KCAW - Sitka

During their regular meeting Tuesday night, the Sitka Assembly approved – on first reading – a dedicated fund for student activity travel using marijuana fees.  See ordinance here: Ord 2016-39

The ordinance, co-sponsored by Assemblyman Steven Eisenbeisz and Deputy Mayor Matthew Hunter, proposes depositing all money generated from marijuana licensing fees into a specific fund for student travel. Depending on how Sitka’s marijuana industry evolves, Eisenbeisz believes this could generate $8000 to $10,000 a year for activity travel sponsored by the Sitka School District.

This year, Sitka High School received roughly $132,000 for student activities from the city. The local contribution has been fairly stable, but with more teams and clubs flying to meets, the need is greater.

Superintendent Mary Wegner appreciates the Assembly’s work.

“Activities and athletics are a great antidote to smoking marijuana. When you’re involved with activities, you don’t want to. So it is a very interesting and novel approach, but I appreciate the [Assembly’s] creativity in keeping the students first and foremost in their minds and in their actions,” Wegner said.

The Assembly also decided – on first reading – to move $250,000 from the general fund into a committed fund balance for landslide mitigation. This includes legal, geotechnical, and other costs anticipated by the city.

Specifically, the city wants to proceed with geotechnical mapping around Keet Goshi Heen Elementary School, which has been identified as a moderate risk area. City Administrator Mark Gorman said some of the money could also be used for legal fees related to the Kramer Avenue landslide.

“We have two suits that have been filed against the city, related to the landslide. These came in about six weeks ago. We are working with council – David Bruce, who you met with several times – and he’s given us his best case scenario as to what the expenses are going to be this year. And it includes geotechnical work,” Gorman said.

Bruce, an attorney based in Seattle, has been working with the city since November. Gorman also hopes the city’s insurance will kick in to help with legal fees.

In other business, Sitka Community Hospital took a major step toward paying down its line of credit, which the Assembly increased two years ago to resolve the hospital’s cash crisis. The hospital is in a much better financial position now, with 81 days of cash on hand. And Tuesday night (09-27-16), they presented the Assembly with a check for $463,000 towards that line of credit.

“That will bring us down where we’ll owe slightly less than $1 million dollars,” said hospital CEO Rob Allen. We’re also set up so that from this month forward, we’ll be making monthly payments on the line of credit.

ECG Consulting is currently looking at ways for Sitka Community Hospital and SEARHC to integrate operations. Allen says the hospitals will hold a work session with the Assembly in November to discuss the findings.

During his report, City Administrator Mark said that construction on Jeff Davis Street may take longer than anticipated due to issues with the old sewer main.

The Assembly’s next meeting will take place on October 11th in their new chambers at Harrigan Centennial Hall. During that meeting, the current Assembly will resolve old business and then change hands, welcoming a mayor and either one or two new Assembly members.

 

The body of a missing hiker was found by searchers in Sitka on Friday afternoon.

Michael Hansen, 37, was reported missing last Monday after he did not return from a solo hiking trip up Mount Verstovia in Sitka.

Throughout the week, Sitka Search and Rescue received assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Forest Service, the Alaska State Troopers, the Sitka Police and Fire Departments, and a number of volunteers who combed the mountain for Hansen and provided support to his parents, who arrived in Sitka on Wednesday.

A team of volunteers found Hansen at the 1,160-feet level 4:20 p.m. Friday. His body will be transported to the medical examiner in Anchorage to determine cause of death.

Search and Rescue Captain Lance Ewers believes Hansen slipped while hiking off trail on his way down Mount Verstovia.

“Instead of staying on the trial, he just decided to go straight down the mountain,” Ewers said. “It appeared like he feel and slid down, it could have been 100 feet. 75 to 100 feet or so. So it was a sad deal.”

The old growth forest Hansen was likely cutting through is deceptively steep and that it’s easy to lose footing, Ewers said.

He advises all those hiking and hunting in Sitka to take extra precautions when going off trail.

“Watch your foot, especially in that steep terrain,” Ewers said. “And if you gotta go back up hill, because it’s starting to get questionable, sometimes you gotta bite the bullet and turn around and go back uphill. And that’s easier said than done for anyone who has been in a situation like that.”

Ewers praised the efforts of the teams for working long hours, in inclement weather and in steep terrain in the search for Hansen. Technology also played a role.

Every team carried a GPS used to map which portions of the mountain had been covered and home in on Hansen’s location.

Other technological breakthroughs were more simple, but no less significant. A local locksmith Jerry Deppa managed to unlock Hansen’s car, which was left at the trailhead, Ewers said.

“He spent hours on Michael’s car and through his training and experience was able to make a key on Michael’s car so his mom and dad had transportation while they were here,” Ewers said. “And they did that for free. I’m telling you, the people in Sitka are so great.”

Hansen was an avid outdoorsman, who also enjoyed fishing, berry picking and swimming.

Hansen was born and raised in Wisconsin. The former Army ranger moved from Anchorage to Sitka in July this year. He was a residential counselor at Sitka Counseling and Prevention Services, providing both individual and group counseling.

Maria Garcia, his supervisor and friend, said Hansen was deeply committed to his job and supporting his clients, accompanying them on trips to the local raptor center, to yoga, and art therapy.

Over the phone with KCAW, she described Hansen as “shy at first with a great sense of humor.”

“He was a very beautiful human.”

A fisherman has spotted the dead humpback whale in the Sitka area that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association was interested in studying.

Fisherman Henry Larsen spotted Thursday it at the southern entrance to Olga Strait on the western shore. Larsen said the carcass was beached, but looked likely to refloat on the rising tide. He expected it to eventually drift south on the ebb.

The animal’s body was moored to the beach. NOAA’s Julie Speegle confirmed it will be examined.

Dr. Kathy Burek, a veterinarian from Alaska Veterinary Pathology Services, is scheduled to fly to Sitka on Saturday to perform a necropsy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking for a dead whale near Sitka.

The Sitka Police Department received a report of the dead humpback floating in the Sound near Crow Island shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, and passed on the information to NOAA officials in Juneau.

NOAA would like to study the animal, which they believe is a male, spokeswoman Julie Speegle said.

“If it’s possible to collect some samples while the whale is floating we will have our Stranding Network members attempt to do that,” she said. “The best case is if it were on a beach and easier to access.”

NOAA’s Marine Mammal Stranding Network is well-known for its work clearing whales from fishing gear and other entanglements.

Members also perform full necropsies.

Speegle doesn’t think it’s likely that NOAA will necropsy this whale — but they wouldn’t mind getting a close look at its eyeball.

“Because you can get the best information on harmful algal blooms from a sample of the eyeball,” she said. But they also collect blubber samples, skin tissue, and other tissues depending on what they’re able to gather based on where the whale is.”

Dead marine mammals are not an especially rare sight in Sitka Sound.

This past July, members of the Stranding Network examined a dead humpback in Whale Bay.

In 2012, researchers from the University of Alaska Southeast necropsied a full-grown Steller’s sea lion behind Mt. Edgecumbe High School.

In 2011, the Stranding Network necropsied a juvenile killer whale on Kruzof Island. Its skeleton was later re-articulated and installed in the Sitka Sound Science Center.

If anyone happens to see this whale — either floating or beach — Speegle asks that you call the 24-hour Marine Mammal Stranding hotline at (877) 925-7773.

City Administrator Mark Gorman will step down from the position in six to nine months, he announced during Tuesday night’s Assembly meeting.

He’s resigning for both personal and professional reasons, he said.

He commented that the average tenure for city administrators in Alaska is 2.5 years and that his three year anniversary is next month.

The former Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium vice president began his tenure in October of 2013.

“I love this community. It’s been my home for 40 years,” he said. “I see, as I move around the community that there’s a fatigue in terms of my role as administrator growing in certain members and sectors of the community. I think it’s important to recognize that and allow the community to refresh at some point in time. And that’s a hard decision because I want to serve the community to the best of my ability.”

Gorman, who has received consistently high marks from the Assembly, gave the group a six- to nine-month window in order to look for a new city administrator. He also wants to remain in the position to guide the FY18 budget process, which will be accelerated to end in March instead of May.

The legislature will still be in session, but Gorman says next year’s budget will not expect much in state contributions.

In other action, the Assembly unanimously approved an employment agreement with Brian Hanson as city attorney at a starting salary of $125,000.

Hanson’s start date is Monday, Sept. 19th.

A pair of Forest Service workers killed a charging brown bear near Sitka at the end of August.

It was the third dangerous bear encounter in the Sitka Ranger District in less than a month.

Sitka District Ranger Perry Edwards said the pair of workers — whose names will not be released — was doing a fisheries survey along Appleton Creek, about 30 miles north of Sitka, and only about 10 miles from where a wilderness guide from UnCruises was seriously mauled just over a week earlier.

The workers were making a lot of noise as they progressed about a mile up the stream bed, when they saw a brown bear on the canyon wall about 50 yards ahead, Edwards said.

“The bear saw them, immediately came charging down the hill at full speed,” he said. “It was really brushy. The crew had enough time to back up from thick salmonberry brush to have a clear opening. And the bear came through the brush and was shot about 30 feet away from the crew.”

Brown bears at top speed move at about 30 miles per hour, Edwards said. His crew relied on training and muscle memory to avert a disaster.

“The crew estimated less than four seconds from the moment they first saw that bear to the moment they fired the first shot.”

The Tongass National Forest has annual training for employees in the use of both lethal and non-lethal bear deterrents — and in how to avoid potentially harmful bear encounters altogether, Edwards said.

The bear proved to be a sow. She had two large cubs, both of whom were in trees next to her, and nowhere near the fish crew.

Edwards, who also is a habitat biologist, suspects that sows over the last few mild winters may have produced more cubs than usual and now — especially with pink salmon returns lower than normal — they’re feeling stressed.

Not many people make their way up Appleton Creek.

Edwards said one possibility was that this bear was guarding the stream like it might guard a food cache.

“Maybe the bear was defending that fishing spot and was at the point where, ‘one more creature comes by my fishing spot and and I’m going to give them a what-for that they will always remember.’”

The shooting took place on August 27.

Forest Service dispatch notified Alaska Fish and Wildlife troopers.

As with any so-called “DLP” — or the shooting of a bear in defense of life and property — the Forest Service surrendered the hide, skull, and claws to the state.

Just nine days before this incident on August 18, and about 10 miles away across Peril Strait, two UnCruise guides were mauled leading a group of more than 20 people in Sitkoh Bay.

The guide at the front was medevac’d south and is expected to recover.

On August 7, former search-and-rescue captain Don Kluting shot a sow with a .44 revolver after it charged him and a hiking partner in Nakwasina Sound — the first time this lifetime resident and outdoorsman had shot a bear in self-defense.

Edwards said the reasons why these bears are charging are impossible to know, and in his words “irrelevant.”

Rather, he wants the public to be aware of their surroundings, make efforts to avoid bear encounters, and be prepared to deter a bear, if necessary.

Editor’s note: In addition to being the Sitka District Ranger, Perry Edwards currently serves as the president of the board of the KCAW Raven Radio Foundation.