KCAW

Co-owners of Sitka Construction Solutions, Derek James and Kris Karsunky, stand in front of the four 450-square foot houses that they built for the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe in 2021. Efforts to stimulate housing growth in Southeast Alaska in recent years have had mixed results. For example, tiny homes have not really caught on, despite policy changes to allow them, while the Sitka Community Land Trust has been a major success. Learn more about past efforts to improve housing availability in KCAW’s 2021 series Building Solutions. (KCAW/Erin McKinstry)

The issue has been in the background for a few years now. The steady economic growth in sectors like cruise tourism and healthcare is undermined by a continued shortage of housing in Southeast, and by a lack of childcare.

Sitka Chamber of Commerce director Rachel Roy was the commencement speaker for the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus graduation ceremony in May. Roy told the graduates that she had her first child the summer after her freshman year, and continued to juggle babysitters and coursework through earning her Master’s Degree.

Roy stuck it out, and encouraged her audience to do the same.

“We need you,” she said. “We need your skills, your curiosity, your resilience. We need your voice in research labs, in fishing boats, in classrooms, on city assemblies, and in boardrooms.”

But it will take more than curiosity and resilience to keep young people in Southeast. In February, Meilani Schivjens presented a detailed report to the mid-session meeting of the Southeast Conference in Juneau. Many of her numbers, like the growth in jobs and wages, were really promising, but she told a story that spoke more loudly than any pie chart.

“I ran into someone at the gym the other day, and I said, ‘You know, when we’re looking at these early numbers for 2024 I can tell you, just in a nutshell, the Southeast Alaska economy is great.’ And she said, ‘Well, tell that to my four daughters in their twenties that really want to move home and live here, but can’t afford to because the cost of housing is too high,’” said Schijvens. “And so I have a caveat: The Southeast Alaska economy is great, depending on who you are.”

It wasn’t too long ago that an efficiency apartment in Sitka cost about $750 a month. The March edition of Sitka’s Economic Trends, published by the local Economic Development Association, reports those rents are now over $1,000. A three-bedroom unit in Sitka now goes for $2,100 a month.

The four daughters Schijvens heard about at the gym are a statistical sample of an even larger problem that has developed in Southeast over the last decade.

“We have 6,000 fewer people of that sort of prime workforce age,” said Schijvens. “We have 7,600 more seniors. But at the same time, we have 1,700 more jobs. So we’re doing great on jobs. We’re just struggling when it comes to having that strong workforce age population.”

“Prime workforce age” refers to residents between the ages of 20 and 59. When prime workforce workers leave Southeast, so do their children. School enrollment in Southeast communities like Sitka has been in steady decline for at least two decades. Teacher turnover has been extraordinarily high the last few years – Sitka alone lost 14 teachers for the academic year that just ended.

Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot is a former teacher. In an interview with KCAW, Himschoot said that she hopes an all-new teacher retirement bill (HB 78) now working its way through the legislature helps stabilize education, and attracts a younger demographic to the state.

“So when we have teachers who come here because we have, I hope, a great salary, we have great working conditions, and we offer some sort of retirement with dignity, and they invest in their community, and they raise their kids here and they become great teachers over time – that’s a win,” said Himschoot.

Sen. Bert Stedman, who represents communities from Sitka to Ketchikan, has reservations about the new retirement bill and its impact on the state’s liabilities. But he too (also in an interview with KCAW) recognizes a serious problem.

“When a young Sitkan graduates from Sitka High School, goes off and gets a teaching certificate, and then goes to work in the Midwest or Florida or wherever, because they can pay them more as an entry level teacher than we can in Alaska, something’s wrong,” said Stedman. “We have a higher cost of living. And then you take a look at Sitka, in particular, we have extremely high housing, so we get a double-whammy.”

New housing is being built in most Southeast communities. Juneau tops the list with almost 1,200 units in the last ten years. Ketchikan is next with 366, and Sitka third with 291. But Meilani Schijvens’s report suggests that it’s not enough to cure the shortage, or to create affordability. Basically, the downward pressure of these economic factors is greater than the surge in jobs and wages. Southeast has lost over 4,000 residents in the last decade, and the strengthening economy is not bringing them back. State Department of Labor projections show 15,000 people leaving the entire state by 2050, with 12,000 coming from Southeast alone. But Schijvens and others at the Southeast Conference believe this trend reversible, like the Ghost of Christmas Future: a vision of what might happen that caused Ebenezer Scrooge to make significant changes now  for the better.

Shijvens told the Southeast Conference meeting that there will always be a big upside to living in the region.

“We know Southeast Alaska is an incredible place to live, an incredible place to raise families,” said Schijvens. “We know that the main reason people live here or stay here is for access to just absolutely world-class recreation. We know that people who are from here are more likely to stay here long term, and we know that people absolutely love living here for the high quality of life that Southeast Alaska has to offer.”

Writer Heather Lende and Ruth Underhill joined KCAW for the morning interview to discuss an upcoming writer’s retreat in Tenakee Springs. Listen here:

To register or learn more click here

Sawmill Cove, the site of the former Alaska Pulp Corporation mill, is a classic “brownfield.” Significant investment and cleanup has allowed the community to redevelop the area for fish processing and boat maintenance. (GPIP photo)

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska is holding a community visioning session for some site decontamination work. The STA’s Natural Resource specialist Callie Simmons and ANTHC’s (Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium) Contaminated Sites program coordinator Kevin Heller invite the public to share local knowledge about contaminated sites and “brownfields” (abandoned or under-utilized sites with known or suspected contamination that hinders future development). 6 p.m. Thursday, June 12, at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Dinner is provided.

SFM Photo

Violiist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Maria Asteriadou, joined KCAW for the Morning to share upcoming Sitka Music Festival highlights. The pair highlighted the intimate, family-like atmosphere of the festival, enhanced by recent renovations to Stevenson Hall. Upcoming performances include a French-themed box lunch at Odess Theater and a concert at Harrigan Centennial Hall featuring Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio and Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. Listen to their conversation here:

More information is available at sitkamusicfestival.org.

Photo/KCAW

Sitkans will hold a “No Kings!” rally on Saturday, June 14, as part of a nationwide demonstration, described by organizers as a “rejection of authoritarianism.” Organizers Kathy Ingallinera and Bruce Gazeway joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the planned, peaceful march from the roundabout to the Crescent Harbor Shelter at noon. Listen to the conversation here:
 

SFAC Photo/Mina Brooks-Schmidt

Mina Brooks-Schmidt is back after her third year away at college, and on June 12, she’ll be performing a new array of art songs and arias spanning three centuries and four languages. She joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the show, her studies, and plans to sing opera as part of a summer opera program in Sicily this summer. Listen here:

Photo/Parks and Rec unveils its new Airfloor

Sitka’s Parks and Recreation team joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss this summer’s activities including summer camp, gymnastics, swimming lessons, a neurodiverse activity group, and aviation courses. Listen to their conversation here:

For more information, visit recreation.cityofSitka.com or call 907-747-4031.

The OVK – or Organized Village of Kake – petitioned the Federal Subsistence Board in 2020 shortly after nationwide lockdowns and supply chain disruptions threatened the food supply to the 500 residents of the community, located on Kupreanof Island, about 50 miles east of Sitka. (Melati Kaye photo)

The 3-judge panel handed down its ruling on June 2, in a case involving the Southeast community of Kake, which had asked the Federal Subsistence Board for an emergency hunt during the height of the pandemic in 2020. The board authorized the hunt over the objections of the state, which promptly filed suit.

James Brooks has been covering the case for the Alaska Beacon. He spoke recently with KCAW’s Robert Woolsey about what the decision means for subsistence in Alaska.

Note: In Kake’s emergency hunt in 2020, five deer and two moose were harvested out-of-season to mitigate a potential food shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brooks: “One of the best places to start might be to say that this is one of a number of lawsuits/conflicts between the state and the federal government over who should control subsistence hunting and fishing and how it should be run. In this case, you have to go back to 2020, during the COVID 19 pandemic, and everybody was extremely worried about how we would get food here in the Southeast Alaska, and in villages like Kake, that worry was particularly large. So people appealed to the Federal Subsistence Board (this is the board that oversees and regulates subsistence hunting on federal land in the state of Alaska) and they said, ‘Can we have an emergency hunt so we can make sure we have food during the pandemic?’ And the board considered this proposal and said, ‘Yes, and to make it speedier, we’ll have the Tribe run the hunt.’ The State of Alaska had an issue with this and sued. It said, ‘Hey, opening a hunt is not within the powers of the Federal Subsistence Board.’ And so that was their argument that’s gone on for five years now, back and forth between the US District Court in Anchorage and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, and all along the west coast. And now, just recently, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit confirmed that the Federal Subsistence Board acted legally when it opened that emergency hunt back during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

KCAW: “And that is a very significant ruling on the part of the US Ninth Circuit. Is Alaska going to pursue this further? Because, as you say, subsistence has been a tug of war between the state and the federal government since ANILCA.”

Brooks: “Right. And you have to understand that ANILCA, the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (it’s a mouthful, that’s why we call it ANILCA) says rural Alaskans should have a preference for subsistence hunting and fishing. But the problem is that the Alaska constitution forbids giving some residents preferential treatment in hunting and fishing. So as a result, the federal government now oversees and controls subsistence hunting and fishing on federal land, and that conflicts with the state’s interest, which is sharing hunting and fishing equally across all residents. And so that conflict has been continuing for 45 years now.”

KCAW: “Getting back to my question, James: Is the state going to be content with this ruling? Because it’s a fairly significant blow in this ongoing struggle between the state and the federal government over subsistence management.”

Brooks: “The state hasn’t said whether it’ll appeal this or not. This ruling was from three judges on the Ninth Circuit, and the state could ask the entire Ninth Circuit – all of the judges on that court – to hear the case and then rule, or it could appeal to the US Supreme Court. And the thought might be that that court (the Supreme Court), which is a lot more conservative than the Ninth Circuit, might be more favorable to Alaska’s interests.”

Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot introduced a bill (HB 69) that would have increased student funding by $1,000 — the first substantial boost to schools in a decade. Even though she considered it a half-measure relative to the rate of inflation, legislators couldn’t muster the votes to override when the governor vetoed it. Sen. Bert Stedman’s Finance Committee arrived at a $700 increase that did survive a veto, but he’s not sure it’s enough to reverse the decline in teacher salaries that has eroded the ability to recruit even in-state graduates into the profession. (Gavel Alaska photos)

Alaska’s schools received the first significant permanent increase in state funding in a decade this year, after a remarkable parliamentary drama that took place over the last two years.

Sitka Representative Rebecca Himschoot doesn’t belong to either political party, but she is a career teacher, and she was a driving force behind the legislation to keep the state’s schools adequately funded.

The legislative session adjourned for the year on May 20. Himschoot recently visited KCAW and spoke with Robert Woolsey about her involvement in the effort to successfully pass school funding.

HIMSCHOOT: “There’s a lot of work that goes into an override like that. So I think for context, it’s important to realize that half of the funding the legislature appropriated in FY ‘24 had been vetoed. And then the following year, Senate Bill 140 was vetoed, which was a great compromise bill that had a lot of elements that were desired by people across the political spectrum. And then this year, House Bill 69 was vetoed, (KCAW: your bill), my bill correct, and so the legislature has been doing the will of the people we’re elected to represent for, I would say, a number of years now, only to run up against what some people call  the ‘61st vote.’ You have your 60 legislators, but without the governor, you can’t, you can’t get things done. So we’ve been trying for years to respond to what is nothing less than a crisis in our public schools across the state. And I think the override (of House Bill 57) that happened, there was a build up to that. Of course, there was a lot of conversation, a lot of hard work, a lot of compromise. So when the moment came, I think the most telling part of the override was that the Senate has to enter the House chamber. They take the role to make sure we’re all there. They pose the question, we voted and we left. There wasn’t a single floor speech that day, no one had anything to say. We’re done talking. We’ve exerted our will. We’ve exercised what we’ve been asked to do by the people of Alaska, and we’ve been doing it multiple times, and it’s time to finally act. And I think that’s what we saw that day.

KCAW: “What changed between SB 140 last year and HB 57 this year? because last year, after the veto, it’s like the wind went out of everybody’s sails, and the thing was swept off the priority list for a while. So what do you think changed? Was it that the makeup of the legislature changed, and that that kept momentum for education strong?”HIMSCHOOT: “Yes, I think there are two things that changed. One is exactly what you said, the momentum: We have coalition majorities in both bodies, so the House and Senate leadership, for the first time in many years, are aligned, and both were prioritizing education, and the reason they’re prioritizing education is the other thing that changed, which is the crisis has just grown to such a such a magnitude, that we must respond. We cannot kick the can anymore. When you see what’s happening in our schools and across the state, it doesn’t matter if it’s a rural school or an urban school, everyone is in crisis. When you see that, you have to respond, so by having aligned bodies and by allowing the crisis to get as bad as it has, yeah, collectively,  the will to do something, grows.”

Note: Although the legislature overrode Gov. Dunleavy’s third veto of education funding last month, there’s a possibility that he could still veto the actual appropriation of the funding anytime before June 19. A veto that late in the year, however, would throw many districts into financial disarray just as school is about to begin, and many legislators doubt that even this governor – a former school superintendent himself – would choose that option.

Sen. Bert Stedman sheds light on budget process

With over two decades under his belt in the Alaska Senate, Bert Stedman never appears terribly disturbed by what happens in the state capitol. He’s seen his share of both wins and losses, and understands that balancing those opposites are how things work in the legislature.

Stedman stopped by KCAW recently to reflect on the last legislative session. He spoke with Robert Woolsey.

I bumped into Sen. Bert Stedman in Harrigan Centennial Hall on the day of Sitka’s special election (May 28). Everyone else was weighing in at the ballot box on whether to limit cruise traffic in town.

Stedman was there to speak to the Board of Trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was holding a two-day meeting. Stedman wants to see the fund modernized, and protected by a constitutional amendment that would prevent a simple majority of the legislature from draining the Constitutional Budget Reserve – where earnings from the fund are socked away.

He also wouldn’t mind if the Senate had a say in appointing trustees, but he doesn’t think that will happen.

“We don’t have the ability to confirm them, although we would like to,” said Stedman. “But we got this pesky document called the Constitution and Separation of Powers in the way, so we’re unable to accomplish that. And we would obviously like that (ability), but we do not. So they are appointed by the governor, and hopefully we’ll go back to the way it has historically been managed. And I’m not saying that there’s political cronyism going on today, but there seemed to be a whiff of it in here a little bit ago, and hope we put that in the rear view mirror and never see it again.”

On other money matters, Stedman has extraordinary influence. He co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which writes both the state’s operating and capital budgets. One positive outcome of this year’s legislative session was a $700 increase in per-pupil funding for schools – the BSA, or base student allocation. That $700 figure came out of Stedman’s committee.

“So we were pursuing the $680 BSA with the numeric within the budget plan to get to a balanced budget,” he said, “and we got an agreement from most of our colleagues – at least the recognition that there wasn’t going to be a $1,500 or $1,000 BSA, and we’re gonna have to have a different number. But some of them wish the number was different from $680. It could be $679 or $681, they were just tired of hearing $680. So the next day we decided, ‘Well, let’s just add $20 bucks. $700 is a nice round number. That’s where it came from. Just that simple.”

Stedman voted to sustain the governor’s veto of two previous bills that had larger increases to schools, but he joined 45 other legislators in overriding the governor’s veto of the $700 increase. However, he knows the issue is not settled.

“My guess is that this discussion is far from over,” said Stedman. “We have housing issues with teachers in a lot of the rural parts of the state. The retention issue – a lot of us believe that’s fundamentally based in salaries. Some of the entry level salaries are too low to retain them. When a young Sitkan graduates from Sitka High School, goes off and gets a teaching certificate, and then goes to work in the Midwest or Florida or wherever, because they can pay them more as an entry level teacher than we can in Alaska, something’s wrong. We have a higher cost of living. And then you take a look at Sitka, in particular, we have extremely high housing, so we get a double-whammy.”

Stedman, a Republican, shares the chairmanship of the Finance Committee with Lyman Hoffman, a Democrat from Bethel. Hoffman manages the operating budget; Stedman takes the capital budget, the money for maintaining and building state infrastructure. Both budgets are closely connected to the price of oil, Alaska’s most valuable export.

Stedman is frustrated by policy from the Trump administration that runs counter to Alaska’s interests.

“The headwinds just keep getting worse out of Washington,” he said. “I mean, almost every other week there’s some bad news: We’re going to lose, you know, Medicaid reimbursements, and and then right before we left (at adjournment), it was LIHEAP (low income fuel assistance) for a lot of citizens, including some in Sitka. Anyway, there’s a whole litany of things on the hit list in Washington, and we don’t know how bad they’re going to be, but they weren’t positive. And the direction out of Washington to move oil prices down to stimulate the economy, that’s good for California, but it’s not good for Alaska, because we are an oil-based economy.”

Oil is very volatile right now; Stedman’s committee worked to cover basic capital expenses assuming the price would not drop below $66 per barrel. He says many of the expenses covered in this budget should be double – even triple – what the state can afford. Gone are the billions available only a decade-and-a-half ago. He sees more lean times ahead, if the White House gets its way.

“What I mentioned many, many times to my colleagues in both the House and the Senate, when they would bring up the budget, I’d just flat tell them, nobody’s getting anything,” Stedman said. “Doesn’t matter if you’re in the majority, or the minority, how long you’ve been here, what position you are in – it’s zero. Everybody gets a lump of coal. And next year, if we end up at $60 a barrel, you’re not even going to get the coal. You’re just going to get the bag it came in this year.”

Sen. Bert Stedman represents Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, Ketchikan, and all communities in between. He’ll run for his sixth full term next year.

Violinist Evin Blomberg will be making her first appearance at the Sitka Music Festival this weekend. (Evin Blomberg image)

Festival artists Ilya Finkelshteyn, Evin Blomberg, Christian Colberg, and Amy Taylor (two couples all from Cincinnati) share their love stories, and how they’ve made lives together in music. During concerts this Friday and Saturday (June 5, 6) they’ll be performing works by JC Bach, Johannes Brahms, Mozart, and Ludvig van Beethoven.