KCAW - Sitka

The activities budget for Sitka High School may have reached a tipping point and it could force the end of some programs.

The Sitka School Board heard a report from activities director LieuDell Goldsberry earlier this month. Between the recent addition of several new activities and a reduction in district spending, most programs have seen a cut of at least 40-percent over two years.

“Each sport is going to have to fundraise year round,” says LieuDell Goldsberry, who is in his first year as activities director at Sitka High. His budget was cut by $35,000 to about $132,000.

“If we continue to stay at our current level, with the district giving us $132,000 and $10,000 for uniforms, my thought was: We’re going to have to cut at least three activities if we want to fund our activities at $10,000,” Goldsberry says.

That $10,000 figure is significant. Only two years ago, each of Sitka High’s activities was receiving exactly $10,000 from the district. Last year, the high school added two new activities, girls’ and boys’ soccer. The district cut its allocation to $8,500 per activity, but the overall activity budget still rose, to over $177,000.

This year that budget has been slashed, and every activity is getting only $6,000.

Goldsberry says participants, families, and the community are taking up the slack — well beyond the season for any given activity.

Participation fees are also up. Goldsberry said the fees at best create a burden on families, and at worst, aggravate economic disparities that are not supposed to exist in public schools.

He presented data showing typical per-student participation fees running up to $350. A four-activity student may pay around $1,200. Goldsberry says students are sitting out — for the wrong reasons.

“A high school kid is more ashamed to go tell the coach that, I don’t have the money,” Goldsberry says. “It’s embarrassing.”

Goldsberry urged the board — at the very least — to reverse the downward slide in the activities budget, and restore funding to last year’s levels.

“It’s not a fix, believe me. It’s not a fix to our problem. Our problem is how can we sustain our current activities with the money that the district has given us? That’s the problem that you as board members need to solve. You have to go to the city. You have to ask those questions.”

Last year board member Tim Fulton tried to pull together a public committee to discuss activities funding. Two former activities directors — Mike Vieira and Lyle Sparrowgrove — both attended.

Board member Tim Fulton was interested in attacking the problem again. “We’ve done a couple of things that have created the perfect storm here. Now that the waves are bigger, there might be more people willing to work with us.”

The school board budget process will begin in the early spring next year.

The city-owned Sitka Community Hospital is in worse financial shape than anyone thought — including its new CEO.

The Sitka Assembly was briefed on the hospital’s finances during a closed-door session Tuesday. The hospital’s chief financial officer has resigned. Very little information has been released to the public so far.

After the closed meeting, Mayor Mim McConnell offered the body’s only public comment on the situation.

“The assembly met to receive a report on the fiscal situation at Sitka Community Hospital,” she read from a prepared statement. “There has been a perfect storm of financial events that have led to a difficult situation. We have an excellent team in place, committed to exploring all possible solutions, which include both short- and long-term plans. The assembly will be updated on a regular basis over the coming weeks.”

While Sitka Community Hospital is mostly autonomous, its board answers to the Assembly and its budget is a line item in the city’s budget.

Speaking with reporters after the meeting, hospital CEO Jeff Comer said he hopes to release more information soon. Comer was hired in September.

“I’ve been, as you all know, on the job for about three months now, and I’ve been looking into our financial situation,” he said. “We’ve got multiple issues that I’ve uncovered, and I’m still evaluating. So as soon as I have a better feel for those, and the depth of them, and the impact, then I’ll have more information to release.”

Comer said the hospital will be able to make payroll and that he’s still evaluating whether to ask the Assembly for money. Comer said the hospital’s dire financial situation was not discussed during his interview and it’s come as a surprise to him.

Comer has recently outlined ambitious plans for the hospital, including major recruitment, regional collaborations, investment in telemedicine, and satellite clinics. He said his ultimate goal is to make Sitka Community Hospital the dominant health care provider in Southeast Alaska. That vision still stands, he said.

When asked if learning about the hospital’s finances has made him regret taking the position, Comer said, “not at all.”

Although there are a lot of loose ends to tie up, the Blue Lake Expansion Project came to a formal close in Sitka Wednesday with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new powerhouse.

“Now that this plant is expanded and it’s bigger and the dam is higher, we can make more electricity from the Blue Lake plant than Green Lake,” said Dean Orbison, the city’s Generation Engineer.

With this expanded capacity, about 165,000 MW-h per year between the two lakes, Orbison hopes citizens will wean themselves off of oil and switch to electric heat.

A growing number of municipalities in Southeast are expressing concern about the mining boom in British Columbia.

More than half a dozen mines have been proposed in B.C., and several sit in the headwaters of rivers flowing into Southeast Alaska, including the Taku, Stikine, and Unuk Rivers.

Critics are concerned the mines could affect water quality and salmon habitat.

Sitka, Wrangell, Petersburg, Tenakee Springs and Port Alexander have all either passed resolutions or written to Alaska’s congressional delegation, asking the U.S. government to intervene.

The Southeast Conference of Mayors has a similar resolution in the works. And in Ketchikan, the assembly has directed the borough manager to draft a resolution for it to consider.

Sitka Mayor Mim McConnell says the mines may seem far away, but their impacts could be felt close to home.

“We’ve worked hard to keep our reputation strong for having healthy salmon,” McConnell said. “And we don’t want to lose that. It’s a huge industry in our state…that would be crazy to do something to impact that.”

The Sitka Assembly passed its resolution on October 14. It asks the federal government to take their concerns to the International Joint Commission, which handles issues under the U.S-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty.

The resolution asks the U.S. government to use “any and all powers under the Boundary Waters Treaty to ensure that Alaska resources are not harmed by upstream development in B.C.” and asks that local communities be represented in any discussions.

State Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins says the goal isn’t to stop development, but to make sure that projects are fully vetted.

“So it’s not an ultimatum,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “It’s just saying, ‘We need to do our homework,’ or, rather, ‘Canada, please, do your homework, for all of our sakes.’”

A dam failure at the Mount Polley mine in eastern B.C. in August gave the issue more urgency. That breach released more than 2 billion gallons of water and mine tailings into the headwaters of the Fraser River.

In his letter to Alaska’s congressional delegation, Wrangell Mayor Dave Jack wrote that the Mount Polley spill has “shaken confidence in the Canadian Government’s oversight of mining operations.”

The resolutions join similar statements passed by many tribal governments and organizations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives, National Congress of American Indians and the Tlingit and Haida Central Council.

Guy Fawkes Day doesn’t mean much to anyone unless you happen to be British — or in one special case in Sitka — a brown bear.

Every year on November 5th, Brits recall the day in 1605 when Fawkes rolled barrels of gunpowder into the basement of Westminster, and nearly blew up both houses of parliament and the king before he was caught.

The day is traditionally celebrated by lighting a bonfire and burning the notorious traitor in effigy. Chris Turner, at Sitka’s Fortress of the Bear, had a different approach. He spoke with KCAW’s Rich McClear.

McClear – Is it traditional to feed an effigy of Guy Fawkes’ head to the bears?
Turner – Absolutely not. It’s not something we often do in England. We don’t have a huge amount of bears to partake in the tradition. But it’s fun. We’re putting a bit of an Alaskan spin on it.

Turner is a volunteer at the Fortress. He hails from Exeter, England.

Besides inviting the community to feed leftover Halloween pumpkins to its several grizzly bears, the Fortress lit the traditional bonfire and placed another pumpkin — carved in the likeness of Guy Fawkes — on top.

The symbolism may have been lost on the several dozen Yankees who turned out for the event, as one onlooker observed.

“I smell pumpkin roasting. It’s a really good smell — the best smell!”

And likely to be the animals’ only opportunity to enjoy it — like their wild counterparts, most of the Fortress bears will head to bed before pumpkin pie season and the traditional American holiday of Thanksgiving.