KCAW

Registration is now open for fall classes at the Sitka Studio of Dance. Melinda McAdams and Kincaid Parsons joined KCAW for the morning interview to discuss the summer and upcoming fall events, including an open house this weekend, on August 15, and free classes for local elementary school students on August 22. Listen to the conversation here:

Local business owner Sherri Blankenship filed to run for a seat on the Sitka Assembly last week (8-5-26). 

Blankenship is a nutritionist and owner of Highliner Coffee. She ran for an assembly seat last year, narrowly losing to incumbent Thor Christianson. 

KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down with Blankenship on Monday (8-10-26) to discuss her bid for a seat and what her priorities would be, if elected.

TRANSCRIPT:

KCAW: This is your second time running for the assembly. Tell me a bit about that decision.

BLANKENSHIP: Well, I have the same desire to run for assembly this year that I did last year. I have the same goals, and I was pretty close last time, within just a handful of votes. It was disappointing, but at the same time, I felt like that was a growing experience because I went the route that mentors told me to do, which is join commissions, be more involved, and that’s what I did all this year, is I grew.

KCAW: So tell me a little bit about how you’ve been more involved.

BLANKENSHIP: I joined the tourism commission. I feel like I have an indirect-facing business to tourism, but it affects my business in some ways. But I have a neutral position in a lot of ways because I know what tourism does for our town, but I also represent everyone, and I want it to be comfortable at the same time. So I don’t want it to be the only industry that we focus on.

KCAW: There are a lot of issues facing Sitkans right now. What do you see as some of the biggest? And if elected to the assembly seat, how would you help solve those?

BLANKENSHIP: I really haven’t seen the needle move much from last year. I really think that all of those issues that we concentrated on last year are still remaining. We’re still dealing with them, and I don’t really expect that we would have them solved by now. But I would really like to see that needle move a little faster. I do believe that we also need to focus on wellness in general for our community. Mental health is really important, and I would like to see better programs, or the programs that are existing to be more bolstered, more supported, and [not only] supported by business, but supported by our city as well. So that is one of the areas that I want to concentrate on.

KCAW: You mentioned some of these issues that have been affecting Sitkans for a long time, including last year. For those who might not have been in the loop last year during election time, or are new to town, can you expand on some of those issues that you’re talking about?

BLANKENSHIP: Well, we’ve always had a housing issue, but the issues that we’ve been dealing with as a community is housing, economics, as far as being economically healthy, supporting local industry, making sure that they’re all supported the way that they need to be, and also [that] small businesses have the support that they need. But the cost of living is another issue that we’re dealing with, and that one’s a hard one because that’s not something that we can change necessarily on the assembly. You know, that is something that we have to be empathetic to our residents and know what they’re dealing with, and try to come up with more ways to bring money into our community so that in the end, it can bring down the cost of living.

KCAW: And as you mentioned, last year, you just narrowly lost in the election. Why should Sitkans vote for you this year?

BLANKENSHIP: I know that I represent a larger demographic here in Sitka. I have four children that have gone through, two that remain in the school district, two grown children, and I also own a business. I’ve also not owned a business while I lived in this town, so I’ve seen all levels and phases of living here. I’ve lived here for 22 years, actually almost 23, and I can say that I think that I represent that middle ground where I still am young enough to represent the younger crowd, and I’m old enough to know what those struggles were and survive them, but I’m also not too old to be out of touch.

KCAW: Is there anything else that you think Sitkans should know about you before the municipal election this October?

BLANKENSHIP: I’ve grown a lot, I think. I think in this last year, I took a lot of direction to heart. I’ve learned to listen a lot more, and I think that is really important when being on the assembly. Being able to listen closer to the larger group and see what those needs are, and be able to change your mind if you get new information that would validate a change. And I believe that’s a metric that has definitely changed with me, and I’ve seen that growth, and I think reflection is really important.

For a small fire department like Sitka’s, volunteers are incredibly important. There are currently 14 paid staff and about 80 to 90 volunteers on on the roster. Interim Fire Chief Brian McLaughlin joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the Sitka Fire Department’s staffing situation, how to become a volunteer, how to practice fire safety and be prepared for outdoor activities, when to call 911, and recent emergency responses in Sitka. Listen to their conversation here:

Matt Potter filed to run for a seat on the Sitka School Board on Friday (8-7-26). Potter has worked as a school administrator and teacher across Alaska, including in the Sitka School District. He spoke with KCAW shortly after filing about his interest in serving on the board. Listen to the conversation here:

KCAW: You have thrown your hat in the ring for a seat on the Sitka School Board. You’re currently a member, you were appointed last month, but you’re vying for a full term. Why why are you running for a seat on the board?

Potter: I’ve decided to run for school board because I and my family have been in Sitka for almost 10 years now. I first came to Sitka as the assistant principal at Blatchley Middle School, and we’ve kind of made it our home. We’ve a couple times have had to leave because of job opportunities, and funding cuts in education, and that kind of stuff. But really, this is our home, and my kids or my boys are both at the age where one’s going to be in third grade, one’s going to start kindergarten next year. I want to be able to kind of shape the way that their education is as they move through the Sitka School District, and everything that I have seen, everything I’ve been a part of in Sitka, we have a really great educational system. We have awesome staff members, and awesome teachers, and I want to be able to be a part of that, and help shape as we’re going forward, especially with the the way funding in education on the state level has been trending in the last couple of years. I want to be able to make sure that I have a voice in how that money and how those budgets are made, but I also want to be able to have a platform for advocacy on that statewide level as well. So I think that being a part of the school board is really going to kind of help me do both of those things.

KCAW: And can you talk a little bit about what experiences you you have that are going to inform your work on the board the most?

Potter: I have been in education my whole adult life. I started as a teacher in Anchorage, and my first administrative job was up north of Fairbanks, and then after that, that’s when I moved to Sitka as the AP at Blatchley. I was then the the principal at Seward Middle School in Seward. I came back and I was at Mt. Edgecumbe for a couple years as an assistant principal there, and I spent the last year in Oregon as a director of a middle school director of a charter school down there. So I feel like coming onto the school board with a background in education, but also a background in education that’s not just with the Sitka School District, but it’s kind of statewide and in multiple states as well. [It] kind of gives me that overarching view of how the education system works, both the city level, the state level, but also kind of nationally as well. And I think that’ll kind of help me inform my decisions as as we move forward, especially with the budgeting process, because it’s always such a big issue for the school board and for the school district as a whole.

KCAW: Can you expand a little bit more on what your goals would be if you were elected to the board for a full term?

Potter: Yeah, and you know, I don’t have one specific goal that I have in mind. I just want to be able to serve the school district any way possible, and now it’s going to be on the school board and help inform the decisions that are made, so that that both my family, my sons, as well as the students in the Sitka School District as a whole get the best education that they can get. I mean, because really, at the end of the day, right, that’s why everybody is in education, is on the school board, is because we want what’s best for kids, and I think this is the way that I can help direct that.

Darrell Windsor filed to run for a seat on the Sitka Assembly on Wednesday. Windsor owns Sitka Appliance Repair and is a long-time member of the Sitka Planning Commission.

KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down with Windsor on Friday (8-7-26) to talk to him about his bid for an assembly seat, and what he hopes to address, if elected. 

WINDSOR: Well, I’ve been in Sitka for 32 years. [I’ve] seen a lot of changes in 32 years. And I’ve been on the Planning Commission for 15 years. So, on the Planning Commission, we make recommendations to the Assembly. So, I thought I’d like to be on the other end for once, get the recommendations given to me.

KCAW: Yeah. So, I was going to ask you about that. You are a long-serving member on the Planning Commission, you’re the current chair as well, but this is your first time running for a seat on the Sitka Assembly. Why now? What are the issues affecting Sitkans that are making you want to to run?

WINDSOR: Of course, the biggest one is housing and the tourism. Those are two really hot items that we have to figure something out. I mean, I understand this is a tourist town, and that’s our main business. But it seems like half the population doesn’t want it, and the other half does. 

KCAW: Do you have specific policies you have in mind for how to address those issues?

WINDSOR: I do on the housing, but I really don’t want to say right now. But yeah, I’ve got an idea.

KCAW: So, why should Sitkans vote for you?

WINDSOR: I think Sitkans should vote for me because I’m level-headed. I like to hear both sides and try to make an intelligent decision. I just don’t jump off the bat because I feel this way or that way. I like to hear it all. So, I think if you want a balanced somebody to make a decision, I’d be good for that.

KCAW: What else should people know about you? We know that you’ve served on the Planning Commission for a long time, but what should people know about you before they vote in the municipal election this fall?

WINDSOR: Well, I think a lot of people know me. I do appliance repair, so I’ve met probably at least 40% of the population of Sitka, so they understand that I don’t jump in. You know, I try to think things through and I try to apply that with the same thing I do on my job with troubleshooting: figure out the problem, then try to fix the problem. I feel I’ll be the same way on the assembly.

KCAW: And so you mentioned these big issues of housing and tourism affecting Sitkans right now, and I know you don’t want to go into all the details. But if elected, how do you propose to address those longstanding challenges here in Sitka?

WINDSOR: Well, like I said, I’ve got an idea. I really don’t want to say it right here. [Find] a way to get some property out to people, and an affordable way of getting property out to people.

A thick slug sits on a deer heart leaf in Tiger Xu’s hands. He holds the leaf up to a large window misted with creek water. Petting it with his pointer finger, Xu tries to coax the slug onto the glass.

“I can name him Franklin,” Xu says. “I like that. It’s an arbitrary name.”

Xu is wrapping up a summer seminar called “The Art of Noticing in Multispecies Worlds.” This was a three-week course for high schoolers through Outer Coast, an undergraduate liberal arts program in Sitka.

Instead of papers or exams, students created art to showcase what they learned in an exhibition called “It’s Literally About Everything.” And they used just about anything to prove it. 

Xu is using Franklin’s goo. As the slug slides across the window, its trail of slime will be the art on display. 

“I’m putting it on a vertical surface that’s moist because we could never adhere to a surface like that, right?”

During the seminar, the students helped rehab sections of Sitka’s trails as a service project. Xu noticed how classmates would nudge slugs with their boots or chuck them to the side of the path. And that attitude is something Xu wants to change.  

“How do you empathize with a mollusk that has a face very different from yours?” asks Eben Kirksey, an anthropology professor at the University of Oxford who led the seminar.

Kirksey says Xu’s art aims to create a greater sense of “slug empathy” by spotlighting the creature’s curiosities, like its slime.

“The idea is to teach students to pay attention to creatures in our shared environment, and especially notice what get called the ‘unloved others’ that share the world with us,” Kirksey says.

Taking a closer look could lead to new discoveries. It did for Zoe Cole who stumbled across some scraps when scavenging for salmonberries. At first, she noticed discarded bathroom tiles scattered outside of a campus residence hall. The closer she looked, and the deeper she dug, Cole realized they were entangled with metal and cement. 

“How can I make this art? How can I make this actually meaningful and not just a bunch of garbage?” Cole wonders.

Her moss-covered findings now sit in the center of the exhibition. Rusted wires, chunks of concrete, and broken tiles sprawl across a folding table draped in an inside-out emergency blanket. 

“When I first found it,” Cole says, “I was like, ‘Whoa! This reminds me of an ecosystem and how everything is connected in ecosystems.’”

The more she thought about it, the more it symbolized. She says it looks like a galaxy or a family tree.

“It can be life with all the moss that’s growing on the pieces, or it can be death with all the rust that’s on the wires. It’s everything,” Cole says.

Kirksey says it was Cole who came up with the exhibition’s name: “It’s Literally About Everything.”

“It’s been all about hope. It’s been about love. It’s been about how to undergo symbiogenesis, which means becoming symbiotic. So this is what the students have done together socially, and also with the art that’s on display today,” Kirksey explains.

That idea is best represented by a branch hanging on the wall. Mariia Hryhurko wanted to literally intertwine her classmates into her art. So she twisted tendrils of moss and lichen together with their human counterpart.

“We took moss and lichen, and we weaved some braids with the hair of our participants,” Hryhurko says.

One strand is nearly a foot long. 

“It’s one of our co-creator’s, and she contributed a lot, as you can see,” Hryhurko says. “She’s very dedicated to this artwork.”

Kirksey says the seminar’s 12 students came to Sitka from all over the world with their own values and perspectives. AnnaMae Owen and Annmarie Sakar collected heart-shaped leaves, shells, and bark they found in the forest. Owen says nature is full of hopeful symbols.

“A late night that’s full of stars with the northern lights or the early morning sunrises or the sunsets, the birds chirping in the early mornings or in the dawn,” Owen says, “those are the kind of things that bring me hope for a new day and a better tomorrow.”

Kirksey says the course has been about that kind of observation, and thinking more about the creatures around us. He wants the students to ask: What’s the world like as a starfish without eyes? How does human infrastructure change where a plant might grow?

Or what’s it like to be Franklin? Empathizing may have been tough before. But as people peer at the slug leaving a trail of ooze across the glass, they now have a mutual interest: art.   

Sitka Public Library and Outer Coast are hosting the second annual Big Ideas Book Club, which will explore American history, including the Early Republic, the 19th century, the Great Depression, and the 1960s, through weekly readings, viewings, and discussions. Meetings will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-7:30 p.m. at the library, from Aug. 18 to Sept. 24. Margot O’Connell, adult services librarian, and Garrett Faulkner from Outer Coast, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the return of the book club. Listen to their conversation here:

Elle Campbell and Rachel Fox with the city’s Parks and Recreation Division joined KCAW for the morning interview to discuss summer and upcoming fall activities. Swimming lessons were a big highlight for the organization this summer- they offered two rounds of group lessons, and three rounds of private, serving around sixty kids. Parks and Rec also hosted a six week summer camp. Coming up– a bike rodeo, hot yoga, and later this fall community choir and city league basketball will return, among many other programs. Listen here:

It’s just after 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning in late July, and fishermen are unloading their gear onto the shores at Redoubt Falls after the 15-mile boat ride from downtown Sitka. The sound of rushing water drowns out their chatter as they begin to dip their large nets into the rapids, trying to catch their allotment of sockeye. Time and again, they lean toward the water and scoop from the thousands of red salmon returning to the lake above.

Redoubt is an important area for many Sitkans. It’s a former Lingít village site, and it’s the largest, and closest, sockeye salmon fishery in the area. Every summer, subsistence, sport, and commercial fishermen flock there to fill their freezers.

Subsistence fishermen are currently allowed to catch 25 sockeye per household, with an annual limit of 100. But that wasn’t always the case. 

“In the early ‘80s, the runs at Redoubt were significantly depressed. I think there were around 800 sockeye returning at the time,” said Jeff Feldpausch, director of the Resource Protection Department at Sitka Tribe of Alaska. 

He said the Tribe, U.S. Forest Service, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game stepped in to develop a management plan that helped the fishery rebound.

The salmon weir at the top of Redoubt Falls was essential to that effort. Every summer, technicians from the Forest Service and Tribe would hand count each fish one-by-one as they funneled through the hole in the long fence-like barrier that stretches across the outflows of the lake. During a low return, the State might reduce catch limits or even close the fishery for the year. During higher returns, they might open it up for a larger harvest.

“We have a commercial fishery that’s now taking place that wouldn’t if the weir wasn’t in place,” Feldpausch said. “The Tribe is able to utilize its community harvest permit. We would not be able to do that if the weir was not in place and that data wasn’t being collected. And right now, harvesters can get up to 100 sockeye a year, up from 50 — that would not happen without the weir being in place.”

But in recent years, Feldpausch said, funding has lapsed. As the fish rebounded at Redoubt, the Forest Service and Tribe weren’t able to get as much grant money to collect escapement data. 

“The system is not broken. That’s the problem [when] going after grant funds,” he said. “There’s lots of money out there to fix and monitor broken systems, but there’s no regular funding out there for this side of it: for a system that isn’t broken.”

So now the Tribe is trying something a bit different. They got a grant, and last summer started testing out a new artificial intelligence system from the British Columbia-based company SalmonVision that Feldspausch says saves both money and time. 

Techs from the Forest Service and Tribe still go out to Redoubt periodically to collect biological data from the sockeye, he said, like weight, age, length and sex.

“We are the first entity, as far as I know, in the state of Alaska that is using the AI video system,” Feldspausch said. “There’s several of them down in BC, but we’re the first ones in Alaska.”

Feldspausch describes the system as a white polyethylene plastic chute with a video camera on the side. As the fish swim through the chamber, the system is able to draw a rectangle around each fish to pick out identifying features and assign what species it is. A float in the lagoon has battery packs, solar panels, and a Starlink system, and the data is immediately uploaded online and accessible from the Tribe’s office in town.

AI is being used in other ways across the state. He said there are remote video shoots operated by the Forest Service at other weirs, but someone still needs to review the footage and count each individual fish, in contrast to the Redoubt weir that provides data in real time.

Researchers in Bristol Bay also started exploring new AI and drone technology this summer to improve escapement data in the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery. And there’s a pilot project at the Chignik River weir where the department is providing weir images to a company that is evaluating the utility of AI to count and ID salmon, according to ADF&G, but they are not using it to generate in-season counts.

The goal, Feldspausch said, is to keep the Redoubt weir counting fish so Sitkans can have full access to the increased returns coming back to the lake. He said he thinks the AI weir data triggered the increased harvest access this summer.

“The computer itself has actually learned how to count sockeye, and the data we have provided the program has gotten up to about a 95% confidence interval on counting sockeye through the system,” he said.

But, he added, the system has created several unintended challenges as well. 

Under the old manual counting system, when techs weren’t working, the weir was closed. The closures would cause a pool just below the weir to fill up with salmon, allowing both harvesters and bears access to large quantities of the fish. But with the AI video shoot constantly at work, those fish aren’t building up behind the weir anymore.

“The bears don’t have the ability to fish in that weir pool away from where people are fishing down in the saltwater, so we’re starting to see some conflicts between human-bear interactions that may not have been in there in the past because there was a different pool of fish for them to fish out of,” Feldspausch said.

The Tribe and Forest Service issued a warning to Sitkans in late July, urging them to practice bear safety in the area after several brown bears, including two sows with cubs, were seen frequenting the lake’s weir. 

Feldspausch said while the new AI system might take some getting used to, without a way to keep monitoring escapement at Redoubt, Sitkans would end up with a restricted harvest. 

“I know there’s been some concern about AI taking away jobs, and the reality is, there’s no funding for the weir right now,” he said. “We have looked high and low for different grant sources, and all of them deal with systems that need some sort of remediation. They’re a damaged system. This system isn’t damaged. It is blowing the doors off of it. This is about maximizing access to a resource, and it would be a real shame to have it go underutilized and not have the commercial fishery or subsistence harvesters catching those fish.”

Nine-year-old Avery rests a thin foldable mat on his shoulders. Its two ends point straight ahead, like horns on a bull. He leans forward before charging across the Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School gym. 

Avery is part of the Neurodiverse Physical Activity Group. It’s a collaboration between Sitka’s Parks and Recreation Division and Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, or SEARHC, that provides hour-long sessions of individualized play for kids on the autism spectrum. 

“Sometimes we challenge them and set up obstacle courses or try to do more of a structured game,” says McArthur, a physical therapist at SEARHC. “But for the most part, this is their space to come and explore and play, and we’re just here to facilitate it.”

McArthur says organized sports aren’t for everyone, so physical activity looks different for every kid. 

“The fun part about this group is really letting it be kid-led and see how they play and just adapt our play around them,” she says.

McArthur plays right alongside the kids. She prances across balance beams, hops on trampolines, and acts out whatever character the kids dream up. She’s been a bull fighter, a knight, or, when another boy’s here, a race car (with a notable losing streak).

“He is usually one step above me in upgrades,” McArthur says, “and I’m always slower than he is, and he usually has something he can throw at me.”

Avery likes when there’s a soundtrack to his imagination. As he and McArthur build castles and fight monsters, video game music booms from a speaker in the gym. But it’s not all fun and games. McArthur says it benefits the kids’ gross motor skills too. Those are movements we make with our arms and legs, like climbing, throwing, or jumping. 

“It’s a great opportunity for parents to meet each other too and build that support group as well,” McArthur says.

Earl Pirtle is Avery’s grandfather, who Avery calls buddy. He says not every kid enjoys baseball, so letting Avery run around with this group is a good way to get his energy out.  

“For him, it’s to get out of the house and do other things, other activities, and keep him more active rather than sitting in the house playing video games,” Pirtle says.

The group met every Monday and Thursday in July. Although this is the last session, Pirtle hopes there will be more in the future. 

As the hour draws to a close, it’s time to start cleaning up. McArthur turns off the music and Avery helps her put the mats and balls away. Once the gym floor is clear, Avery slips his sneakers on and runs toward the door. 

“Come on, buddy,” Avery calls to Pirtle as he runs toward the door.