Rosemarie Alexander

Early morning child care at five Juneau elementary schools is being eliminated.

The school district’s RALLY program is losing money and will make several changes in January.

RALLY – which stands for Recreation, Arts, Learning and Leadership for Youth – is for kindergarten through fifth graders. The district plans to cut the 7 to 8 a.m. program at all elementary schools except Harborview, downtown.

District spokeswoman Kristin Bartlett says only 22 students are enrolled in the early morning program at Gastineau, Glacier Valley, Mendenhall River, Riverbend, and Auke Bay elementaries, while Harborview has 16.

She says RALLY is supposed to cover its costs, but the district lost $150,000 last year despite a 10 percent increasee in student fees. She says the Harborview RALLY session is paying for itself.

“It’s a combination of increase in operating cost and a change in demand for child care,” Bartlett says. “Not necessarily in the number of students enrolled, but in the times that are needed.”

RALLY has four programs – Before School, After-Kindergarten, After School and Drop-In. According to Bartlett, a total of 392 students are enrolled this year in all the sessions.

Mendenhall River Community School now has a full-day kindergarten, eliminating the need for an After-Kindergarten RALLY program at the school. She says the After-School RALLY at MRCS also will be cut, and students in that program will be taken by bus to the Glacier Valley RALLY program.

RALLY is state-licensed and fills a critical need in the capital city, which has few child care programs.

Bartlett says RALLY school-site managers are working with the families and staff to help them find other options for morning daycare.

Alaska airports are key drivers of the state’s economy and an area for growth.

A new report looks at the economics and community importance of 12 airports around the state. Conducted by Northern Economics, it shows Alaska’s aviation industry supplies 47,000 jobs, and pumps $3.5 billion into the state’s economy.

Eighty-two percent of all Alaska communities are accessible only by air.

Deputy Commissioner of Aviation Steve Hatter says Alaska is a major stopover for international air carriers. Anchorage is among the world’s busiest cargo airports and Fairbanks is in the top 100. At 9 and a-half hours from 90 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, Hatter says Alaska is well-positioned as a refueling stop.

“It’s really an amazing strategic reality and we want to take advantage of that,” Hatter says. “The fact we have such a significant cargo through-put operation in our system, speaks to the strategic location. So it’s sort of the perfect stop for balancing payload versus fuel.”

Hatter says major facility upgrades at Fairbanks and Anchorage airports allow for new growth, beyond re-fueling.

“Take advantage of those cargo transfer rights we have here in Alaska to get them to do other things besides just get cash, (such as) transfer to other carriers, other partners,” he says. “Multiplication-wise, things happen here from a business perspective. We think there’s lots of opportunity for growth there.”

The Northern Economics study looks at the number of direct and indirect jobs attributable to Alaska aviation as well as the value of passenger, freight, and mail moving through the 12 airports.

Fairbanks International is Alaska’s second busiest airport. It’s a hub for more than 50 communities in Interior and Northern Alaska that rely upon air freight, mail, and commuter services. The airport is also an economic engine with one in 20 jobs attributed to the airport.

According to the study, the Juneau International Airport provided a total of 1,240 direct and indirect jobs in 2009.

Juneau is a Southeast regional hub and makes a significant contribution to the Lower 48 economy as well. The report indicates that Seattle’s role as the largest “first order” recipient of cargo reflects Juneau’s role in shipping out perishable seafood goods.

Bethel Airport is the state’s second busiest cargo airport serving 56 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The report says one in 14 jobs is attributed to the Bethel airport.

Economic and Community Attributions of Selected Alaska Airports can be found at alaskaasp.com.

Millions of pages of Exxon Valdez oil spill litigation will be organized and permanently archived in the capital city.

The state archives office has received a federal grant to make the documents accessible to the public.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission, commonly called the National Archives, has given Alaska $109,000 to catalog the material from the case, which took five years to litigate.

Project director Larry Hibpshman says two full-time archivists will evaluate and appraise the records, dispose of extraneous material, then organize and put it into the state archives electronic catalog. The catalog will be uploaded to a national bibliographic utility so the material is available wherever anyone needs to use it.

Hibpshman says the project will take about two years to complete. He expects the work to be done by September 2013. He’s already begun the evaluation.

“There are lots and lots of witness interviews, some of which are probably depositions. There are exhibits, particularly the ones that support the interviews. There are the daily documents the lawyers filed as they went through to keep track. There’s a great deal of discovery material both from the plaintiffs to the defendant and from the defendant to the plaintiffs,” Hibpshman says.

While most of the material is paper, there are also recordings and some microfilm.

Hibpshman has assembled a seven-member Oversight Task Force to review project activities and advise the archvists on matters he says historians usually don’t deal with, including legal issues, the science and technology of the spill and cleanup, regional concerns, and public information.

The state’s lead oil spill litigation attorney, Craig Tillery, is on the task force as well as Barbara Hendrickson, the state’s lead case paralegal; Jennifer Schorr, Department of Law Environmental Section Assistant Attorney General; and former Environmental Conservation Commissioner Kurt Fredriksson. Other members are Andrew Goldstein, Valdez Museum and Historical Archives; Patience Andersen Faulkner, Eyak Tribal Council; and Carrie Holba, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustees Council Librarian.

Hibpshman says others closely associated with the spill and litigation will provide advice and information.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators have started piecing together the cause of the weekend helicopter crash that killed William Zeman, of Juneau.

Bad weather prevented a visit to the accident site until Tuesday. Senior Air Safety Investigator Clint Johnson says the ERA helicopter went down about six miles southwest of Iliamna.

“We spent most of the day there, documented the accident scene and we are in the process of working with the operator to get all the parts and pieces and the wreckage moved back into Iliamna,” Johnson said. “Then the engine and some other parts and pieces will be shipped to Anchorage and we will be doing more testing as time goes on.”

He says the helicopter engine will eventually be sent to an NTSB lab in Texas for testing of possible mechanical issues.

The 66-year-old pilot was the only person onboard the helicopter. Johnson said Zeman had been headed to Anchorage and had made refueling stops in Unalakleet and Bethel. He planned to spend the night in Iliamna.

ERA’s GPS and web-based tracking system received a final signal from the helicopter about 8 p.m. Saturday. Searchers found the wreckage on Sunday. Zeman’s body was sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy.

While the weather at the time of the crash is not known, Johnson says snow showers had been moving through the area. He says NTSB meteorologists are doing a weather study.

Johnson expects to issue a preliminary report in the next few days, but the cause of the crash likely will not be known for several months.

Zeman was the company’s most senior pilot and had been with ERA Helicopters for 39 years.

Developing hiking and biking trails and summer tourist attractions are very important to the future of Eaglecrest Ski Area, according to a random telephone survey of Juneau residents.

The survey is part of the long-range master plan being prepared to guide area development over the next 20 years.

A study of the Eaglecrest market, the survey, and examples of successful summer activities at other ski areas were presented last night (Wednesday) at a public meeting on the master plan.

Jim Calvin of Juneau research firm McDowell Group is leading the work. He said the single most important component of the master plan study is community input.

“The market assessment is important, understanding of what goes on in ski areas across the country is important, the economics and financial feasibility are important, but first and foremost we have to know what is acceptable,” Calvin said. “What kind of future development is consistent with what current users and the community overall really value at Eaglecrest?”

Calvin said the telephone survey results are statistically representative of Juneau as a whole – both ski area users and non-users. But when he analyzed results by those groups, they were quite different. While 50 percent of non-users wanted summer activities, only 32 percent of skiers and snowboarders viewed them important.

Tapping into Juneau’s hundreds of thousands of summer cruise ship visitors may be a way to generate additional revenue for the ski area, but Calvin said it isn’t easy to break into that market.

“It’s not just build it and they will come. The main cruise lines each offer more than 40 different opportunities to see whales, see glaciers, flightseeting, you name it, so there’s a lot to do and there’s really stiff competition for the visitor dollar and visitor time,” he said. He says most people come to Juneau to experience Alaska, such as whales and glaciers. They purchase their tours in four-hour blocks and there’s little time to visit a ski area within the confines of the already limited day in town.

Calvin was careful to note the city-owned ski area is not planning to compete with private-sector operators.

“With respect to the master plan, it’s identifying those kinds of activities that might be compatible with community values,” he said. “Then when a private-sector operator comes to Eaglecrest management or board and says ‘I’d like to do X,’ they will have the plan, the documentation, the measure of community attitude to know whether that’s compatible with what we all think is the right way to manage Eaglecrest,” he explained.

McDowell Group is working with SE Group, an international ski area planning firm. Resort Planning Director Claire Humber has helped many areas build master plans, considered “working” documents.

“It’s not ‘here’s the answer, do it.’ A master plan should never be that,” Humber said. “A master plan is a process as much as it is a document. This is a way of evaluation as you move into the future.”

An online survey asking what types of development Juneau residents would like to see at Eaglecrest can be found at ski.juneau.com until the end of the month. Public comments also can be sent to facilitator Jan Caulfield at janc@gci.net.

It will be several months before the master plan is complete. A draft is expected in February, when another public meeting will be held.

How will Eaglecrest look 20 years from now? Will the city-owned ski area be bigger? Will there be cabins and condominiums, restaurants and bars?

Will summer cruise ship tourists put it on their agenda during their few hours in port?

A host of “what if’s” are under consideration in a long-range master plan being prepared to guide area development over the next 20 years.

Jim Calvin of Juneau’s McDowell Group is heading up the research. He says the master plan will look at the opportunities now available to Eaglecrest that would get more people enjoying the mountain.

“”It also will develop a set of criteria the board can use in 5, 10, or 15 years to evaluate proposals in light of what the community considers to be compatible uses of Eaglecrest that are consistent with how the community values Eaglecrest today,” Calvin says.

The study has been underway since August, beginning with a random telephone survey of 450 Juneau households and an assessment of the Juneau market, inclulding demographics, Calvin says.

“What are the demographics in terms of age and income? And what do other analysts and what do we see in terms of future population growth?”

In the last three years, Eaglecrest has added one new lift and replaced the platter pull with a chairlift. A gravel road winds to the top of the mountain, a major improvement for the summer hiking and biking crowd. Calvin says much of the master plan work is studying the potential summer visitor market.

“How non-residents spend their time when they’re here and how much they spend for the various excursions they enjoy while they’re in Juneau,” Calvin explains.

McDowell Group is working with the international ski area planning firm SE Group. The organization has worked with ski areas all over the country and has seen what works and doesn’t work, especially summertime development.

The Eaglecrest study team will present what they’ve learned so far at a public meeting on Wednesday, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Centennial Hall.

Calvin says people will want to hear SE Group’s presentation on summer and winter developments that have been successful at other ski areas. 

SE Group also is putting together displays on potential activities to expand resident and visitor use at Eaglecrest, such as new hiking and mountain biking trails.

Jan Caulfield is facilitating tomorrow’s public meeting, the first of two on the master plan.

“We’re really hoping the evening will get people thinking and coming in with written comments at a later date,” Caulfield says. “We’re asking people to submit comments by the end of November that we can work with during the planning process.”

The information gleaned so far by the study group will be presented tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7 p.m., followed by questions and the displays. Another public meeting will be held in February.

Caulfield says Juneau residents also should take an online survey asking what types of development Juneau residents would like to see at their mountain. It can be found at http://skijuneau.com.