe volcano thousands of years ago – and ocean swells can suddenly heave and break, especially at low tide.
Menefee said the Awakin, its captain busy assisting clients, was likely taken by surprise by a breaking swell that first flooded the boat, and then rolled it.
“The loss of vessel control may have prevented the master from making a radio distress call,” he said. “The loss of control could have been due to electrical or mechanical issues, or the chaotic situation that would likely ensue following the swamping of the vessel’s well deck.”
The Awakin’s owner and captain, Morgan Robidou, was young and in his first season operating a charter boat, but he knew his business. He grew up in Sitka and had logged over 800 service days on the ocean toward earning his 50-ton masters license. Also, he had taken this same route 19 times in just the previous five days.
Safety aboard a charter boat – officially called an uninspected passenger vessel, and unofficially known as a six-pack – is heavily dependent on the master. The Awakin was well-equipped with safety gear, including two “digital selective calling” radios that would have sent an SOS and the boat’s position, if only someone had known to push the button. (And if someone had received it. The DSC system, called the “Alaska 21 Rescue System” is relatively new and has “reliability issues. On May 28, 2023, there was no DSC coverage in Sitka Sound from a Coast Guard shore station, although a message could have been relayed – had one been sent).
Unfortunately, Robidou himself was likely among the first two swept overboard.
“it’s very probable that anybody standing on the back of the well deck may have gone overboard including the master,” said Menefee.
With no captain and no other boats nearby, the remaining passengers on the Awakin were in dire straits. Uninspected passenger vessels in the US are not required to carry a life raft or an EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), a device which automatically releases from a submerged boat and sends an emergency signal. The investigators say this type of hull – again a well deck – lacks adequate drainage if a lot of water suddenly floods over its tall bulwarks. Once swamped, it did not take much for the boat to roll and capsize. In perhaps the most tragic detail of the investigation, a passenger remained alive in the submerged cabin of the Awakin for at least a half-hour and sent several texts asking the recipient to call 9-1-1. Then the person, known as Passenger One, tried calling Sitka Dispatch.
Prerecorded voice of slide narrator: “There were five outgoing calls to 911 on passenger one’s phone made between 15:01 and 15:12. Data showed all five attempts to call 911 as not answered.”
The Sitka Dispatch records show no calls were received during that time. Although there is spotty cell service in Sitka Sound, investigators believe that it was impossible for Passenger One to obtain a signal while trapped in a submerged aluminum boat.
Factors which the Team concluded played no role in the loss of the Awakin or its passengers:
— Although one full and one partially-full bottle of rum were found on board, Morgan Robidou’s blood alcohol level was consistent with the natural post-mortem process between his death on May 28 and his autopsy on June 9, and not from consumption of alcohol. Charter guests often gave Robidou bottles of “Captain Morgan”-brand rum as gifts.
— Awakin’s anchor was found fouled on the bottom near Low island, but investigators concluded that it slipped from the bow roller after the boat capsized.
— Flare sightings reported in Sitka Sound during the search were not related to the incident. The Awakin’s flare kit was recovered intact and unopened.
— Although winds were expected to increase offshore to small-craft level later in the afternoon of May 28, they were not yet high at the time of the incident. The Awakin was under control until the moment it was lost.
— Discrepancies at Low Island between raster charts and the Time Zero vector charts in use on the Awakin’s navigation laptop (although the Team notified Time Zero of this issue).
.
The Awakin was due back in port at 4 p.m. When it failed to arrive, fellow charter operators began calling the Awakin on VHF radio. Others began looking, and at least one boat went all the way out to Cape Edgecumbe following the Awakin’s usual route. It wasn’t until almost 5:30 p.m. that the owner of Kingfisher Lodge notified the Coast Guard of an overdue vessel. Typically, once the Coast Guard decides to initiate a search, a helicopter can be airborne in a half-hour. On May 28, a half-fueled helicopter was ready at Air Station Sitka, but the pilot, expecting a long search flight, ordered a full tank. The pit crew encountered some problems, however, and it was 58 minutes before the helicopter took off.
Air Station Sitka commander Cpt. Vincent Jansen supported his pilot’s decision, although looking back it was clear that the fueling issues weighed heavily on him.
“I’ve been flying for 20 years, the fuel tanks and the fuel pit we have right here in Sitka is the best I’ve ever seen,” said Jansen. “And it’s also the most well-maintained. We had two malfunctions that day with that fueling system. It’s Murphy’s Law. Everything else was by the book but it couldn’t happen at a worst time. And I own that.”
The 58-minute delay likely didn’t matter. By the time the Coast Guard was notified that the Awakin was overdue, the five people aboard had been in the water two-and-a-half hours without floatation, or trapped in the sunken vessel’s cabin, and almost certainly no longer alive.
The investigators made a handful of recommendations to the Coast Guard Commandant to prevent similar tragedies, including requiring uninspected passenger vessels to carry life rafts and EPIRBS – much like the commercial fishing fleet – and to have significantly more drainage on deck. It’s not clear whether anything will change, however. As Menefee said, regarding the life rafts and EPIRBs, “We’ve made these recommendations before.”
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NSRAA assumed management of the Little Port Walter chinook program when NOAA stopped collecting eggs in 2020. But eggs had to be shuttled to NSRAA’s Hidden Falls Hatchery, and then returned as fry. Receiving a hatchery permit for LPW chinook will put an end to the commute for kings, and allow NSRAA to build chinook program. In the photo, king fry hatched at Hidden Falls are transferred for release at Little Port Walter. (NSRAA photo)NSRAA has been keeping the chinook program going at Little Port Walter since 2020 when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stopped collecting eggs at the site. NSRAA general manager Scott Wagner says that his organization stepped in to help by using its Hidden Falls Hatchery permit, and shuttling eggs and fry the 64 miles between the two locations.
The broodstock for Little Port Walter come from the Keta River and were being reared experimentally in a joint effort between NOAA’s Auke Bay Laboratory and the state. Wagner says NSRAA was interested in further developing Keta River chinook, and integrating them into their overall program.
“Fish & Game and NOAA started that program, maybe a decade ago, and it was just starting to show good signs of progress,” Wagner said. “And then that (Keta River) stock also tends to be an inside-rearing king salmon stock. So those will be harvested more in the winter troll fisheries. And additionally (Keta) tends to be a larger bodied stock, so slightly larger per-fish pounds that the fisherman receive when they harvest those.”.
NSRAA has applied for an “Aquatic Resources” permit to manage the Little Port Walter chinook program on site, saving time and money transporting eggs and fry between that location and Hidden Falls. The permit application won unanimous approval of the Southeast Regional Planning Team at its April meeting in Sitka. It will have to go to the Commissioner of Fish & Game for final approval.
Aquaculture section chief for ADF&G, Garold “Flip” Pryor, says the application was largely unopposed, and met the basic criteria for the commissioner’s approval – namely, the location of Little Port Walter on the southern tip of Baranof Island puts it far enough away from Southeast’s mainland rivers, which can be more sensitive to comingling of hatchery stocks.
“So we tend to be a little bit more lenient on issuing permits in a non sensitive zone than a sensitive zone,” said Pryor. “If it’s (the proposed hatchery program is) in a sensitive zone, then one of the requirements is to use the closest broodstock available. And so in this case, at the south end of Baranof Island there’s not a lot of spawning of chinook salmon near there. I think the Farragut River is the nearest and it’s over 50 miles away.”
At that range, Pryor says, the documented “straying” of hatchery-produced kings is significantly reduced.
The minutes of the Southeast Regional Planning Team did note one concern over potential straying. Chris Guggenbickler, the gillnet representative on the board of the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association, contended that fish from both Little Port Walter and Hidden Falls Hatchery had been identified in the Stikine and Taku rivers. He wrote, “Maybe this fall I can have someone tell me what an acceptable level of straying is, whether it comes from a sensitive zone or a non-sensitive zone.” Guggenbickler urged ADF&G to take a close look at the possibility of straying.
If its permit wins approval, the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association is hoping to increase chinook releases at Little Port Walter, and improve the availability of king salmon during the winter and spring troll fisheries.
Unlike its other projects, under an Aquatic Resources permit NSRAA will not be allowed to harvest and sell fish itself – a process known as cost recovery. Any kings that make it back to the hatchery and are not recovered for broodstock will unfortunately be wasted. NSRAA manager Wagner says this could potentially run to thousands of fish. In lieu of cost recovery, NSRAA has received some federal Pacific Salmon Treaty mitigation funding to pay for the program.
For Wagner and the NSRAA board, saving Little Port Walter was really a matter of not losing a chinook program, in an area where chinook have been important historically. He believes people have been working with kings in the Little Port Walter area since the 1930s. He said, “It would be a shame to see that all go away.”
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Former district business manager Dave Arp has returned to work for Sitka Schools as an interim. “This picture is a heartbreaker for a finance person,” he said, pointing to a spreadsheet showing district reserves at nearly zero next year. “So you better be good at what you do.” (KCAW/Woolsey)The decision by the Sitka School Board to move ahead with a major staff cut came just hours after some relatively good news from Juneau. The Senate Finance Committee – co-chaired by Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman – had drafted a balanced state budget for next year that included a one-time $680 increase in per-pupil funding for K-12 education, and the budget had won approval from the full Senate.
Gov. Dunleavy in March vetoed an education bill with a permanent increase of $680 in per pupil funding, and last year he vetoed half of a one-time appropriation, and sent public schools an extra $340.
During a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Dunleavy told reporters he’d let the full $680 stand this time around.
“I’ve told people I’m open to an increase in one-time funding, especially to help with the inflationary issues, yes,” said Gov. Dunleavy.
“Does your number match their (the legislature’s) number?” asked Becky Bohrer, with the Associated Press.
“I don’t have a pencil on me here,” responded Dunleavy, “but if it’s close to the $680-something, yes.”
The Sitka School Board, however, chose to stick with a budget carefully built around only a $500 increase, as a way to hedge its bets. Board member Phil Burdick explained why.
“So we’re going to have to go based on this $500,” said Burdick. “Or decide we want to do a $680 budget, trusting the governor. (Laughter in audience.) That was not a joke.”
Definitely not a joke. The Sitka School District has been faced with budget cuts and potential staff reductions in the past, but those have almost always been managed through retirements, or teachers leaving voluntarily for work elsewhere. This time, however, 16 teachers are getting laid off. The remaining staff will be reshuffled among the five schools, but the direct loss in positions will be:
3.5 fewer positions at Sitka High,
.5 fewer positions at Pacific High,
3.5 fewer positions at Blatchley Middle School,
5 fewer positions at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary,
and 3 fewer position at Xóots Elementary.
Course offerings will also be limited. There will be nine fewer electives offered at Sitka High, and 18 fewer electives at Blatchley. Pupil-to-Teacher ratios in elementary classrooms – or PTRs – will increase, to 18 at Xóots and 24 at Keet Gooshi Heen.
PTRs will also go up at Blatchley and Sitka High, but those classes are structured differently than at the elementary level, so they average lower. Nevertheless, high school Biology teacher Stacy Golden offered some insight into what it will look like.
“So I just want to give you an idea of how my life has changed this week, to give you an idea of what it’s like,” said Golden. “So I currently have about 128 students. Next year, I will have at least 150 students. And I’ll do it, and I’ll make it work. And in my higher elective classes that thrive at those numbers of 15, because I’m the Biology teacher. So it’s all place-based and tons of outside and tons of field trips. I run into the same dynamic that any other teacher would: when I’ve got 25 kids, it’s a whole lot harder to deal with them in these more remote environments than it is for 15. Again, I’ll make it work.”
If the governor approves the operating budget with the one-time increase of $680 per pupil, it will save four teaching jobs in Sitka – for next year. The year after, if the governor continues to resist increasing funding for schools, Superintendent Deidre Jenson said things would be worse, and the district would likely have to close and consolidate schools, as has been done this year in Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage.
The budget decisions made by the Sitka board this spring have been driven by the numbers, and how many jobs may be lost. Board member Phil Burdick wondered what else was being lost.
“We have a strategic plan that talks a lot about equity. We have a strategic plan that talks about closing learning gaps, opportunity gaps, achievement gaps,” Burdick said, “and I get that it is complex at the secondary level. But those numbers don’t make sense to me. I can’t get into the weeds about how staff manage their buildings. And I’m going to trust that they know what’s best for their buildings. But from what I see, I still see higher butts in seats at the lower level than I do at the upper level.”
The school board has a statutory obligation to pass a budget by May 1, so that is what it did (4-0 with Steve Morse absent and excused). But non-retention notices don’t have to go out to teachers until May 13. Board president Tristan Guevin said the district should consider this a placeholder budget until more information came in about the state operating budget, and other variables like insurance premiums, and federal “Secure Rural Schools” funding. He called for a special meeting on May 9, to give the administration more time to adjust the numbers and plan for next year in a way that would help the district recover its momentum. Even with the possibility of saving four teaching jobs, that is a tall order. “In my time in Sitka,” said Guevin, “I’ve never come close to seeing reductions like this.”
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Sitka began closing Lincoln Street to traffic in 2022, when 383,000 passengers visited the town. 2024 brought Sitka’s first 10,000-passenger day, which many agreed was not optimal. (KCAW/Kimmell)The two governments in Sitka get together for a meal and an informal meeting a couple of times a year. Most recently, two days before the community will be swarmed by cruise passengers.
Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz apologized for what is likely to be a wild start to the visitor season.
“So the goal going forward is to not have 9,000,” said Eisenbeisz. “A week ago, it wasn’t. This port call was added very late in the agenda. So Thursday will be busy. What a way to kick off the season.”
There will be three ships in port on Thursday in Sitka – rather than two – with a total passenger capacity of 9,300. The late-comer is the Nieuw Amsterdam, which notified Sitka’s port director about a week ago that it was making an unscheduled call. Combined, the three ships have several thousand crew, many of whom catch a shuttle for the seven-mile ride into town, and can raise the actual number of visitors into five figures.
Sitka officials at the meeting were wary of a possible citizen initiative that would limit summertime cruise visitation to less than half of last year’s record season. The mayor cautioned the Tribal Council that recent efforts by city hall to establish a Parks & Recreation program, assume responsibility for maintenance of the schools and the Performing Arts Center, and to take over management of the school swimming pool, would all be jeopardized by limiting cruise ship calls.
Mayor Eisenbeisz described a simple trade-off: increased tourism or local amenities.
“I think that’s a choice that community can make,” he said. “The other side of not having buses on your streets, is not having a parks & rec program too.”
Tribal Council member Lillian Feldpausch, however, thought the argument was overstated.
“What is it going to take to be able to run at minimum some of these programs?” she asked. “Because that’s kind of like holding people hostage to say, ‘You don’t have these, you know, we don’t get the funding for these, say goodbye.’
Mayor Eisenbeisz said it was not his intention to hold anyone hostage, and that more work needed to be done on tourism. Rather than impose a season limit, he believed Sitka could better manage a daily limit, and one day a week with no ships at all.
Municipal administrator John Leach said the city was investigating a regional strategy to manage cruise traffic, because if Sitka enforced a day with no ships, the cruise lines would go to other towns, and possibly increase congestion there. He wanted a solution that didn’t involve the courts or a ballot initiative.
“Because when it goes to the ballot box, there’s, there’s legal implications on either side pro or against,” he said, ” and it’s going to affect another community.”
As for the cruise passengers, no one disputes that their arrival will be both an economic and culinary boost. A new food truck offering Hawaiian Doughnuts is parked downtown, along with another specializing in Cuban food. “Welcome back to all the food trucks as well,” the mayor said. “I’m pretty excited about that.”
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“As much as we would like to be, we’re not superheroes,” Keet Gooshi Heen music teacher Susan Brant-Ferguson told the Sitka School Board following a statewide education protest on April 24. “The lack of funding will affect the quality of programs.” (KCAW/Woolsey)Note: The Sitka School Board will hold a public budget hearing 9 a.m. to noon this Saturday, April 27, in the district office board room. Final adoption of the Fiscal Year 2025 budget is scheduled for the board’s regular meeting 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 1, in Harrigan Centennial Hall. May 15 is the deadline to notify staff of non-retention.
Ryan Myers is a non-tenured Math teacher, whose job could well disappear next year. He told the board he would rather have the bad news sooner than later.
“I’ve obviously been looking at jobs, and every week the number of available jobs everywhere just goes down, down, down, because everyone’s looking,” said Myers. “I mean, the longer I wait, the fewer jobs I’ve got to choose from, and I’m trying to make choices about whether I’m going to leave my son here to finish school and have to go live somewhere else. And these are choices I would like to get on with.”
The school board is considering two no-win scenarios, even if the legislature and the governor come to an agreement before the end of the legislative session in May. The first assumes that the state will come to the rescue with a one-time increase of $500 to the BSA, which would still mean a loss of 18 staff positions in the Sitka School District. (A third scenario – a $680 increase to the BSA – is considered unlikely because the governor vetoed it last year.) Incoming superintendent Deidre Jenson advocated for the $500 assumption, because the other alternative – a one-time increase of only $340 to the BSA – was both painful to contemplate, and would force the elimination of programs that might never come back. 22 teachers would be fired under this scenario, there would be far fewer classes in the middle and upper grades, and those classes would be larger. Jenson did not mince words.
“The cuts are going to be hard no matter what,” she said. “It’s, it’s going to hurt deep, and our kids are going to pay.”
Jenson argued that it would be preferable to plan a reasonable schedule next year, and cut back only if forced to. Elementary school music teacher Susan Brant-Ferguson, however, believed it was time to inform the public about what was on the line, under either the $500 or $340 BSA scenario.
“The lack of funding will compromise the quality of our programs,” Brant-Ferguson said emphatically. “Because as much as we would like to be superheroes, we’re not. And there’s a point at which, when you take on more students, when you take on more classes, when you take on more this or that – it does compromise the quality of our programs. So I know it’s not you doing that, but there’s only so much we can do.”
The board itself was split on which BSA scenario to build next year’s budget on, with Steve Morse leaning toward $500, and Todd Gebler and Tristan Guevin more comfortable with $340. The board hasn’t made a decision yet, because they haven’t had to, and some variables – such as next year’s health insurance premiums – remain unsettled. But time is running out for the board to choose a number, and for over a dozen Sitka teachers – even under the most optimistic scenario – to pack up their classrooms.
From the board’s April 16 hearing: The community “needs a chance to react” to the dramatic cuts likely next year
The legislature’s failure – by one vote – to override Gov. Dunleavy’s veto of the education bill has left the Sitka School District financially high and dry. In past years, an eleventh-hour push in the capitol has rescued schools, but that’s not likely this time. The help that’s expected to pass in Juneau – $340 per student – is about as good as no help at all, and schools are going to have to slash positions, as many as 24 in Sitka.
Bottom line is we have been operating off of a low pupil:teacher ratio for a long time,” said incoming superintendent Deidre Jenson. “And it’s going to have to increase. So that’s that.”
Jenson and interim superintendent Steve Bradshaw, who’s already returned to his home in Montana, are jointly running the district administration. Neither has shown their hand about how they’ll close a $2.6 million budget gap next year. As a result, the April 16 work session with the Sitka School Board was a combination of hand-wringing and spitballing about pupil:teacher ratios and the food service contract, and gathering ideas from a small audience comprised mostly of educators.
Board member Phil Burdick felt the room was sidestepping the issue.
“At some point we’re going to have to say, we can’t be everything to everyone,” said Burdick. “So what Lane are we going to choose? And this is where I would like to see some community input. What do you want in your school? Where do you want to see us go because we only have one lane anymore. We’ve been driving down the super freeway for a while, and it is narrowing.”
At the top of board members Todd Gebler’s and Tom Williams’s minds was continued frustration over the precipice that schools had been brought to by political gamesmanship in Juneau. Board member Steve Morse wanted to explore early retirement incentives for the district. Burdick pressed for more involvement from the public in what could be a radical change in local education next year.
“You know, we’ve talked a lot about community input and no shine on people who are here, but you’re all intimately involved in education,” Burdick said. “Is there a way that we’re going to get public input? That is, parents, families, students? I know it’s capacity and time, but is there a way for buildings to ask your people what it is that they’re really concerned about?”
Board president Tristan Guevin suggested surveying the public, but expressed reservations about the very short timeline before the board’s budget had to be completed. (Well-versed in the politics of the situation in Juneau, Guevin said that “any budget the board submitted could be considered an interim budget,” until final action in the legislature.)
Sarah Ferrency, interim education director for the Sitka Tribe, suggested that diverse communities had already been consulted through strategic planning. She thought a survey would return a narrow response from anyone with the interest, aptitude, and technology to take it.
“Nobody wants to make these changes,” she said, “like, nobody does. We walked in this room, and I thought I was coming to a funeral.”
Nevertheless, the district’s strategic plan wasn’t written with the seismic changes possible next year in Sitka’s schools. Mike Vieira is the president of the Sitka Education Association, the union representing teachers. He said most residents were expecting cuts of 10-12 teaching positions, and not the 20-24 now on the table.
“I think you just need to give the community a chance to react to that change in reality, and not get bogged down in the semantics of what the survey is going to be,” Vieira said. “Just give us a chance to have some feedback on the change of those numbers. Because they haven’t those numbers yet. It’s a remaking of the entire district.”
Board president Guevin recommended an additional work session in May, prior to the board’s next meeting. Incoming superintendent Jenson said that she and the building principals were developing plans to specifically address cuts next year, and that a community-wide hearing could help inform the board about what programs and positions should go.
The post Following statewide protest, Sitka teachers ask board for specifics on staff and program cuts appeared first on KCAW.
Even at the time of its construction in 2018, there were concerns that the deepwater dock at Sitka’s Gary Paxton Industrial Park would evolve into a cruise passenger facility. (SEDA photo)The Gary Paxton Industrial Park board met on April 22 and agreed that the $1 per head tariff charged last year for use of the GPIP floating dock was too low, and out of line with fees at Sitka’s other public facilities. Executive director Garry White said the city was examining rates charged in other Southeast cities, with the goal of establishing a consistent rate in Sitka.
“There’s a City & Borough’s in a study right now to do basically benchmarking,” he said, “looking at all of the different ports around Southeast to come up with some rates. And the goal is to get the harbor system and GPIP on the same field where we’re not competing against one another, where it’s a standard rate across.”
The board had previously considered bumping the per-passenger fee to $5 for use of the dock. Adventure Sitka, a local excursion company, is a major customer at the dock. Co-owner Chris McGraw said that his company had already cut deals with the cruise lines, and a fivefold increase in the tariff was not factored into their rate structure.
McGraw urged the board to hold the increase to $2 for this year, while the city resolved the broader tariff question.
“Ultimately, I feel if we could get to some standard tariff rate that is community-wide,” he said, “whether you come here to Crescent, or you go out there, it’s the same for our type of shore excursion service versus actual ship that’s coming in letting off passengers.”
Sitka opened the 250-foot deepwater dock at the industrial park in 2018. It’s seen growing use by the fishing fleet, and increasing demand from small cruise lines for moorage. Adventure Sitka uses a finger float connected to the dock to board roughly 10,000 passengers per summer for its excursion in Silver Bay. Jeremy Serka works in the marine trades at the park. He suggested that Adventure Sitka was not only getting a good deal, it was also limiting the ability of industrial users to access the dock.
“Not only are you getting that (moorage), you’re getting access with your buses all day long coming through there, too, which prohibits anybody from getting down to the dock,” Serka said. “So next year at this time hopefully that haulout is complete, and we’re going to have to look at what are we going to do if there’s a ship in town, or if somebody wants to lay up for a little bit to look at their engine.”
Board member Casey Campell agreed, but didn’t want to start that conversation on the eve of the summer tour and fishing seasons. He proposed taking up the user issue again in the fall.
“I think there’s a lot of long term concerns which are valid and that we’re going to need to address here sooner than later,” said Campbell, “with what GPIP looks like, you know, down the road with industrial activity, the haulout and, you know, tourism activity that is continuing to maybe grow out there.”
The Gary Paxton Industrial Park board voted unanimously to recommend raising the tariff for use of the deepwater dock to $2 for the 2024 season, and to $5 for 2025.
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Seafood Producers Cooperative is spending $200,000 to upgrade its energy, half of which will be rebated by the US Department of Agriculture’s REAP program. “And when you’re at half the payback on a project, man, that gets really good,” he told the Sitka Chamber of Commerce. (KCAW/Woolsey)Seafood Producer’s Cooperative in Sitka is upgrading its energy systems, with financial help from the federal government.
Stephen Rhoads is the vice-president of sales for SPC. He said problems with old, diesel-fired equipment at the plant came to a head last winter.
“Our heating system was built with the plant,” Rhoads said. “ And it is a diesel boiler on one end of the plant, and my office is on the opposite side of the plant. And it’s been getting less and less effective. And this winter, I had enough space heaters in my office that when I hit print on my printer, I would blow the breaker to the office. So I stopped printing.”
Rhoads outlined SPC’s energy strategy during a presentation to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce on April 16. He said SPC is the nation’s oldest and largest fisherman-owned cooperative in the country. It met the criteria for a grant from the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program – or REAP. The first step involved an extensive energy audit by the agency, and then a lengthy application.
But Rhoads said it has been worth it.
“The first year, we went for a project of a hair under $200,000,” he said, “and they’re gonna reimburse us $100,000. We’re ripping out our diesel boilers, and we’re putting in heat pumps in all of the office and break rooms. It’s a big project – we’ve been talking about it for years – we were going to have to replace our diesel system anyways. And we’re going to upgrade to heat pumps, and be into it. And when you’re at half the payback on a project, man that gets really good.”
Rhoads encouraged other businesses – both nonprofit and for-profit – to look into REAP. He said many fishing vessel owners were put off at first, because there is no funding for energy improvements for propulsion – or, new engines. However, there are plenty of other systems that qualify for funding.
“On commercial fishing vessels, they have done generators, they’ve done heat pumps, so people can offset the diesel cost of heating their boats in winter,” said Rhoads. “They put variable frequency drives on circulation pumps, replaced entire freezer systems, fixed the shore power connection to be compliant with the city utilities, batteries, LED lights. But there’s a lot of flexibility on what can be done.”
Rhoads said that another challenge in Sitka was finding a contractor qualified to perform energy improvements. But once that hurdle was down, he said the project could be completed well within the USDA’s two-year requirement.
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The Sitka Chamber of Commerce designs and manages “Visit Sitka” under a base contract of $300,000. For the last several years, however, it’s asked for an additional $275,000 to fund a variety of projects. With this new “baseline,” some on the Sitka Assembly wonder whether it’s time to overhaul Visit Sitka, and solicit competitive proposals to run it. (KCAW photo)Change is coming for Sitka’s visitor marketing and information program – but not this year. In a recent work session (3-26-24) with the Chamber of Commerce, assembly members indicated that it was time to revisit the strategy behind “Visit Sitka.”
The Sitka Chamber of Commerce assumed responsibility for visitor marketing following the dissolution of the Sitka Convention & Visitors Bureau in 2015.
And by just about every metric, Visit Sitka has done a remarkable job.
Rachel Roy is the director of the Sitka Chamber, and oversees Visit Sitka.
“There used to be weeks in the summer, during the Fine Arts Camp or the Music Festival, that would be sold out,” said Roy, “and that’s not the case anymore. There are several months where there is little space left for this summer. We heard from our multi-day charter operators and lodges three or four years ago that they were filled up and sold out and really encourage travelers to book ahead, book for next year – book your ‘25 dates now – because they’re filling up. So that demand has really, really been there.”
The City of Sitka pays the Chamber $300,000 to manage Visit Sitka, which produces a variety of printed guides, maintains a website and visitor center, with a full-time staff of four and ten summer employees. That’s a lot for $300,000, which is why for the last several years the Chamber has asked for – and received – a $275,000 supplemental appropriation. Assembly members didn’t necessarily balk at paying for the services, but they did wonder if the mission of Visit Sitka had creeped from the mission of the old Sitka Convention & Visitors Bureau, which was intended to support independent travelers.
Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz wondered if the budget was creeping, too.
“I think we’ve drifted away from the annual contract amount being the baseline,” said Eisenbeisz. “And now we’ve hit this new baseline of $500,000, without any supplemental asks, and that was never really how I saw this to happen. I saw the supplemental budget as the projects above that baseline that we had wanted done.”
The Sitka Chamber of Commerce is an independent nonprofit organization, with other pursuits besides Visit Sitka. With the recent rapid growth in cruise tourism, assembly members have begun to ask whether Sitka’s visitor marketing should be restructured, and put out to bid. Mayor Eisenbeisz thought the regular supplemental budget requests were pointing in that direction.
“ I think that just reinforces the assembly’s desire to go out to a new RFP (Request For Proposals), because clearly that amount isn’t matching what it costs to do what we’ve asked for.”
Assembly member Thor Christianson supported issuing an RFP, and refocusing Visit Sitka’s marketing efforts on independent travelers, who pay the bed tax, which constitutes a large portion of the Visit Sitka budget.
“To me, the natural way to do it is to focus on the people that are paying your bills,” said Christianson. “If Visit Sitka is going to be dealing with cruise ship people then we need to move a revenue stream from that group to it.”
Chamber director Rachel Roy reminded the assembly there was significant overlap between independent travelers and cruise passengers.
“Thirty-percent of independent travelers first came on a cruise ship – that’s your introduction to Alaska,” she said, “and so I think that’s always been kind of understood.”
Assembly member Tim Pike agreed. Once a person is on the ground in Sitka, they’re a visitor, regardless of how they got here. He favored a resolution that didn’t put people into opposing camps.
“The cruise ship people are going to show up and ask questions, regardless,” he said, “we’re not going to turn them away and say, ‘Sorry, we only work for the airplane travelers.’ I think we need to figure out how to manage this particular problem and where those funds come from is up to us to figure out, if we’re uncomfortable with the bed tax paying for it.”
With the first cruise ship due to arrive in mid-April, and the presses rolling on all the maps and guides that will be distributed this season, the assembly will likely approve the Chamber’s supplemental budget request when it officially arrives on a meeting agenda, and possibly then direct staff to develop a new plan for next year. “At the end of the day,” said Mayor Eisenbeisz, “the amount presented from Visit Sitka is the cost of doing business status quo.”
Note: In a previous meeting, the Sitka Assembly also discussed creating a Tourism Commission and a city tourism director.
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Draft concepts of Sitka’s proposed marine haulout and boatyard from a community meeting in June, 2023. Although voters in 2022 approved spending $8.2 million, and the Denali Commission came through with another $1 million, the project is still $5.7 million short of the full-sized project depicted in these plans. (KCAW/Woolsey)The new marine haulout and boatyard at Sitka’s Gary Paxton Industrial Park is a year out from completion, although no ground has been broken yet. Board members heard an optimistic update from the municipal engineer last week.
The city received two “highly competitive” bids for the project, according to municipal engineer Michael Harmon. Now, the goal is to see how well costs for the winning bidder, Western Marine Construction, align with design estimates.
Harmon spoke to the board of the industrial park last week (3-18-24).
“So I’m very antsy to get into that step to really feel like we can come back to you with much higher confidence in our overall approach,” said Harmon. “I’m still very confident in it but I’d like to hear that from the contractor.”
Sitka has just over $9 million in hand for the project, from the sale of the former Sitka Community Hospital building, and a $1 million grant from the Denali Commission. This amount will buy a very basic facility, including a travelift and washdown pads, but it will take roughly $6 million more to add features like an expanded boatyard, restrooms and office space.
With such a tight budget, rising costs are a worry. Harmon told the board that bringing in a contractor at the design stage – technically called a Construction Manager at Risk – means that the CMAR will bear significant responsibility for holding the line on expenses.
“These contracts are set up so the construction is on actual costs,” said Harmon. “They have to prove up on their actual costs: All their receipts, their time, their labor, and then they get their markup on top of that. And then the third component that we locked in, and Sitka is kind of unique in this because we’re trying to lock in as much as we can on these upfront, is we listed out a whole bunch of general conditions like mobilizing your equipment here, getting office space for your crew – you had a whole list of general conditions that they locked in now, and they cannot change that either.”
Harmon said the variables at this point boiled down to materials and subcontractors.
A consistent concern of the industrial park board is the absence of electrical service to the boatyard work areas. With no wiggle room in the main funding package, park director Garry White said he’s looking at doing it as a side project.
“We’ve heard from this board that’s an important thing,” he said, “and we really want to figure out how we can separate this project from that project. Because if we ended up going for something that’s going to fit the waterfront, that could tie in NEPA and all kinds of other federal environmental stuff that would potentially drag out the waterfront development.”
NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires an environmental assessment of federally-funded projects. Consequently, White sought the board’s approval to apply for non-federal funding to pay for electrical service.
Actual construction of the boatyard and haulout is scheduled to begin this coming October, with final completion in March, 2025.
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Although the legislature voted 56-3 in support of the education bill, Gov. Dunleavy shot it down with a stroke of his veto pen, writing ” Although I SUPPORT an increase to the base student allocation – there were no new approaches, other than enhanced funding, to increase educational outcomes. SB 140 lacked sufficient changes in how charter schools are chartered in order to allow more students and families charter school possibilities.” Sitka school board student member Felix Myers was incensed. “That is not something our children deserve. They don’t deserve to be pawns in a political game. Their education and their futures should not be sacrificed because one person wants to continue their political agenda.” Myers warned of a possible student protest. (KTOO photo/Clarise Larson)The governor’s surprise veto of the education bill (SB140) has thrown school districts across the state into turmoil, and Sitka is no exception.
Even if the legislature rides to the rescue – as it has in the past – with some last-minute funding by the time it adjourns in May, it’s unlikely that it will come close to reversing the damage done by the governor’s veto, which is forcing school closures in the state’s largest districts in Juneau and Fairbanks.
In Sitka, it hasn’t come to that – yet. Right now, the district administration is only discussing reducing the number of teaching positions, but that could change.
School officials appeared in a forum on KCAW Wednesday night (3-20-24) to discuss the potential fallout from the veto.
You don’t even have to pay close attention to politics to realize that something was up in Juneau this year. At the governor’s request, a nearly-unanimous legislature approved a funding package for schools to make up for almost a decade of neglect, and then the governor turned around and erased the bill with a stroke of his pen.
The Sitka School Board’s student member, Felix Myers, said none of this was lost on his classmates.
“I think right now, there’s some, you know, talks about trying to do like a statewide student protest,” said Myers. “I think that’s something that we’re looking at… But, I mean, kids aren’t stupid. Kids know what’s going on.”
Myers said that nine years of flat funding for education by the state would eventually become apparent, as the Sitka School District is going to have to cut teachers, even if the legislature manages to pass a last-minute appropriation. The legislature, however, took extraordinary pains to shore up schools this year. He says there’s genuine anger over the governor’s reversal, and the impact it’s going to have on students’ lives.
“You might not have been able to see it before, you’re going to see it now,” said Myers. “And that is not something our children deserve. They don’t deserve to be pawns in a political game. Their education and their futures should not be sacrificed because one person wants to continue their political agenda.”
Gov. Dunleavy’s agenda is hard to pin down. He wanted to streamline the creation of charter schools, and he favored cash bonuses for teachers. In his veto of the education bill, the governor wrote “this bill fails to address the innovations necessary to allow Alaska students to excel.” He also said, “True reform must embrace a willingness to provide alternative methods of education to meet the varying needs of our student population.” People assume this is a reference to charter schools and cash bonuses – neither of which were specifically included in the bill.
Assistant superintendent Deidre Jenson said they didn’t need to be in the bill – more school funding was really the answer to both.
“Innovation takes money,” Jenson mused. “If you want us to do new things, we are just getting by doing the requirements, and the additional requirements with the Alaska Reads Act. Innovation is is key to what we would like to do. The charter schools reach just a small population. There are so many school districts out there that just would never have the ability to have a charter school formulated in their communities, it’s just so restrictive to meeting all of our students needs.”
The worst case scenario for Alaska’s schools would be that this legislature never rallies to send one-time money to schools, or that the governor vetoes it again. This is what the Sitka School District calls the “Zero BSA” option – which means no increase to the base student allocation. This translates to a budget deficit of over $3 million in the Sitka School District. Board president Tristan Guevin said the number of faculty positions to offset this is staggering.
“You’re looking in that 20-25 and above range,” said Guevin. “And that’s the challenge for us: We’ve been making those cuts, we’ve been tightening our belt for basically the past decade. Teacher classroom budgets are down, funding is frozen on some of those supplies and other things. And we’ve cut some of those other auxiliary positions. And, yeah, there’s really nowhere else to look besides staff.”
If teachers go, the main academic classes would all remain – perhaps in more crowded classrooms. It’s all the other stuff that’s at risk: shop classes, art, music, and activities . Felix Myers said he knows many students who attend just for these classes.
“It’s all those extra things that make school worth going to – and sports, extracurriculars, things like that,” he said. “Those are the first things that get cut.”
Board member Todd Gebler has served three years, and has seen this drama play out in Juneau every legislative session. He’s concerned about being forced to make decisions that are expedient now, but have lasting consequences.
“When those programs are gone, they normally don’t come back,” Gebler said. “As a board member, that weighs heavy on my head. These are things that I’m going to have to cut. These are teaching positions, these are people’s livelihoods that I’m going to have to cut. From the governor’s perspective of what he did, as a board member, it’s incredibly frustrating. You know, the anger is kind of going away, kind of not. And I don’t know why I’m so surprised, but the state has chronically disappointed us as far as education funding goes.”
Part of that disappointment is timing. Gebler and other board members have to settle on a budget by April 17 to meet the city’s deadline. The legislature likely wouldn’t take any action on supplemental school funding until the following month, when many teachers have already received pink slips, and have begun to look for work outside of Sitka.
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Sitka’s Schools will have $1.4 million in reserves at the end of the current academic year — far short of the amount needed to cover an expected $3.85 million deficit next year. At a work session on March 21, the Sitka School Board discussed how much of its savings to drain to make ends meet next year, and which programs — like the Blatchley Swimming Pool (pictured here) — might be transferred to the city, or cut altogether. (KCAW/Woolsey)In all the uncertainty over school funding next year, the Sitka School District knows one thing: How much money it will have left in reserves at the end of this school year.
How much of this “fund balance” should be protected, and how much should be spent is the Sitka School Board’s first major decision as it determines what will stay, and what will go, in district schools next year.
Sitka Schools will have about $1.4 million in cash remaining when students finish up this spring. That’s more than the district’s had in some years, but not nearly enough to cover the almost $4 million ($3.85 million) projected deficit for next year.
As interim superintendent Steve Bradshaw pointed out in a March 21 work session, there are far more difficult decisions ahead.
“The fact is, folks, things are bleak enough that you’re not gonna get by without cutting some positions this year,” he said.
The cut positions could number as few as 10, if the Alaska Legislature and the governor take action and appropriate a one-time increase to the base student allocation of $340. If the legislature and the governor do nothing – the so-called “Zero BSA” – the number of cuts would be apocalyptic – probably over twenty. But school board members considered that an unlikely scenario. For Sitka High Principal Sondra Lundvick, a “Zero BSA” would radically transform her building.
“We can’t build a schedule right now,” she said. “We can’t. And if you build a budget on zero, we will lose most student choice within our schedule. It will decimate our programs, whether it’s real or not. That’s what will happen.”
Making decisions around what may or may not happen – while it doesn’t seem wise – is what school districts all over the state are forced to do. Patty McPike, speaking as a member of the public, encouraged the board to postpone any dramatic changes.
“I would like the board to consider not making any quick cuts at all, until the very last minute,” said McPike. “In business, it’s not unreasonable for businesses to take out a line of credit, until they can really get their grasp on things. And speaking for myself, I feel like this may be one of those times, because you can’t just whip up and find a new teacher, let alone housing for them.”
So how much of that $1.4 million in reserves should the board use to pad what is likely to be a challenging budget year? School board members waffled around $1 million. Keet Gooshi Heen Music teacher Susan Brant Ferguson urged the board to use it all.
“I love that we end up with a fund balance every year, and that it is larger than we think it’s going to be,” said Brant-Ferguson. “It’s awesome. Please don’t cut to keep a (projected) fund balance. Spend the money for this year, for this year. And if we have to slash and burn and cut and wreck all the programs the following year, because there is no fund balance, so be it. Don’t do it until you have to. That’s why we have the programs that we still do. Because people were willing to take that risk. I think it’s worth it.”
Sitka High vocational teacher Tim Pike also holds a seat on the Sitka Assembly. He reminded school board members that “you only have one shot” each year to make a difference for a student. He called the state’s method of funding schools “backward” and “archaic.” Like Brant-Ferguson, he felt the reserves should be applied where they can do the most good.
“If we start trying to save, we end up cutting what we could do for kids who are currently here,” he said. “There’s no guarantee that you’re going to have that fund balance, there’s no guarantee you’re not. So, I think work with the money that’s in front of you, and make sure that it works for our students.”
School board members didn’t make any decisions on how far to draw down reserves, but Superintendent Bradshaw reminded them that, with the city expected to assume responsibility for maintenance of the schools, large reserves really weren’t needed any more.
But even if the board takes every penny from savings and puts it toward next year, there’s still about $2.5 million in the red, with no way to cover the deficit without major cuts. The prospects for the year after – if the political situation remains unchanged – are even worse.
School board member Tom Williams said what many people in the room were thinking.
‘If we can weather until we get a new governor with the hopes that the new governor has a better outlook for education, that might get us where we need to be,” Williams said.
In addition to the fund balance, the Sitka School Board briefly discussed closing the Blatchley Swimming Pool if the city did not take it over, and consolidating kindergarten and first grade into Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary. Board members agreed, however, that combining elementary schools wasn’t feasible for next year, but could be on the table for 2026.
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Rep. Rebecca Himschoot (I-Sitka) was one of 39 legislators who attempted to override Gov. Dunleavy’s veto of Senate Bill 140, which would have been a major funding boost to public education. The override failed by one vote. “My heart is just breaking in this situation because there was so much good and so much effort that went into SB 140,” said Himschoot. “It really kind of represented the best of what we can do in Juneau. And to have that unilaterally crushed is hard.” Sen. Bert Stedman (R-Sitka) also joined the override effort. (APM/Eric Stone)Sitka’s legislators were among the 39 lawmakers who voted to override the governor’s veto of a major education funding bill on Tuesday (3-18-24).
The override attempt failed by one vote (39-20), leaving legislators deeply concerned over the future of school funding.
Note: Sitka School Board members and administrators will join KCAW News for a one-hour forum on school funding in the aftermath of the veto, beginning 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 20. Please email your questions in advance to news@kcaw.org.
Back in February Senate Bill 140 passed the legislature by a near-unanimous vote (56-3) the first significant bipartisan legislation to pass in recent memory.
Rep. Rebecca Himschoot is an independent. She’s still reeling from Gov. Dunleavy’s veto.
“My heart is just breaking in this situation because there was so much good and so much effort that went into SB 140,” said Himschoot. “It really kind of represented the best of what we can do in Juneau. And to have that unilaterally crushed is hard.”
Himschoot is a career educator who spent many years teaching at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary in Sitka. Senate Bill 140 would have increased per-pupil funding for public schools – the base student allocation – for the first time in eight years. She’s not sure why Republicans who voted for the education bill the first time, then defected on the override vote. Himschoot doesn’t think the legislature will go back to the drawing board.
“And I’m going to be fairly blunt with you right now,” she said, “it is very hard to rally energy to dive back into a conversation on education. And I’m passionate about education. I think folks who know me know that it’s kind of the center of my universe, and I’m struggling to find energy to have more conversations about it. So all of that to say, there are still options out there. There are still things we can do.”
One of those options is a one-time allocation similar to last year, however there’s little certainty in it. Last year, the legislature agreed to give school districts an additional $680 per pupil, but the governor vetoed half of it. Himschoot says Senate Bill 140 “really was our best option.”
Sen. Bert Stedman of Sitka also voted to override. Stedman, like the governor, is a Republican, but he’s never been a fan of the brinkmanship that takes place in the capitol. He said that SB 140 started as a way to bring better internet to Alaska’s rural schools. Now that – plus all other elements of the bill – have been shot down with the veto. He called it “collateral damage.” He told the Alaska Beacon, “I find it distasteful, extremely distasteful, that the rural children of our state are virtually held hostage over our squabbling with the base student allocation.”
Rep. Rebecca Himschoot says there is an upside: It’s not happening in a last-minute rush, or in a special session when legislators are heading for the door. “If there’s any good news in this situation,” she said, “It’s the fact that we do still have half of this session to go.”
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Sitka Community Land Trust director Randy Hughey at the S’us’ Héeni Sháak Community neighborhood in 2017. To date, much of the Land Trust effort has been managed through significant volunteer effort. A fourplex apartment building will create a much-needed revenue stream for the organization moving forward. “There has to be a certain number of staff members, all of whom make a living wage to work,” says Hughey, “And this apartment is a really big step in that direction.” . (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)The housing squeeze in Sitka will improve a little next year, thanks to a big shot of funding from the federal government.
The Sitka Community Land Trust has won a grant from US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the construction of a four-unit apartment building in its existing cottage neighborhood. Work should be completed in 2025.
There’s a lot to be said for having the right project at the right time. During a senate recess in February, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski visited Southeast Alaska. Weather prevented her from coming to Sitka, but in a call to KCAW she said that she was hearing a message from Alaskans.
“Everywhere I go is ‘housing, housing, housing,’ and then throw in some childcare and then more housing,” said Murkowski.
Fast forward to the middle of March and Randy Hughey, executive director of the Sitka Community Land Trust, opens an email from Washington, D.C.
“I sat down, I sort of teared up and read it again. And went ‘We got it!’” said Hughey. “I showed it to my wife Carol, handed her the phone, and said ‘Read this.’ Yeah, it was quite emotional. I was very, very surprised and really happy.”
The email informed Hughey that the Land Trust had been awarded $2.17 million to construct a four-unit apartment complex. Not partial funding, not a matching grant – the full amount.
Hughey believes the Sitka Community Land Trust was well-positioned to benefit from government support. Planning for the project was well underway in the organization’s existing S’us’ Héeni Sháak Community neighborhood on Halibut Point Road.
“We’ve subdivided off the westernmost end of the property,” Hughey said, “and so it’s outside of the homeowners association, etc. And we have created the space for the building to fit. And actually we have already hired an architectural firm and engineering firm and environmental firm – we were doing all of the work to get ready for this building long before we actually had the money. So it’s an awfully sweet thing to have the actual construction funding come at such a time.”
Hughey said that prior to receiving the funding, he outlined the project in a 5-minute phone conversation with the senator herself, followed by a much longer call with a senate aide, where he went into more detail. Each apartment will be two-bedroom, 825 square feet – roughly the same size as the smallest standalone cottage in the neighborhood. And, per the Land Trust mission, they’ll rent at below-market rates. Hughey says everyone on the applicant list for cottage housing in the Land Trust will automatically be placed on the list for the apartments, when they become available.
Funding from the Denali Commission has covered planning and design expenses, as well as site preparation and utility installation. Hughey thinks it could be up to a year for the HUD money to arrive, which would allow for construction in the spring of ‘25.
Hughey says the funding is about far more than creating four more apartments in Sitka – it’s about sustaining the Sitka Community Land Trust itself, which has been grown principally on the work of volunteers and semi-retired staff like himself.
“That’s not a way that an organization can continue in the future,” Hughey said. “There has to be a certain number of staff members, all of whom make a living wage to work. And this apartment is a really big step in that direction.”
The Land Trust has used the same builder for all of its existing cottages. Hughey says that in the interest of fairness, the construction of the fourplex will be put out to bid.
The post Following senate call, $2 million allocated for Land Trust apartment complex appeared first on KCAW.
The Sitka Assembly approved an appropriation of $1.7 million for a new lift station at Thompsen Harbor, when it met in regular session Tuesday night (3-12-24).
The assembly pulled the money from “wastewater working capital,” in the hope that the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation will cover the amount with a low-cost loan later this year. The equipment pumps wastewater to the treatment plant on Japonski Island.
Public Works director Ron Vinson said that while the DEC loan wasn’t guaranteed, he felt it was a pretty safe bet, since the department had previously loaned the city $1.3 million for the same project and “they want to see things through.”
Total cost for the project should not exceed $2.8 million.
The assembly approved the appropriation unanimously, wrapping up the evening’s public business in about 20 minutes. The assembly spent the rest of the evening in a closed-door session to discuss employee benefits.
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Advocates say an update to the "National Standards" could overhaul outdated guidance for the management of Alaska's federal fisheries, and introduce climate change, equity, and environmental justice into harvest policies -- and drastically reduce bycatch.
The post Comment deadline: Advocates believe revising NOAA’s ‘National Standards’ will increase equity, reduce bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska fisheries appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka High principal Sondra Lundvick told the school board that activities were in full swing at her school — with money leftover from last year’s fundraising. She was still waiting for a $132,000 city appropriation that was never deposited into the activities account last year. (SHS image)In addition to classes, sports and activities are underway at Sitka High School – using funds raised by the students last year.
The expected allocation of district money that kicks off sports like Swimming and Cross Country, and activities like Debate and Drama, didn’t happen last year for reasons that remain unclear. And at its regular meeting Wednesday night (9-6-23) the Sitka School Board postponed making an allocation this year – until members could be sure there were funds to cover it.
This was the question that dogged the final weeks of former superintendent Frank Hauser’s tenure in Sitka: Why wasn’t an appropriation from the Sitka Assembly to help defray the costs of student activities deposited into the activities account?
Current interim superintendent Steve Bradshaw listened in to the tense board meeting last June when his predecessor was put on the ropes by concerned parents and coaches.
He attributed the missing money to a change in district accounting practices, rather than to any malfeasance.
“For my perception, it sounded a little bit like somebody was questioning where the funds went, when the funds were always there,” said Bradshaw. “And I don’t blame the former superintendent, and I don’t blame the board for wanting to be cautious with how they spend that money, because of the fear of cutting teachers out of the classrooms. That has been a priority on this board for quite a few years now.
“That money” is $132,000 which is distributed at the beginning of the school year to all student activities, in chunks of $6,000. Bradshaw proposed that the board authorize a transfer of the money from the general fund to the activities account, and put the controversy to bed. But he wanted members to realize that it wasn’t just loose change: $132,000 is approximately the cost of a full-time teacher.
In any case, the money for a transfer simply may not be there.
“I’m not necessarily opposed to it,” said Tristan Guevin. “I just think, as a board member, I need to do my due diligence and my fiduciary responsibility and be able to answer that question: Do we have the money to do this?”
Member Tristan Guevin was on the board last spring when it adopted a bare-bones budget that just about drained the district savings account. By his math, a $132,000 transfer – though needed – would put the district in the red.
And he was also concerned that the proposed transfer would benefit high school students exclusively.
“I think we need to have a broader conversation,” he said. “And this gets back to transparency and to our role engaging students and parents and families and the community and all of our stakeholders. I want to have a discussion. I want to know how student activity money is allocated across all of the Sitka School District.”
Guevin didn’t think the conversation could move forward until the books had been closed on the last fiscal year – which they weren’t. He motioned to table the transfer until the next meeting, when the board would have a better grasp on its finances.
High School principal Sondra Lundvick urged the board to not wait too long to act. Student programs were in full swing, using unspent money that they had raised last year.
“By October, we already have activities going on,” Lundvick said. “We have Cross Country, Volleyball, Swimming. We hosted swimming this past weekend; Volleyball is going on right now. These guys have already begun, they didn’t get their allocation last year, and while the city has promised that $132,000 for this year, they still haven’t seen that.”
Lundvick said she felt some of the hope for the student activities budget surrounding Sitka voters’ passage of the marijuana tax (“Prop 3”) last year was “crumbling,” after the State Department of Education this summer cracked down on the Juneau School District for supplementing its budget with local money in excess of state law – so-called “outside the cap” funding. That decision could have major ramifications for Sitka’s schools, which have depended on “outside the cap” funding for student activities for decades.
Board member Tristan Guevin recognized the need for haste; he just didn’t want to spend money the district didn’t have.
The post Board postpones action on activities funding, as Sitka schools begin fall sports season appeared first on KCAW.
NOAA Fisheries has received a settlement of $1.3 million from the National Pollution Funds Center for restoration of herring habitat and shellfish monitoring in the aftermath of the 2017 sinking of the tugboat Powhatan in Starrigavan Bay.
The post $1.3 million awarded for beach cleanup, shellfish monitoring following 2017 tugboat sinking in Starrigavan Bay appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman says Alaskans will keep receiving dividend checks, despite a worrisome report from the AK Perm Fund Corp. that the earnings reserve account will be exhausted in four years. "We could skip inflation-proofing for a year or two," he says, "but what you can't do is start over-drawing the Permanent Fund."
The post Fearing a financial ‘house on fire,’ Stedman warns against overdrawing the Permanent Fund to pay dividends appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka's interim school superintendent is no stranger to the district. Steve Bradshaw held the top job from 2001-2014. In the intervening nine years, he's seen the state fall behind in funding schools, and he'd like to change that. "If politeness doesn't do it, then we'll pound on doors," he told the school board at his first regular meeting on Wednesday (8-9-23).
The post Sitka’s interim superintendent ready to ‘pound on doors’ to level up state education funding appeared first on KCAW.
German university student Tessa Schindler is on course for a career in international relations, thanks in part to the year she spent as an exchange student in Sitka.
The post An exchange year in Sitka helped this German master’s student choose a career in international relations appeared first on KCAW.
A new hydroelectric project on Admiralty Island has gotten a green light from the Forest Service -- forty years after it was authorized by Congress. The Thayer Creek project could revolutionize electrical generation in Angoon.
The post A long-awaited hydro project in Angoon has the go-ahead, if money can be found to build it appeared first on KCAW.
Southeast trollers landed 85,000 kings during the summer's first opening, July 1-12. Only 500 boats fished during the opener, the lowest on record. Managers think a number of factors -- including a lengthy court battle -- may have chilled effort.
The post Fish plentiful, but fishermen scarce for Southeast Alaska’s first summer king opening appeared first on KCAW.
Patrick J. O'Brien has pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree in the 2021 death of his father, James O'Brien, Jr. Following an altercation on Kasiana Island, the elder O'Brien was medevaced to Harborview Medical Center with severe head injuries. He died about a week later.
The post Sitka man accused in death of his father will serve 25 years appeared first on KCAW.
A seafood donation program spawned in Sitka during the Covid crisis, is transforming into a regional Seafood Distribution Network. This June, the program connected subsistence sockeye harvested in Bristol Bay, with communities on the Yukon and Chignik rivers.
The post Sitka’s seafood donation network connects abundance with scarcity in Western Alaska appeared first on KCAW.
An infestation of western blackheaded budworm that began in Southeast Alaska in 2020 is on the decline. Although 685,000 acres were affected, not all the damage may be permanent.
The post Tongass Forest rebound possible, as budworm infestation winds down appeared first on KCAW.
The Sitka School Board appointed Tom Williams to serve the remaining two-and-a-half months of Blossom Teal-Olsen's term. Williams was the only applicant for the seat; he says he'll run for a full term in October.
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Managers of both the state and federal subsistence fisheries at Redoubt Lake have liberalized harvest limits for sockeye, hoping to put the brakes on a run that could exceed the lake's capacity.
The post Concerned over Redoubt Lake’s capacity, Forest Service liberalizes subsistence sockeye harvest appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka's airport was last remodeled in the 1990s, and it shows. A $40 million renovation scheduled to begin this fall will address the cramped, undersized boarding lounge, cross-traffic between arriving and departing passengers, and the small baggage claim.
The post Sitka’s airport expansion set for takeoff this fall appeared first on KCAW.
Remember that cutting board you made in shop class? Or that wobbly nightstand? Computer-controlled tools have blown open the creative possibilities for students in Career & Technical Education programs like Sitka's.
The post Sitka student builds a telecaster, shredding our old ideas about high school shop class appeared first on KCAW.
Photojournalist Berett Wilber grew up trolling in Sitka (aboard the Alexa K). She recently visited the docks to photograph and speak with trollers as they prepare to head out on their much hoped-for, yet completely unexpected, summer king salmon season.
The post Portraits of a fishery: Sitka trollers gear up for an unexpected season appeared first on KCAW.
Nearly 10,000 cruise visitors in one day is "far too many," Sitka's mayor said at Tuesday's assembly meeting (6-27-23). An informal poll of downtown businesses indicated that June 21 was more bust than bonanza, as resources were strained across the community.
The post More bust than bonanza, Sitka’s 10,000-passenger day was ‘far too many’ says mayor appeared first on KCAW.
A Sitka physician with a long career in sports medicine, Don Lehmann has lately turned his attention to a relatively recent field: Performing Arts Medicine.
The post A Sitka doctor uses sports medicine to help musician-athletes perform their best appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka's industrial park board has approved a "preferred alternative" that falls short of the ideal marine haulout and boatyard residents envision. But plans are in place to expand if additional funding is found.
The post ‘Preferred alternative’ for Sitka haulout falls short of perfect, but has potential for expansion appeared first on KCAW.
Southeast trollers will fish for king salmon this summer after all. The 9th Circuit Court on Wednesday (6-21-23) ordered a stay of a lower court ruling which would have blocked the fishery.
The post Ninth Circuit Court grants stay in Southeast troll lawsuit, chinook season to open July 1 appeared first on KCAW.
Tele Aadsen grew up trolling in summers in Southeast Alaska. Her new collection of essays, "What Water Holds," is a memoir of her life trolling for salmon, and a celebration of the environment that makes fishing possible.
The post Aadsen’s ‘What Water Holds’ a celebration of the marine ecosystem that makes salmon fishing possible appeared first on KCAW.
High concentrations of carbon dioxide gas and warm surface temperatures are two clues that geophysicists use to assess volcanic activity. A team from UAF recently tested Sitka's Mt. Edgecumbe volcano for both.
The post UAF Geophysical team looks for clues to Mt. Edgecumbe’s next eruption appeared first on KCAW.
Without giving too much away, NOAA Fisheries Alaska region administrator Jon Kurland told trollers in Sitka that his agency was working full-tilt to comply with a US District Court order, allowing the fleet to target king salmon -- if not in July as usual -- then perhaps in August.
The post NOAA to trollers: A revised environmental analysis could allow king fishing by August appeared first on KCAW.
"Subject matter experts" in the marine trades recently met in Sitka to consider four concepts for a marine haulout and boatyard. Even with $8.2 million on hand, it will take more funding to create a yard to meet Sitka's needs now and into the future.
The post ‘Subject matter experts’ convene to study what Sitka wants in a boatyard — and what it can afford appeared first on KCAW.
High interest rates are affecting the affordability of homes in Alaska -- but many homes were unaffordable for one wage-earner even when interest rates were rock-bottom. The May issue of "Trends" from the AK Dept. Labor weighs affordability versus income for average wage-earners.
The post Many Alaska homes were unaffordable when interest rates were rock-bottom. New data show the problem is growing worse appeared first on KCAW.
A nine-year old, an 11-year old, and a 15-year old were the top winners in the Sitka Salmon Derby, claiming over $20,000 in cash and prizes between them. Was it beginners' luck? Not likely.
The post Kids land big fish — and even bigger prizes — in Sitka’s 52nd Annual Salmon Derby appeared first on KCAW.
Two new lawsuits were filed against the Sitka Police Department this spring, both alleging that the department arbitrarily applied enforcement powers that it does not have under federal law, in one case, and under municipal code in another.
The post A pair of court cases will test Sitka Police and their discretion to interpret municipal and federal law appeared first on KCAW.
Morgan Robidou poses with his boat in October, 2022. Robidou and one of his passengers, 61-year old Robert Solis, still remain missing following Sunday’s (5-28-23) accident. (FB image) Alaska State Troopers on Wednesday (5-31-23) recovered the bodies of two of the five victims of last Sunday’s charter boat sinking in Sitka.
One passenger and the boat’s captain have yet to be found.
The victims identified by troopers on Wednesday evening are 53-year old Danielle Agcaoili and her sister, 56-year old Brandi Tyau.
Their bodies have been sent to the State Medical Examiner’s office in Anchorage to confirm their identities.
The body of Danielle Agcaoili’s husband, 57-year old Maury Agcaoili, was recovered on Monday (5-29-23) offshore of Low Island, not far from the partially-submerged charter fishing vessel in which the group had been traveling.
A fourth passenger, 61-year old Robert Solis, as well as the boat’s captain, 32-year old Morgan Robidou of Sitka, have not been found, despite an extensive search on Monday that covered over 800 square miles.
Solis and Tyau were visiting Sitka together from California. The Agcaoili’s were visiting from Waipahu, a community on the island of Oahu.
Hawaii News Now carried news of the tragedy back to that state.
“…An outpouring of condolences from the community: Pearl City High School’s band director shared the news with parents, who wrote that the Agcaoilis were active volunteers and their children, Jarek and Jessica had been members of the band. Other members are hosting a meal rotation to help the children. Danielle worked at First Hawaiian Bank. CEO Bob Harrison extended condolences to the family and friends saying in a statement that she was a beloved member of the First Hawaiian Bank Ohana.”
Large swell and heavy surf on the shore of Low Island have impaired efforts to salvage the 30-foot aluminum charter vessel. Sitka-based Hanson Maritime is leading recovery efforts.
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Riley Bernhardt is once again photographed at the derby barge with a couple of enormous kings. Her dad Gary has been posing with her like this for at least the last six years. (SSA/Marsha Lysons)The loss of a charter fishing boat on Sunday (5-28-23) came during the middle of the first weekend of the 68th Annual Sitka Salmon Derby.
The contest continued, while many boats helped in the search and everyone hoped for positive news.
The extensive search effort was evident to anyone in Sitka Sound on Memorial Day Monday (5-29-23), with both a Coast Guard C-130 search plane and an Air Station Sitka helicopter airborne for much of the day, along with many Good Samaritan and official watercraft, including the fast-response cutter Douglas Denman.
Derby officials say that a number of participants diverted to assist with the search as the news spread, and one told KCAW that “I know it was on everyone’s mind as we all waited hoping to hear that they’d been found.”
Sitka, along with much of Southeast Alaska, experienced unseasonably warm temperatures and calm weather in the first half of May, but conditions had changed significantly by the holiday weekend, with strong southerly winds and temperatures dipping as low as 40 degrees.
Despite the dire news and the bad weather, 94 people entered a total of 276 fish in the Sitka derby. Caleb Gray turned in a 32-and-a-half pound king to take the top spot on the leaderboard. Adding in his other five fish for the weekend, Gray also leads in total pounds at just under 126.
Caleb Gray, at left, waits while his king is weighed on the Sitka Salmon Derby barge. On the right, he learns that he’s the leader. (SSA/Marsha Lysons) In second place in both categories is Riley Bernhardt – no stranger to the leaderboard – with a 29-and-a-half pound king and 115 total pounds for her six fish.
In third place is Kenny Gray, with a 28-and-a-half pound king and just over 100 total pounds.
The Sitka Salmon Derby continues over next weekend, June 3 and 4. All results are unofficial until the awards banquet on June 15.
Prize money in this year’s derby has gone up: The winner will take home $10,000 cash and two round-trip tickets on Alaska Airlines. Second place will win $5,000 cash, and third place will receive an electric pot hauler worth almost $2,000.
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Sitka troller Eric Jordan helped found the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, and was on the board of directors of the Sitka Conservation Society for twenty years. He’s incensed that the Washington-state based Wild Fish Conservancy has singled out the Southeast Alaskan troll harvest of king salmon in its federal lawsuit to protect endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales in Puget Sound. “Trollers have been the allies of conservationists for decades… We are the greatest allies of people who want to conserve king salmon and other salmon species. And for us to be vilified and attacked is just plain wrong.” (Sitka Conservation Society/Bethany Goodrich)Barring a stay, or a successful appeal, or other eleventh-hour legal action, there will be no troll fishery for king salmon in Southeast Alaska either this summer or winter.
The fisheries have been canceled by order of the US District Court of Western Washington on largely procedural grounds, stemming from a violation of the Endangered Species Act, and the failure of the National Marine Fisheries Service to fully address the impact of Alaska’s king salmon trollers on an endangered population of orcas in Puget Sound called Southern Resident Killer Whales.
No other salmon species or commercial gear group or sport fishery – anywhere on the entire Pacific Northwest Coast – is affected by the order, just commercial trolling for king salmon in Southeast Alaska.
Heading out every July 1 in search of Alaska’s most valuable salmon – also called Chinook – has been an annual ritual across the region since before statehood.
Shortly after the court order came down, KCAW’s Robert Woolsey met with trollers Eric Jordan, Jacquie Foss, and Jim Moore to discuss what no king salmon season will mean for them, personally and professionally. This is their conversation, in three parts.
Part 1: The practical implications of a summer without ChinookFoss: The cost of a boat exists whether or not the king salmon fishery happens or not. You have to pull it out of the water, you have to maintain your zincs. There’s work that you have to have just to make sure your boat stays fishing. And so that’s still happening for us. How we’re gonna pay for it is less certain.
Moore: I’m confident that we’re going to have a season. I’m confident that the king salmon season is going to open July first. I feel that we have so much support. Our congressional delegation is working behind the scenes. The State of Alaska is throwing its full weight into the fight. The Alaska Trollers Association are [intervenors and] co-defendants with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the State of Alaska. And everybody’s working pretty hard to make sure that we’re out on the water this summer. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to happen. It’s a legal court case. And so different parties hold their cards close. But I’m confident we’re gonna go ahead. So I’m planning on going ahead.
Foss: I always appreciate sitting next to Jim and his optimism, because I don’t always go there. The decision last week (May 3, 2023) was a gut punch. And fishing is how I can afford to raise my family in Sitka. So it’s really affected me in sort of a more existential way: Who are we if we’re not fishermen? Who are we if we’re not catching king salmon on our boat?
Jordan: It’s already affected boat values. I just had a survey on my boat, on what I would say as a very optimistic estimate. Even though I’ve made improvements since the last survey, [my boat] has lost about 20% of its value. Right away. People can’t sell their boats. I spent a whole week before this latest [court] decision preparing to sell gear at the Fisherman’s Flea Market because I’m getting ready to retire and I have thousands of dollars of really good surplus gear that’s basically worthless right now, except for the chum troll and coho gear. But thousands of dollars of king salmon plugs and spoons are just basically worthless.
Emotionally, I have to call my crew and tell them the situation. Some of them just love fishing king salmon. We do really well chum trolling, and Jim [Moore] and I helped pioneer that, but I’ve had crew members cry when I’ve told them that we’re gonna go chum fishing instead of king salmon fishing.
Foss: You know, it’s more of a spiritual problem than a financial one. Because fishermen are scrappy people. We will always figure out how to make expenses somehow. It’s just…we’d be broken in some way doing that, if that makes sense?
You know, not catching king salmon has a huge, huge impact to our financial bottom line: 40% of our income. And so there’s the argument, ‘Well, you can find the other 40%.’ That 40% allows us to make the other 60%. So it’s not like you can just make up that amount of income somewhere else on the water or in some other fishery. It’s really holistic.
Jordan: There’s a miraculous, wondrous thing about catching king salmon and pursuing them all over the coast, from Dixon Entrance – like Jim’s fished – from Forrester Island to Cape Suckling. And the chum troll fishing is not going to save us. It’s gonna help.
Moore: Having fished a long time, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the fishery. And I have to say that when I bought my first boat, people said, “There’s no future in it. It’s over. It’s had its heyday and it’s going down.” But I’ve seen this cycle of boom and bust, optimism and pessimism several times. And that’s one reason why, you know, if we’re looking at grief over this court case, I’m in the first stage: denial.
Part 2: The importance of king salmon to the identity of trollersJacquie Foss trolls with her family aboard the Axel. Fishing for kings is a core part of her family’s identity: “Our whole life is centered around that July 1 opener. And the anticipation starts in my house about June 20.” Like many trollers, Foss is critical of the Wild Fish Conservancy’s lawsuit which singles out an Alaskan fishery to protect killer whales in Puget Sound. “It’s really easy to look at a problem and decide that someone else should pay for it. It’s really, really hard to look internally to see what you’re doing and how you’re contributing to that problem. And I really feel like that’s what’s happening here.” (KCAW/Erin McKinstry)Jim Moore bought his troller in 1970. This summer will mark his fifty-third year as a professional salmon fisherman. Eric Jordan wasn’t born on a troller, but when he was still an infant, his parents rigged a bunk for him in the cabin of their boat, a 32-foot double-ender named “Salty,” and he could watch them fish for king salmon through a porthole. Having fished every year since, Jordan is about to turn 73 years old.
Jacquie Foss doesn’t yet have that kind of seniority, but she might one day. She and her husband fish as a family, with their 8- and 10-year old children on board.
These three Sitka-based trollers are typical of the Southeast Alaska fleet: They have exceptional longevity in a difficult profession, and a multi-generational investment in their businesses.
Foss: Every year the fish – it’s exactly the same and nothing alike. You’re in the water, you’re dragging hooks. But are they going to hit the herring this year? Or is it going to be this spoon? Or is it gonna be the spoon that you have buried in there that worked 10 years ago that might work now? It’s about the puzzle. And it’s about the fact that our entire year really starts July 1. That’s our New Year: our whole life is centered around that July 1 opener.
Moore: I’m just so blessed to have found a livelihood doing something so interesting and creative. Every single day is different. And it presents a whole new set of problems to solve. “You know, I think I’ll try that green thing that I used 15 years ago,” and then have them hit it – that’s a tremendous feeling: success.
Foss: And it’s just this anticipation and joy, and just the puzzle of king salmon, because they could be where they’ve always been, they could not be there, you could have a 10 fish day, you could have a 300 fish day. That’s 300-fish day is a feat. 100 is a lot – just your arms are tired, but you’re not tired. It’s hard to come up with the words.
Jordan: What I said in my deposition on this Wild Fish Conservancy suit: because we handle each fish individually, our connection with them is strong. And we care about them, we respect them. And that comes from my friend Amy Gulick’s book captures, The Salmon Way in Alaska from the indigenous origins 1,000s of years ago, right to the present. We honored these creatures, and in trolling, especially those that offer themselves to us, for us to sustain our bodies with the finest food on Earth. But we also sustain them by fighting to protect their spawning grounds, their passageways, their lives. And that’s what breaks our heart because we are fighting for them. And now we’re being excluded from their harvest.
Foss: It’s hard to not develop a connection, when you are intimately involved with ending a creature’s life. And it’s not something that anyone takes lightly. And you’re right… you’re right there. And it’s not easy, but it’s good. Because you know that you’re taking care of the creature quickly, as painlessly as you can. If you’re going to take life and you’re going to extract a resource and you’re going to eat meat, it’s really important to do that as respectfully to the creature that you’re taking it from as possible.
Jordan: Let me tell you, there’s a lot of grief in the troll fleet. A lot of grief, and families and people need help. So not only do we have to think about making financial arrangements so people can make or delay their payments with the state or CFAB [Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank] or whoever else. Banks. We also need to think about mental health counseling for people who are devastated and don’t know how they’re going to feed their families – literally.
Moore: You know, I’m proud of the product that we produce. This whole battle, this court battle with Wild Fish Conservancy trying to shut down a food-producing industry, without considering: there’s 300 million people right now – not killer whales – 300 million people are starving to death. There are 2 billion people that are ‘food insecure,’ as they say. And I just feel sick about all of the energy being spent, all the resources being spent, just to try to be able to continue to produce food for people.
Part 3: Trollers and conservationJim Moore slips by Pt. Amelia in his troller Aljac. “It sounds kind of crazy. But I love — and I’m a part of — this wonderful dance. We’re sometimes portrayed as raping and pillaging, and extracting heartlessly. No, this fishery — trolling — began as a king salmon fishery. That’s our identity.” (Eric Jordan photo)In a state where fish landings are most often measured in the millions of pounds and millions of fish, the Southeast Alaska troll catch of king salmon is a small fraction of the overall harvest. This coming season – if there is a season – Southeast trollers will take just 149,000 Chinook.
Those fish are mixed into a salmon pie that is shared by Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Canada – a pie that is sliced by an international agreement called the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Over the past couple of decades, Southeast trollers have accepted smaller slices of the pie to preserve the health of salmon stocks covered by the treaty, and they’ve even accepted deep cuts in the harvest of kings which originate in Alaska’s rivers – and aren’t subject to the treaty – to make sure that those stocks thrive.
In short, Southeast trollers have nothing to gain and everything to lose if king salmon don’t survive. They are conservationists, whether or not they use the label.
Foss: I want to make it very clear that trolling is 100-year old fishery, and if it was not sustainable for a long period of time, it would be evident. And I have not ever seen another resource extraction group begrudgingly-but-willingly not go fishing to ensure the longevity of the species. Is that the right thing to do? Absolutely. When it became apparent that we were going to take a hit on king salmon in the last (Pacific Salmon) treaty cycle for political and conservation purposes, we could weather it because the emphasis is making sure there’s fish in the future.
Jordan: Trollers have been the allies of conservationists for decades. Salmon fishermen all over this state fight things like Pebble Mine, things like the borax mine in Misty Fjords. Trollers have worked to protect the salmon habitat throughout the region from mines in British Columbia. I’ve written op-ed editorials on those mines, working with Salmon State and others. We are the greatest allies of people who want to conserve king salmon and other salmon species. And for us to be vilified and attacked is just plain wrong.
Foss: It’s really easy to look at a problem and decide that someone else should pay for it. It’s really, really hard to look internally to see what you’re doing and how you’re contributing to that problem. And I really feel like that’s what’s happening here [with the Wild Fish Conservancy lawsuit].
Moore: This fishery is the poster child for sustainability. There’s never been – that I know of – any run of salmon that’s been wiped out by a hook-and-line fishery. When I first started fishing, there was the criticism that it’s too inefficient. Well, we’re not hearing that much anymore (laughs). But anyway, we’re hearing these narratives that are just outright lies. Like ‘the increase in greedy corporate fishing.’ My kids grew up on the back deck of the boat, you know, this is ‘greedy corporate fishing,’ you know. They learned that they could work hard and produce something tangible. And your success depends on being able to understand and connect with something you can’t see directly. From that standpoint, it’s like science. I can’t decide whether it’s more like art or like science. It’s both.
Jordan: And one of the things that happens, as both Jim and Jackie have mentioned, is the connection you develop with these places, the ocean, the ecology, the fish that you’re pursuing. It’s really a love affair.
Foss: You just love it. You love everything about it.
Moore: You know, I love the killer whale. I’m connected with the killer whale. This is not about saving the killer whale, this battle. It’s about destroying this industry. That’s the stated agenda: the Wild Fish Conservancy, they want to eliminate ocean fishing, mixed-stock fishing, and they want to eliminate the hatchery program. That’s a small minority viewpoint – a very small minority viewpoint. They had an opportunity to move their agenda, and they took it. But it’s an immoral decision. It makes me sick.
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The population of endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales in Puget Sound has dropped to around 70 individuals. Many are skeptical that a judge’s ruling to close commercial trolling for king salmon in Southeast Alaska this winter will have any impact on the long-term survival of these animals. (NOAA photo/Holly Fearnbach)There have been a number of rapid-fire developments since the US District Court of Western Washington ruled on May 2 that the National Marine Fisheries Service had violated provisions of the Endangered Species Act, and vacated the “Incidental Take Statement” that authorizes the Southeast Alaska summer and winter troll harvest of king salmon.
Monday, May 8: Alaska asks for a “partial stay” of the ruling
The State of Alaska is asking for a “partial stay” of a federal court order forcing the closure of commercial salmon trolling for king in Southeast Alaska this summer, pending an appeal.
The motion for a partial stay was filed on Monday (5-8-23) in the US District Court of Western Washington, which last week ruled that the Southeast Alaska king salmon fisheries in both summer and winter were operating in violation of the Endangered Species Act, and depriving a small population of killer whales in Puget Sound of a critical component of their diet.
The state of Alaska immediately filed notice that it intended to appeal to the US 9th Circuit.
The state was joined by the Alaska Trollers Association in asking for the stay, arguing that “if the summer and winter troll fishery seasons are closed, this will have a direct, immediate, and irreparable impact on the economic, cultural, and social fabric of Southeast Alaska.”
The state and the trollers are intervenors in the lawsuit on behalf of the defendant, the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is responsible for ensuring the compliance of Alaska’s fisheries with federal law. NMFS (“nimfs”) hasn’t indicated any intention to appeal the ruling, and instead issued a statement assuring Southeast trollers that the other species they target – coho and chum – were unaffected by the Court’s order. Additionally, the agency was “working expeditiously” to resolve the conflict with the Endangered Species Act.
The lawsuit was originally brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy of Duvall, Washington, to protect Southern Resident Killer Whales, which has just over 70 animals remaining. Expert opinion differs on whether the closure of king salmon trolling in Southeast will have any effect on their long-term survival.
The Alaska Department of Fish & Game has yet to determine how and when the commercial troll fishery would open this summer if the Court refuses to grant the stay.
Alaska is asking for a decision by May 26.
Thursday, May 4: KCAW’s Robert Woolsey outlines lawsuit issues on Alaska News Nightly
Listen to the interview.
Wednesday, May 3: Alaska’s Congressional Delegation condemns judge’s ruling
All three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation released statements strongly condemning Tuesday’s ruling from the US District Court of Western Washington which – if left unchallenged – will force the closure of the king salmon troll fishery in Southeast Alaska this summer.
Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, wrote “This is a disastrous decision for Southeast Alaska that will only serve to harm those small boat troll fishermen who are trying to provide for their families. This lawsuit should have been dismissed months ago, but now threatens devastating restrictions that will harm hundreds of Alaskans and dozens of coastal communities—all while doing nothing to actually benefit the Puget Sound orca population.”
The lawsuit was filed in early 2020 against the National Marine Fisheries Service by a Washington state conservation group, the Wild Fish Conservancy, which argued that the interception of king salmon in Southeast Alaska was harming a small population of threatened orcas, known as “Southern Resident Killer Whales.”
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan called the judge’s ruling “outrageous,” writing ““What’s most remarkable about this case is that the judge and Wild Fish Conservancy totally ignore much more likely causes of the orca decline, like the toxins, pollution, noise disturbance, and vessel traffic that have undoubtedly wreaked havoc in the Puget Sound region.”
Alaska’s lone member of the US House, Rep. Mary Peltola, joined the senators, writing, “If this order is allowed to stand, Southeast Alaska will suffer a devastating loss, putting thousands of jobs at risk in communities that depend on this sustainably-managed fishery.”
In March of this year, the delegation filed an amicus brief with the US District Court, in support of Southeast troll fisherman. Other interveners in the suit are the Alaska Trollers Association, and the State of Alaska. The Alaska Legislature this spring passed a resolution in support of the fishery; the governor has said he’d appeal the case to the US Supreme Court, if necessary.
Tuesday May, 2: US District judge affirms recommendation to close Southeast Alaska summer and winter troll fisheries
A US district judge in Washington state has affirmed a controversial recommendation that could shut down summer trolling for king salmon in Southeast Alaska this summer.
Judge Richard A. Jones signed the two-page order on Tuesday (5-2-23) which now requires the National Marine Fisheries Service to remedy a violation of the Endangered Species Act, concerning a threatened population of killer whales in Puget Sound.
In addition, the ruling vacates the “Incidental Take Statement” under which the National Marine Fisheries Service manages the commercial harvest of chinook salmon in Southeast Alaska during the summer.
The lawsuit was brought against NMFS by the Duvall, Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy in early 2020.
In a news release, the Alaska Trollers Association – which intervened in the suit on behalf of NMFS – says it will work with the State of Alaska to appeal the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and likely ask for a stay of the order.
Director Amy Daugherty wrote: “The ATA will continue to fight for the way of life of its members and the communities of Southeast Alaska.”
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Sitka High actors Sam McLaughlin (Abby Binder) and Maia Capp (Marilyn Dunne) join director Christian Litten in discussing this weekend’s performance of “Ripcord,” a dark comedy by David Lindsay-Abaire. Performances 7 p.m. Thursday, May 11, Friday, May 12, and Saturday, May 13. (There will be no Sunday matinee.) Tickets $10 at the door of the Sitka Performing Arts Center. “Ripcord” centers on a rivalry between two residents of a senior living center, whose competition escalates to ludicrous levels.
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Under a pending plea deal, Horner-Raffaele will serve a year in prison for his role in the March 19 robbery. (KCAW/Woolsey)A Sitka man could spend a year in prison for the robbery of a downtown bar this spring. The crime was committed with a bb-gun, and the net proceeds were about $7.
The Sitka Grand Jury last month indicted 20-year old John Horner-Raffaele on one count of Robbery in the First Degree, and one count of Assault in the Third Degree, for standing by while an accomplice entered Ernie’s Bar through the back door just before midnight on March 13, smashed the DJ’s tip jar, and fled with its contents.
According to the criminal complaint, Horner-Raffaele is alleged to have waited in the alley with a handgun, while his 17-year old accomplice, wearing a ski mask and hoodie, stole the cash.
Two bar patrons attempted to stop the robbery, but the 17-year old escaped and joined Horner-Raffaele. After a short foot chase up American Street, the patrons caught up to the pair and demanded the return of the money. Horner-Raffaele allegedly pulled the gun from his waistband and pointed it at the head of one of the patrons, who, fearing for their lives, gave up the chase.
Sitka Police quickly apprehended the 17-year old near the Baranof Elementary School playground. About an hour later, a search warrant was issued for his home on Flume Circle, where police recovered some torn bills in a backpack, and other evidence from the crime.
The bartender at Ernie’s confirmed that they often placed torn, unusable cash in the tip jar, as seed money.
Other occupants of the home said that Horner-Raffaele had come by shortly before the arrival of police, but then left.
Police issued an all-points bulletin for Horner-Raffaele on social media, and a call came in at 10:30 the following morning that he was in the vicinity of the library. Horner-Raffaele was apprehended and taken to the police station, where he admitted brandishing the gun – which was a bb-gun – and purchasing a mocha and a bag of chips with the stolen cash, which amounted to no more than $7 in usable money.
Horner-Raffaele was charged with Robbery in the First Degree and taken into custody and arraigned on $100,000 bail. In a plea deal with the state entered on April 25, that charge was reduced to Theft in the Second Degree. A charge of Assault in the Third Degree was reduced to Assault in the Fourth Degree.
The deal stipulates 1 year of prison time for the crime. A May 1 hearing on the agreement was postponed until the Public Defender could discuss the terms with the defendant.
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The 150-ton travelift and pier in Hoonah. Note the washdown pad just above the pier. Sitka wants to start with a pier that could be expanded to accommodate a 300-ton lift, and build washdown pads off to the side. Future plans also include an office and restroom. (PND Engineers)Sitka has selected a site for a new marine haulout, but the proposed timetable for the publicly-funded project is not sitting well with some in the industry. They remain concerned about the ongoing loss of boat repair and maintenance business to other communities.
Sitka has over $8 million to spend on a marine haulout. Voters last October overwhelmingly approved withdrawing the money from the city’s permanent fund to build a pier and to buy a large travelift to pluck boats from the water.
The only thing slower than a 150-ton travelift, however, is the process of designing, engineering, permitting, and actually building a place to use it.
Juneau-based PND Engineering is doing preliminary planning for the project. At a recent meeting (4-26-23) of the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board of directors, PND representatives rolled out a timetable that aims for a 35-percent preliminary design by this fall, final design by the summer of 2024, and operations sometime in early 2025.
Local shipwright Mike Nurco thought the timeline was excessive.
“We’ve missed the ‘23 season completely,” Nurco said. “Boats are just flying to Wrangell, they’re flying to Hoonah, the (Sitka harbor) grid’s, swamped. And now we’re talking about missing ‘24. And we’re talking about missing the year ‘25. For all of these boats – that’s four harbors chock-full of boats – I would encourage everybody to somehow pick up the slack and make this happen quicker.”
There hasn’t been a commercial haulout in Sitka since early last year, when Halibut Point Marine closed. Nurco said the run to the nearest full-service haulout in Wrangell was 28 hours for a typical fishing vessel. Hoonah, which has a haulout, but limited services, he said was around 16 or 17 hours.
Industrial park board member Chad Goeden sympathized, but stressed the importance of investing time now, which prompted a swift rebuttal from Nurco.
“I completely understand your concern,” said Goeden. “But everybody in this room has an idea of what ‘right’ is in their mind. And if we don’t take the time to get that ‘right’ from everybody, then we have regrets about having moved too quickly. And that’s my concern, because when we’re done, it’s permanent. And there’s gonna be a lot of things that we can’t go back and fix.”
“That’s right,” said Nurco, returning to the testimony table. “But that’s why we pay these guys (PND Engineering) with all their experience to do something quicker than three years away. And so there’s got to be a place in the middle. Nobody wants to rush you. But you know what, this is not rocket science…. So I do hear what you’re saying. I think that’s wise. But I think there’s a middle ground.”
That middle ground was not identified during the meeting.
The board did resolve a separate issue, however. The haulout project won’t include a public use ramp to launch smaller boats. The existing 60-foot wide gravel ramp was constructed by Northline Seafoods several years ago to haul out barges, and convert them into floating fish processors. Northline has since moved that part of its operations to Washington State, and the ramp is seeing only occasional use now. PND proposed – as one of three options – building the pier for the travelift on the site of the ramp, since the same characteristics that made it ideal for hauling out barges also favored hauling out fishing vessels: Plenty of room for adjacent washdown pads, and a relatively short run to the area where vessels will be serviced.
Board members for the Gary Paxton Industrial Park preferred Option 2 for the location of the new haulout. Although a gravel ramp is currently located there, members felt the haulout was a higher priority, and the ramp could be relocated. (PND Engineering)Retaining the ramp, if possible, was included in the instructions – or the “charter” – given to PND Engineers, but the location is too attractive to ignore. Park director Garry White suggested that the ramp – which was free to begin with – could be relocated to another site. Municipal administrator John Leach agreed, and urged the board to focus on the core mission.
“The ramp, in my mind, although I personally would like to preserve it, that’s starting to become an add on to the project,” Leach said. “Because right now there is no public use ramp. And if we start talking about what can we do to maintain a public use ramp, that’s not in the scope of what we were doing in the first place. So I just wanted to draw everybody back to the haulout right now.”
Board member Lauren Mitchell was the most reluctant to give up the ramp, and – prior to the vote – asked other members to explain their reasons for parting with it. Chair Scott Wagner said that he saw it as the best, central location for the haulout, and the ramp could be moved.
When it finally came to the vote Mitchell, after a pause, said “I’ll let it go,” and joined the others in selecting the ramp as the preferred location for the new haulout.
PND plans five other public meetings on the project. The next will be sometime in May, when engineers present an initial concept design.
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Sitka’s public works director has been reassigned to a position as municipal engineer.
Michael Harmon has been serving as public works director for 14 years. Municipal administrator John Leach told Sitka Assembly members on Tuesday (4-25-23) that relieving Harmon was intended to shore up staffing in capital projects, following the retirement of the current project manager this Friday.
Leach praised Harmon’s contributions to the department during his long tenure.
“Michael’s and extremely valued and respected engineer, and a loyal and hard-working member of our team,” said Leach. “His skills will be critical to ensuring our capital projects portfolio, valued over $150 million, stays on track and our projects are seen through to completion. With current and upcoming vacancies, our capital program was at risk of becoming more of an ancillary thought, rather than a primary mission within the department. There’s simply too much at risk for our capital projects to not be the focus of a highly-qualified engineer and project manager, which is why Mr. Harmon and I mutually agreed on this path being the most beneficial to the city.”
The change will become effective on May 1. Harmon will be the only engineer working on capital projects for the time being.
Leach named Ron Vincent as interim public works director, during the search for a permanent replacement for Harmon.
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The Sitka Tourism Task Force will consider Sitka’s capacity for cruise tourism, but it will have other challenges in the coming year: Land use and development, tourism best practices, and deciding if it should disband and reforganize as a permanent Tourism Commission. (Pictured: the Serenade of the Seas at the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal in 2021, KCAW Tash Kimmell)Sitka has created a task force to make recommendations on the long-term impact of increased tourism in the community.
The Tourism Task Force will face many challenges in the coming year. The first, which was tackled by the Sitka Assembly, was deciding whom to put on the panel, in order to represent the widest-possible interests in the community.
Note: The first meeting of the Sitka Tourism Task Force will be a joint work session with the Sitka Assembly, 6 p.m. Thursday, April 27, in Harrigan Centennial Hall.
It’s not often that municipal commissions have more applicants than seats in Sitka, but that was the case with the Tourism Task Force, which had 16 residents apply for nine seats.
Several seats are weighted toward cruise industry interests, and there wasn’t any debate over filling the Tribal, Cruise Terminal, and Tours Attractions seats. A couple of other seats, representing the Port and Harbors Commission and Sitka’s Sustainability Commissission, only had one applicant each.
The General Business Seat, however, was more contested. Three applicants wanted the slot, including Cambria Holmes, who owns Campfire Kitchen. Holmes said her views on cruise tourism were shaped by living in Haines, and seeing what was going on in nearby Skagway.
“I would look over there and want to cry because everything’s owned by the cruise ships,” said Holmes. “It was just polar opposites. And I felt like when I moved to Sitka, it had a really nice balance to it. And I want to find a good balance where Sitka benefits, money can come and it can stay, and we can not be destroyed by turning into Skagway part two.”
Holmes won an appointment to the task force.
Showing up and speaking did not guarantee a spot. Shirley Robards was one of two applicants for the Downtown Business Corridor seat. Her business, Stereo North, is celebrating its 40th anniversary soon. Robards discussed her history, and her good relationship with other downtown businesses, but the assembly opted instead to appoint Jim Michener, the co-owner of Alaska Pure Sea Salt Company.
The most highly-contested seats were for Community-at-Large, which had six applicants for two positions.
During public testimony, former assembly member Richard Wein suggested that the commission needed better balancing, and would benefit from more at-large members.
“If I were you, there are six on there, I would nominate them all and let them all sit and give their opinions,” said Wein.
Wein’s view was seconded by Eric Jordan, a long-time outspoken community advocate in Sitka.
The assembly, however, didn’t have the freedom to amend the ordinance creating the tourism task force. Instead, they chose applicants with broad constituencies.
Former assembly member, and 40-year resident Phyllis Hackett was picked for the eighth seat.
“I also have a really deep sense of the importance of Sitka as a community and a lifestyle here for the residents,” said Hackett. “And I know that the summer is very important to the residents that live here year round. And I really believe we need to find a good balance. I’ve watched Juneau, and I’ve watched Ketchikan, I’ve watched Skagway, I’ve watched all these communities over the years go through their changes with tourism, and I’m concerned – I’m concerned for Sitka.”
The ninth seat went to Rich McClear, a former employee of KCAW and current volunteer at the station, who has both a long record of community service, as well as a passion for cruising fostered by his grandfather, who came to America working as a ship’s steward.
McClear has become an avid world traveler in retirement, and is a student of the cruise industry.
“And recently I’ve been following what other communities are doing to try and look at the tourism situation,” McClear said. “I’ve looked at the memorandums of understanding that Bar Harbor, Maine, and Juneau have come up with. I’ve looked at the ordinances that Bar Harbor and Portland and Key West have tried to pass. I’ve looked at some of the controversies in Cobh, Ireland and Bora Bora. All these communities are facing the same issue: How do we preserve the essential nature of our community while having business flourish?”
The Sitka Tourism Task Force will have a year to do its work, in five major areas ranging from determining an appropriate level of tourism in the community to land use regulations. Its final task will be to determine whether – a year from now – it should be dissolved, and replaced by a permanent Sitka Tourism Commission.
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The Sitka School Board was faced with the choice of keeping 2-3 classroom positions at Keet Gooshi Heen, or taking district reserves down to their lowest level ever: $10,000. The board decided to keep the teachers. (File photo)The Sitka School Board has gone out on a limb – maybe the longest limb it’s ever gone out on – in passing a budget for next year.
In a split vote last Thursday (4-20-23), the board voted to keep staffing levels the same as this year, and to almost completely drain the district’s reserves.
Note: The Sitka School District’s $23 million dollar budget for next year now goes to the Sitka Assembly for final adoption.
The most money for education in Alaska comes from the legislature, and that’s the rub for Sitka, and every other school district in the state.
The legislature hasn’t decided how much it will spend next year, leaving schools to draft their budgets based on guesswork.
It’s an infuriating and agonizing process for local communities that want to spend as much as they can on schools – keeping good teachers, recruiting new ones, and maintaining sports, music, and other extracurricular programs that incentivize attendance.
Board member Tristan Guevin attributed much of Sitka’s difficult position to a faulty legislative process.
“We’re building a budget without an idea of what our revenues will be because of inaction by the state,” said Guevin. “We’ve talked to death the situation with the BSA, that it hasn’t been increased since July of 2016. In that same time period, we faced about 25-percent inflation. So in essence, that flat funding is a budget decrease – a significant budget decrease.”
The BSA stands for Base Student Allocation, or the amount of money the state gives each district for each student. The BSA has been increased once in the last seven years, and been bumped several times with one-time grants, but – as Guevin noted – it’s never been adjusted for inflation. Several bills have been introduced in the legislature this year that might provide yet another bump, but it’s anyone’s guess where the final number will land.
This left the Sitka School Board to consider only two options: whether to cut three teachers at Keet Gooshi Heen and increase class sizes in fourth and fifth grade, or keep those teachers and take the district savings account to its lowest level ever – just over $10,000. (Note: The district must maintain restricted reserves of about $65,000. The $10,000 balance is in excess of that.)
Board member Todd Gebler wanted to keep the teachers.
“It is an enormous risk,” said Gebler. “And a lot of it, you can put a label on it, the state is not doing what they should for us. And that is the truth: they’re really not doing it. But in order for the teachers to do what they need to do, small class sizes are important. And in order for us to do that, I’m very, very happy to keep those three positions at Keet.”
The risk is that the proposed budget assumes the state will increase the BSA with a one-time shot of $450. Again, it’s just a guess. Bills have been introduced in the legislature with higher amounts ($680 to over $1,000), but it’s a long road before any of them arrive at the governor’s desk. The final amount could also be lower than $450. In that event, the district couldn’t meet its obligations, as pointed out by Mike Vieira, president of the Sitka Education Association, which represents teachers.
“If you can’t meet payroll – that’s us (teachers),” Vieira said. “I think that puts us all in the same boat.”
Another alternative before the board would be to reduce staff at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary by two positions, and transfer them to Baranof Elementary School. The resulting draw on district savings would then leave close to $200,000 in the bank. This was the preference of board president Blossom Teal-Olsen, who was uncomfortable with going all the way down to $10,000.
“I cannot. I cannot bring myself to be okay with walking away, knowing that it would jeopardize our whole community, knowing that our find balance would be left at such a level,” said Teal-Olsen.
In the end, other board members overruled Teal-Olsen, and voted to approve a budget that leaves the teaching staff intact (with the exception of eliminating one teaching position at Raven’s Way, adding a Special Education case manager at Baranof Elementary, a social worker at Pacific High, and a reading specialist), draws on $1.7 million in savings, and assumes the legislature will allocate at least another $450 per student to education this year which – as yet – it has come to no agreement on.
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Tim Fulton in his “happy place”: His home workshop. TISABAS did not spring into being overnight; Fulton has been prototyping for decades, with a variety of rollers and belts to move heavy items like fish boxes in the bellies of airplanes. His first two TISABAS are headed to an equipment supplier for Malaysian Airlines — for $35,000 a piece. (KCAW/Woolsey)An airplane equipment manufacturer is setting up shop in Sitka – in the garage where he invented his first device.
Tim Fulton is a “ramper” who spent nearly four decades loading luggage and cargo on Alaska Airlines jets. After weathering the pandemic and several years of demonstrating his product around the world and obtaining various safety certifications, he’ll be shipping his first two orders this month.
KCAW’s Robert Woolsey dropped by to see how business is shaping up at Ramper Innovations.
CNC cutter starting up…
If you’re experiencing déjà vu right now, don’t be concerned. I’ve reported on Ramper Innovations on two previous occasions, first with Tim Fulton the innovator, a second time with Tim Fulton the product developer. This third trip is to meet with Tim Fulton the manufacturer, and to see his operation.
Fulton’s machinist, Danon Vest, is operating a computer-controlled router.
KCAW – What’s this part that’s being made?
Vest – It’s a cover plate for the chassis. So right now it’s using a chamfer mill to cut some chamfers to accept hardware.
Machinist Danon Vest operates a computer-controlled router. While Ramper Innovations has outsourced the fabrication of some precision parts to other firms, the final product is assembled in Sitka. Eventually, CEO Fulton hopes to move into a larger facility with better storage for materials. (KCAW/Woolsey)Fulton’s shop is still located in his home in a Sitka neighborhood, but it’s evolved far beyond your typical garage workshop. The computer-controlled router and color monitors by the door are a dead giveaway, but so is the device taking shape on the bench: A clean assembly of precision-made aluminum framing, motors, and belts that is less the Rube Goldberg of my last visit, and a bit more Henry Ford. Fulton calls his product TISABAS, which is an acronym for Tim Saves Backs.
“We’re wiring this one up, and it should be assembled by the end of the week,” said Fulton. “Then we’ll start on the second one, and plans are to send it to Malaysia by the end of the month.”
The machine is a folding belt designed to operate in the belly of an aircraft like a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320. Unfolded, it’s 20 feet long, with eight independent conveyor belts that move your luggage from the loading door toward the center of the plane, where a “ramper” piles it up and secures it with a cargo net. In current practice, your luggage doesn’t move down a belt inside a plane: A ramper working on their knees throws, shoves, or rolls it, and the consequences can be painful – and often chronic – back injuries.
TISABAS is not exactly flying out the door. Fulton had to advocate for his product in a commercial environment where taking care of the people who load planes is a harder sell than passenger amenities, like streaming wi-fi. Still, there are believers, and Fulton has traveled the world to put TISABAS in front of them, and now it’s paying off.
“These are sold to an equipment supplier to airlines,” he said. “So we actually met this guy when we were at the expo in Paris last year. And he was with the purchaser for Malaysian Air, and the purchaser was very impressed and pushed this guy to purchase for them to send it over.”
Fulton has three beta-versions in circulation in various countries. As we spoke, one was being shipped from Brazil to Miami. Another had just been delivered in Sweden.
Surprisingly, the North American market – even his former employer, Alaska Airlines – hasn’t shown much interest. There’s little reason to doubt Fulton, who was a ramper for 38 years, when he says the US airline industry is slow to adopt. If TISABAS succeeds, it will be the international market that makes it happen.
“We were on a call yesterday with Argentina; the day before with Brazil,” Fulton said. “We have IAA, the Israeli Airport Authority is interested. From Sweden, the (beta) unit is going to Spain, England, Thailand, and India. So the international market is where we are close to closing deals on a daily basis.”
Ramper Innovations’ first year of revenue was 2022. Each of these TISABAS sells for $35,000, so they’re putting up numbers for this year too. But it’s still a scrappy operation.
“I do have a corner office, but it’s in my spare bedroom,” said Maury Hackett, laughing.
Hackett is one of four employees in the company, and Ramper’s chief operating officer, tracking everything from the company’s three-to-five year strategy, to how it manages time on the production floor. When I was last here, Hackett was in a jacket and slacks. Today, she’s in work clothes, helping to assemble the product. Her background is in recreational therapy and ergonomics. She wants to position Fulton as a thought leader in ramp safety, and she believes that safety will ultimately sell TISABAS.
“In the receptivity that Tim had in Paris by all these European companies,” Hackett said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, this is incredible.’ And not just like, ‘This is an interesting thing, let me see if I can convince the decision-maker of purchasing this thing.’ Rather, they have the authority as the safety person. And safety is shaping things.”
A crowd-funding campaign for Ramper Innovations raised over $325,000 last year, but now that he’s actually putting TISABAS into production, Fulton believes his company is turning over a new chapter. He envisions his folding belt technology used in trucking, warehousing, and even cruise ships. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, he did not think it would be this hard, but he’s in it for the duration.
“It does get stressful,” Fulton said, laughing. “But it’s still enjoyable. And I think believing in what we’re doing makes a big difference.”
In the meantime, Fulton will continue cultivating international sales, and stay focused. “What’s in front of us right now is getting these units built, getting more sold,” he said.
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“It’s the gape,” says Prof. Todd O’Hara. “The size of the mouth will dictate the trophic level in a lot of fish.” O’Hara says long-lived predators like lingcod are likely to have higher concentrations of mercury. But so far, Alaskan seafood remains far below levels considered dangerous by the World Health Organization. (Flickr photo/Allie Caulfield)It’s an unpleasant fact for everyone who eats fish in Alaska: Mercury is in the food chain, and it’s particularly prevalent in seafood.
And while the amount of mercury found in Alaskan seafood remains far below dangerous levels, a pair of researchers want to keep an eye on it long-term. The best way to do this, they’ve found, is not by testing fish coming over the docks, but by testing human hair. They’re in Sitka to report the findings of a pilot study begun five years ago.
Note: Todd O’Hara and Maggie Castellini will report to the public on their mercury study 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, in Harrigan Centennial Hall.
Todd O’Hara is a veterinarian, but don’t bring him your cat to be spayed.
“I’m a veterinarian who has a PhD in toxicology,” he said. “I’ve never had any desire to be a clinical veterinarian. I’ve applied my veterinary degree to wildlife and fish research in toxicology and environmental agents of disease. So that’s how I got into this business.”
O’Hara is a researcher with Texas A&M and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A lot of pathologists who study human disease are veterinarians, which is not surprising when you consider how closely humans and animals are linked on this planet.
Maggie Castellini, however, is not a veterinarian.
“Maggie is a marine mammal physiologist, by the way,” said O’Hara, “she’s actually trained in marine mammal physiology.”
“That’s correct,” said Castellini.
“Which greatly applies to what we do,” said O’Hara.
We’ll come back in a moment to why a marine mammal physiologist is important for research about mercury in seafood. Castellini – until last summer – was with the UAF College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and working in the vet department. In 2018, she and O’Hara won funding from the National Institute of Health to study the accumulation of mercury in the marine food web.
The pair had often been to Sitka for the annual symposium on humpback whales – called WhaleFest – and the community, they realized, provided a diverse pool of people who live closely with the marine environment. They launched a pilot study, hosted by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, and began to collect samples – not of the sea creatures consumed by Sitkans, but of human hair, which can reveal a lot about the head it’s growing out of.
“And hair is just a really easy tissue to be able to work with,” said Castellini. “it’s a very good indicator of mercury in the rest of the body. It’s obviously very easy to sample: You don’t have to stick a needle in somebody or anything like that. And we would just take a very small – maybe about the width of a pencil – from the very back of a person’s scalp, and just cut it right close to the scalp. And that’s all you need to do. It doesn’t hurt and you can’t even tell that the hair has been cut away. So it’s really nice to be able to do effective monitoring with such an easy collection and sample, and also something that’s pretty easy to analyze as well after the fact.”
The pilot study tested mercury levels in the hair of 70 subjects, both in Sitka and in another, smaller community in Southeast Alaska. The objective was to be as broad-based as possible, rather than focus on any specific ethnic group or demographic. Really broad-based.
“And one of the things we like is when vegans and vegetarians participate in the study,” said O’Hara, “because that shows us sort of a control, a non meat consuming person.”
The upshot of the study is that the tested population showed mercury levels far below the cutoff for the World Health Organization. O’Hara says most people came in at around one part per million of mercury, a couple of people were at five parts per million. The WHO cutoff is ten parts per million.
This is good news for Alaskans who live by – and from – the sea. But it’s not the full story. Mercury accumulates in different species at different rates. O’Hara and Castellini want to expand mercury monitoring, to better specify any risk.
“For a long time, the types of advisories that would be sent out – and there still are in some parts of the country – that basically treat all fishes equally, ‘Don’t eat more than this many meals of fish a week if you’re a woman who’s of childbearing age.’ But that’s not at all true with mercury. Some species of fish have vanishingly small amounts of mercury because of their lifestyle, whereas others can have – especially the bigger ones – can have fairly high levels.”
“The gape, the size of the mouth,” said O’Hara, “will dictate trophic level in a lot of fish. So the bigger the fish, the larger fish they can consume. And those tend to be at a higher position in the food web.”
And higher still are marine mammals. Alaska, the pair agree, has a pretty good advisory system for fish – but not for the animals that eat those fish, and then are consumed by people, primarily Alaska Natives.
“So we would like to include marine mammals, in our study,” said O’Hara, “to give people here in Southeast Alaska, better representation of their diet.”
Note: O’Hara is scheduled to present to the Sealaska Heritage Institute on mercury pathways in marine mammals. View a link to a YouTube video of the presentation.
Some places are famously contaminated with mercury: San Francisco Bay, with Gold Rush-era mining residue. Minamata Bay in Japan, with industrial mercury at such high concentrations that the resulting neurological damage is called Minamata Disease. Alaska’s mercury is less likely to be caused by human activity: There’s naturally-occuring cinnabar, for example, and volcanoes.
O’Hara and Castellini hope that their pilot study with the National Institute of Health will take off into more permanent monitoring of mercury in coastal Alaska. They see monitoring as an incentive to a healthy diet, rather than a deterrent.
“If that’s all people hear about, then they start to be afraid to eat good, healthy foods,” said Castellini. “And so it’s really nice to be able to get a broad study where we can look at communities and say actually ‘You might eat a lot of fish, but your mercury concentrations in general are still not that high.’ And it’s a good reassurance.”
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Gas prices have fallen in Alaska recently, but in Sitka they’ve fallen the least. Sitkans pay about 5-percent less for fuel than they did last year. In Anchorage, they’re paying 20-percent less. (KCAW/Woolsey)There’s an economic rebound occurring in Sitka, but it comes at a price – mainly in increased housing costs, and continued high fuel prices.
View the latest numbers from Sitka Trends, the quarterly newsletter of the Sitka Economic Development Association.
On the plus side, there is more money in Sitka now than in 2019, although it sometimes doesn’t feel that way with inflation running high.
A major source – obviously – is the increase in sales tax revenue. Sitka collected over $2-and-a-half million dollars more over the last fiscal year than it did in fiscal year 2021. That’s an increase of 19-percent, which has given local government a lot more flexibility to make major decisions around things like school funding, and the emergency replacement of the heat pumps at Blatchley Middle School.
Property tax has increased by less than $100,000 over the same period. Raw fish taxes – another major economic indicator – aren’t included in this report.
But it’s not just the city government that’s doing better. Per-capita income in Sitka is up since 2019 – by over $5,000 per person. That’s a bigger increase than seen in Juneau, Ketchikan, or even the entire state. Per capita income in Sitka is now roughly $76,000.
On the downside, driving is still expensive in Sitka – and it’s immediately clear how much so when you buy gas in Anchorage, where fuel has dropped to around $3.70, just $.30 higher than the national average. That’s a 20-percent drop for Anchorage in just the last year. Meanwhile in Sitka, the price of fuel has dropped only about 5-and-a-half percent, and is still over $5 per gallon. That’s worse than Juneau, where gas is going for a little more than $4.
The other big expense for Sitkans is housing, where costs have gone up significantly more than comparable communities like Ketchikan. Rent for three bedrooms in Sitka now averages about $1,870, compared to $1,815 in Ketchikan – but that Sitka rent is over 9-percent more than it was a year ago, while the rent in Ketchikan went up just 2-percent over the same period.
And finally Sitka’s population is down slightly – by just under 200 people since 2020. That’s consistent with the overall decline in Southeast Alaska, but contrary to the statewide trend. Alaska, as a whole, has gained over 7,000 people in the last two years.
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Artist Steve Lawrie at Phonograph Creek in 2021. The Bealers didn’t specify how their home should be used by the Sitka Conservation Society, only that it benefit the Society’s Living Wilderness Fund. (SCS/Clare)A new exhibit is opening in Sitka, in honor of artists Eric and Pam Bealer.
The year-long project is a collaboration between a visual artist and a writer, both of whom found inspiration in the extraordinary lives of the Bealers, and in the extraordinary nature of their passing.
Note: The Squirrel and the Bear opening reception will be 5-7 pm Friday, April 7, in the first floor of the Venneburg Insurance building on Harbor Drive. All are welcome. The exhibit will be up until April 21. For purposes of disclosure, Maite Lorente serves on the board of directors of KCAW.
Eric Bealer was a wood engraver. Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’ll instantly recognize his art: Intricately detailed prints of the Southeast Alaskan landscape surrounding the home he made with his wife Pam, a textile artist, in Phonograph Creek, just outside of Pelican, on Chichagof Island.
In most ways, the Bealers were like so many other Alaskans living off the grid, forging a life from the land. But in one way they were quite different: Although it’s been five years since the couple died, their home – and their spirit – are very much alive.
“The interesting thing about that couple is when you go there, her presence is strong, really strong,” said Steve Lawrie, a portrait artist and painter who’s been out to Phonograph Creek several times.
“And Eric not so much, until you get out into the boat shop because he built boats, in addition to other things. He built all the buildings on the property. They built boats. It’s not that they’re any different in some ways than a lot of Alaskans. You know, you can look around and see people living out in the sticks and right there around Pelican. It’s the amount of art that Eric produced with Pam’s help. That’s pretty amazing.”
A world class wood engraver, Eric Bealer’s work is instantly recognizable for the depth of its detail. This piece is entitled “Surge Bay Puffins.” (SCS image)Then and now, Eric Bealer’s engravings remain some of the most iconic work produced in Alaska, and they can be found in homes and galleries everywhere. The exhibit installed in Sitka isn’t a wall filled with Bealer’s prints, however, it is a collection of over 50 paintings by Lawrie and his literary collaborator, Maite Lorente, which illuminate the lives of these remarkable people.
The exhibit is called The Squirrel and the Bear.
“Eric identified – if you like – as a squirrel, and boy, it is appropriate,” said Lawrie. “I don’t know if you’ve ever met him but he’s very frenetic. Like a squirrel. His wife Pam, more grounded, more solid to the earth. She identified with bear, so that’s how the title came about.”
“They tried to live as close to the earth as possible,’ said Andrew Thoms, the director of the Sitka Conservation Society.
“They tried to have as small of an environmental footprint as they could. They built their house out of beach logs that they salvaged. They practiced a subsistence lifestyle and put up all their food, they had gardens and grew stuff, and they made a lot of their art from what they found and gathered and were inspired by in the surrounding environment. And it was a really Alaskan way of life off the grid.”\
Pam and Eric Bealer at Sea Pony Farm. As Pam’s MS advanced, she gave up her horses and sheep. The couple disappeared from their remote cabin on Green Top, Yakobi Island, in the fall of 2018. They had completely arranged their affairs, and left instructions not to look for their bodies. (SCS image)In widely publicized news at the time, the Bealers disappeared from their home at Phonograph Creek in the fall of 2018 (and also from their remote property at Green Top, on Yakobi Island), leaving behind packages and postage, notes for friends and family, and a message for everyone else that they had chosen to end their lives together, and to waste no time or money trying to find their bodies.
They were both in their late 50s, Pam suffering from increasingly debilitating multiple sclerosis , and Eric – as far as is known – in good health.
They left their Phonograph Creek property and its contents to the Sitka Conservation Society, to benefit the Society’s Living Wilderness Fund, and it’s now a retreat built by artists, for artists.
“Eric and Pam lived and built their property and designed – everything that they had up there was a work of art,” said Thoms, “you know, just like the artwork that they did. They were true artists to their core, and it was infused in everything that they did. They had a very strong connection with the lands and waters around them. And you can feel that they’re in the property. And the Living Wilderness Fund honors them, and the founders of the Conservation Society, and the people that really did great work to help preserve this place for future generations.
“Ken” by Stephen Lawrie. Lawrie’s portraits often feature only his subject’s face, in remarkable detail. In “The Squirrel and the Bear,” Lawrie says he focused on illustration, and found a strong new direction for his work. (Image c. Stephen Lawrie)Although some will say the Bealers’ lives ended tragically, Steve Lawrie doesn’t. The context of The Squirrel and the Bear is much greater than the detail of their deaths.
“It’s a love story,” he said. “ Look at me, I’m an older guy: We all know how life works. But this couple met when they were young. And within two days, they started a life together and they never deviated. They went from back East to Haines, Alaska. They lived there for four or five years and then moved to Phonograph Creek when that property became available. And they never deviated from what Andrew just described, which is a life far less impactful life than I live for example. And I really admire their tenacity and in doing it.”
Lawrie has become well-known in recent years for his oversized portraits – paintings large enough for the National Portrait Gallery, but displaying, in most cases, only his subjects’ faces in painstaking detail. While this might recommend him as an interpreter of Eric Bealer’s work, Lawrie goes in a different direction for The Squirrel and the Bear, and the departure has resulted in some surprising – and profound – new work.
“They’re all paintings that describe the Bealers,” Lawrie said. “There are several portraits. The home, the interior of the home, the exterior of the home. Basically, I became an illustrator in this series of paintings, I suppose it would be fair to say. I think they explain their lives – this whole thing will help explain their lives.”
Lawrie credits his collaborator, Maite Lorente, for pouring over the journals and photos the Bealers left behind, including their notes to one another, and giving the exhibit a structure. Some of Lorente’s poems and excerpts from other writings are incorporated into the paintings themselves – over 50 in all.The Squirrel and the Bear seems made-to-order for a book someday, but the Sitka Conservation Society doesn’t have a timeline. For now, it’s both a tribute to the Bealers and to their home in the Tongass, as well as fresh insight into the lives they led, and the choices they made.
The post In paint and words, ‘The Squirrel and Bear’ exhibit is a portrait of one couple’s artistic legacy appeared first on KCAW.
The power of the Rights of Nature movement is its simplicity: Along with individuals and land owners, nature itself should be able to litigate for damages. This tool has already been adopted by Tribal Governments like the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin. The participants in the Sitka Indigenous Youth Summit wanted to take the Rights of Nature — and other revolutionary ideas — back to their home nations in the Yukon, Cape Cod, Louisiana, and Hawaii. (KCAW/Woolsey)One of the major ideas to emerge from the Enlightenment was that individual humans have rights. In Sitka recently, a group of students from all over the country spent a week exploring how rights might be applied to nature, and what a legal framework respecting those rights might look like.
Surprisingly, this isn’t a group of legal scholars. Most are in high school, all are Indigenous, and all are committed to learning how the Rights of Nature can not only protect natural resources, but also preserve culture.
Britt Gondolfi lecturing, with PowerPoint:
“If you have a legal right, you have three things: One, you can bring a lawsuit on your behalf; two, when you bring that lawsuit, you have the right to have a court assess the injury done to you; and three, you have the right to be given relief from the court.”
In a classroom in Fraser Hall, once a dormitory for the Sheldon Jackson Training School (and later college), a mixture of about 40 mostly high school students and some older students are exploring a formidable new legal concept: The Rights of Nature. In this example, instructor Britt Gondolfi describes a scenario where landowners are suing an upstream polluter. Under current legal theory, those landowners can win damages. But what about the stream itself?
Gondofi continues…
“The Rights of Nature movement is saying, ‘We need to be adding nature to the list of people that are harmed in these kinds of litigation.’ And so in this kind of fictional scenario, the court will assess the injury done to the stream. They’re going to put a value not only on the loss that the landowner and the community has suffered, but they’re going to put a value on what it costs to restore the ecosystem.”
Britt Gondolfi, a former high school teacher-turned law student at Loyola University in New Orleans, walked students through the principles of the Rights of Nature. She explained that tribes are the logical entities to pursue the Rights of Nature because they are sovereign. When other jurisdictions (like cities) have tried to give nature legal “personhood,” they’ve been subject to countersuits. Sovereign tribes, on the other hand, would be immune. (KCAW/Woolsey)Once a high school teacher, Gondolfi is now a third-year law student at Loyola University in New Orleans, and the Rights of Nature project manager for Bioneers, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization.
During the pandemic, local Indigenous rights advocate Yeix Anatsees Tom Gamble gave a lesson on salmon to a Bioneers conference in San Francisco, and that was the genesis of this spring’s summit in Sitka.
Gamble says the Rights of Nature can be grasped by everyone, from a five-year old to a Ph.D.
“And some of our students recognize those rights without us ever having to explain more than ‘You’re an indigenous person, you’re in your own home, tell me what you would protect,’” Gamble said, “and the Rights of Nature just become blatantly clear to all of them.”
Yeix Anatsees Tom Gamble speaks to summit participants during the annual Blessing of Herring Rock in Sitka. After 25 years fighting for Sitka’s herring run, Gamble sees a new path forward in the Rights of Nature, and in educating young people about the possibilities. “Everything that I endured was not passed on to the youth that came to the summit,” he said. “We provided the real atmosphere that I had hoped for. They were safe, and they were learning. They’re empowered to engage their communities. In their own way, shape or form, they’re gonna change the world, and then they’re ready to go eat a hot dog (laughs).” (KCAW/Rose)Today’s lesson is far more than an academic exercise. There won’t be a test, at least not in this room. The test for these students will be taking the ideas home and putting them into practice, to protect their heritage and way of life.
Amaya Balbeuna is a freshman in high school, and a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts. She’s determined to protect both her community’s herring resource, and what it represents for her culture.
“I grew up going down to the herring run and getting herring with my dad,” she explained. “And when I saw they were dying out – the population was dying because of the cyanobacteria thing we have right now – it was really hurtful to me. And I know my community is hurt by it too. Our belief is the herring represent a new year every time they come. So if the herring stop, life stops for us.”
After Gondolfi’s presentation, the students break into smaller groups, one each for the Wampanoag, the Yukon Llingít, the Hawaiians, and the Houma Nation of Louisiana. Their objective today is to draft a proposed amendment to their tribal ordinances that incorporates the Rights of Nature principle. It’s to be modeled on the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, who have adopted language that reads: “Ecosystems, natural communities, and species.. possess inherent, fundamental, and inalienable rights to naturally exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve. This includes… rights to maintain, recover, and preserve their life cycles, structures, and functions… and rights to the defense, protection, and enforcement of their rights.”
Talia Landry is the adult facilitator for the Mashpee Wampanoag in Cape Cod. She says teaching the Rights of Nature to high school students will help create the long-term commitment needed to see those rights established in law.
“Obviously, we live for the seven generations before and the seven generations after in implementing this concept within the tribal youth now and having them push this along, “ she said. “ It’s going to be their life’s work. So if you implement the youth to do something very strong now, by the time they’re adults the initiative goes all the way forward. So you do have to start with the youth.”
“I got coastal erosion, we lose a football field of land every 40 minutes down there,” said Gabe Barnett, an 11th grader from the Houma Nation in Louisiana. He’s watching his home disappear.
“And it’s due to saltwater intrusion from the oil and gas company because our land is sinking while at the same time, glaciers are melting. And like because of climate change, and the water is rising while the land is sinking. So it’s like double whammy just hitting us hard.”
Each of the four Indigenous groups at the summit has a different issue: For example, the Houma have climate action, the Wampanoag have herring, and the Yukon Lingít have language preservation. But the Rights of Nature is important across cultures. It’s no coincidence that the Indigenous Youth Summit is in Sitka in late March, during the annual herring run in Sitka Sound. No subsistence issue has been more hotly-contested in the region, or actively litigated. The Sitka herring run hasn’t yet been defined as a Right of Nature, but it’s a likely candidate. The group learned about Sitka’s millennia-old relationship to herring from Tom Gamble and tribal elders during a field trip to the Blessing of Herring Rock, in downtown Sitka.
Yeix Anatsees Tom Gamble at Herring Rock…
“We call it speaks Lingít, ‘We’re gonna save it for our grandchildren.’ So some of the kids that aren’t even here yet, they’re not even born, are going to come back in 100 years, and you’re laying the foundation, the very first foundation, to make sure that our lives will be protected forever.”
There are other activities that give the Indigenous Youth Summit a bit of a summer camp feel – a tour of a hatchery and the Raptor Center, and a trip out on the water to harvest herring eggs. But there is an intensity to this education that can’t be overstated. The students huddle around their laptops and legal amendments like collegiate basketball teams in a championship game. The Rights of Nature won’t be won overnight. There’s got to be a strategy.
This is Houma 11th grader Gabe Barnett again.
“What we can do about it is people need to wake up to it,” he said. “More than anything people need to realize what’s happening.”
Yeix Anatsees Tom Gamble has been at the center of conflict over herring in Sitka for a long time. He believes the Rights of Nature represents a new path forward for him, and everyone who follows.
“A quarter of a century of fighting,” Gamble said. “I did not want that fight to be passed along to our youth. What we wanted to do is to hand them the tools necessary to conserve, protect, and to peacefully resolve their issues, in harmony with all the groups that need them.”
Gamble says a 2024 Indigenous Youth Summit is already being planned.
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If the Sitka district is forced to lay off some untenured teachers, it’s likely that a few remaining staff positions would be “displaced” from Keet Gooshi Heen to Baranof Elementary, where there are an unusually high number of special needs students entering next year. However, having to consider dramatic cutbacks is an annual ritual in Alaska’s schools, because the legislature doesn’t appropriate funding until after most districts have built budgets for the following school year. (KCAW file photo)The Sitka School Board is facing the uncomfortable possibility of cutting up to 15 teaching positions next year, unless the legislature comes through with some eleventh-hour funding for education across the state.
Six of the teaching positions on the chopping block are retirements. This method of reducing the size of the workforce is the easiest, but it still creates some tough choices about where to fill vacancies, where to make some classes larger – often called the PTR, or pupil-teacher ratio – or what programs to cut entirely.
On top of the six retirements, another eight or so teaching positions would have to be cut if nothing changes. Currently the district employs 27 teachers who have not completed the two full years needed to become tenured, and – in anticipation of possible cuts – have not yet been issued contracts.
At a special budget worksession with the school board on March 9, Superintendent Frank Hauser said that shifting the remaining untenured teachers around to fill critical roles would not be simple.
“Of those 27 people, we will potentially have to have some displacements, if the board decides to change some PTRs and reduce PTRs at certain schools that could have a ripple effect and displacement of some staff,” Hauser said. “We know we have a couple of positions open at Baranof Elementary School, if we have to lose some teachers at Keet Gooshi Heen, then those teachers might be displaced to another school depending on what their certification is.”
This predicament – this conversation – occurs in every school district board room across the state this time of year, since Alaska is one of very few states that doesn’t appropriate money for education, until after most districts have prepared their budgets for next year.
As in past legislatures, at least two bills have been introduced to increase the Base Student Allocation (BSA), or the money that the state contributes for the education of each child in the state. For students who have special needs, that number goes up by a multiplier of thirteen – but the added revenue can still fall short of the money needed to cover the extra staffing for special needs students.
District special education director Chris Voron said that Baranof Elementary is going to require a special needs case manager, to keep up with the expected 12 special needs students in kindergarten and first grade next year.
Voron said it was an unusual set of circumstances, between the pandemic and other issues, creating the special needs bubble.
“The most common areas of eligibility are speech impairment, or early childhood developmental delay, those are categories in early childhood that I would say there is an increase in need that we’re identifying,” Voron explained. “So the pandemic has had a effect on our special education needs. However, we would say that doesn’t really account for everything that we’re seeing. It’s just these are the families, these are students, that are here currently, coming into kindergarten next year. We just have a very significant amount of students that are what we call ‘low incidence,’ meaning students with autism, students with medical conditions, students that have those higher level of needs.”
Sitka School Board members did not have a lot of ideas at this point, except a general willingness to use district reserves to balance the budget next year – but not all the reserves. They looked at scenarios where the state raised the Base Student Allocations by different amounts, from $250 to $450, and even by $1,000, which many education advocates say is the minimum needed to keep up with inflation since 2016 – the last time the BSA was adjusted.
Any of those numbers – if they come to pass – would provide relief for the district. Sitka assembly member Tim Pike sat in on the worksession. He’s also a teacher at the high school. The uncomfortable conversation around potential teacher layoffs was familiar, because it happens – to some degree – almost every year.
He urged board members to come up with a plan, and hope they don’t have to use it.
“I can remember previous superintendents who would say, ‘Gosh, I’m crying wolf all the time here,’ ” Pike said. “You know, at some point, that will show up, but most of the time — and up until now, and all my time here — it has never showed up. Because the state does come through with money in the end, but we don’t know what it is until after we’ve all gone through the pain and suffering of this process.”
The Sitka School Board’s draft budget for 2024 stands at just under $24 million. The board will finalize its budget for adoption, and submission to the Sitka Assembly, on April 20.
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383,000 cruise visitors in 2022 prompted local leaders to close Lincoln Street to auto traffic on the busiest days. In 2023, an additional 100,000 visitors are possible. Based on data collected in the “2022 Community Assessment on the Impacts of Increased Tourism in Sitka,” a majority of residents feel the rapid growth of cruise tourism has made Sitka a less desirable place to live. (KCAW/Kimmell)A majority of Sitkans think the rapid increase in tourism last summer made the community a less desirable place to live – or at least that’s the feeling of a majority of respondents of a graduate study conducted in the height of the cruise season last August. As KCAW’s Robert Woolsey reports, collecting data on the impact of tourism is a matter of numbers, and of perceptions.
Note: Priya Gandhi and Samantha Matthews will present their study to the Sitka Planning Commission at its next regular meeting on Wednesday, March 15. Here’s a link to the Brief Report, and a link to the Full Assessement.
Priya Gandhi and Samantha Matthews are students at the Pardee Rand Graduate School of Public Policy in Santa Monica, California. They were the project leaders for a social science study last August to understand how Sitkans perceived the dramatic increase in summer visitation, and how it affected their sense of well-being.
Unlike more casual surveys, this project tried to tease out nuances: For example, Sitkans can appreciate the increase in sales tax revenue derived from visitors, but can be frustrated by the increased congestion.
And Priya Gandhi says the timing of the survey was a factor.
“This is kind of a snapshot into how community members were feeling at that very moment in which they engaged with our efforts,” said Gandhi. “But there are certainly lots of other potential changes, both in terms of tourism and the visitor industry and in terms of Sitka’s planning and responses, that all might feed into differences in these numbers one way or the other in the future.”
The survey results are revealing. 87-percent of respondents reported being impacted by tourism in 2022; 63-percent of respondents felt the uptick in tourism made Sitka a less desirable place to live.
Sitka underwent significant short-term planning measures to accommodate the roughly 400,000 cruise visitors last summer – around double the typical number of visitors in any previous year. On the busiest days, the main street downtown was closed to traffic, large toilet trailers were parked in less-than-ideal locations, and cafes and restaurants struggled to meet the out-of-proportion demand.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. Samantha Matthews says Sitkans felt the yin and yang of the town’s surge in economic activity.
“A lot of our data show these trade offs that people are facing with increased tourism,” Matthews said. “And so a lot of folks talked about the the economic benefits, the tax revenue that the city would receive, and things like that, but then there were concerns around equity and the economic benefits of tourism, and where would that tax revenue go? So I think some of our recommendations were really just around making that process transparent. So that community members are able to be a part of that process and know where where the economic benefits of tourism are going and making it so that those benefits are more equitably distributed.”
The full study is called the 2022 Community Assessment on the Increased Impacts of Tourism in Sitka. It’s 28-pages long, with another 29 pages of appendices. It is the kind of social study where opinions matter, and the words of respondents come through as much as the data. One Sitkan wrote, “I believe there are economic benefits for our community due to increased tourism, but it’s still unclear if that means all residents will feel financial relief, like decreased utility rates, or if only the residents who work in tourism will feel the financial rewards…”
Gandhi says this type of response can help inform policy, as much as hard numbers.
“It was really our aim to help create sort of that point in time opportunity for the community to share their real time reflections with us, their insights and their suggestions, so that we could then take stock of that, and aggregate it and share it with different individuals and organizations who might be interested in thinking through this potential issue of increased tourism further,” said Gandhi.
The assessment doesn’t really say what to do next. It has a raft of suggestions offered by survey respondents on housing density, transportation, the environment, and so on – but this is information for policy makers, rather than direction.
Gandhi says the rest is up to Sitka.
“Sitka has such a collaborative spirit,” she said. “And we can’t emphasize enough just how important and valuable we think that is, in the community coming together to address any issue it might be facing currently, or in the future, that it feels is affecting sort of individuals’ opportunities to thrive, which is really how we are defining well-being.”
The Pardee Rand Graduate School of Public Policy has turned its focus on Sitka and several other communities around the nation, as a way of drilling down into how communities respond under a range of circumstances. Rand, for instance, was an early partner in the development of Sitka’s landslide warning system. Matthews is considering the Tourism Assessment as a basis for her doctoral research. Sitka may eventually adapt to the increase in tourism; attitudes could soften toward the industry – or harden.
She would like to find out.
“This could be something that could be very interesting to repeatedly do each summer and see how things evolve,” she said. “I think it’s definitely worth exploring in the future.
Sitka is anticipating possibly an additional 100,000 more cruise visitors in 2023 than in 2022. The first ship scheduled to arrive is the Brilliance of the Seas, on April 25.
The post Is Sitka’s cruise boom a bust for livability? A new study shows many residents think so. appeared first on KCAW.
Handcuffed, Richard McGrath surrenders into the custody of Sitka police officer Dave Nelson, after pleading guilty to 3rd Degree Sexual Assault. Three of McGrath’s victims were present to hear his change his plea: All of them were assaulted while under McGrath’s care at Sitka Community Hospital. A civil lawsuit on behalf of the victims is pending, with a trial scheduled for this July. Formal sentencing on the criminal count has been set for June 12. (KCAW/Woolsey) A former Sitka doctor accused of multiple counts of sexual assault four years ago is now behind bars.
On the first day of what was expected to be a lengthy trial, 79-year old Richard McGrath made a surprise plea deal, and will spend the next two years in prison.
Please note that some graphic detail in this story may be inappropriate for some listeners.
Dr. Richard McGrath has nearly come to trial twice. His first court date in 2020 was postponed because of the COVID pandemic. His second, last July, was declared a mistrial when the court failed to empanel a full jury.
But McGrath’s four-year journey to justice ended the morning of Monday, March 6, a few minutes before jury selection was to begin for a third attempt at a trial. Judge Michael McConahy put the question to McGrath.
“So, to the charge of sexual assault in the third degree, as I read to you, what is your plea?” McConahy asked.
“Guilty, Your Honor,” McGrath responded.
Two of McGrath’s three victims were in the courtroom for the hearing, and they visibly reacted to his admission of guilt. Over the weekend, two of them had consented to a hastily-crafted deal that – if the judge agreed – would see McGrath sentenced to 17 years in prison, with 15 suspended, and permanently lose his medical license.
A third victim did not think that was sufficient. A relative, Jessica Hames, spoke on the victim’s behalf.
“Mr. McGrath was hired into a position of trust and power as a doctor by the city of Sitka,” said Hames, reading from a statement. “He abused that power and violated the sacred trust between doctor and patient. I do not care how old and feeble Dr. McGrath is, or pretending to be, at this moment. He is a dangerous, sick predator who caused irreparable damage to these women. I would like to ask every man in this courtroom including you, Your Honor: How you would like this to be handled if it were you who had been violated?”
Bailey Woolfstead, with the state’s Office of Special Prosecutions, explained some of her rationale for the deal: She had received medical records which indicated that the 79-year old defendant was in a state of “mental decline,” that would create issues of competency in the event his case went to appeal. She said that the protracted delay had been exceptionally hard on the victims, and while there was never any certainty of winning a conviction in front of a jury, she had little doubt that she could prove some of the charges.
“I’m imagining we’re having at least one woman on a jury,” Woolfstead said, “and based on those experiences and how doctors regularly perform or exam: For example, going to perform a breast exam, they’re going to tell you they’re doing it. And it’s certainly not going to involve things like squeezing someone’s nipple, or taking your breast out of your bra and shirt without telling you what’s going and what’s happening.”
Regardless of the outcome of a possible jury trial on criminal charges, McGrath still faces a civil lawsuit brought by the victims , in a trial scheduled for this July. Woolfstead said that the plea deal would bring finality to this aspect of a complicated case, and perhaps – most importantly – put McGrath behind bars.
“Dr. McGrath going to jail this morning,” said Woolfstead. “As the court knows, there’s a statutory requirement that if he pleads guilty to a sex crime, he is going to jail today.”
McGrath’s attorney, John Cashion, did not offer any counterargument in the proceedings, telling Judge McConahy that he intended to argue mitigating factors at his client’s sentencing hearing on June 12. In the meantime, “I’ll certainly be asking the court to honor the plea agreement,” he said.
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Skipper Alicia Eells says all the Golden Dream’s electronics and navigation were destroyed by the fire, along with most of her belongings. Whether or not the boat is saved depends on the engine. “If the engine is gone, there’s no point,” she says. (KCAW/Woolsey)A commercial troller caught fire and burned in Sitka’s ANB Harbor Thursday evening (2-23-23). The boat’s skipper hasn’t yet determined if the boat is a total loss.
The Sitka Fire Department received the call at about 9:20 p.m. on Thursday, that a vessel was on fire in ANB Harbor.
Firefighters were on scene just eleven minutes later, and found the fiberglass troller Golden Dream fully involved, with visible flames in the cabin. A Good Samaritan was already at work attempting to douse the fire with a harbor hose. Nine firefighters and one EMT fought the blaze with a portable pump, and brought it under control in a few minutes.
David Johnson, with the Sitka Fire Department, says the fire likely started in the exhaust plenum – the shaft from the engine room to the smokestack that is supposed to protect the rest of the vessel from heat.
The vessel’s skipper, Alicia Eells, agrees with that conclusion. Eells told KCAW she had fished that day aboard the Golden Dream, tied it up in ANB, and then left to go play volleyball at the Hames Center. When she was notified of the emergency and returned to the boat, she found that the blaze had consumed the Golden Dream’s cabin, its navigation and electronics, and most of her belongings.
The Golden Dream caught fire while its skipper was off the boat. Firefighters suspect a hot exhaust stack, after a day’s fishing. The blaze was mostly confined to the cabin. (KCAW/Woolsey)Eells said that whether or not the Golden Dream can be saved depends on whether the engine survived the fire. “If the engine is gone, there’s no point,” she said.
Eells bought the boat last year and said she had a good season, and was looking forward to another. A GoFundMe page has been started on her behalf, with a $20,000 goal.
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Rep. Rebecca Himschoot (r.) meets with Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association director Linda Behnken in Sitka. Himschoot’s background as an educator has been useful, as she advances a Joint Resolution in the legislature in support of Southeast Trollers, whose season has been jeopardized by an environmental lawsuit. “The first step is to make sure they (other members of the House) understand the difference between trawl and troll, which I didn’t realize would be a barrier, and it is,” she says. (Rep. Himschoot photo)Among the first bills to reach the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives this spring will be a resolution sponsored by Rebecca Himschoot, a first-term legislator from Sitka.
House Joint Resolution 5 in support of the Southeast Seafood industry – the troll fleet in particular – had a speedy passage through its first committee hearing on February 14. But Himschoot says that final passage of the resolution is no slam dunk. She says that she has her work cut out for her, bringing the 40-member Alaska House of Representatives up to speed on the issue.
“When I’m working with the other 39 members of the body, the first step is to make sure they understand the difference between trawl and troll, which I didn’t realize would be a barrier, and it is,” said Himschoot. “So you know, depending on which member I’m talking to, they either know the issue well, or they need to learn about the issue.
Note: Read additional reporting on Rep. Himschoot’s legislative priorities in the current session.
It’s the Southeast Alaska Salmon Troll Fishery that’s under threat from an environmental lawsuit in US District Court in Washington state. Educating her colleagues about this critical difference is something that Himschoot, a lifelong teacher, has already shown an aptitude for. Rep. Himschoot was recently in Sitka, and spoke with KCAW’s Robert Woolsey about other ways her background has helped prepare her for the capitol, especially the first couple of weeks when the legislature organizes its majority and minority caucuses.
KCAW – Was there anything about being on the Sitka Assembly that helped you navigate Juneau, or helped you work the halls in Juneau? Was there anything about your assembly experience that is helping you now?
Himschoot – 100%? Juneau is a whole different game. We use Robert’s Rules on the assembly, they use Mason’s manual. It doesn’t seem like it would be a big shift, but it is. So logistically how you do things is different. But the assembly experience really helped me wrap my brain around what is the job of government to provide? What are we there to do? And I’m still having to make some adjustments in my mindset. Locally, where you are supporting either public works public safety or public education, it’s a little more straightforward in some ways, but also more complex, because my friends’ and neighbors’ politics don’t matter. I hold them in equal esteem, no matter which side of an issue we’re coming at a topic on. It doesn’t matter what people think in town politically, I value each Sitkan so deeply that it made decision making more difficult in some ways, trying to weigh what are the best interests of the community, versus the people who are giving me input and my respect for them and my respect for their input. And so it makes decision making more personal at the assembly level. But it also was a great experience and sort of looking at what is the problem we’re trying to solve? And what are the levers we can use to solve that problem? And in Juneau, everything is just 10 times more complex. I think I have a little bit of a leg up because I’m used to examining issues, getting the background, doing the research, and figuring out what the right path is. It (Juneau) is just a much bigger stage.
KCAW – At any point did you feel like going in as unaffiliated was a handicap?
Himschoot – I think the handicap of unaffiliated is for the voters in my district, because they don’t know exactly what they’re getting. And it made it harder to campaign in some ways, because people can’t say, ‘Well, you’re a Republican, I will or won’t vote for you,’ or ‘You’re a Democrat, so I will or won’t vote for you.’ So I had to explain my ideas and, and my positions on things. And so I think it made it harder for voters to know what they were voting for. And harder for me to make sure I get my message out. And then as far as where I’ve landed, in this round everybody who ran unaffiliated is in my caucus. I don’t think it made organization more challenging. I thought it would. But it didn’t really. And I can say that I was never asked to, so to speak, stray from my principles. So that was good that no requests like that came in. And then ultimately, some deals were made by some other people. And I landed in what we’re calling the house coalition, same as what Jonathan (Kreiss-Tomkins) was in, but we are in the minority as the House Coalition. But I feel really confident that we’re a very strong minority in that we’re very unified, we know what our agenda is, we’re very confident in what we’re doing. And we have a good sized group and a very representative group. I feel like our group really encompasses Alaska from the span of age ranges to life experience we have, young people, old people, people who are way to my left, some to my right, all in our little coalition that we have in the minority. So I think I landed in the right place for me and it gives me a longer runway for when we get back to the majority in a couple of years.
KCAW – When organization is happening, it’s not like you don’t fill out a survey with your principles. It just has to somehow become clear. And the dealmaking that was done was in the news. And it sounds like what you’re saying, you would, you would prefer to be in a minority with people who share values and who you feel you can work with, than trade some principles for a stronger voice in the majority, or a committee chair or whatever.
Himschoot – I would say that’s accurate for this year. I can’t say that will always be the rule I live by. I think it’s a good choice for me this year, as I get my feet wet, as I learn the system, as I learn the people in the system, which is I’d say at least half the battle is knowing who you’re working with and what their priorities are. So I can’t say that I won’t make some deals later when the time is right. But I will say I am comfortable with the people I’m working with, and that like I said is more than half the battle.
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Helen Cheek (l.) and Steve Bradshaw submitted letters of interest to the Sitka School Board, for the position of interim superintendent. (KCAW file photo)The Sitka School Board will interview two applicants who are interested in serving as interim superintendent of schools beginning this summer.
Former district superintendent Steve Bradshaw submitted a letter of interest for the position. He served as superintendent in Sitka for 13 years, and three years prior to that as principal of Sitka High School. He most recently was superintendent of the Columbia Falls, Montana, school district from 2014 to 2020.
In his letter, Bradshaw wrote, “I believe I can help the Board, district staff, and students have a very productive 2023-2024 school year.”
At the board’s February 16 meeting when the applicants were announced, at least a half-dozen faculty and staff stepped forward to speak in support of Bradshaw.
A second letter was submitted by Helen Cheek, who has been superintendent of the Iditarod Area School District in McGrath, Alaska, for the last two years. For two years prior to that, Cheek was the director of the Career Technical and Education Center for the Yukon Flats School District, as well as that district’s director of federal grants.
In her letter, Cheek wrote, “I love working with students and communities to build bridges between what the community needs and what students want for their future.” Cheek’s husband is a certified teacher and retired from the US Navy.
The Sitka School Board will meet in special session 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 22, in the District Office board room to develop interview questions for the applicants, and then convene in executive session to discuss contract terms for the interim hire. A meeting to interview the candidates has been tentatively scheduled for the evening of Thursday, March 2.
Current Sitka Superintendent Frank Hauser has submitted his resignation effective June 30.
Helen Cheek letter of interest.
Helen Cheek resume.
Steve Bradshaw letter of interest.
Steve Bradshaw resume.
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Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot (r.) introduces her resolution in support of the Southeast Troll Fishery, during a hearing of the House Special Fisheries Committee on February 14, 2023. Staff member Thatcher Brower (l.) provided supporting details. (KTOO/Gavel to Gavel) A legislative resolution in support of Alaska’s salmon troll fleet has cleared its first hurdle, although it has a way to go before seeing a full vote of the Alaska House and Senate.
House Joint Resolution 5 is the first piece of legislation introduced by Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, who was elected to a first term last November, and was sworn in this past January.
Note: The US District Court of Western Washington could issue a final Report & Recommendation on the Wild Fish Conservancy lawsuit any day. Additional reporting on this story, including comment from the Conservancy, is coming shortly from KFSK in Petersburg.
HJR5 was heard in the House Special Fisheries Committee on February 14, Valentine’s Day. Rep. Himschoot used the day as a springboard to focus attention on Southeast trollers, whose livelihood has been jeopardized by a lawsuit in the federal court in Seattle.
“I want to start by wishing everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day,” Himschoot opened. “And if there’s one thing Alaskans love, it’s our fishermen. So we’re going to talk about some fishermen today.”
Himschoot and co-sponsor Ketchikan Representative Dan Ortiz are the only two Southeast Alaskans on the Special Fisheries Committee. Himschoot explained the significance of the troll fleet to the other members.
“You’ll find trollers in every community of Southeast Alaska,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s a community without at least one troller no matter how small the community. So it’s a very important fishery for Southeast Alaska. And 85% of the trollers in the fleet are Alaska residents. So these are people who are hook-and-line fishing. When they put their line in the water, it’s a very sustainable fishery, they’re going to pull up a salmon. So this incredible homegrown fleet of fishermen doing the hard work that brings in about $85 million to our economy in Southeast Alaska is under attack. And they’ve been attacked by the Wild Fish Conservancy. There’s a lawsuit that started in 2019. And this resolution is going to urge state and federal agencies to continue defending our trollers.”
Although the Southeast king salmon fishery is the target of the lawsuit, the defendant is the National Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees the management of the nation’s commercial fisheries. In broad terms, the Wild Fish Conservancy argues that NMFS violated the Endangered Species Act when it failed to fully account for the impact of Alaska trolling on the food supply of a population of endangered killer whales in Puget Sound. Although experts believe that NMFS can correct this supposed error, it’s now in the hands of a federal judge in Washington whether or not to shut down trolling for king salmon in Alaska until it is remedied.
Other members of the committee tried to tease out a better understanding of the problem. Committee chair Sarah Vance of Homer asked Alaska Trollers Association director Amy Daugherty if harm to killer whales was an ongoing concern.
“Has there been concerns about impact to the orcas prior to this?” Vance asked.
“Never,” Daugherty responded. “In fact, it’s our understanding that every other orca population up and down the coast is healthy, and in fact increasing, except for this localized Puget Sound population.”
This is probably the most incongruent aspect of the lawsuit for trollers, who regard themselves as an environmentally sensitive fishery: Shutting down commercial trolling for king salmon in Alaska may not have any effect at all on killer whales in Puget Sound.
Sitka troller, environmentalist, and fisheries advocate Eric Jordan could barely contain his frustration.
“This existential threat to close down our Southeast troll fishery and fundraising charade by the Wild Fish Conservancy is a brutal assault on us that won’t save one orca,” Jordan said. “ It is the most vicious, misguided assault I have witnessed and a lifetime of experience with fisheries conflicts.”
Tad Fujioka, board chair of the Seafood Producers Cooperative in Sitka, argued that the Wild Fish Conservancy lawsuit failed to accurately trace the problem for Puget Sound’s killer whales. If it did, the line would lead right back to Puget Sound.
“The lack of salmon isn’t really the problem that Southern Resident Killer Whales face,” he explained. “If it was, we wouldn’t see that the Alaska and British Columbia orca pods growing so steadily. If our fishery was the reason for trouble, the local orcas would be suffering a lot more than the ones hundreds of miles away. The real problem for Southern Residents is the pollution in Puget Sound. There are 5 million people that live in the Puget Sound area, and with all the heavy pollution and road runoff it makes the local fish toxic. The Washington Department of Health recommends that people eat no more than two servings of Puget Sound king salmon per month. And of course the local killer whales eat a whole lot more than that. And that’s made them some of the most contaminated marine mammals anywhere in the world.”
The House Special Fisheries Committee unanimously passed House Joint Resolution 5 out of committee. Its next stop is the Rules Committee, where it could be scheduled for a floor vote.
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The Sitka School Board is hoping public pressure will push the legislature to increase school funding in Alaska, or else the district could face potentially drastic cuts.
The board met in a work session last Thursday (2-9-23) to hear an overview of the budget for the next school year, and the numbers aren’t pretty.
Superintendent Frank Hauser warned board members that cuts are coming.
“We are projecting, if we do not see any relief in the form of a new or increased Base Student Allocation (i.e. state funding), that we will have to have some budget reductions which could include increase pupil teacher ratio, reduction in staff and potential reductions in programs,” said Hauser. “And those will be needed to really balance the budget for the deficit that we’re looking at.”
Hauser has previously reminded the board that the Sitka School District is in no way a unique position: Districts across the state are looking at deficits, and the blame is most often placed on the failure of the state to keep up with increasing costs. There is a bill in the Alaska Legislature to increase state funding by $1,000 per pupil. Hauser said that if it passed, it would cover Sitka’s nearly $3 million dollar deficit, and then some.
“It’s important to know that there is some conversations happening in the legislature right now around the Base Student Allocation increase,” said Hauser. “If there is a Base Student Allocation increase, that will have a positive impact on the district. Currently, right now, with a $2.79 million deficit, it would require a Base Student Allocation increase of just under $900 to essentially break even, and potentially even put a few thousand dollars in the in the bank account.”
As it’s only February, no one is expecting quick action from the Legislature. Sitka High Math teacher Ryan Myers is the father of student board member Felix Myers. The pair were among those who attended a fly-in last weekend to lobby the legislature on behalf of schools. Ryan Myers told the board that the Legislature would only act if there were significant public pressure.
“There is absolutely no guarantee of a raise in the Base Student Allocation,” said Myers. “There are people that want that, and there are plenty of people that don’t. And there are people that want it at $1,000; people that want it “1,500. And there’s people that want it at $250. And if we’re counting on having teachers and programs and a school district that functions, that’s not a want, that’s a need. And I’m just stating for the public record that we need to be putting pressure on our legislators, we need to be writing them, we need to be putting things in the newspaper, we need to spread the word far and wide that this is not a small problem. If we have to pink slip 10 to 20 teachers and people in the school district because we need to balance a budget, and we just hope that they’re going to stick around and wait for us to decide we can pay them. That’s a dangerous game to play.”
The Sitka School Board often begins the budget process in the hole, and is forced to consider cuts that often it’s spared from making, thanks to an 11th-hour infusion of cash from federal or state sources.
Board member Todd Gebler doesn’t see a rescue coming this year. He urged the public to start contacting legislators.
“Without proper funding, school board members are going to be cutting programs and cutting teachers and cutting everything,” said Gebler. “There’s no more low hanging fruit to cut.”
The Sitka School Board will hold its next budget work session on March 9 in Harrigan Centennial Hall. The budget for the next school year is scheduled to be finalized and adopted on April 20.
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The proposed Seawalk extension, identified as “Section 2” in blue above, places an 8-foot wide path along the outside of the O’Connell Bridge. One of the last few areas on the downtown Sitka waterfront that has not been filled or otherwise modified, the site may contain a former clam garden — an ancient method of mariculture widely used by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska is concerned that a proposed extension of the Sitka Seawalk will destroy one of the few remaining cultural sites on the town’s waterfront.
The Tribe and the Sitka Assembly conferred on this and other matters during their semi-annual government-to-government meeting on Monday (2-13-23)
The Sitka Seawalk currently runs from Sitka National Historical Park to the Sitka Public Library. It’s a waterfront enhancement funded largely through the local share of the head tax on cruise passengers (Commercial Passenger Vessel Excise Tax) levied by the state.
A proposed extension of the Seawalk would create a new path around the outside of the O’Connell Bridge – essentially the last sliver of undeveloped waterfront in downtown Sitka.
State planners noted that rock fill for the proposed route would impact a bed of eelgrass in the area, considered essential fish habitat for herring. And there was also something else, as Jeff Feldpausch, the Tribe’s Resource Protection director, explained.
“They did find a man made rock wall that extends off that point, just from the base of the bridge kind of back towards the street or the road,” said Feldpausch. “I think the state had gone back through and did some additional testing. We were concerned that that rock wall was probably part of a clam garden.”
A clam garden is created by terracing a beach in an intertidal area with walls made from large stones. It’s a form of mariculture used by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest for millenia.
Clam garden in the Broughton Archipelago in British Columbia. Note how the lower intertidal zone rock wall has created a terrace of shell hash in the mid-intertidal, creating productive clam habitat in a location where there wasn’t even a beach before (Photo: John Harper/”Clam Garden” by SFU – Communications & Marketing is licensed under CC BY 2.0.).Tribal Council member Fred Olsen, Jr. noted the irony in that some places in Southeast were trying to enhance their waterfronts with recreations of nature or history (like the whale sculpture in Juneau), but Sitka had the real thing, and was putting it at risk.
“Instead of inventing something for tourists to look at, you have actual history to look at,” said Olsen. “And just don’t pave over that, you know.”
(Note: Tribal Council member Fred Olsen, Jr., is employed at KCAW.)
Sitka’s waterfront has been substantially modified and filled in over the years. Early in the last century, waves used to lap at the base of Castle Hill, and at the back of the stores along Lincoln Street. Now, most of the area from Crescent Harbor to Eliason Harbor has been filled in for streets and public buildings, like Harrigan Centennial Hall and the library. While the Seawalk doesn’t seem like a very big project relative to the overall development of Sitka’s waterfront, some Tribal Council members nevertheless felt very protective about what little of the natural environment remains.
Council member Marth Moses suggested that the construction of the Seawalk has already come with a cultural cost.
“When the Seawalk was being developed out to Totem Park and there was that little hill right there that had the huckleberries and the blueberries,” Moses said, “and when you had your elder go with you, you had a little trail that you could take your elder and they can go pick their own bucket. But that’s already blasted through. There’s a walkway through there, and that berry bush is gone. So when we talked about it at the Resource Protection (Committee), you make these developments and they’re gone forever. Our tradition is gone forever.”
Moses’ view was echoed by fellow council member Rachel Moreno, who said she worked in summer on cruise ships and interacted with passengers who were really interested to take in Sitka’s history, without creating harm.
“They want to know that they’re not having a negative impact where they visit,” Moreno said. “And if we just are so worried about creating a place for them to walk, without taking into consideration these historic sites and, and things that we grew up seeing – and gosh, we don’t see them anymore! I remember when Blueberry Hill was bulldozed for the Sitka – what’s there now? SAIL and the dental office. All us kids used to go up Blueberry Hill to pick berries, and that was a safe place to go. You know, we didn’t have to worry about bears or anything. And so that, because of development, is gone. That’s such a childhood memory. And I would hate to see one of the last parts of downtown Sitka that’s natural right now be destroyed.”
Scoping meetings were held in Sitka last fall on the Seawalk extension, and a public comment period was open through the end of the year. The state expects to have a 75-percent plan ready for public review by this coming spring or summer, as well as another public comment period. Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz told Tribal Council members that he’d be adding their concerns to those he’s already heard.
“Just being honest,” said Eisenbeisz, “I have heard a lot of negative on this Seawalk. So I think it is time for us to take a hard look at that project and determine if it is right for Sitka.”
The Sitka Tribal Council and Sitka Assembly meet twice a year over a meal to discuss issues important to both bodies. Now in its 25th year, the arrangement (which is codified in a formal Memorandum of Understanding) is regarded as a rare — yet inspiring — form of government-to-government interaction. (KCAW/Woolsey)The Sitka Tribal Council and Sitka Assembly meet twice a year for a meal, and to cover a joint agenda of issues important to each body (and have done so for the last 25 years, a fact which was noted at the meeting). Other major topics covered at their February meeting included collaboration on an Affordable Housing Summit this year – including homelessness – building redundancy into the community’s broadband infrastructure, and coordinating the strategic plans of the Tribe and the City.
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The Sitka School Board is going to shake the tree for a week to see if an interim superintendent candidate falls out, before launching into a full-scale search for a permanent hire.
The board met in special session Thursday night (2-10-23) to consider how best to start looking for a new person to lead the Sitka School District.
Sitka Superintendent Frank Hauser submitted his resignation the first week of February. Although it’s a full month earlier than when former Superintendent Mary Wegner asked to be released from her contract, it’s just on the cusp of being too late to hire someone to begin work on July 1.
In fact, Timi Tullis, a hiring consultant with the Alaska Association of School Boards, said hiring season for school administrators across the state is wrapping up just about now.
“Copper River had two finalists chosen, and they were supposed to come into town this week to interview and both have accepted other jobs before they came to Copper River,” Tullis said. “So they have reopened theirs. And this week we have Aleutian East, Unalaska, and Bristol Bay are supposed to pick their finalists. Then we have Fairbanks who is in the middle of theirs, Juneau, Iditarod, and Southeast Island just this week have determined they’re going to be doing a search. And then of course you. I’m not trying to scare anyone, I am just saying this is the reality as of today.”
The meeting was well attended by district staff, several of whom urged the board to move forward with a permanent hire, and to train its sights on someone with practical experience in both the classroom and in the administration.
Another theme that came out in testimony was finding a candidate who might want to settle in Sitka, if they weren’t here already.
Sitka High Teacher Freddie Charbonneau – “The Sitka School District will intentionally develop haa’ latseeni, or strength of mind, body, and spirit, to inspire and prepare students to be compassionate and empowered, and to equip critical thinkers within a global community. This is the mission of the school district… And it is really important that when we’re looking for a leader, we are looking for someone who will live by this mission, and will encourage others to also do the same.”
Blatchley principal Ben White (reading from an email) – “Please consider prioritizing two key factors: The candidate having multiple years of actual classroom level teaching experience, and having multiple years of building level administrative experience. A significant part of any school superintendent’s job is to help inform teachers and administrators how to best do their jobs so that children reap the greatest educational benefit.”
Blatchley teacher Alexander Allison – “Please prioritize hiring somebody who is fully invested in living in, and being a member of, our community year round with their whole family.”
Tullis, who appeared via zoom, was visibly taking notes during public comment, but she cautioned everyone to lower their expectations slightly. Like a matchmaker counseling a bride, Sitka might get some of what it wants, but might have to settle for less than all it wants.
“I heard a few people talking about the essentialness of having both teacher and building level experience,” said Tullis. “And I’m not disagreeing with that. I just want to remind everyone in the room that currently our nation is facing a terrible teacher shortage. And because of that, we’re facing a building administrators/central office shortage. And because of that we’re facing a superintendent shortage. It’s just the reality of where we are now.”
The board was of two minds on how to proceed. Student member Felix Myers argued that the board needed a permanent superintendent in place sooner rather than later, because this person would take the lead in negotiating a new contract with teachers next year. He didn’t think such an important role should fall to a temp.
“What our students want is to make sure that we at least try first to get someone who can be here long term,” Myers said, “because when it comes to those discussions that are going to be essential next year, they want to make sure that person is in good faith when it comes to those discussions.”
Members Tristan Guevin, Mitch Mork, and Blossom Teal-Olsen favored going with a highly-experienced interim superintendent, to buy time for a more thorough search for a permanent hire. This approach was used when the district hired former superintendent John Holst to work for a year following Wegner’s departure in 2019. Teal-Olsen said she had been urged by the public to take the time to get it right.
” The consensus being there’s no rush,” Teal-Olsen said. “And I want to stay true to the community and how they feel. And ultimately I would like to find a candidate that will be long term, committed to the community, integrated into the community, and will represent Sitka, as they should.”
In the end, the board decided 4-1, with Myers opposed, to take a week (until February 16) to solicit letters of interest from interim candidates – just to see who was out there. If no one turned up who fit the bill, they’d ask Tullis and the Alaska Association of School Boards to initiate a search for a permanent replacement, with costs not to exceed $15,500.
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Staff members involved in student activities were concerned that centralizing the student activities accounts, and moving them from the individual school buildings to the district business office, would interfere with a system that’s worked well for decades. “We’ve basically been carrying that internal control risk for 30 years, and it’s been working as far as I know,” said school board member Mitch Mork,”but this is the first that anybody’s heard that it’s not working.” (KCAW photo) For the first time in recent memory, the Sitka School District in January failed to get a clean audit.
Although the faults were procedural – rather than financial – the issue weighed heavily on the minds of some school staff and school board members as they considered whether or not to formally adopt the findings at their February 1 regular meeting.
It should be noted from the get-go that the Fiscal Year 2022 Audit of the Sitka School District completed by the Anchorage accounting firm of Altman, Rogers & Co. is a 138-page report that finds the financial practices of the Sitka School District to be in good shape, and even praiseworthy.
That said, a couple of deficiencies were noted, that – given the overall competency of the district’s business office – might be the equivalent of grammatical errors on an A-student’s otherwise solid term paper.
The first was a failure to track expenses from the Student Activities accounts to the district’s general ledger on a monthly basis – which the auditors consider a “lack of internal controls,” and the second was a failure to file some quarterly reports to the US Department of Education on time, which the auditors also attributed to a lack of internal control.
The district office was informed about both of these problems before the auditors officially delivered the report in January, and its response was to promptly agree with the findings, and to begin corrective action.
Keeping on top of federal grant compliance did not generate much attention at the meeting, as it’s probably a matter of bringing recent hires in the district business office up to speed on the requirements of the government bureaucracy. But centralizing the Student Activities accounts raised alarm bells for some.
Mike Vieira is the president of the teacher’s union (Sitka Education Association) and a former activities director at Sitka High School. He was worried that changing accounting practices, while impressing auditors, might interfere with the function of activities.
“I was concerned to see that kind of buried on page 132 of the audit is a pretty big change in the standard operating procedure of our district regarding the way that activity funds are distributed and controlled, and executed,” Vieira said. “Forever, those activity funds — at least at the high school — have remained with the high school accountant. And it’s a very local approach to our building. And it’s allowed our building to function as a team with our administration, our accounting team, and the coaches inevitably that need access to those funds.”
Vieira recounted an incident where the Sitka basketball teams were en route to games in Wrangell, and ended up overheading and going all the way to Seattle for the night, where they had to be housed in hotels – all of which transpired long after the district’s business office had closed.
Rich Krupa is the athletic coordinator at Sitka High. He said that the episodes Vieira described were not unusual.
“Things happen all the time,” Krupa testified. “I need access to stuff immediately. And with stuff that’s proposed, that’s not going to happen. And my feeling is Sitka athletics and activities are going to be held captive, if it’s changed dramatically. I have no idea what (the District Office) they’re planning to do.”
The corrective plan is written right into the auditor’s report: Business manager Leslie Young stated that “the district is currently in the process of transitioning all school activity accounting to the district’s accounting system to provide a uniform system for operating and training school staff within one centralized system.”
What that will look like in practice is still a bit uncertain. Felix Myers, student representative on the school board, was caught in one of those thorny travel situations last year on a Mock Trial trip to Anchorage. He urged the administration to make sure that remedying the audit did not leave his fellow students in the lurch.
“We have to make sure that when this does happen, there is a constant line of support for student activities,” Myers said. “So because of that, speaking on behalf of students and student activities, that has to be a priority, making sure that we still have access to the ability to communicate and make sure we can get home.”
Board member Mitch Mork took a different tack: Maybe the auditor was incorrect. There’s nothing illegal about maintaining separate activities accounts in the schools, so why fix what isn’t broken?
“This has been going for, I don’t know, a long time, 30 years,” he said. “We’ve basically been carrying that internal control risk for 30 years, and it’s been working as far as I know, but this is the first that anybody’s heard that it’s not working. So again, communication…. We don’t have to do anything special. It’s just a conversation.”
Mork suggested that the board postpone voting on approval of the audit until all affected parties had been brought together and assured that the corrective action required by the auditors was fully understood.
Board member Tristan Guevin, however, thought it was irresponsible to play chicken with General Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”), and urged the board to approve the audit, and the corrective plan.
“When you look at this audit finding, these bank statements weren’t being reconciled with the general ledger,” said Guevin. “And so I think that’s something we need to ensure happens. We need to support the the superintendent and the business office in ensuring that happens, and I think the only way that that does happen is through some kind of level of centralized control.”
Board president Blossom Teal-Olsen concurred, saying it was the board’s fiduciary responsibility to citizens to comply with the audit. Superintendent Frank Hauser carefully avoided trying to sway board opinion on the corrective plan, but emphasized several times that the district was required by law to have a board-approved audit. “We’re approving the audit,” Hauser said, “we’re not necessarily approving business office functions.”
Ultimately, all board members were reassured that approving the audit – including the two “internal control” deficiencies, and their corrective plans – didn’t rule out further dialog about how to best handle the student activities accounts, and the measure passed unanimously.
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A Southern Resident killer whale preys on salmon in the Salish Sea near Seattle. The Alaska Trollers Association has filed two major objections to the December 13 “Report and Recommendation” from US Magistrate Michelle Peterson, one of which is that shutting down trolling in Alaska wouldn’t benefit the whales, who reside in one of the most densely populated urban environments in the Northwest. The ATA argues that adopting the Report and Recommedation would not “appreciably reduce the likelihood of both survival and recovery of Southern Resident killer whales or destroy or adversely modify their designated critical habitat.” (Su Kim/NOAA Fisheries)Alaska’s governor says he’ll appeal a pending federal court ruling that threatens to shut down the Southeast king salmon season.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy was unequivocal when answering a question from a listener during Alaska Public Media’s “Talk of Alaska” on Tuesday (1-31-23).
The Duvall, Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy filed suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in US District Court in 2019, arguing that a flaw in the agency’s environmental analysis left a small population of endangered killer whales in Puget Sound exposed to further harm, due to the interception of their primary food source: king salmon, also known as chinook.
In barest terms, the proposed remedy to correct this alleged oversight by NMFS involves shutting down the Southeast Alaskan salmon troll fishery, until the full impact of the chinook harvest on Southern Resident Killer Whales can be assessed.
The Alaska Department of Fish & Game intervened in support of the National Marine Fisheries Service; so did the Alaska Trollers Association. It hasn’t gone well. Although a federal judge in 2020 declined to impose an injunction against the Southeast troll fishery, the latest “Report and Recommendation” in the US District Court of Western Washington in December, 2022, by US Magistrate Judge Michelle Peterson, leaves open the possibility that the Wild Fish Conservancy could prevail. The ruling includes a proposed order vacating the Incidental Take Permit, or “ITS,” issued by NMFS that allows the Southeast troll fishery to harvest chinook year-round. If a judge signs off on the recommendation, trolling for king salmon in Southeast might be off-limits for ten months of the year – making the fishery uneconomic and unviable for many trollers.
Although the state joined the lawsuit, it’s been relatively quiet about the case. No fighting words, at least in public. That changed on Tuesday morning (1-31-23) when Juneau troller, and 4-decade plus fisherman, Tom Fisher posed the question directly to Gov. Dunleavy on Alaska Public Media’s “Talk of Alaska.”
“My question is, will the state commit all resources necessary to take this court case to Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? And if necessary, the Supreme Court?” Fisher asked.
“Yes. The answer is yes,” Dunleavy responded. “Because this is another example of opportunities being curtailed in Alaska. And again, I think we do fisheries better than the Feds did when we were territory. So the answer to that is yes.”
“We very much appreciate the governor’s conviction on pursuing this lawsuit to the end,” said Amy Daugherty, director of the Alaska Trollers Association.
“You know, it’s just so frivolous, and so harmful to all of Southeast and our way of life here. So it’s such good news.”
Daugherty says her job has changed dramatically since the Wild Fish Conservancy filed suit three years ago. The existential threat to Southeast trolling – which is somewhere between 700 and 800 small businesses across the region – has grown, as the suit has progressed. She says the issue has not been overhyped.
“I think (the threat to SE trolling) it’s extremely valid,” Daugherty said. “It’s extremely justified to be very concerned about the current situation. The Wild Fish Conservancy has a lot more means certainly than the Alaska Trollers Association. And they seem to be applying it with absolute conviction. So we’re just doing everything we can: We’re getting a lot of resolutions, we’re getting new money every day, a lot from fishermen, a lot from organizations, processors, stores even. And we’re just hopeful that there will be some common sense, you know, brought forward through this process.”
The Wild Fish Conservancy’s Response to the December 13 Report and Recommendation
“I want to emphasize that Alaskan fishers are not to blame for NOAA’s chronic mismanagement of this fishery, and we are sympathetic to the burden this decision may pose on Southeast Alaskan communities. However, it’s critical to also acknowledge that for decades this fishery has harvested majority non-Alaskan Chinook at unsustainable levels with cascading and coastwide consequences for fishing communities throughout British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington.
Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy. Learn more about the WFC’s position on the December 13 Report and Recommendation.
It’s unclear what the immediate impact of a ruling in favor of the Wild Fish Conservancy would have on Southeast trolling, given the this newly-reelected governor’s interest in fighting the suit to the bitter end. During the same “Talk of Alaska,” Gov. Dunleavy didn’t just go to bat for trollers, he reaffirmed a commitment to the industry as a whole, and to subsistence harvesters on Alaska’s interior river systems whose way of life is threatened by a still-unexplained collapse of king salmon and chum runs.
“I would say that this is priority number one when it comes to resources for this administration for the next four years,” Dunleavy said, in response to another caller. “And you know, missing a fishing season – two or three fishing seasons – has a detrimental effect not just as you said on food, but also on the fact that it’s difficult to pass down the ways of life and the culture if you can’t bring the kids out the fish camp…. So we’re gonna do everything we can to turn this around because Alaska is fisheries.”
A final decision by the US District Court of Western Washington on the December 13 “Report and Recommendation” in the case of the Wild Fish Conservancy versus the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA), et. al., is pending.
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The surge in independent travel in the last two quarters of 2021, combined with a rebound in cruise visitors in the first two quarters of 2022, contributed an additional $3 million in sales taxes to the City of Sitka over 2019. (KCAW/Kimmell)The numbers are looking fairly good for Sitka, as sales tax figures are coming in for the last two summers – but expenses and inflation have taken a bite out of that windfall.
Municipal administrator John Leach walked through the Annual Report to the Community, during a meeting of the Sitka Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. His remarks – and the accompanying slide show – touched on the workings of every department in the city, and what local government was doing to both develop much-needed projects, and to preserve and maintain existing ones.
Here’s an excerpt of Leach’s discussion of upcoming capital projects. He warned the audience: There are a lot.
“We have an airport expansion and remodel. We have the haulout that was approved by a vote of the citizens that’s starting down at the industrial park. Marine service center bulkhead and seawall – we won a RAISE grant for $8.3 million, that is a federal grant that we received we’re starting on that. The heat pump emergency Blatchley, we just wrapped that up, about a $600,000 project. Transfer station compactor, an upgrade. You guys might remember the issue we had with shipping municipal solid waste and open top containers and now we’ve got a compactor coming in and we resolved that issue but got to start construction there. The Crescent harbor high load, the net shed over here (by Harrigan Centennial Hall). Senior Center fire system and plumbing, police station HVAC, Thompson lift station, Lakehurst-Monastery-Kincaid sewer reconstruction. Crescent Harbor multiple sewer lift stations, a seaplane base, Lincoln Street remodel, Crescent harbor restrooms, City Hall HVAC, the Seawalk phase two, Wachusetts fish passage culvert, Kimsham drainage, GPIP landfill, biosolids landfill expansion, and a traffic study we’re working on for the community.”
Many of the capital projects Leach mentioned are paid for through some combination of state or federal grants, combined with local matching funds. The most variable source of cash for the city is the local sales tax, which began ticking upward in the second half of the summer of 2021, through the first two quarters of 2022. The city brought in over $3 million more in 2022 than it did in 2019, but Leach explained that it was not a pure cash windfall, since the city was forced to defer a number of expenses during the 2020 pandemic.
“In ‘22 we finally saw a strong rebound of our most significant source of revenue, which is our sales tax. We went from $13.3 million In 2019, to $16.4 million in FY ‘22, this was attributable to a strong independent travel season in July through September of ‘21, continued increases in tax revenue on remote sales – it was zero in ‘19 when we kicked off that program, and it’s $1.2 million in ‘22 now. And a rebound in cruise tourism in April through June of ‘22. However, important to note is that CBS continued growth at a pre-pandemic rate of growth. Our FY ‘22 revenue is still less than what would have been expected by this point if let’s pretend COVID didn’t happen. But part of that is inflation, things are getting more expensive, that drives up the sales tax revenue too. So while adding the revenue, it also impacts us on the expense side. This revenue is really what’s needed to support deferred maintenance, which was further deferred to the pandemic.”
Leach went on to say that the positive revenue from sales tax contributed to the transfer of $9 million dollars into the municipal infrastructure sinking fund over the past two years, to allow the city to catch up on maintenance deferred during the pandemic.
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Proposal 10 was a rare creature in its own right, as hunters asked the Board of Game for a reduction in the bag limit for what — at the moment — is an abundant game species in Southeast Alaska: Sitka black-tailed deer. However, the board saw no biological necessity to lower the limit, and may have wanted to communicate that message to the Federal Subsistence Board, which will consider similar proposals later this month. (Image: Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center – Girdwood Portage Alaska” by watts_photos is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)The bag limit for the sport harvest of deer in Unit 4 in Southeast Alaska will remain at six, one of the most liberal in the state.
During its Ketchikan meeting over the weekend (1-22-23), the Board of Game unanimously voted down a proposal that would have reduced the bag limit to 4 deer, saying it saw no biological necessity for lowering the harvest. Advocates of the change, however, urged that – given so much ecological uncertainty recently – erring on the side of caution was the more prudent course.
Things have been pretty good for deer hunters in Unit 4 for at least the past decade, as deer populations have rebounded to near carrying capacity for the three major islands comprising the unit – Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof, which are often called the “ABC Islands.”
This is a change from 2006 through 2008, when harsh winters, with especially high snowfalls, dramatically affected deer populations. Fish & Game beach surveys in the spring of 2007 recorded roughly 4 winterkill deer carcasses per mile of shoreline – and the ABC Islands have many miles of shoreline.
Kevin Maier, who proposed the bag limit reduction, was aware of this history, as well as where things stand now. If anything, his proposal was an effort to nudge the Board of Game to think more broadly about changes happening in the ecosystem, and to manage Southeast Alaska’s now-abundant deer population with caution.
“We’re facing incredibly uncertain climate and economic futures, and we owe it to our children and future Alaskans to make conservative decisions,” Maier told the board. “Although I’ve spent most of the last 20 years in Southeast, I grew up in Washington state where I watched dramatic fisheries declines happen in my lifetime. I’m in Alaska in no small part because of abundant fishing opportunity. And I’m hopeful you make decisions that help us avoid the disastrous fate of much of our hunting and fishing opportunity in the lower 48.”
Maier sits on the Juneau Fish & Game Advisory Committee, but offered the proposal (Proposal 10) as an individual. He told the board that he personally would be unaffected by the bag limit reduction, since he didn’t have a large enough boat to hunt in the ABC Islands. In fact, he said his position on his own proposal was neutral.
Unit 4 area management biologist Steve Bethune suggested that many more hunters would also be neutral, as a very small percentage ever filled all six tags, after the bag limit was raised from four to six in 2019.
“And we found that between 2019 and 2021, under this new bag limit, we had an average of 30 non-federally qualified hunters who took five deer and 29 non-federally qualified hunters who took six deer,” said Bethune, “and this averages out to about 88 additional deer per year. It’s about one- to one-and-a-half percent of the annual harvest.”
“Non-federally qualified hunter” is government-speak for sport hunter, or in the case of Unit 4, hunters from Juneau. Every other community on Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof islands is a federally-qualified subsistence community. Hunters in these towns, including Hoonah, Angoon, and even Sitka, have always been able to take six deer, and also have an extra month of hunting in January on federal lands. The total number of deer taken in the Unit ranges between 5,000 and 7,000 animals per year.
So in a nutshell, 97-percent of sport hunters are taking four deer or less in Unit 4. Why not make that the bag limit? Possibly, because it sends the wrong message to the federal government. This is biologist Steve Bethune again.
“The four-deer bag limit is adequate for most non-federally qualified hunters,” said Bethune. “However, six deer is sustainable and provides an additional opportunity. So it’s going to be fully up to you all on the Board of Game to decide if you want to make changes on the state side to try to influence the federal subsistence board.”
The Federal Subsistence Board meets at the end of the month in Anchorage and will weigh in on several proposals about deer hunting on the ABC Islands, most notably a proposal that would close several major drainages on Admiralty Island to sport hunting during the month of November – the peak deer hunting season – in order provide more access for subsistence hunters. In a relationship that is murky at best, the Federal Subsistence Board relies heavily on research from the state Department of Fish & Game, but sets policy based on different priorities. Often, federal and state regulations overlap, but there is always a possibility that they could conflict.
Paul Johnson, a well-known hunting guide based out of Chichagof Island, also put in a proposal (Proposal 11) to cut back the Unit 4 bag limit for deer, but withdrew it when it became clear that the Board of Game was not going to support Maier’s proposal. Unlike Maier, Johnson did have a “horse in the race” with a four-decade career in guiding on the ABC Islands. The board kept Johnson at the testimony table for a few minutes, just to hear his opinion on the issue. Johnson didn’t disagree with state biologist Steve Bethune, he didn’t sense any urgency to lower the bag limit, but he felt the four-deer limit was probably more cautious.
“I always felt the four-deer limit held the test of time,” Johnson said. “Times have changed, the department has got different concepts on what’s happening around. I don’t want to interfere, it’s above my level. But I can say that Steve’s right it’s the winters that play the biggest role”
Nevertheless, the state Board of Game unanimously voted down the proposal to reduce the sport bag limit for deer on Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof islands.
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The Coast Guard wants to purchase the three lots outlined in red, one of which it already holds under long-term lease. Under the recent determination, Lot F-1 also could be leased until an alternative site for “student recreation” is identified. (DEED image)The state has determined that it’s in its best interest to sell a portion of the Mt. Edgecumbe High School campus to the Coast Guard, for construction of a new dock.
The determination is a necessary step before the state can dispose of land.
The state Board of Education met in Sitka on the Mt. Edgecumbe campus in September and voted to enter into negotiations with the Coast Guard for the sale of the property, which includes three lots immediately to the north of the Coast Guard’s existing dock. The total amount of land to be sold is a little over one-and-a-half acres.
One of the lots is currently under long-term lease to the Coast Guard, and is used for parking. The other two lots are directly across Seward Ave. from the Mt. Edgecumbe Aquatics Center, and are designated “student recreation.” The preliminary determination authorizes the Department of Education to negotiate a lease for a second lot until an alternative site for recreation can be built.
The land is needed by the Coast Guard to construct a floating dock for the 154-foot Fast Response Cutter Douglas Denman, which is currently stationed in Ketchikan, awaiting its final homeporting in Sitka. The existing pier for the buoy tender Kukui will be demolished and rebuilt as part of the project. The Douglas Denman is one of six Fast Response Cutters being deployed in Alaska.
The state Board of Education met on December 8 and voted to approve the preliminary determination. A public comment period opened on December 13, and will remain open through the close of business on January 13.
Written comments should be submitted to DEED at P.O. Box 110500, Juneau, AK 99811-0500, or by fax to (907) 465-4156 or e-mail at deed.commissioner@alaska.gov.
Read the public notice.
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While the picture appears bleak for several Alaskan fisheries, resource advocates urge an end to crisis-based management, and a more traditional perspective on the ecosystem in general. “And now we’re managing as if we’re in this little time slot, we’re not thinking enough about the past and not thinking enough about the future,” says Linda Behnken. “Except for someone like Harvey (Kitka), who has a viewpoint informed by generational knowledge being passed on from time immemorial, we all fall prey to thinking it all started when we first arrived. And that becomes our baseline.” In the photo: In a ceremony held every spring, Herring Rock receives a blessing of water from the major rivers and streams that empty into Sitka Sound. (KCAW/Woolsey)Although a number of Alaska’s fisheries have collapsed, or are otherwise under threat, some of the people most deeply involved in fishing advocacy believe that recovery is not just possible, but necessary to the well-being of our communities and our planet.
KCAW in Sitka recently held a one-hour forum on the Future of Fishing (12-16-22), and the three panelists all found reasons to be hopeful that continued research, traditional knowledge, and historical perspective will all play a role in charting a path to the future.
Harvey Kitka is a lifelong Sitkan, whose father was a commercial seiner around the time of statehood, when fishermen were paid by the fish, rather than by the pound. His grandfather seined prior to the arrival of hydraulics, and pulled the weighted webbing by hand.
As an indigenous Alaskan, Kitka has one foot in a millenia-old subsistence tradition, but both eyes on the future. He’s uniquely positioned to bring deep perspective to policy decisions, and he’s been no stranger to the testimony table at the state Board of Fisheries. He is an advocate for rebuilding Southeast herring stocks.
“I think one of the first satellites that took pictures of the Earth, at one time took a picture of Baranof Island,” said Kitka. “And it just happened to be the time when the herring were spawning. And it really shocked me to look at that picture and see that around the whole island was white with herring spawn. And now it’s just Sitka Sound, basically.”
“I would say the future of fishing depends on a fair measure of humility, really” said Linda Behnken, “We are seeing so many changes in our ecosystem right now, because of climate change.”
Behnken is the executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association. She’s been on both sides of the policy table, having served nine years on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.
“I think we all suffer from – except for someone like Harvey, who has these connections from time immemorial, and his viewpoint informed by generational knowledge being passed on – we all fall prey to thinking it all started when we first arrived. And that becomes our baseline. And I’m not just talking about herring, I think that happens in a lot of arenas. And so if you start managing a commercial fishery, and this is the abundance – we’re looking at the fourth highest – that seems huge, right, because it’s the fourth highest, but if you have Harvey’s perspective, and you have seen what herring stocks might have been back before the herring reduction plants, you really have a different baseline.”
Behnken draws parallels between Sitka Sound herring and the crisis in far Western Alaska. Only five years ago, the region’s commercial fisheries appeared robust. The rapid change demonstrates just how short a five-year window is.
“I’m thinking a lot about what’s going on right now in the Bering Sea, with crab with salmon, where we’ve seen these huge population crashes,” said Behnken, “and what that’s meant for the people who depend on those resources, whether they are the subsistence people of the Yukon, or the commercial crab fleet that’s just lost everything. That, yeah, the system’s changing, but there was a long time of people depending on those resources, watching things change with kind of glacial timing of receding and advancing – but adapting. And now we’re managing as if we’re in this little time slot, we’re not thinking enough about the past and not thinking enough about the future. And with the changes might be bringing.”
Heather Bauscher chairs the Sitka Fish & Game Advisory Committee, and has become a recognized face at both the Board of Fish and North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. Bauscher represents a younger generation of Alaskans, equally concerned with community sustainability and the fisheries. The future that Behnken and Kitka are talking about is her future
“We’re not in the position that they are in out west,” said Bauscher. “But if we can’t get a handle on some of these threats to the resource, we might be in a position like that down the road. And I want to second what Linda said about the time spent at the meeting, the testimony was absolutely incredible. And I’m not as familiar with the (North Pacific Fisheries Management) Council process. This was a really big learning opportunity for me. And I’m grateful to people like Linda and like Harvey, that have been my mentors in these processes, whether it’s the Council or the state process or the subsistence process over the years, but it was a strong showing of voices from all of coastal rural Alaska and especially some strong voices from Southeast from both indigenous communities and commercial fishing. So, you know, despite the things that we’re up against, it’s always really inspiring to witness that. And remember that there is a growing movement on these things.”
Bauscher believes it’s possible to bring a new level of data to the policy table – something more than graphs and tables that go no farther back than statehood. Scientists tend to rely on things they can count, but so much of the observable world is full of information that’s been impossible to quantify. Bauscher is helping spread the word about an app called “Skipper Science,” originally developed by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, that exponentially expands data collection in Alaska’s fisheries.
“So each year we’ve done this,” said Bauscher, “all these observations get standardized and become part of this report that we can hand off, and we finally successfully have proven to the different agencies that fishermen are capable of collecting this data. So one of the brand new projects, circling back to sablefish, we’ve been working with Seafood Producers Cooperative and local longline fishermen in Southeast Alaska to collect stomach samples that they then photograph through the app and upload, and it becomes part of a data set that (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) NOAA is going to be using to do full ecosystem analysis of the Gulf of Alaska, which is also pushing management towards ecosystem-based analysis and giving local fishermen a direct hand in. And we’re even paying (fishermen) them for it.”
When everyone who fishes has the ability to contribute information to fisheries research, Alaska’s policy makers will have a far broader perspective to draw on than they do now, and perhaps more courage to act for long-term benefits.
This will be a full-circle moment for Harvey Kitka, who has never needed an app to understand the natural world, and how best to manage it.
“Back in the 50’s and early 60’s we had 50-, 60-, 70-pound (chinook) fish being caught in Sitka Sound,” said Kitka. “Now we’re lucky to see a 30-pounder. What a world of difference in size and things. It would be nice to know what actually happened out there in the ocean. When only when only the herring were left (and other forage fish species gone) and this is one of the things I was so concerned about: The only thing that man controls is what we take, and if we don’t keep track of what’s happening in the natural cycle and try to adjust ourselves to, we’ll be hurting ourselves in the long run.”
The post ‘Future of Fishing’ panel hopeful that Alaska’s near-term crises will be met with long-term vision appeared first on KCAW.
In its 134-page Annual Report (2021) the Alaska Division of Public Health tracks a large amount of health and medical data for residents — including what we’re naming our babies. (Flickr photo/mulan)The most popular boys name in Alaska in 2021 was actually a tie: Noah and Oliver.
This interesting – and surprising – fact was compiled by the Alaska Division of Public Health, along with over one-hundred pages of other vital statistics for the state for the year.
See the complete 2021 Alaska Vital Statistics Annual Report.
At a time of year when everyone is making lists of the best and worst of 2022, please remember that the information in Alaska’s most recent vital statistics report comes from 2021. So Noah and Oliver may have been nudged off the top spot in the past 12 months – we’ll just have to wait until this time in 2023 to find out. I will reveal the top girls name of 2021 at the end of this story, if you’d care to guess.
In the meantime, there is a lot of other information available about 2021, some of it positive, and some of it distressing.
COVID, for example, was the third leading cause of death in Alaska last year, right behind heart disease and cancer, and ahead of accidents. Heart disease and cancer each took the lives of just over 1,000 residents in 2021; COVID killed 762, accidents killed 591.
A total of 6,216 Alaskans died in 2021, but happily, there were more residents born in 2021 offsetting some recent trends in outmigration from the state. There were 9,410 babies in the state that year, over 3,000 more than the number of deaths. 52-percent of those babies were boys. The oldest mother to give birth was 48, the youngest was 14. The oldest dad was 71, and the youngest dad 15. And contrary to whatever stereotypes the rest of the country holds for long winters and romance in Alaska, the number of births in the state by month is absolutely uniform (although it has been on a slow decline since 2017).
The Alaska Division of Public Health tracks a huge amount of data on ethnicity, prenatal care, and other factors relevant to birth – not to mention reams of charts and tables on the diseases we’re suffering from, the accidents that befall us, and life expectancy. The complete Vital Statistics Report is a total of 132 pages long.
But really, the most unexpected statistic is the state’s tracking of baby names: I’ve already mentioned Noah and Oliver were tied for the boys, at 42 each. Oliver has actually been at the top of the list three out of the last four years, except for 2019, when Liam was number one. Wyatt, Elijah, and Logan have all been recent runners up. And for girls, Amelia was the top Alaskan baby name in 2021, with Ava, Hazel, and Olivia tied for second, and Charlotte a close third. The two names to take a dip in popularity in the last few years are James and Emma: Both were number one in 2017, and dropped to fourth in 2021.
The post What we’re naming our kids, and other vital data from Alaska’s Division of Public Health appeared first on KCAW.
Roger Schmidt (trombone) and Brad Hogarth (conductor) share the highlight’s of this weekend’s Holiday Brass Concert (7 p.m. Saturday, December 17, Sitka Performing Arts Center, tickets available online). Schmidt says the show is an attempt to create a “spectacle” around a challenging repertoire of music ranging from Baroque to contemporary jazz. This year’s musicians come from not just from Sitka, but also from Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Washington, D.C. New for 2022: a guest lighting designer will illuminate the show.
The post This Saturday: Sitka’s ‘Holiday Brass’ a spectacle for the ears (and eyes) appeared first on KCAW.
Blown by the Same Wind is the fourth novel in author John Straley’s mystery series set in the fictional Alaskan town of Cold Storage. Set in 1968, the story sees the Christian mystic and guru Thomas Merton come to Alaska and “become involved in a big, messy crime,” says Straley. (KCAW image)Sitka author John Straley has published a new novel. The story weaves a little-known strand of 1960s pop culture into the fabric of life in a remote, Southeast Alaska fishing town.
KCAW’s Robert Woolsey recently spoke with Straley about the book, and what’s next for one of Alaska’s most prolific fiction writers.
Note: Author John Straley will read from Blown by the Same Wind at 6 p.m. Thursday, December 8, at Old Harbor Books in Sitka.
The novel is called Blown by the Same Wind, and like all of John Straley’s books, there is more to the title than meets the eye.
Writing mysteries and detective fiction is just Straley’s day job. By night, Alaska’s former Writer Laureate is a poet, and a student of literature and history. During his decades working as an investigator for the Alaska Public Defender Agency, Straley says he kept a quote from the monk Thomas Merton on the cover of all his notebooks.
“I wrote this quote down and it was, ‘I am blown by the same wind that moves all of these people down the street like dead leaves and bits of paper in all directions.’” Straley recited, from memory.
Knowing that he carried Thomas Merton with him as he explored the criminal underbelly of Southeast Alaska, it’s a little surprising that it’s only in Straley’s twelfth and latest novel that Merton makes an appearance. I asked Straley to tell me the story of the story, which begins shortly after Merton, a Cistercian monk living at a monastery in Kentucky, had published a best-selling book called The Seven Storey Mountain, making him something of a superstar in the world of spirituality.
“Dozens and dozens of tourists would come to want to sit at the feet of Thomas Merton,” said Straley. “The abbot suggested that he go someplace more remote, to pray and meditate and serve a small community. And they talked about coming to Alaska. In 1968. Merton actually did come to Alaska, and he wrote some letters indicating that after his trip was over, he was going to come back and live in Alaska – in southeastern Alaska. (Although he was nervous about bears.) Anyway, after he was in Alaska, went to California and then to Asia, where he traveled and met with the Dalai Lama. He was also of interest to the FBI and the CIA because he was not in support of the war in Vietnam. And he died in Bangkok. His brothers found him under an electric lamp, which they thought must have killed him.”
That Merton actually came to Alaska – and may have moved here had he not died suspiciously – was all Straley needed to weave him into the fictional world of Blown by the Same Wind.
“It’s an interesting story full of conspiratorial overtones,” said Straley. “And so I thought, that’s just perfect for me. So I thought up every conspiratorial frame of mind that I could from 1968, researched all the different kinds of things and have Thomas Merton come to my little fictional town of Cold Storage and get involved in a big, messy crime.”
Blown by the Same Wind is Straley’s fourth novel set in the fictional Southeast Alaskan town of Cold Storage. He’s written eight other novels in a different series featuring his ne’er-do-well detective, Cecil Younger. His plan is to write a novel for each series in alternate years.
Twelve novels so far, some poetry collections, an anthology, and a biography make John Straley one of Alaska’s most prolific writers, but there is a small problem – he doesn’t live in Alaska anymore. Earlier this fall, Straley and his wife, the noted humpback whale biologist Jan Straley, moved to Carmel, California.
Straley is trying to make the adjustment.
“I love the climate there,” said Straley. “It’s good for my health. It’s good for my wife’s health. I love the food down there, the fresh vegetables, but I miss the people here.”
Straley has been knocking around some of the roughest corners of Alaska for about four decades. He’s in Steinbeck country now, and he’s already noticed that most residents appear “thin, rich, and healthy.” But, there are plenty of thin and healthy people in Alaska. But Straley is having to recalibrate his ideas about the rich.
Straley – “Brad Pitt has a $42 million home in Carmel, California now, with like 62 fireplaces. He hired a guy just to work on his fireplaces.”
KCAW – “Wow.”
Straley – “That’s where I’m rolling now. That’s the kind of crowd I’m in.”
KCAW – “Does Brad Pitt have a library?”
Straley – “He should. I haven’t driven up to the gates with the guard dogs and the men in black suits and sniper rifles to try to drop a book off, but you never know!”
Straley feels obligated to write another novel about detective Cecil Younger, since the last title in the series, So Far and Good, saw our hero locked up in the Lemon Creek Correctional Center. “I’ve just got to get poor Cecil out of jail,” Straley says. Next comes a biography of his wife Jan, and only then might he turn his attention and his pen to Northern California. There is literally no place John Straley can’t work.
“Everybody has failings and tries to cover them up and gets in trouble,” Straley observed. “Everybody gets in trouble. And I have to say there’s some beautiful country around Big Sur and some crazy people down around there and near where I live. So every place is worthy of writing about.”
The post ‘Blown by the Same Wind’: Mysticism meets mayhem in Straley’s latest novel from Cold Storage, Alaska appeared first on KCAW.
The new heat pumps at Blatchley Middle School replace similar equipment that was only eleven years old when in failed. The school district maintenance staff believe the original heat pumps may have been incorrectly installed, allowing some parts of the units to freeze in cold weather. (KCAW/Woolsey) The heat is back on at Sitka’s Blatchley Middle School, and classes are expected to resume as usual on Wednesday (12-7-22) after students were unexpectedly sent home for four days during the installation of new heat pumps.
The return to warm classrooms concludes what has been a full year of chilly instruction for Sitka’s middle schoolers.
Blatchley principal Ben White is feeling upbeat about the prospect of a fully-heated building.
It’s been a while.
“Yeah, it’s been a calendar year since we’ve had a functional effective heat system,” said White. “It was November of last year when it shut down. And so as of last night, that would be December 5, at eight o’clock, we have half the units up and running and functioning very well, and the other half of the units should be hooked up in the next 24 to 48 hours. And they don’t anticipate any issues going forward with the continued hook up. But even with half the unit running, the building is already more completely heated than it has been in well, a year.”
The school had been getting by on space heaters, and a couple of the original heat pumps that were limping along, leaving conditions in the building tolerable, if not comfortable. There was no disruption of classes until Wednesday, November 30, when White sent a note informing parents that there would be no school for two days – Thursday and Friday – and then remote learning for another two days on Monday and Tuesday.
It happened to be the coldest part of the winter so far in Southeast Alaska, and the problem wasn’t a lack of output from the new heat pumps. The contractors, White says, had to test the other half of a heat pump system, and turn on the building’s air conditioning.
“It was a little ironic,” White said. “And when they told me that I had to laugh, but it’s part of the heating and cooling system. So they had to essentially purge that and make sure that system was functional. So it was kind of comical at that point. ‘Oh, of course, we’re gonna turn the air conditioning on.’”
White says the test run of the air conditioning took the temperature down to around 40 degrees in some classrooms.
The Sitka Assembly set aside $600,000 last August to purchase new heat pumps for the building, when district maintenance staff determined that the old heat pumps, which were just eleven years old, had failed beyond repair – likely the result of an installation method that just wasn’t suitable for Southeast Alaska. Fortunately, there was money to spare from surplus sales tax revenues from Sitka’s rebound in cruise tourism, and the new equipment was ordered, while the actual timeline for installing it remained an open question.
That the installation came during a cold snap wasn’t the best timing, but White is glad the situation is finally being resolved, and that Sitka’s middle-schoolers can return to learning without having to dress for the climate.
“We have lots of students and staff who do actually wear their winter hats and winter coats and gloves,” said White. “Students get to move throughout the school during the school day, they see seven different teachers each day. So part of their days was in heated rooms while part would be in rooms that weren’t heated. However, staff, if you happen to be an unlucky teacher whose room didn’t have heat, you were frequently in a room all day long that might be 50 degrees. So it does start to take a toll.”
White says all Blatchley students will return to in-person learning, and buses will run on their usual schedule, as of Wednesday, December 7.
The post After a year of heating problems, Sitka’s middle schoolers return to class in a warm building appeared first on KCAW.
“And this is, as far as I know, the only award for young adults (fiction) that’s given in recognition of what they’re calling these days Eco-Lit, focusing on sustainable themes, talking about the wild, talking about resources and how they are and aren’t used. And they decided for 2022 to recognize Whispering Alaska, which, which was awesome, because I’ve always wanted a gold sticker on my book. And now I have one,” says Jones.A Sitka-based author has taken a detour into young adult fiction, and the diversion has paid off with a national award.
Brendan Jones will receive/received the “Green Earth Book Award” in a virtual ceremony on December 7th from Delaware. The award has been presented for the last 18 years by the nonprofit Nature Generation, for exceptional work in a genre now called “Eco-Lit,” or literature which explores ecological issues.
Jones’ new novel Whispering Alaska, was published last year by Penguin/Random House. Jones says the story about twin girls who move to an island in Alaska wasn’t his idea; rather, it was suggested to him by an editor at Random House. However, the novel didn’t come together until Jones was living in the Russian Far East on a Fulbright scholarship.
“My agent called up and said, ‘Hey, listen, there’s a great editor out there, Beverly Horowitz,’” said Jones, “‘Would you be interested in writing a story about twins coming from Pennsylvania to Alaska?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know anything about, you know, young adult.’ And, Julian, my agent pointed out, ‘Well, you’re gonna have three of them – and specifically three girls, because you have three girls who are younger now. So I’m sure it’s something you’ve been thinking about. And so maybe you could give it a shot.’ And so I did. I wrote a manuscript and sent it to Beverly, and she said, ‘This is not good. Try again.’ And I did and I sent her one. And she said, ‘This is still not good. Try again. Start over.’ And I went to Siberia, and just had a couple of months on my own right before COVID started in March (2020). And I had some time alone. And I just really dropped into some sort of creative space and sent her one. And she said, ‘We can work with this.’ And that was Whispering Alaska.”
Jones says that although the story coalesced into a novel before COVID, writing during the pandemic informed the plot. In fact, Jones says his publisher believes that this is the first young-adult fiction to explore the impact of the pandemic on youth. In this case, the twin girls at the heart of the story have suffered the death of their mother, an emergency room doctor. And although they’re twins, a rare genetic twist means that they each have a unique experience of grief.
“So they’re grieving their mother’s loss, and they’re mirror twins. It’s this incredible thing where twins are actually mirrors of each other. They’re they have birthmarks on opposite sides, even their hearts are on opposite sides – it’s this crazy phenomena. But it also means that one is right brain and the other is left brain. So they literally mirror each other. And so when their mother dies, they have very different ways of dealing with her death. And both those different ways – one, for lack of a better term is more type A and one’s more type B – are seen through the lens of the Tongass and through this small remote island town, and they react so differently. One is much more biology in the classroom and engaging on that level, and the other just wants to get out into the old growth and experience what’s there.”
Jones says that Whispering Alaska is aimed at readers who are around age 12 and up – which in the publishing industry is known as “middle-grade.” He’s recently returned to Sitka from a trip to Port Alexander, where he taught the book for a week, and he says that it’s been a great way to reach Alaskan kids with a story that’s more relatable than the usual novels like To Kill a Mockingbird. His plan is to take Whispering Alaska into other classrooms in Alaska, and into high school and university courses he’ll instruct in the coming year.
Jones has received high marks for his previous work: His debut novel The Alaskan Laundry won the 2017 Alaskana Prize, and was recognized by Oprah’s Book Club.
The post A coming-of-age story in the Tongass, ‘Whispering Alaska’ wins a prestigious award for Eco-Lit appeared first on KCAW.
The next phase of the Sitka Seawalk will connect Sitka Public Library to Totem Square, by meandering along the shore -- and under the O'Connell Bridge.
The post Planners hope residents contribute ideas to the next — and trickiest — phase of the Sitka Seawalk appeared first on KCAW.
Out fishing for halibut last month near Sitka, geologist Jacyn Schmidt and her partner noticed an unusual feature on their depth sounder: A 100-foot tall cone, with a plume of gas. Experts believe that it's an underwater volcano -- caused by heated mud or gasses, rather than by erupting magma.
The post More likely mud than magma, Sitka’s newest volcano is rising from the depths appeared first on KCAW.
Jane Straight is a United Way Healthcare Navigator and the Director of Income/Health at United Way of Anchorage. She discusses the agency's free services to help residents sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act (Open Enrollment is now through January 15, 2023). Straight will be in Sitka on December 7. To connect with a navigator on the phone, call 2-1-1.
The post The United Way has free assistance for anyone who needs help navigating health insurance appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka-based Northline Seafoods lost its processing barge in a Bristol Bay storm in 2020. Thanks to a $40 million USDA loan, the company planning a comeback.
The post A Sitka processor lost everything in 2020. Now it’s planning a comeback with a bigger boat and a better idea appeared first on KCAW.
The series "American Innovators" first considered Sitka for a film about energy storage, but that quickly changed. "Here's a town doing it all," says producer Kate Tucker, "and doing it in a way that's necessary for resilience in the future."
The post ‘American Innovators’: New film ties Sitka’s push for renewable energy to a tradition of resilience appeared first on KCAW.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy took an ideological tone in his remarks to the 43 graduates of the Alaska Law Enforcement Training Academy in Sitka on Nov. 18, saying, "We haven't had any shootings or lootings or burnings when the rest of the lower 48 and some of our major cities were going through that, what I consider to be nonsense."
The post Dunleavy to Sitka DPS Academy grads: ‘Your character is going to be tested’ appeared first on KCAW.
As Sitka's planners look to 2024 and beyond, traffic congestion remains at the top of the list in managing the record volumes of summer cruise passengers. Not far behind are concerns over the bus fleet used to transport them. Many residents are calling for electrification, and at least one thinks light rail is the answer.
The post Managing congestion tops list for future tourism planning in Sitka. Electrifying (or eliminating) the bus fleet is a close second appeared first on KCAW.
Unlike nearly every other sector in the Alaska, marijuana cultivation did not experience job loss during the pandemic. That's helped position the industry as the projected leader in job growth through 2030.
The post Marijuana cultivation to lead Alaskan job growth over next decade appeared first on KCAW.
As advance votes are counted, Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman and newcomer Rebecca Himschoot appear likely winners in their respective legislative races.
The post As absentee/early votes come in, Stedman and Himschoot likely to claim seats in the next legislature appeared first on KCAW.
Over 2,000 voters turned out in-person in Sitka on Election Day on November 8, but a significant number of advance votes (1,600 early/absentee) won't begin to be tallied until November 15, with final results counted on November 23.
The post Sitkans turn out in large numbers to polls, but many early/absentee ballots haven’t been counted yet appeared first on KCAW.
Prop. 1, the so-called marijuana tax, could be sending $300,000 to Sitka Schools in a couple of years. The district want public input on how to distribute the funding. KCAW's Robert Woolsey reports from the November 1 Sitka School Board meeting.
The post Sitka schools seek ideas on how to distribute Prop. 1 funding appeared first on KCAW.
Outer Coast will open its doors as a two-year college in 2024. Nine years in the making, the program is modeled on Deep Springs College in California, but should be "a significant departure from any other institution that's out there."
The post Outer Coast to admit first freshman class in ’24 appeared first on KCAW.
Since the earliest days of statehood, the Alaska Commission for Human Rights has held meetings in rural communities. This Alaska Day, the commission is renewing that tradition in Sitka.
The post Human Rights Commission to join Sitka’s Alaska Day Festival appeared first on KCAW.
Although Halloween is just around the corner, the woman wearing the gold crown and sash as she mingles with the crowd at the ATIA conference in Sitka this week is not in costume -- but in uniform. She is the current Miss America, Emma Broyles.
The post It’s really her: Miss America Emma Broyles visits Sitka appeared first on KCAW.
The board and staff of Shee Atiká honored Sen. Lisa Murkowski “for her continuous support of Shee Atiká and its shareholders" and "assisting with the transaction of Cube Cove," which returned the heavily-logged area to federal wilderness protection.
The post Murkowski honored for Native advocacy, and an unusual land deal that expanded wilderness appeared first on KCAW.
Somewhere Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson are smiling, as Sitka revives parts of the old Community Schools program as "Community Recreation." This, and other news from the October 5, Sitka School Board meeting.
The post Sitka’s new ‘Community Recreation’ program to launch this month appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka voters overwhelmingly approved a proposition to use public funds to build a marine haulout and boatyard, giving the project 80-percent of the vote. A new tax on marijuana also passed with 57-percent of the vote. The proceeds will support school activities.
The post Sitka voters hand a big wins to marijuana tax and marine haulout appeared first on KCAW.
Economics steered at least a third of the Southeast troll fleet toward chum salmon this summer. As a result, about 9,000 kings went unharvested, despite being open all season.
The post A rare summer-long chinook opener was not enough to lure SE trollers away from Chumageddon appeared first on KCAW.
Candidates Mitch Mork and Tristan Guevin covered achievement, teacher retirement, LGBTQ student policies, among other issues in an hour-long forum on KCAW on September 22.
The post Sitka School Board candidates weigh issues in KCAW forum appeared first on KCAW.
In a 23-page decision issued on September 16, 2022, the Alaska Supreme Court found Sandy Sulzbach's arguments "unpersuasive," and denied her appeal for a new trial.
The post AK Supreme Court upholds Sitka jury’s verdict in $3.7 million injury lawsuit appeared first on KCAW.
For the first time, the state is inviting the public to contribute to envisioning the future of Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka.
The post With increasing pressure on campus property, public invited to envision a new master plan for Mt. Edgecumbe High School appeared first on KCAW.
The state Board of Education is ready to negotiate with the Coast Guard for the sale of waterfront land on the campus of Mt. Edgecumbe High School.
The post State board enters negotiations with Coast Guard for sale of Mt. Edgecumbe High School waterfront property appeared first on KCAW.
As a proportion of overall housing, more of Sitka's stock is tied up in short-term rentals than anywhere in the state except the Kenai Peninsula
The post Sitka (almost) tops state for short-term rentals, but long-term vacancies are high, too appeared first on KCAW.
Mary Peltola edged out former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III in the race to fill the seat in Congress left open by the sudden death of Don Young. She'll be the first Alaska Native to serve in the US House of Representatives.
The post Peltola wins race for Alaska’s seat in US House appeared first on KCAW.
Although Sitka's local school bus contractor is short-staffed, buses have been covering all routes. The bigger holdup is likely construction delays at Sitka's major intersection.
The post School buses rolling in Sitka despite short-staffing, construction delays appeared first on KCAW.
Seven years (to the day) after a swarm of landslides struck Sitka -- one of which was fatal -- an interdisciplinary team has developed a web-based tool to alert residents to landslide danger.
The post New app warns Sitkans of landslide risk appeared first on KCAW.
If Sitka voters had their way, Bethel Democrat Mary Peltola would be their representative in the US House -- by a longshot. Voters in the district also gave big margins to Lisa Murkowski and Bill Walker.
The post No longer an unknown, Peltola is Sitka’s clear favorite on primary election day appeared first on KCAW.
A federal judge in Seattle has ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated a key provision of the Endangered Species Act in 2019, when NMFS published research on the harvest of king salmon in Southeast Alaska – and failed to address its impact on a small population of killer whales in Puget Sound.
The post US Court ruling on endangered killer whales likely won’t shut down Southeast trolling. But it could force a rewrite of federal fisheries policy appeared first on KCAW.
Former Gov. Bill Walker says he vetoed half the Permanent Fund Dividend in 2016 because the legislature lacked the courage to do so. "We need generational thinking," Walker says. "We need to think beyond the next election."
The post ‘Who will run to the fire?’ Walker’s comeback depends on persuading voters that political courage matters appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka's Blatchley Middle School was without its primary heat source for most of last winter, after five Mitsubishi heat pumps failed. Now, the Sitka Assembly has appropriated up to $600K on first reading for emergency replacements.
The post Premature heat pump failure at Sitka’s middle school could mean $600,000 in replacement costs appeared first on KCAW.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was out with COVID, and did not join the Republican defection to block the PACT Act on July 27. She subsequently issued a strong statement supporting veterans.
The post Murkowski sidesteps PACT controversy, offers full support for veterans appeared first on KCAW.
People who move to Alaska are not staying as long as they used to. The latest report from the Alaska Department of Labor shows a striking downward trend in outmigration -- but it's not from a lack of job opportunities.
The post ‘Trends’ report: Despite near-record job availability, more recent arrivals are choosing to leave Alaska appeared first on KCAW.
Unlike past oil windfalls, much of Alaska's $2 billion surplus will be deposited in savings, and used "to fix the fiscal position of the state." says Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chair of the Alaska Senate Finance Committee.
The post Stedman: Alaska’s wartime windfall a chance to save more, and build less, than previous oil booms appeared first on KCAW.
Tristan Guevin has filed for a full term on the Sitka School Board. The former assembly member was appointed to a vacancy in June of this year. He's committed to public service, and he believes in the power of education to address problems of social justice.
The post Guevin files for Sitka School Board race appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman says the legislature has appropriated enough money to complete the Katlian Bay Road – and several others across the state – but the project may serve as a cautionary tale about the reality of construction along Southeast Alaska’s rugged coastline.
The post Stedman: Sitka’s Katlian Bay Road a hard lesson for future construction along the Southeast coast appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman is cool to the idea of withdrawing $8 million from Sitka's permanent fund to pay for a new marine haulout. He thinks using state funding to build a yard similar to Wrangell's is "more workable and deliverable."
The post Stedman ‘not excited’ about drawing on Sitka’s permanent fund for new marine haulout appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka’s unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in almost two decades (2.9%) – which sounds good, but may actually indicate a scarcity of workers. A recent economic summit (7-14-22) crunched numbers published by the Sitka Economic Development Association.
The post Workforce summit points to a scarcity of workers in Sitka appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka's economy has rebounded to near-pre pandemic levels, but there are some disturbing trends nonetheless. Thursday's economic summit (2 p.m. UAS Sitka or Zoom) will look at the numbers. Registration information here.
The post Workforce development to be topic of Sitka Economic Summit appeared first on KCAW.
The board of Sitka's Gary Paxton Industrial Park unanimously supports putting a ballot proposition before voters this fall that would use the proceeds from the sale of Sitka Community Hospital to build a new marine haulout.
The post Industrial park board backs proposal for spending Sitka hospital sale proceeds on marine haulout appeared first on KCAW.
Despite coming in first in the special primary, Sarah Palin was not widely supported in the latest Alaska Survey Research opinion poll. In fact, she showed pronounced negative favorability of almost 44-percent, and finishing third behind Nick Begich III and Mary Peltola.
The post Statewide opinion poll shows Palin sinking in race for Congress appeared first on KCAW.
Two Good Samaritans – the Cirus and the Lucky Strike – responded to an urgent marine broadcast on Monday (7-4-22). The Miss Amy was unable to control the flooding and sank. The Cirus and Lucky Strike successfully pulled the crew of the Miss Amy from the water.
The post Good Samaritans ‘save three lives’ in sinking near Porcupine Rock appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka Superior Court Judge Jude Pate made the ruling Wednesday morning (7-6-22), on the second day of jury selection, after it became clear that there would be too few jurors left, once both parties had exercised their right to "peremtory challenge," and dismissed up to 11 jurors each.
The post Judge rules mistrial for Sitka doctor accused of sexual assault. New trial to be scheduled later this year appeared first on KCAW.
Elizabeth Peratrovich was born 111 years ago on July 4. Sitkans honored the civil rights leader's memory -- and her birthday -- by dedicating a massive yellow cedar bench on the site where a statue of Alexander Baranov once stood.
The post Peratrovich bench a birthday present to a civil rights leader, and a step toward healing Sitka’s cultural wounds appeared first on KCAW.
Although record inflation is making national headlines now, it's only about half the rate experienced in Alaska during the pipeline years. The scarcity of labor and housing might be creating similar conditions in Sitka, and driving inflation to higher-than-average levels.
The post Is Sitka’s hotter-than-average inflation a touch of ‘Pipeline Fever’? appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka is having an outbreak of kennel cough among its canine residents. The disease is fairly common in dogs, but clinics in town have seen an unusually rapid uptick in cases.
The post Kennel cough outbreak means more social distancing for Sitka’s dogs appeared first on KCAW.
The Sitka School Board Wednesday night (6-15-22) appointed Tristan Guevin and Mitch Mork to a pair of vacant seats on the board. They will serve until the Sitka Municipal Election in October. After swearing in Guevin (Mork appeared telephonically, and will be sworn in later), the four members elected Blossom Teal-Olsen as president, Todd Gebler as vice-president, and Paul Rioux as secretary.
The post Guevin, Mork appointed to vacant seats on Sitka School Board appeared first on KCAW.
A big dividend check from the state is the only campaign promise many voters will need to hear this year. But Les Gara thinks Gov. Dunleavy is not disclosing the full cost of large dividends. The Democratic former legislator would like to unseat Dunleavy in the election this fall.
The post Running for governor, Gara speaks out against the ‘false promise’ of unfunded dividends appeared first on KCAW.
Although Saturday June 11 is the deadline for the special primary election to fill the vacancy in Congress created by the death of Don Young, Friday June 10 is the last day to have your ballot postmarked in Sitka.
The post Voting Friday is Sitka’s best choice for beating Saturday’s deadline for special primary election appeared first on KCAW.
The NPFMC will cover a wide range of species harvested in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, but based on public comments, salmon bycatch and electronic monitoring (EM) will be big issues.
The post Salmon bycatch, electronic monitoring on the table at Sitka meeting of North Pacific Fishery Management Council appeared first on KCAW.
The Sitka School Board gave its informal approval to a plan to replace the sales tax on cannabis products with a new consumer tax that -- if voters approve -- would top out at 8-percent.
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The three remaining members of the Sitka School Board will appoint two new members -- from an expanded pool of applicants -- on June 15. The board followed a similar process two years ago.
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Sitka Salmon Derby officials were hoping to see a trend back toward larger fish this year, and that may be happening. A 40-pounder went to the top of the leaderboard on Sunday.
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Andrew Hames has been on the Sitka School Board since 2020, but he considers a chance at a music teaching job in the district too good of an opportunity to pass up.
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Sitka's teachers ratified a two-year contract on Tuesday, May 24, ending the first negotiating impasse in 25 years. Union reps say the agreement restores competitive salaries and is a hedge against inflation.
The post Negotiating impasse over, Sitka teachers ratify two-year contract appeared first on KCAW.
Sunny skies and light winds are forecast 67th Annual Sitka Salmon Derby, which begins over Memorial Day weekend. Anglers will be chasing a big fish that could be worth $6,000.
The post Sunshine, bigger fish anticipated in 67th Sitka Salmon Derby appeared first on KCAW.
Valorie Nelson says she offered her name "to help," and is not interested in running for a full term on the school board this fall. The board is scheduled to fill its vacant seat on June 1.
The post Former mayor, assembly member Valorie Nelson applies for vacant school board seat appeared first on KCAW.
Sitka has 15 electric cars for every 1,000 residents, an EV adoption rate higher than California's. Now the community needs to find a place to locate a federally-funded charging station.
The post In the fast lane of electric vehicle growth, Sitka looks for a place to install its first public charging station appeared first on KCAW.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory has reclassified Mt. Edgecumbe from "dormant" to "historically active." While there's clear evidence of volcanic activity deep under the mountain, it doesn't mean an eruption is imminent.
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Hundreds of hours of audio from an unlikely historical source are now archived on the internet, and available for anyone to listen to.
The post Southeast Native Radio aired for just 16 years, but its voices will live on in a new digital archive appeared first on KCAW.
The Sitka School District has been unable to reach a contract agreement with the union representing teachers. It's the first impasse in negotiations that anyone can remember.
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A leading researcher on the Queen Charlotte Fault believes the numerous small earthquakes beneath Sitka's Mt. Edgecumbe were produced by volcanic activity.
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Seismologists have detected a "swarm" of earthquakes below the long-dormant Mt. Edgecumbe volcano near Sitka, whose last major eruption was 4,500 years ago. Next comes a long period of "watchful waiting" for additional activity -- if any.
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Students in Career and Technical Education classes are getting hands-on experience working with equipment that could take their skills to the next level – literally – and launch them into jobs in the aerospace industry.
The post This high-tech tool ‘hooks’ high school students on industrial arts, and opens a door to aerospace careers appeared first on KCAW.
Tim Fulton has designed a piece of equipment to make loading and unloading luggage and cargo more efficient – and dramatically safer – for the workers inside aircraft. The pandemic bought him the time to not only work out the kinks in the product, but to secure patents and distribution agreements all over the world. Now he'd like to build it in Sitka.
The post After 38 years as a ‘ramper,’ Tim Fulton designed a safer way to load luggage on planes. Now he wants to build it appeared first on KCAW.
SE trollers will be allowed to target 28,000 "treaty kings" in outside waters in April, after the Board of Fish gave ADF&G more latitude to adjust the dates of the winter fishery.
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A subsistence fishing method that has become more popular with sockeye harvesters in Sitka in recent years is now banned. The Alaska Board of Fisheries last week (3-22-22) prohibited the use of spear guns in the Redoubt Lake management area.
The post Amid legal questions, Board bans subsistence spearfishing at Sitka’s Redoubt Lake Falls appeared first on KCAW.
The commercial sac roe herring fishery opened for just over an hour on Saturday (3-26-22). On Sunday, the first visible spawn was seen along the Kruzof shoreline.
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Sitka Schools Superintendent Frank Hauser has been named one of three finalists for the superintendent’s job in Anchorage.
Hauser has been superintendent in Sitka for one academic year. Prior to coming to Sitka, he spent most of his professional career … more
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The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute predicts that 77-percent of people who began buying Alaskan seafood online during the pandemic would continue to do so when it’s over. The relationship is strengthened by the solid appeal of Alaska seafood – and its sustainable message.
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The guided sport industry proposed increasing bag limits, to offset the overall smaller size of black cod recently. Commercial interests argued that raising the limit was counterproductive to rebuilding the stock. (ADF&G photo) A proposal to allow sport anglers to harvest more black cod has failed.
The Alaska Board of Fisheries last week (3-15-22) rejected an effort by the Alaska Charter Association to increase the daily bag and possession limits for black cod – also known as sablefish – to offset the decrease in fish size in recent years.
The Alaska Charter Association’s Richard Yamada explained the rationale behind proposal 225 .
“I don’t see any large growth in the amount of people that are going to be participating in this fishery,” said Yamada. “So this proposal is just because of the size of fish has been on a decline. And because we are measured by numbers of fish, the amount of net weight that a person can go on a trip has been reduced. So for efficiency, even a resident angler going out and catching some black cod, to give them instead of four giving them six would make that trip more efficient. And (the proposal) returns sport anglers to the weight of fish they traditionally have caught in the previous five or six years.”
The proposal raises the daily bag limit from four to six fish for all anglers, and raises the annual limit from 8 to 12 for non-residents. It only covers the northern inside waters of Southeast Alaska. Sitka Advisory Committee chair Heather Bauscher testified that her group struggled with a sport bag limit increase.
“We didn’t think to recognize and address that, with the expansion of the sport black cod fishery to outside waters, it’s no longer really appropriate to base the entire region’s limits on the abundance of Chatham alone,” Bauscher explained. “And unlike 15 years ago, Chatham is now just one small portion of where the fishery occurs. And there’s been a lot of growth in this. In Chatham it’s been up by 400%, and the outside catch is now up by 500%. And the use of electric reels is contributing.”
The Sitka AC approved an amended version of the proposal, but the vote was not unanimous.
Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association director Linda Behnken also opposed the bag limit increase. She implied that it was a solution for a problem that did not exist.
“I think as was clear from your staff presentations, this fishery is 96% nonresident 95% of those nonresidents do not catch any sablefish,” said Behnken. “And less than 1% anglers overall reach their annual limit. So what I would say is the bag limits you have in place are quite adequate. We have a sablefish stock that is slowly recovering, it’s still 76%. below where it was when you first set these bag limits, in terms of where your annual harvest limit is for the commercial fishery. You set these thinking you are being conservative, but we’re still below that point. So raising bag limits at this point, just puts more pressure on the stock we have.”
Commercially, black cod – or sablefish – are harvested under a quota share system, in which fishermen buy the right to harvest a specific number of pounds each year. Board member Israel Payton, of Wasilla, thought the quota system gave the commercial sector a greater sense of ownership over the stock than was actually the case.
“So it seems to be like when you tie a quota share to a fishery like this, and you assign this quota, you’re you’re almost assigning the fish as an entitlement to that stakeholder/permit,” Payton said. “So by default, we’re doing that, in my opinion. So therefore, if that never changes, how would allocation ever change away from them if we’re kind of assigning a quota to that? And, you know, when is there room for the growth of other stakeholders to come in, in an equal quota share like that?”
Board member John Jensen, of Petersburg, said quota harvests were managed under the same permits as other state fisheries. But he personally didn’t mind giving resident harvesters an advantage in fishing for black cod.
“I have nothing against nonresidents coming up to Alaska and fishing,” said Jensen. “I just want to keep it respective to the different user groups, the ones that have been here longer like the commercial guys and and the residents that live around Alaska, and try to give Alaskan residents a little bit of a leg up compared to nonresidents.”
Proposal 225 failed on a 1 to 5 vote, with only Payton voting in favor.
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Heather Bauscher works the gear aboard the troller I Gotta in Sitka Sound. Bauscher led the Sitka Advisory Committee through over 20 meetings as it vetted dozens of fisheries management proposals for the area — a critical part of the state’s management process. (Eric Jordan photo) Sitka’s Fish & Game Advisory Committee has been recognized by the Alaska Board of Fisheries, for exceptional service, especially on the part of its chair, Heather Bauscher.
Board chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort made the presentation Sunday morning (3-13-21), midway through the Board’s 14-day 2022 Southeast Finfish and Shellfish meeting in Anchorage.
“Before we break for lunch, I wanted to take a minute to recognize some exemplary service on an advisory committee,” said Carlson-Van Dort. “Heather Bauscher is the chair of the Sitka Advisory Committee. She was elected in the fall of 2020, following the resignation of a long serving chairman. In response to the COVID 19 pandemic, she embraced the new Zoom meeting format, and created additional opportunities for members of the public to participate in the AC process through web conferencing technology. The Sitka AC held more than 20 meetings to address the Board of Fisheries Southeast finfish and shellfish proposals. And under Heather’s direction, the Sitka AC held weekly meetings, and sometimes, as she mentioned earlier, meeting twice, and even three times a week to weigh in on local proposals and topics relevant beyond Southeast Alaska. As chair, Heather uses her position to facilitate constructive dialogue between members and helps focus the advisory committee activity into tangible formats, including letters, resolutions, and comments to governing bodies. And Heather, we just want to thank you so much for your service and your exemplary leadership on the Sitka AC. Thank you. Well done.”
Sitka Advisory Committee chair Heather Bauscher (c.) with Alaska Fish & Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, and Alaska Board of Fisheries chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort. (Photo provided.) At her next appearance before the board, which came shortly after lunch, Bauscher credited her fellow committee members – 17 of them, all volunteers – and the many Fish & Game biologists who contribute to AC, for making the process in Sitka exceptional.
“I want to say thank you earlier for that award,” Bauscher said. “I was completely shocked and caught off guard and really appreciate it and want to express so much gratitude to the whole Advisory Committee because this wouldn’t have gone this well without all their support and mentorship, and I’m grateful to all the people in the community for working through us on all those meetings.”
The Alaska Board of Fisheries is the regulatory body in the state. It meets every two years to consider dozens of proposals for management of Southeast Alaska’s fisheries – every one of which is vetted by a local advisory committee – or “AC”– like the one in Sitka.
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Of the short video Ukrainian President Zelensky showed to the US Congress, Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, “If that didn’t touch the heart and the core of every one of us, then we didn’t have our eyes open.” Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the United States Congress Wednesday morning (3-16-22) was a galvanizing moment for that institution, and possibly for the world.
Zelensky delivered his remarks from his embattled capital in Kyiv, where he has led the resistance to the Russian invasion which began on February 24.
KCAW spoke to US Senator Lisa Murkowski later Wednesday afternoon, to hear her thoughts on Zelensky’s address.
“It is pretty compelling to to listen to a man — to look at a man — and to know that all around him in his capitol, buildings are being are being bombed, people are dying on the streets and in their apartments,” Murkowski said. “And he is standing there before the free world asking for help and support, reminding us of the values that the people of Ukraine are fighting for. They’re fighting for the same values that Americans hold dear — and to remember that as we provide the aid and support for him. And so I have been moved to say, we must do everything that we can to help the people of Ukraine because their fight is the fight of the free world.”
Following Zelensky’s remarks, President Biden announced another $800 million in aid to Ukraine.
Sen. Murkowski said that anyone who wasn’t swayed by President Zelensky’s argument should watch the short video he played for the joint session of Congress. “If that didn’t touch the heart and the core of every one of us, then we didn’t have our eyes open,” she said.
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Herring Rock receives a blessing of water from the major rivers and streams that empty into Sitka Sound. (KCAW/Woolsey) Sitkans gathered on a wet and windy Tuesday afternoon (3-15-22) for the Herring Rock Blessing.
The traditional ceremony is a celebration of herring as they arrive in Sitka Sound to spawn, and an invocation of the renewal of life that comes each spring.
Yeix Anatsees Tom Gamble is the master of ceremonies at Herring Rock, which once stood near the tideline in Sitka Channel, but now rests in front of the Sheet’ká Ḵwáan Naa Kahídi tribal house.
Yeix Anatsees calls to the attending houses.
Yeix Anatsees belongs to Kiks.adi Clay House. An important aspect of the ceremony is acknowledging the duality of Tlingit culture, Raven and Eagle, Kiks.adi and Kaagwaantaan. Gamble invites two Kaagwaantaan to sit in honor, holding the Peace Hat, given by the Russian Empire in reconciliation to Sitka’s Tlingit, and the Frog Hat. The first is Harvey Kitka.
“Thank you,” Harvey Kitka said to the crowd. “ It is not me holding this hat, but my great grandfather Rudolph Walton, and my grandfather Charlie Daniels, Sr. Gunalchéesh!”
Kaagwaantaan Dr. Tom Thornton (l.) and Harvey Kitka are invited to hold the Kiks.adi Frog Hat, and the brass Peace Hat, which was given to the Kiks.adi by the Russian Empire. (KCAW/Woolsey) The second is Dr. Tom Thornton.
“It is not me holding this hat,” Thornton said, “it is my adopted relatives, the Kaagwaantaan, and we are proud to be an outer shell for our Raven Kiks.adi.”
Lakrisha Johnson (l.) and Katelyn Stiles present the Herring Robes, which will be part of a traveling exhibit about Sitka Herring. Robe co-designer, Carol Hughey, is to the rear. (KCAW/Woolsey) Tom Thornton is the Dean of Sciences at the University of Alaska Southeast.
The highlight of the ceremony is the presentation of herring regalia, worn by two of the Herring Protectors, Katelyn Stiles and Lakrisha Johnson, who lead the ceremony in song.
The robes are blue, like the ocean, and embroidered with silver herring. Another Protector, Louise Brady, explains that they are the centerpiece of a traveling exhibit which will educate the rest of the country about the importance of herring to the environment and people of Southeast Alaska.
A very wet mist has settled over Sitka by the time Yeix Anatsees concludes the blessing, by asking each of the houses present to pour water over Herring Rock. He’s collected the water in gallon jugs from all the major rivers and streams in the Sound. He then thanks everyone for braving the elements to attend the Herring Rock Blessing, and reminds us that the damp cold is a sign that winter is changing into spring, and the herring are returning soon.
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Tribal elder Harvey Kitka told the Alaska Board of Fisheries that it takes about three days of spawning to coat hemlock branches with a desirable amount of roe — “about 5/8 to 3/4 inches thick,” he said. Subsistence advocates say that the herring biomass — albeit large — doesn’t spawn reliably anymore in areas accessible to most local harvesters, and the window of opportunity often closes quickly. (KCAW photo / Enrique Pérez de la Rosa) Public testimony during Day 2 of the Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting drew attention to the fundamental problem with herring management in Sitka: How do you reconcile a science-based approach toward commercial fishing, with an unscientific – yet very well understood, and very old – subsistence tradition?
Note: The Alaska Board of Fisheries is expected to deliberate this weekend on over a dozen proposals for herring management in Sitka.
Sitka Sound is home to the largest herring biomass remaining in Southeast Alaska, and recently, the state has calculated that biomass this spring to be the largest on record.
Those records really don’t go back very far, however, only to the 1970s. And subsistence harvesters, who lay hemlock branches in shallow waters near Sitka each spring in the hope that they’ll be coated with a thick layer of eggs, say this large biomass of herring has been forced into less accessible areas under pressure from the commercial seine fleet.
Biologist Kyle Rosendale works for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. He explained to the board how you can have a high abundance of herring, but a poor subsistence harvest in Sitka Sound.
“We are talking a lot about biomass, because that’s our only actionable metric at this time in this fishery,” said Rosendale. “But I think there’s a lot more nuance with some of the spatial data that ADFG has been collecting over time that show we’ve sort of had this contraction in the duration of spawn, and sort of this westward migration in the spawn. It’s really hard for folks to make sure they have places where there are three consecutive days of spawn to harvest that good quality and quantity of eggs. And this is particularly true for folks in smaller skiffs. There’s a very, very small window that people can obtain a good quality harvest in some years, not all years, but in some years.”
A number of Sitka’s tribal citizens traveled to the Anchorage meeting to press the point, that despite the high abundance of herring, the subsistence fishery was failing. Pete Karras, Jr. drew an analogy for the board.
“Well, when I was being carried in my mother’s womb, I was eating herring eggs,” he testified. “So it’s been in our culture for many years. And it is our right, it is our way of life. And I think if the tables were turned, and you had your refrigerators, your freezers, your food cabinets locked, and you could not get into them unless I said that you could. That is what you are doing. And it is just unacceptable.”
Karras also thought that state management was pushing herring stocks dangerously close to collapse. The reason Sitka herring are so prized is because stocks elsewhere in the region have been depleted – some while being managed by the state.
“And if your eyes are closed, open them because it doesn’t take rocket science to figure this out,” Karras continued. “If you put this problem between 9- and 10-year old children, and you ask them the same questions that we’re asking each other today, they would say, ‘Stop fishing.'”
Imposing a moratorium on the commercial herring fishery is not a radical idea. The Alaska Native Sisterhood, in fact, passed a resolution urging the state to do exactly that. Daphyne Albee, ANS Grand President, reminded the board of her organization’s position.
“The Sitka Sound herring stock one of the last within the state of Alaska that provides a viable cultural food harvest of herring eggs for indigenous people that is shared throughout Alaska and lower 48 communities that we represent,” Albee said. “According to ADF&G, the amount of necessary egg harvest for the Indigenous peoples has not been met for nine out of the last 10 years.”
But a moratorium on commercial fishing would shut down a multi-million dollar harvest, and create an economic ripple effect beginning with the 47 active permit holders in the fishery, and extending to the tenders, processors, and to the communities which support them.
Julianne Curry is a second-generation herring seiner from Petersburg, who’s been active in commercial fishing advocacy her entire life. She cautioned the board against rash decisions.
“I’m a subsistence and a personal use harvester and my business is fully dependent on sustainable fisheries management,” Curry said. “I’m proud of my fishing heritage and my way of life. And I’m even more proud of Alaska’s reputation of having the best managed fisheries in the world. I’ve been an advocate in the regulatory process for sustainable commercial fisheries since 2006. And I’ve spent a lot of time working on hearing issues and past Board of Fish cycles. In that time, and as my time as a harvester, I’ve learned that one thing is true. Biomass always fluctuates. Ups and downs don’t signify a stock collapse, or a collapse of the resource. And we can’t manage fisheries based on a strictly on a ‘what if?’ scenario.”
The board may have found valuable insight from some of Sitka’s tribal elders, who carry a memory of herring far beyond the beginning of state management – and even beyond statehood. In territorial days, herring reduction plants were common throughout Southeast Alaska. Consequently, the state government inherited a herring population that had been driven into serious decline.
Harvey Kitka told the board that basing today’s high abundance on a baseline set in the 1970s created a false impression that Sitka herring were thriving.
“Oh, in the 70s, using that as a baseline — that was a far cry from what it was back when we first became a state,” Kitka said. “When we first became a state, we were still able to harvest eggs almost anywhere in Sitka Sound because the whole Sound turned white (with milt from spawning herring). And therewere a lot of places where we had our own private places to set branches. Now we’re competing for the tiny spot (aka the “core area”). And sometimes it’s really hard to get the quality eggs that we need. There’s so much that we we’ve been competing for eggs over the years.”
Kitka’s testimony resonated with at least one Board of Fish member John Wood, of Willow.
“Mr. Kitka hits something that was on my mind not only in relationship to the herring industry, but also to salmon throughout the regions,” Wood said, “and that is what I call shifting baselines. Because when I came on the board, I was under the impression that part of our responsibility was to restore stocks to their historical levels. And you hit on that today. You, sir, are a treasure, in that you go back to actual active harvesting, back to a time before statehood.”
Kitka stayed at the testimony table for 15 minutes, answering board member’s detailed questions about subsistence practices in Sitka, how many days branches are left in the water, how thick a coating of eggs was desirable.
When asked what he would recommend to solve the problem in Sitka, Kitka replied, “Fish conservatively.”
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Sitkan Katelyn Stiles, a doctoral student at UC Davis in Native American and Indigenous Studies, testifies remotely before the Alaska Board of Fisheries on March 10, 2022. The Southeast BOF meeting was originally scheduled for Ketchikan in January, but was rescheduled to Anchorage due to the winter’s COVID surge. (KCAW/Woolsey) Public testimony on the opening day of the Alaska Board of Fisheries Southeast finfish meeting split along predictable lines, with subsistence advocates speaking in favor of three proposals prepared by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, and commercial fishing advocates speaking against them.
Some, like Sidney Kinney, who with her husband operates a 58-foot seiner in the Sitka Sac Roe Herring Fishery, encouraged the board to try and understand that the issue – despite the noise – was not a simple us-versus-them problem.
“I’m just one of 47 small business owners in this fishery trying to diversify our operation to stay afloat in our current economic situation,” Kinney said. “We aren’t just up against difficult economic times, but up against social media warriors throwing themselves behind causes they know little about and stamping their name on proposals and spreading false information on platforms that become the pinnacle of how the next generation get their news. We plan to raise our three girls on the back deck. We’re committed to showing them the importance of being stewards of the land and sea which we depend upon for our livelihoods and our subsistence needs as well. That’s why we’re all here isn’t it? To advocate for what we love and what resonates within each of us.”
Kinney is both a citizen of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and a shareholder in Doyon, Limited, a regional Native corporation in the interior. Kinney was one of 30 people who signed up to testify on Day 1 of the Anchorage meeting in-person.
In Sitka, around 20 people signed up to offer testimony remotely, in a video conference. Katelyn Stiles is Kiks.ádi Tlingit who grew up in California, but now lives in Sitka. She’s also a tribal citizen, and a doctoral student at UC Davis in Native American and Indigenous Studies.
“Tlingit people have stewarded and managed these waters successfully for thousands of years before the State of Alaska existed, creating complex relationships to ensure mutual survival,” she said.
Stiles argued that adopting the Sitka Tribe’s three proposals was a step toward reconciling management of the fishery with sovereign rights spelled out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Public testimony on herring will continue through Friday at the Board of Fisheries – much of it dominated by the three tribal proposals from Sitka. In all, there are 14 total management proposals for herring before the board, with deliberation and voting scheduled for Saturday.
Watch the livestream of the Alaska Board of Fisheries 2022 Southeast Finfish meeting.
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At the request of the Sitka School Board, the Cultural Resources Committee of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska officially recommended renaming Baranof Elementary School “Charlie Joseph Sr. Awdigaan Hít,” which means “a place of sunshine and joy.” However, the choice has prompted hard discussions within the broader tribal community, some of whom felt left out of the decision. (KCAW file photo) The renaming of Sitka’s Baranof Elementary School has been put on hold, pending more input from tribal and other community members.
The Sitka School board on March 2 decided to table a final decision, after surprising resistance from within the tribal community itself.
The issue has been before the Sitka School board for over a year, since January of 2021, when it was referred to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska.
Former school board member Yeidikook’áa Dionne Brady-Howard now sits on the Tribal Council. During the government-to-government portion of the March 2, 2022, meeting of the board, she restated the rationale for seeking out the Tribe’s advice in changing the name.
“We recognize the intention of the board, in turning it (the name change) over to the Tribe,” she said, “not as a way of passing the buck, but recognizing that since our schools were once one of the major agents of colonization of our people, that it seemed like a natural step then that the responsibility for coming up with a recommendation would be handed over to the Tribe.”
But the Tribe’s ultimate recommendation – from its Cultural Resources Committee – has prompted some pushback: Charlie Joseph Sr. Awdigaan Hít, which means “a place of sunshine and joy.”
The significance of Charlie Joseph Sr. in cultural education is beyond question, but – as has been clear from the beginning – singling out Joseph among all of Sitka’s outstanding cultural educators, would create problems within the tribal community.
Tribal citizen Melonie Boord suggested that the school board did not go far enough in handing the issue to the Tribe.
“This has been heartbreaking and really sad, all around,” Boord said. “I think this would indicate something is not right with your process. People were not heard until now, and they were not part of the decision making process on the tribal or the community level.”
Boord conducted a survey which was returned by over 700 Sitkans. Half of them favored Awdigaan Hít, one-quarter favored leaving the name unchanged, and 14-percent favored the name Charlie Joseph Sr. Awdigaan Hít. Nevertheless, the poll was conducted online, and may have missed many.
Pauline Duncan taught at Baranof Elementary for 28 years. She said that she was one of over 200 tribal elders who were left out of the decision. Personally, she took issue with the imbalance in Sitka between publicly honoring men and honoring women – particularly in street names. She thought the Baranof name change was an opportunity for redress.
“Please keep in mind that the impact you will make will really made a difference to high risk children and high risk women,” said Duncan.
The school board also heard from tribal citizens who said that naming things after people was not consistent with Tlingit tradition. Assembly member Crystal Duncan argued the point.
“I know Charlie didn’t do it for the glory and he is remembered at the most appropriate way — through our oral traditions,” said Duncan. “There is a way to honor him and those who helped establish the SNEP program (Sitka Native Education Program), but this is not it.”
Sitka School Board members were in a quandary: They had sought the formal advice of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, and now they had it, and an undertaking that had started with the best of intentions apparently had backfired.
Board member Paul Rioux said he was willing to hold off for a while.
“I know when we started this process, I was hopeful that it was going to be a process of unity, and healing, and you know, progress as a community,” said Rioux. “And my email box doesn’t reflect that.”
A motion to table action on a Baranof Elementary School name change passed 4-1.
Note: This story was update on 3-11-22 to include the detail that Melonie Boord’s poll was distributed electronically.
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In ‘Cruise Boom,’ Sitka Sound Science Center director Lisa Busch says the community’s nonprofit tourist venues are collaborating on summer staffing, housing, and training. “The worst case scenario is that we’re not ready, and the (visitor) experience is not good,” says Busch. “The best case scenario is this remains a wonderful visitor destination and a great community to live in.” (ArtChange, Inc., image capture) A pair of documentary filmmakers is hard at work examining the implications of the rapid growth in cruise tourism projected for Sitka.
Elements of their film, Cruise Boom, are already available to watch online, and many viewers may be surprised to learn that, while the dramatic increase in cruise passengers represents a significant bonanza for the town, there’s also significant worry about the community’s future.
Note: Watch the first two short features of the documentary Cruise Boom, at ArtChange, Inc. Learn more about Sitka’s 2022 Short-Term Tourism Plan.
Sitka is expected to see upwards of half-a-million cruise passengers in the 2022 season. Before this, the most-ever in one summer was 280,000 – and many remember the congested intersections, overflowing sidewalks, and the inability to run the simplest errands downtown during peak hours.
And if you’re a business owner, how do you prepare for the surge, especially when – as COVID has shown us – there’s no guarantee that the big numbers will materialize?
Film clip: “It’s exciting and it’s scary at the same time, looking forward to next year.”
Linda Anderson is one of many downtown Sitka merchants who outlasted the slowdown of the pandemic, only to be faced with an altogether different problem: the rebound.
Film clip: “Every business in town is looking for people. It’s not just little clerk jobs. There’s a lot of jobs out there that aren’t filled now.”
Filmmakers Ellen Frankenstein and Atman Mehta explore this idea in the first “short” release in their documentary film Cruise Boom. Mehta says that the rapid expansion of cruise tourism puts Sitka into its own category.
Listen to an extended interview with Atman Mehta and Ellen Frankenstein.
“I think that while there are broad implications,” Mehta explained, “it’s also worth saying that I think Sitka is unique in a way because of the kind of rise, and Sitka is going to be much quicker than other places.”
Their short film, “Preparation,” is one of two so far that Mehta and Frankenstein have offered online. The other is called “Benefits and Impacts.” Frankenstein is the CEO of Sitka-based ArtChange, Inc., which is producing Cruise Boom. In addition to covering main street, they’ve been to municipal planning meetings, toured Sitka’s cruise facility, and visited some of the popular nonprofit venues for cruise tourism in Sitka.
Frankenstein feels that Sitkans in the front lines are rising to the challenge.
“It’s been really amazing to go behind the scenes,” said Frankenstein. “We both of us have no experience in the tourism world. And there’s a lot of thinking going on. A lot of hard work and a lot of collaboration that’s really impressive.”
There is a lot of uncertainty in both short films, however, and a lot of worry. This is a clip of Lisa Busch, the director of the Sitka Sound Science Center, which runs a popular aquarium and hatchery.
Film clip: “I’m worried about how we’re going to get this all done in time, and the worst case scenario is that we’re not ready, and the experience is not good. The best case scenario is this remains a wonderful visitor destination and a great community to live in.”
Mehta believes the anxiety felt by Busch and others is justified, based on what has happened elsewhere in the world where cruising has shouldered its way in.
“And what often happened in other cruise destinations is that when there is such a rise in tourism is that you see generic stores selling jewelry and trinkets – stores which are often owned by either cruise companies or other very powerful and rich institutions,” Mehta said. “They tend to show up and price out local businesses and local residents. They drive rents up and property prices up. And I think it’s important to ensure not only that the flavor of town doesn’t change, but also that Sitka doesn’t become sort of a hyper-seasonal economy, in which most of the businesses cater only to tourists. I think it’s going to be important for town to avoid that.”
Mehta cautions that the COVID pandemic demonstrated how volatile the cruise industry is, and that becoming too dependent on the cruise sector could prove devastating if companies chose to one day alter their routes and bypass Sitka altogether.
The producers say that they’ll be filming Cruise Boom throughout the summer in Sitka, with a premiere screening sometime in the late fall.
The post Could Sitka’s ‘Cruise Boom’ be a bust? A new documentary explores the impact of rapid growth in cruise tourism appeared first on KCAW.
Daasdiyáa Ethel Makinen (center) with her students (l. to r.) Lakrisha Brady, Lillian Young, and Kassandra Eubank-Littlefield in Juneau in 2020, as part of Sealaska Heritage’s Haa Shuká language revitalization project. (Sealaska photo) A prominent culture bearer in Southeast Alaska has passed. Ethel Makinen died in Sitka in February at the age of 90. She co-founded the Sitka Native Education Program and was one of only 20 remaining “master-level” speakers of the Lingít language.
Note: Read an extensive biography of Ethel Makinen from the Sealaska Heritage Institute in The Daily Sitka Sentinel. The Alaska Native Sisterhood will hold a memorial and cultural service at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 3, at the Sheetkʼá Ḵwáan Naa Kahídi. A funeral will be held at St. Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral at 11 a.m. Friday, March 4, followed by a burial service at Sitka National Cemetery. A reception at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall is scheduled afterward; guests are welcome to bring a salad or dessert to share.
It is hard to overstate the significance of the loss of Daasdiyáa Ethel Makinen. She was a lifetime Sitkan and elder of the Raven-Coho clan, and one of only 20 remaining fluent speakers of the Lingít language.
Daasdiyáa survived two husbands, and raised her six children as a single mom with exceptional grace and humor. Her commitment to culture and language preservation was extraordinary. According to an obituary prepared by the Sealaska Heritage Institute, Daasdiyáa was instrumental to the development of the Sitka Native Education Program and the Gájaa Héen Dancers, and worked with both programs so long that “she retired a few times.”
She was nothing if not realistic. Daasdiyáa understood the barriers to mastering Lingít, but she also knew that its study carried great cultural benefits.
She made the point to the Sitka Tribal Council in 2014.
“I feel that our language, our way of life – everything’s important,” she told Council members. “And we need the young people to know our culture. Maybe they’ll never catch on to be fluent speakers, but they’ll know about the culture.”
Neither was Daasdiyáa content to stand by while the language came under threat. Two years earlier, in 2012, a New Zealand scholar published what purported to be a definitive “word encyclopedia” of Lingít. The volume was inaccurate on so many levels that it bordered on nonsense. The author later traveled to Sitka, where she was politely-but-thoroughly discredited by Daasdiyáa and the other language teachers in the SNEP program.
Daasdiyáa Ethel Makinen was born in Sitka on September 20, 1931, the fifth child of culture bearers Annie and Charlie Joseph, Sr. She died on February 19, 2022, in her daughter Lillian Young’s home in Sitka. She was 90 years old.
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Sitka High DDF, Alaska’s 2022 Division II Champions. No team — not even in Division I — came within 50 points of Sitka this year. Decades of building a program, plus a strong community arts tradition, likely underlie Sitka’s success. (ASAA photo) Sitka High’s Drama, Debate, and Forensics team won its sixth straight state championship in Anchorage in February.
Sitka has long dominated the ranks of DDF teams in the small schools division, both in the region and the state, but this year not even Alaska’s largest schools came anywhere close to Sitka’s overall point score.
Sitka High DDF coaches Amy Ainslie (l.) and Christian Litten (r.) with team captain and Alaska State DDF Student of the Year Darby Osborne. Both Ainslie and Litten are alumni of Sitka’s DDF program, which started over two decades ago, and consistently dominates regional and state competition. “I feel like we have a really good foundation to maintain and build from every year,” says Ainslie. (ASAA photo) Even if you’re not a baseball fan, you know what someone means when they talk reverently about the New York Yankees – a sports dynasty that, even though they could be beaten on any given day, consistently won World Series titles.
Sitka High DDF is a little bit like that.
“I feel like we have had a really good foundation to maintain and build from every year, which has been really helpful for our program,” said Amy Ainslie, co-coach of Sitka High DDF.
Ainslie has been with the team for about four years, with fellow coach Christian Litten who took over the team two years prior to that. Not surprisingly, both are alumni of the Sitka DDF program. Ainslie says there’s something about the size of the schools in Southeast – and a relative dearth of many other activities in winter – that tends to funnel some of the best students into DDF. The region has been competitive at the state level for over two decades.
“We find that in Sitka and across Southeast, there’s strong community awareness and support for DDF — people know what DDF is,” said Ainslie. “They hear about it on their local media, they hear about it from students that they know, and from family members. And you know, people are really excited to support those programs.”
Sitka High 2022 State DDF Results February 17-19, 2022 Bettye Davis East High School in Anchorage
Individual Events
Informative speaking – 1. Darby Osborne; 5. Isabelle Schmetzer
Original oratory – 3. Jamison Dunn
Dramatic interpretation – 5. Isabelle Schmetzer.
Humorous interpretation – 1. Izzy Williams; 3. Sagan McLaughlin; 5. Aiden LaFriniere
Duo interpretation – 3. Addie Poulson and Darby Osborne; 4. Maia Capp and Sagan McLaughlin
Duet acting – 5. Danica Majeski and Sally Everson
Solo acting – 2. Sally Everson; 3. Izzy Williams.
Pantomime – 1. Jamison Dunn and Aiden LaFriniere; 4. Ben Hedrick, Rita Christianson, and Danica Majeski
Readers Theater: 1. Sagan McLaughlin, Maia Capp, Ben Hedrick, Danica Majeski, and Aiden LaFriniere
- Addie Poulson, Asa Dow, and Felix Myers
Public forum speaker points: 1. Felix Myers, 6. Darby Osborne
Public Forum Debate: 1. Felix Myers and Jamison Dunn
Team Awards:
Division II Academic Award
Division II Drama State Champion
Division II Forensics State Champion
Division II Debate State Champion
Division II Overall Sweepstakes State Champion
Alaska DDF Coach of the Year: Christian Litten
Alaska DDF Student of the Year: Darby Osborne
And it doesn’t hurt that Sitka starts them young. Students learn how to spar debate in their seventh-grade English classes, and get to watch the high school team practice. Senior Darby Osborne never doubted that she would be in DDF.
“Growing up I had that view of the debate team, and what they do,” she said. “And then freshman year, I just knew it was the activity that I’d be going into just because I was always a fan of public speaking. I really wanted to learn how to construct arguments. And it just seemed like a really great activity to expand my horizons, and to learn about public speaking and presentation. And kind of right off the bat I fell in love with it. So I stuck with it.”
DDF has twelve speaking events, including debate, all of which develop a student’s ability to hold an audience’s attention, whether it’s humorous interpretation, or extemporaneous speaking. The season runs from September through February, so team members have time to bring their pieces up to competition-readiness. But Sitka DDF also benefits from feeder programs like the Sitka Fine Arts Camp and Young Performer’s Theater. Osborne says Sitka DDF capitalized on talent developed outside the program.
“This year, we had someone who had a background and acting join the team for their first time as a senior ended up taking home of a first place and a third place at state,” said Osborne.
Osborne took first place in “Informative Speaking” at the state tournament, and was sixth-ranked speaker in debate. Coach Christian Litten says that Osborne has earned an exceptional reputation for being a “courteous and kind competitor” in debate – an event that often favors a more assertive tone. For walking that line especially well, Litten says Osborne earned “DDF Student of the Year” at state.
“As we were getting closer and closer to the state tournament, we were even getting kind of badgered by the other Southeast coaches,” Litten said, “telling us ‘You’re going to nominate Darby, right? because if you’re not, I’m going to.'”
And Litten, for his part, was honored as Alaska DDF Coach of the Year. Although his team is the Division I small schools champion, the next closest competitor – even among Division II large schools – was 53 points behind Sitka. Said Litten (in a Facebook post), “We solidified ourselves as the best DDF program in the entire state. Amy (co-coach Ainslie) and I couldn’t be more proud of this amazing group of young people!”
KCAW’s Erin Fulton contributed to this story.
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Mt. Edgecumbe High School opened in the former Naval Air Station used during WWII. (The Library of Congress) Mt. Edgecumbe High School wrapped up a week of celebration in honor of the institution’s founding – 75 years ago on February 22, 1947. “Founders Week” events were more private than past years, due to the COVID pandemic, but no less engaging for the student body.
Jessica Twydell is the residential vice-principal at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. Last Friday, she ran down the list of 75th Anniversary Founders Week events.
“On Monday we had a snowflake formline class that was offered to students. On Tuesday we did a gathering with the entire school down in the gym. We had a keynote speaker Mary Sussuk Huntington as well as a Native Youth Olympics demonstration. On Wednesday we did on campus at Mt. Edgecumbe – in-school only in recognition of COVID – Elizabeth Peratrovich Day Parade, followed by a banquet. And then last night Thursday we did our gathering of cultures over at the Performing Arts Center. Tonight (Friday 2-18-22) we’ve got Smoke Signals going on over at the Coliseum. Saturday we’ve got a Founders dance which will be held outside for students. And on Sunday, we’ve got a traditional foods potluck.“
The school was founded after the Second World War, on February 22, 1947 in the former home of the Sitka Naval Air Station. Mt. Edgecumbe was originally operated by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. It closed for a few years in the 1980s before being reopened by the State of Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. Its superintendent is appointed by the State Board of Education.
Full story: KCAW visited Mt. Edgecumbe High School for its 70th anniversary Founders Celebration in 2017.
Mt. Edgecumbe High School marks 70th anniversary
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Dealing with illegally-parked or abandoned vehicles has been an ongoing problem for the state operations crew at the airport, who have no enforcement authority. For the public, the primary issue is the shortage of long-term parking (68 spaces). The DOT’s Sam Dapcevich anticipates that a private management system would “reevaluate and adjust long-term versus short-term parking on demand.” (ADOT image) Paid parking is coming to Sitka’s Rocky Gutierrez Airport, possibly as soon as April.
The Alaska Department of Transportation has issued a request for proposals for a parking management company to “remedy parking issues” at the airport.
DOT spokesperson Sam Dapcevich says parking in Sitka has been a headache for the state for some time.
“Well, our maintenance and operations crew, the amount of time that they’ve had to spend dealing with either illegally parked or abandoned vehicles over the years has increased,” Dapcevich explained. “They’re not really tasked with enforcement for parking. And so we’ve had discussions with the city about it. And we’ve come to a point where we needed to make a decision. That’s how we came out with this RFP (Request for Proposals) to seek a parking management company.”
The city is involved in the conversation because it owns the terminal building – but the parking lot, the runway, and ramp areas are all owned by the state.
Paid airport parking by no means is a new thing in Alaska’s largest cities, but a relatively new addition to smaller towns. Just last December, Petersburg implemented a paid parking system that could be a model for Sitka’s.
“A private company, locally owned in Petersburg came forward and leased land from the state, and they’re managing the parking there,” said Dapcevich. “It’s kind of interesting, theirs is managed primarily through a website and an app. So people pay and I believe they register with their license plate, and they’re able to leave their car there, and the company manages it that way.”
The parking fees in Petersburg are modest: the first hour is free, then it’s a dollar-per-hour for 2-6 hours of parking. One to six days is $7 per day, and it’s $35 per week. There’s no booth or parking attendant in Petersburg: users download an app and scan a QR code in their parking space, or pay at a website.
But there’s one big difference between the airports in Sitka and in Petersburg. Not everyone spending time at the airport in Sitka is getting on or off a plane. Dapcevich says the department has crowdsourced a plan to manage patrons of the Nugget restaurant.
“We announced this on social media,” said Dapcevich. “And some of the suggestions we saw were a grace period, which we kind of expect. There’s typically a grace period, so that people can take care of business without having to pay if it’s picking someone up or dropping someone off or whatever. So there could be a one hour grace period potentially. The other thing that we’ve seen suggested is — and I remember doing this at the Juneau airport years ago — to validate your parking if you went in and ate at the restaurant. So that may be an option, to have validated parking.”
Since technology has really lowered the barriers to developing paid parking in Sitka, the state thinks a vendor could be in place by April – in less than two months. In the meantime, Dapcevich says Sitkans can ease some of the problems at the airport right now, especially by not leaving unattended vehicles in the active loading zone in front of the terminal doors.
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The Glory was without power and taking on water in 55 mile-per-hour winds and 5-foot seas. An Air Station Sitka rescue swimmer assisted in hoisting both crew members from the distressed vessel. Watch the full video. (USCG image) Islet Passage (center of chart) is relatively protected, but Monday’s storm generated heavy seas and high winds in the area. (KCAW image) Two crew members were safely rescued from a sinking fishing boat south of Sitka on Monday evening (2-7-22).
According to a news release, the Coast Guard was notified at 8 p.m. that the 40-foot troller Glory was in distress in Islet Passage, about 17 miles south of Sitka, near Kanga Bay.
A rescue helicopter from Air Station Sitka arrived on scene soon after the report, and lowered a rescue swimmer to aid the two mariners on board the Glory, however the flooding could not be stemmed, and its engine would not start.
Although protected waters, weather conditions in the area were poor, with 5-foot seas, and wind gusts to 55 miles per hour.
The swimmer advised the crew to abandon ship, and both were safely hoisted aboard the helicopter by 9 p.m.
Lt. Cmdr. Scott Woodcock, the helicopter pilot, complimented the crew of the Glory on their preparedness, with “good communication and survival gear.” He noted that the most difficult part of the rescue was the severe winds.
The Glory did not fully submerge in the incident, but instead was grounded. Petty Officer Janessa Warschkow says the owner has since returned with a second vessel to de-fuel the Glory and refloat it Tuesday. The engines were restarted, and the Coast Guard is going to allow him to attempt to bring the vessel back to Sitka under its own power.
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While pediatric deaths from COVID-19 are a small fraction of overall deaths (left), the proportion of pediatric cases has been growing during the omicron wave (right). (CDC image) Alaska this month became the 47th state to report its first pediatric deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.
The fatalities both occurred in mid-2021, during the delta surge. State health officials nevertheless remain optimistic that the current omicron wave has plateaued, and that the high infection rates among residents of all ages will soon be coming down.
Dr. Anne Zink is the chief medical officer for the state.
“Sadly, we did have our two first pediatric deaths that we are sharing here in the state,” she said. “These did happen a bit ago, and it took a while for the death certificate review process to come through. Both infants were less than 12 months old in the South Central region.”
The only other detail the Department of Health and Social Services would provide about the infants is that both were Alaska residents.
During a weekly statewide press conference on February 3, department officials said that pediatric deaths are particularly tragic, and run counter to the widespread idea held by the public that COVID-19 presents no risk to children.
The two infants died during the delta surge last year, which generally caused more severe illness and strained the capacity of the state’s hospitals. During the current omicron surge, severe illness and deaths are down, and hospitals are functioning well – but far more people are contracting the omicron variant, including children.
And while most children are at low risk of severe COVID disease, Zink said the rising numbers are of concern.
“A lot of people are mixing, kids need to be back in school and doing lots of things,” said Zink. “But what we have seen with the number of childhood cases in the past has just been a real increase with this more recent surge. And that’s been very different than early on in the pandemic. And you can see this across the regions in the country. And here (in Alaska), when we look at the number of adult cases compared to child cases, again, those child cases clearly are going up as well.”
The number of cases nationally is now coming down – and in Alaska we may be seeing a plateau within the next week. The BA.2 variant of omicron has been detected in the state, but it doesn’t appear any more virulent than the original omicron (BA.1), and vaccines and medications remain quite effective.
Zink said that Alaska has a roadmap – if not back to “normal” – it’s to a better place than we were two years ago.
“COVID is going to be here with us for a very long time, if not forever, and it will be probably continue to change,” said Zink. “And we’ll have surges and we’ll have variants, and we’ll learn new things. Science isn’t fixed, it’s a process. And we’ll continue to learn and respond as we have challenges moving forward. But our tools and our resources in 2022 are definitely different than our tools and resources in 2020. So when we started, when we were helping to support that flight from Wuhan, we didn’t know how this virus spread, we didn’t have PPE (personal protective equipment), we didn’t have a test for it. We didn’t have vaccines, we didn’t have treatments. And we are at really different place now in 2022: Most of the Alaska population has either been vaccinated or has previously had COVID-19. And while both of those things can wane over time, they still provide protection. We have treatments like we never had before, we have more masking and tools. And we are finding ways to be together, have our kids in school, gather and do the things that are important to us moving forward.”
The state Section of Epidemiology expects omicron to taper off in Alaska in the near future, just as it has elsewhere in the country, and with the decline in cases will come a relaxation of some of the layers of mitigation that have been in place since last fall – but only some. Individual responsibility will continue to play a large role in controlling the pandemic.
Dr. Zink said an immunocompromised person going through chemo, and a fully-vaccinated seven-year old who’s already low risk, will protect themselves differently post-omicron. “There are as many different solutions as there are people in the state,” she said.
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The cost of educating Sitka’s students has slowly climbed over the last six years, while state funding has remained unchanged. “When we look at state funding that has kept us at a flat Base Student Allocation since 2017, cost increases, inflation, and all the other factors that come into place, we are finding it more and more difficult to be competitive with hiring and retaining our teachers and our paraprofessionals and our administrators,” Superintendent Frank Hauser told the Sitka Assembly. (SSD image) The Sitka School District will have to wrestle down a $2 million dollar deficit next year, and it’s looking for the city’s help.
Starting the annual budget process in the hole is not unusual for the district – in fact, it’s usually the case – but it always prompts hard conversations about how to make ends meet.
The Sitka School Board and the Sitka Assembly met in special session on Thursday (2-3-22) to take a look at school finances, which are the single largest expense of city government.
Superintendent Frank Hauser outlined the problem.
Hauser – There are a couple items to keep in mind when considering the projected deficit. We’re expecting enrollment to remain steady. Salaries and benefits uncertainties exist due to ongoing collective bargaining with two employee bargaining groups. We are expecting science curriculum expenses this year in light of the adoption of the new science standards. And again, of course, it is still very early in the budgeting process. Cuts will need to occur in conjunction with the use of the fund balance. It’s important to note that the fund balance alone cannot sustain a $2 million deficit between projected revenues and projected expenses.
The “fund balance” is the district’s savings account, which currently stands at over $3 million, but the board usually prefers to draw it down only as a last resort.
Assembly member Thor Christianson asked Hauser the $2 million-dollar question.
Christianson – Any thoughts on how you’re going to make it up? I mean, I know it’s early on — how you’re going to make up that $2 million?
Hauser – I’ve already had some conversations with my principals to go through and look at ways of trying to identify cost savings. We are looking at determining if there’s going to be any retirements or resignations, and trying to manage some of the reduction through managed attrition. And looking at ways to just kind of streamline. We do have some extra monies available still from the CARES Act and the COVID money that came through, and there is a possibility utilizing some of that to help offset some costs.
Enrollment in the district has continued a slow decline, but the anticipated drop next year is not enough to explain the deficit. In fact, the 40 intensive needs students served by the district help support district finances, by bringing in roughly 13-times more funding per pupil than other students.
Assembly member Rebecca Himschoot – a long time teacher in the district – asked Hauser about the impact of intensive needs students on the budget.
Himschoot – Because those students often have a human being attached to them, right? It’s a huge personnel cost.
Hauser – Yes, it is, it is a huge personnel cost. It could depend specifically on the students and the needs for that student. You know, it’s about $80,000, when you look at the each intensive needs student.
Sitka administrator John Leach said it was likely to be this assembly’s approach to start by funding the district with the maximum allowable contribution – often called “the cap.” It would be just under $8 million dollars next year, or 39-percent of the district’s overall budget.
Not all assemblies in the recent past have had the same approach. Hauser was grateful, and now looked to the state government to revisit its obligations to education, under the BSA – or Base Student Allocation.
Hauser – I think the fact that we’re starting with being funded to the cap is just great. That’s just a fantastic position to be in and just the support that we’ve seen so far has just been a real positive feeling. But when we look at state funding that has kept us at a flat BSA since 2017, cost increases, inflation, and all the other factors that come into place, we are finding it more and more difficult to be competitive with hiring and retaining our teachers and our paraprofessionals and our administrators. And so it’s something that we need to take into consideration and when the city funds us to the cap, but yet the state has us at a flat BSA for the last five years, that we have to figure out a way to still be able to make and find those resources to be able to continue to meet our obligations and provide those services for students.
The next community budget hearing before the Sitka School Board will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday, February 16, in Harrigan Centennial Hall. The budget must be finalized and submitted to the assembly by the end of April.
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Technicians in the Sitka Electric Department first became suspicious when they noticed that the locking seal on Forst’s meter at his Islander Drive home had been replaced with one not supplied by the department. When they pulled the meter and cut the power, equipment inside Forst’s garage continued running. (KCAW/Woolsey) A Sitka resident and charter operator has pleaded guilty to felony theft of electricity, and he’ll have to pay $150,000 in restitution and fines immediately, or face additional civil enforcement from the city.
59-year old Richard A. Forst pleaded guilty in Sitka Superior Court on January 31, 2022, to one count of criminal mischief in the 4th degree, a misdemeanor, and to one count of theft in the 2nd degree, a felony, for the theft of electric power at his home on Islander Drive, and at his dock property on Halibut Point Road – for at least the last seven years.
Forst was arrested and charged in 2019 after technicians with the Sitka Electric Department noticed that the locking seal had been removed from Forst’s electric meter, and replaced with another not supplied by the utility. A large motor was audible in Forst’s garage. The department subsequently pulled the meter and found that two bypass wires had been installed to divert power into the garage, without first going through the meter. The main circuit breaker was opened, and the motor inside the garage nevertheless continued running.
Technicians later observed that the meter at Forst’s commercial property at Guckers Island Dock on Halibut Point Road had been bypassed in a similar manner. Police were informed of the situation; they obtained a search warrant to investigate inside the buildings at the two properties and found that the bypassed circuits were feeding refrigeration equipment. Based on the age of the equipment and further investigation into Forst’s electrical consumption, the department estimated the value of electricity diverted over a period of years to be around $200,000.
Municipal attorney Brian Hanson appeared at Forst’s change of plea hearing to deliver a scathing victim impact statement, on behalf of all rate payers in the community.
“Sitka is not a cement building at the end of Lincoln Street,” Hanson told the court. “It is not a full of faceless bureaucrats. The City and Borough of Sitka is approximately 8,500 citizens: Men, women, and children who live, work, go to school, and recreate in this community. They also are electric ratepayers in this community. Some are in poverty, many are low income, and the citizens plead to our assembly to keep the rates of electricity as low as possible. Mr. Forst you stole from those citizens and you stole from them for years.”
Under the plea agreement, Forst must pay $144,925 in restitution to the City of Sitka, and fines of $5,200. In an email to city assembly members, Attorney Hanson wrote that “If Mr. Forst fails to immediately pay the judgement, I will initiate civil enforcement.”
Forst will also be on probation for two years, and subject to the the terms of the Court’s “Order to Probation on Suspended Entry of Judgement.” If he’s found to have successfully completed the terms of his probation by 2024, the charges will be dismissed. Otherwise, the judgement will stand and the felony conviction will be entered into Forst’s record.
Neither was Superior Court Judge Jude Pate conciliatory. He told Forst that, had he not accepted the plea agreement, he could have faced 1-3 years in prison for the original charge of theft in the first degree, and paid up to $100,000 in fines. The original charge of criminal mischief in the third degree carried potential jail time of up to two years, and a $50,000 fine.
Judge Pate agreed with the state prosecutor Amy Fenske that when a citizen of nominal good standing, a prosperous business owner, abuses the system so flagrantly, something more damaging than mere theft occurs.
“The bigger and possibly the more long term harm is, as Counsel Fenske pointed out, tearing at the social fabric,” said Pate. “And that’s just the lack of trust that these actions have brought about, at a time where our society is already at odds on so many things. And you pour in this this doubt, this mistrust by stealing. It causes citizens not to trust the government. It causes citizens not to trust each other. It erodes our very community on both a financial and sociological, psychological level.”
Judge Pate offered Forst the opportunity to address the matter in open court, but he declined.
“Mr. Forst, is there anything you’d like to tell me before I decide what to do?” Pate asked. “You’re not required to speak. But if you’d like to speak now be the time.”
“No, judge,” Forst replied.
Judge Pate went on to observe that if the COVID pandemic had not intervened, this case likely would have gone to trial. As a result, public reaction to date has been “somewhat muted.”
In his remarks, Forst’s attorney, Juneau-based August Petropulos, suggested that the entire question of Forst’s guilt would be moot if two as-yet-unread motions received favorable ruling from the court: the first to dismiss the original indictment, and the second to suppress the evidence in the case. Nevertheless, Petropulos said he wasn’t there to litigate, and urged the court to accept the plea deal.
“We’re taking this deal,” Petropulos said. “I think it’s a fair compromise, given the two motions that were filed. The fact that Mr. Forst has no prior convictions, and that this guarantees the city gets the $144,924. I’d ask the court accept it.”
In addition to the restitution and fines, Forst will serve two years of probation. He also agreed to perform 80 hours of community work service.
Note: This story was updated on February 5, 2022, to reflect that the Sitka Superior Court issued an “Order to Probation on Suspended Entry of Judgement,” which means that Forst’s felony conviction will not be entered unless he fails to successfully complete his two years’ probation.
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SE Alaska trollers believe they have borne the brunt of reductions negotiated in the 2019 Pacific Salmon Treaty. The increased harvest forecast for ’22 is welcome news. Writes Alaska Trollers president Matt Donohoe: “Since most trollers live in rural Southeast Alaska, the 40,000 increase in Chinook harvest will help SEAK’s Covid-beleaguered rural economies.” (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz) The state is expecting a better year for king salmon in Southeast Alaska, which in all likelihood means a better year for all harvesters, the commercial troll fleet in particular.
Overall, about 60,000 more chinook will be available to catch in Southeast Alaska in 2022 (261,300) than last year (201,100) – welcome news, especially for commercial trollers, who will take the lion’s share of the fish (44,700).
The catch limit is set by rules negotiated under the Pacific Salmon Treaty, an agreement between the US and Canada that governs the harvest of kings, who originate in the big river systems from Oregon up the Canadian coast to Alaska, but commingle in the Gulf of Alaska.
Grant Hagerman, troll fish management biologist in Sitka, says there’s no single explanation for the increase in abundance.
“Definitely in winter, and in summer, we have a mixed stock,” Hagerman said. “We’ve got Alaska stocks, Canada stocks and southern US stocks. And so it’s more a picture of Coastwide abundance. And so from this year, it looks like – I’m not pinning down any particular stock – but just in general, that the abundance would be up for 2022.”
The formula for determining abundance is based on the success of commercial trollers during the first half of the winter fishery, beginning in mid-October. How many boats get out, and how many chinook they land allow biologists to calculate the rate of harvest, called the CPUE, or Catch Per Unit Effort. Hagerman says this has proven to be a reliable indicator of abundance later in the summer.
“What we have seen for December and January out here in Sitka is when the weather cooperated and they were able to get out that those catch rates have continued to be good, and much better than what we’ve seen going all the way back to 2001 for those two months,” said Hagerman. “So that’s it is promising that what we were seeing in October-November is a very accurate picture of what we’re going to see for abundances next year.”
The ATA responds to the 2022 Chinook forecast:
“Trollers are grateful for the larger quota and subsequent increased Chinook harvest opportunities this year. The SEAK small boat hook and line troll fishery has taken considerable economic hits from Stocks of Concern Management and from the one-sided 2019 Pacific Salmon Agreement in which SEAK gave up another 13.2% of our historic Chinook harvest (not to be confused with Allocation) (Economic Impact of the Pacific Salmon Treaty on the Alaska Troll Fleet, Dec,2019 McDowell). Since most trollers live in rural SEAK, the 40,000 increase in Chinook harvest will help SEAK’s Covid-beleaguered rural economies.”
Matt Donohoe, President Alaska Trollers Association
The Southeast troll fleet’s share of this year’s increased harvest allocation is nearly 45,000 kings (44,700), and pushes their total allocation up to over 190,000 fish. Summer trolling opens on July 1, and managers aim to harvest 70-percent of the allocation then, and the rest in August. The openers are often very short, just a few days. Although it’s too early to be specific, Hagerman believes the additional 45,000 fish will mean longer openers.
“That could translate into — depending on whether some of it was caught in July and some was caught in August — about 2, 3, or 4 more potential fishing days.” Hagerman said. “But again it’s really all kind of dependent on on how those catch rates are.”
Economically, it’s also hard to know the exact impact on the industry’s revenue. Kings sell for about $10/pound in winter, and somewhat less in summer, although the fish tend to be larger. Hagerman says the additional 45,000 kings are going to make a dent.
“That’s a fairly big financial increase, I think’ from 2021,” he said.
Other groups will share in the increase, but none quite as much as trollers. Seiners and gillnetters combined take about 8-percent of the all-gear catch limit, commercial set netters take an even smaller share, and then trollers and sport fishermen divide the rest 80/20.
The total value of the commercial chinook fishery in Southeast runs to the millions – $13.2 million in 2020, $11 million in 2019, and $14.6 million in 2018.
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Alaska’s omicron surge has put it in front of the pack in per-capita infection rates, but public health officials are seeing some promising signs: Hospitals are not filling up as fast as they did during last fall’s delta surge, not as many patients are in intensive care, and infection rates are rapidly dropping in other parts of the world where omicron got an earlier start. (Alaska DHSS image) Statistically speaking, Alaska is leading a race most residents would rather not win. As of January 27, Alaska had more new COVID-19 infections per capita than any other state.
Health officials are concerned about the wave – there are a lot of sick people in Alaska – but there is room for hope, too.
With almost 30,000 cases in just the last two weeks, Alaska has had more infections per 100,000 residents than the other contenders, namely Oklahoma and Washington state.
But since the emergence of the omicron variant in South Africa last year, the latest wave of infections to sweep the country has generally been east to west, and Alaska is peaking just as cases on the eastern seaboard subside.
Note: Vaccination remains the most potent tool in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about vaccination at the KCAW Coronavirus Information Hub.
It’s not all bad news, however. The state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, told reporters last week (1-27-22) that Alaska was hit harder than most other states by the delta spike last year, which makes weathering the omicron surge a bit easier.
“Unfortunately, we had a bad delta surge here in this state,” she said. “And what happened was that the (DHSS) team got really good at being able to put in a lot of cases quickly, and being able to get them up and out to the public quickly. The health care sector started to meet on a regular basis, the crisis care committee started to meet, and we figured out how to get additional nurses. And some of the other states are just really being hit by the omicron variant in the same way. And so they are very much underwater, trying to figure out how to respond.”
There also isn’t the same atmosphere of crisis around the omicron surge, as compared to delta last year – when Alaska’s hospitals quickly filled up, and seriously ill or injured patients were forced to spend long hours in Emergency Departments, waiting for beds to open up. Currently, just 12-percent of the state’s hospital beds are taken by COVID patients. And many of those patients are not as ill as they were during delta.
“But that is very different than the conversations we were having last fall,” said Zink, “when we were thinking about how we can’t transfer patients in, or we don’t have dialysis right now. Really, staffing is the limitation. And with omicron, we’re just seeing a lot of outpatients and ED (Emergency Department) patients, but we’re not seeing some of the really significant ICU limitations that we saw before. So from a hospital capacity standpoint, even with our high numbers, this feels very different. And hospitals are able to respond really well at this point. It’s been great to work with them.”
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services has been operating under a public health emergency order since April of last year (and an emergency disaster declaration prior to that). Although it’s premature to rescind that order, the head of Alaska’s Infection Disease program, Dr. Louisa Castrodale, says health officials are already preparing to move COVID-19 into another phase, as an endemic disease to be managed like influenza, for example.
“And I think what we’re trying to do now is also learn as we’re sort of integrating (COVID into our permanent infectious disease management program),” said Castrodale, “and also figuring out what resources are because you know, there isn’t a blank check forever. I think we also need to figure out what were the things that we did really well with COVID are, that we learned from COVID, and strengthened our systems with lab reporting or with outreach, and how do we integrate those into what we have been doing for public health moving forward?
And when exactly will it be over? State epidemiologist Dr. Joe McClaughlin says he’s encouraged by what he’s seeing in other parts of the world, especially South Africa, where omicron first took off, as countries drop out of high alert.
Alaska is not there yet.
“We will know,” said McLaughlin, “when the map is no longer all red.”
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Olympian Lydia Jacoby is just a few years older than the kids in Sitka’s swim program, and she remembers the feeling when her friends left the pool to play more social team sports. “I think that’s definitely something that happens in a lot of the sports like running, swimming, skiing, you know, people don’t think of them as ‘cool,’ she says. “So it’s neat to kind of gotten to this level and realize how cool it really is and know what amazing people keep doing it.” (KCAW/Katherine Rose) Olympic gold medalist Lydia Jacoby shared stories of her rise to the top with some of Sitka’s youngest swimmers, in a one-hour pool session on Friday (1-28-22).
And when that was done, they dived in to practice with – and race against – one of the fastest women in the water.
Emily Routon and her children Ruthann (l.) and Asa (r.) look at Lydia Jacoby’s gold medal from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — the first-ever won by an Alaskan swimmer. (KCAW/Katherine Rose) At the Mt. Edgecumbe Aquatics Center
On the pool deck, Lydia Jacoby – somewhere south of 6-feet tall – towers over the 30-odd Baranof Barracudas swimmers schooling around her. On the starting block, she is every inch the larger-than-life Olympic athlete who captured the gold medal in the Women’s 100-meter breaststroke last summer.
Barracudas coach Kevin Knox has a plan.
Knox – We have one more drill we’re gonna do we’re gonna end at the deep end, everybody when you get down there climb out and we’re gonna find a few people to race.
Barracudas – (cheer and moan a bit)
Jacoby, the 17-year old high school senior from Seward, has been warming up in the water with the young swimmers, moving from lane to lane, chatting. She gave a short talk beforehand to introduce herself to the kids and parents, and let them pass around her gold and silver medals from the Tokyo Olympics.
But there’s no one here who doesn’t feel like they know her already. Jacoby is the only Alaskan swimmer ever to qualify for the Olympic games, and her gold in the 100 breaststroke was breathtaking to watch… and watch, and watch again.
KCAW – Did you guys watch Lydia win the 100 breaststroke in the Olympics?
Edith Johnson – Oh yes, we did. And we replayed it probably 10 times after that. She was just so pumped.
Edith Johnson is in the bleachers while her daughter Addison swims laps with Jacoby. Even though the two girls are just a few years apart in age, Johnson says this feels like a hero moment for Addie.
Johnson – She’s been counting her sleeps. She’s been so excited to see Lydia. She made her card. Every day she has been talking about it. So yeah, this totally made made her school year.
Who wants to race? With 10 competition lanes at the new Mt. Edgecumbe Aquatics Center, nearly all of Sitka’s Baranof Barracudas were able to test their mettle against the fastest woman breaststroke in the world. (KCAW/Katherine Rose) At the starting blocks, Knox and Jacoby organize the swimmers into heats, youngest to oldest, to take on the fastest female breaststroker in the world. And then he starts the race.
Knox – Ready…. Hup!
Nine swimmers shoot from the blocks, but Jacoby remains standing on hers. When the kids are nearly halfway down the pool, Jacoby dives in and breaks the surface just in front of the pack, swims two or three strokes to touch the wall, then turns and waits for everyone to catch up.
Jacoby gives the same starting advantage to all the age groups, and the competition tightens up a bit with the teens.
James Nellis just managed to edge out Jacoby.
KCAW – did you touch the wall before Lydia?
Nellis – Yes.
KCAW – What does that feel like?
Nellis – It’s it’s crazy. I don’t even know what to say.
KCAW – How long have you been swimming?
Nellis – Three years.
KCAW – Yeah, cool. I think she gave you a little bit of a head start.
Nellis – Yeah.
KCAW – How old are you?
Nellis – 13.
KCAW – Did anything Lydia say inspire you to keep swimming?
Nellis – When she said a lot of her friends were dropping out and she wanted to quit. I’ve felt that before, and I thought I’m gonna keep going now.
I took note when, in her talk to the kids, Jacoby mentioned that just as she was breaking into the record books in Alaska as a 12-year old, her friends began turning to other more social sports. Kevin Knox says it is something every swimmer struggles with. It’s the most solitary of team sports.
“You know, when you’re trying to stay in and get better and better and better, you have to keep at it,” said Knox. “It’s not the same as you know, a season of basketball or a season of baseball or something else like that. You have to stick with it because it’s tough.”
When the races were done, and the autographs signed, I asked Jacoby if she ever experienced a day like this one, when someone helped motivate her.
“I was really inspired by Jessica Hardy,” Jacoby answered. “She was the world record holder in the 100 breaststroke before Lily King. She came to do a clinic with our team a few years ago, when I was 13, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. And she’s been super encouraging through the whole Olympic process for me, so she’s been awesome.”
Jacoby is a senior at Seward High School, who will attend the University of Texas next fall. She told the Barracudas that she wasn’t disheartened by the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics by a year (from 2020 to 2021), as the extra time was put to good use in more training. And, as she told the Sitka kids, “I’m only 17” — meaning, she’s got a few more Olympic Games ahead of her. (KCAW/Katherine Rose) Jacoby shared some Olympic stories with the kids, the early-morning hours, the intense training, and how to take into competition whatever attitude helped you in practice. She said that she was just glad to have made it to the Olympics; her thrill at winning was written all over her face on the video.
I told Jacoby what 13-year old James Nellis had told me, that he had decided to keep swimming, despite feeling the pull of friends and other sports. In other words, her message had landed.
“Yeah, that’s great to hear,” said Jacoby. “I mean, I think that’s definitely something that happens in a lot of the sports like running, swimming, skiing, you know, people don’t think of them as “cool.” So it’s neat to kind of gotten to this level and realize how cool it really is and know what amazing people keep doing it. So I’m glad that he’s gonna stick with it. And I hope more consider doing that too.”
And there were a few swimmers at the Mt. Edgecumbe Aquatics Center who were going to stick with it – with or without inspiration from a charismatic Olympian. Dean Orbison is an Alaska Masters silver medalist in the 100 fly in the 60-year-old age group. He had Jacoby sign the back of his t-shirt. Tom Jacobsen, a local dentist, holds the Alaska Masters gold for the 200 backstroke for 65-and-up.
KCAW – Dr. J, were you inspired today?
Jacobsen – I am inspired. And yeah…(laughing) Inspired is how much faster she is than I am.
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“I believe that Sitka is poised for pretty major economic growth, if done right,” Municipal Administrator John Leach told the Sitka Chamber of Commerce, “and we could see an economic boom here. But it’s essential that we balanced the community’s desires with the expansion efforts underway in tourism and health care while maintaining an atmosphere to ensure the continued success of our fishing fleet.” Sitka’s municipal website was redesigned in 2021, signaling City Hall’s interest in continuing to move forward despite a difficult couple of years. Given the extraordinary circumstances of the last two years, the “state” of Sitka is apparently not too bad.
Municipal administrator John Leach delivered his Annual Report to the Community at the Sitka Chamber of Commerce on January 26, and identified the many ways that the municipal government is holding its own.
Read the 2022 Annual Report to the Community.
Among the many functions of city government he discussed, Sitka administrator John Leach mentioned that applications to work for the city are down over previous years, but for the past month there’s been a fully-staffed Human Resources Department to assist in keeping jobs filled. Some revenues – like the property tax – are flat, but a promising visitor season could generate more sales tax.
Leach also said that all federal and state relief programs during the pandemic had pumped $76 million into the local economy.
He reminded the chamber that Sitka had to punch above its weight.
“The city has a lot of responsibilities above and beyond what your typical municipality would do,” said Leach, “and that’s because we’re an island community. You know, we have to provide all our own utilities here, and we keep that in-house as a city function. We’ve got our three core services of public safety, public infrastructure, and our contribution to education. So our folks are working hard every day to provide those core services.
But Leach cautioned that continued progress would come with change, and not necessarily the kind of change that residents think about every day.
He mentioned the way Sitka handled its garbage.
“Solid Waste is, is getting a little more expensive,” he said. “You may remember we just had to move to purchase a compactor. And hopefully that will help us gain some efficiencies. So we can make less shipments off the islands because we’ll be able to compact it more. But the important thing is we really need to find over the next eight to 10 years a solution for our solid waste to ship less and less.”
Leach was encouraged, however, that Sitkans – like the Climate Action Task Force – were already thinking about sustainable growth. He mentioned that “there is only so much water behind the dam,” and that the community was going to have to concentrate on energy efficiency, or developing new sources, to support economic expansion in government (US Coast Guard), health care, tourism, and fishing.
Leach did not see Sitka going backwards.
“I believe that Sitka is poised for pretty major economic growth, if done right,” said Leach. “And we could see an economic boom here. But it’s essential that we balanced the community’s desires with the expansion efforts underway in tourism and health care while maintaining an atmosphere to ensure the continued success of our fishing fleet. So we really need to make the right investments to ensure the future success of our special community.”
One of those investments is in planning for major growth in cruise visitation beginning this summer. Leach heaped praise on Planning Director Amy Ainslee, the Planning Commission, and staff for their work to craft the 2022 Short-Term Tourism Plan – but he wouldn’t speculate on where the assembly would land on the question of a full- or partial closure of Lincoln Street on busy days – or just keeping the status quo.
“So all of the choices are hard,” Leach said. “We just need to, you know, more or less try one, figure out what works best and scale it as necessary.”
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The Biden administration is distributing 500 million home test kits now, and another 500 million later this spring. (KCAW image capture) Order four free COVID home test kits per household from the US Postal Service online, or call 1-800-232-0233.
As of Wednesday (1-19-22), every household in the US can order four home test kits for COVID-19 from the Postal Service.
The program was launched by the Biden Administration, which purchased 1 billion kits for use by Americans, and is distributing them in two phases.
Alaskan health officials say the kits work exceptionally well to detect positive COVID cases: What they’d like people to understand is that the kits can also produce false negatives.
With home test kits, context is everything: Someone in your child’s classroom comes down with COVID; soon your child isn’t feeling well.
Dr. Coleman Cutchins, the state’s chief pharmacist, says a home test kit will produce a reliable positive test for your child, if used correctly.
“For the most part, home tests are really good,” Cutchins said. “We’re using them in our household with with kids in school and with people with symptoms that could be COVID. I think it’s also important to remember most kits require two tests. So when you get the first test and it’s negative, it’s important to follow the directions on test and do the second one 24-to-48 hours later, depending on the test and what the instructions say, and get that second negative.”
Coleman, along with other state health experts, spoke at a Department of Health and Social Services media teleconference on January 13.
But home test kits are not always a slam dunk. There are variables in testing that tend to favor false negatives, and it can be confusing.
“So the most important things with home tests is to follow the directions,” said Cutchins. “These tests are meant to be done exactly as the direction say. So, in that instance, when you test positive on a home test, you can really trust that positive.”
But Cutchins continued with this caveat: “All of these tests require a certain amount of virus on the swab to detect a positive,” he explained. “And you know, we get a lot more false negatives, even when we have two people living in the same household with the same symptoms. One could test positive and the other test negative — likely they both have COVID. Just the one who tested negative wasn’t caught in that window. Some people can test positive for a very long period of time. Some people have a very narrow window where they test positive. And it’s hard to tell who’s going to be which.”
Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer, says doctors will put a COVID test in context. The omicron variant, especially, is highly transmissible. If you’ve had a significant exposure – like, someone coming down with COVID in your household – doctors may connect the dots, even if your home test kit shows a negative.
“I think clinically, we see this all the time where one person will test positive or negative,” said Zink. “In making that decision, if someone really has COVID or not, in that clinical setting where we’re seeing a family or group of people, it has to do with what’s circulating, as well as who’s tested positive. So if people are both symptomatic and in the family they’ve had similar symptoms,and one or two of them have tested positive for COVID — particularly if the other people are not up to date on their immunizations and have similar symptoms — and there’s nothing else that tests positive, it is probably COVID, and will be treated in the same sort of way.”
In a nutshell, with any one of the many varieties of home test kits now being distributed across the country, a positive is likely a positive; a negative, however, might just be a positive, if you didn’t use the test correctly, or if you took it at a time when you weren’t shedding virus. Your healthcare provider will look at all these factors – including your immunization status – to confirm if you have COVID, or perhaps one of the other pathogens circulating this time of year, like the common cold, RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus, particularly prevalent in children), or influenza.
Monoclonal treatments give way to oral medications for COVID
If you do happen to come down with COVID during the current spike in the omicron variant, chances are that you may not receive one of the monoclonal antibody treatments that proved so effective during the delta surge last fall.
Two out of the three antibody treatments used during that time don’t work against omicron, and the third that does work*** is in limited supply.
Instead, state pharmacist Dr. Coleman Cutchins says you’ll likely get oral medication – in other words, a pill.
“With vaccines and monoclonal, we saw this linear steady increase in supply,” said Cutchins. “With the orals, I really think it’s going to be more like an exponential curve straight up. We’re going to get more and more of these orals. And I think it’s important to remember that these are much better options to give to a lot of people, because they’re easier to deliver. And I think we all would rather take an oral med than have to go somewhere and get infused with an IV.”
There are two types of oral medications for COVID***, one of which has come on the market so rapidly that the Alaska Department of Health has been able to double the availability of the drug.
And although vaccination remains the best of all tools against COVID-19, the state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, says outcomes are generally improving for COVID patients.
“The good thing is that most people who get COVID-19 are going to do very well,” said Zink. “Well, at this point on most people have either been vaccinated or previously had COVID-19. And particularly the younger and healthier you are, the more likely the Omicron variant looks to cause less of your illness. You might feel miserable, but you may not need treatment and your body may recover well with just supportive care.”
DHSS officials are encouraged by recent downturns in cases in South Africa, where the omicron variant first emerged, and by recent dips in major urban centers in the US. In Alaska, however, cases are continuing an upward trend.
*Bamlanivimab plus etesevimab, and casirivimab plus imdevimab, aka Regeneron.
**Sotrovimab, available at 13 sites in Alaska, with 6 courses of treatment each. A fourth product, Evushield, is a different type of monoclonal antibody, administered to only the most high-risk COVID patients.
***Paxlovid (limited), molnupiravir (available, 45 allocations of 20 doses each, allowing DHSS to double the sites and add seven new regions).
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