Candidates for Mayor Address Chamber

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Created on Tuesday, 17 September 2024 16:04

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By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    The two candidates for mayor in this year’s municipal election voiced their views on a range of topics, from housing and tourism to leadership roles and fishing, at a forum hosted Friday by the Chamber of Commerce.
    Early voting has started in the Oct. 1 city election for mayor, two Assembly members and two School Board members.

Leah Mason and Steven Eisenbeisz. (Sentinel Photo)

     The mayor candidates are incumbent Steven Eisenbeisz, who is running for his third two-year term, and Leah Mason, who works for Baranof Island Housing Authority.
    “For better or for worse, I’ve been sitting on the Assembly now for almost 10 years; I think that that has a lot of upsides,” Eisenbeisz told the Chamber in his opening remarks. “I think that that potentially has some concerns about term limits as well. And I would share some of those concerns. You know, term limits may be something that we look into in the future, but at this point, I am running for... another two-year term. I think the business community should know that I am a business owner.”
    Mason has lived in Sitka for a decade, first coming to visit family during a trip to the U.S. from Australia.
    “It was become a Buddhist monk in the Blue Mountains in Sydney or come to Sitka, which was my happy place, I had determined, after a couple of visits,” Mason said. “And so, knowing that Sitka was a small place and that the opportunities to fit in are kind of wild and interesting, I took the leap of faith and I just moved, so I figured that my background is diverse enough that I could find a spot for myself.”
    Besides BIHA, Mason also has worked for SEARHC and the University of Alaska through the years. Eisenbeisz owns and operates the clothing and sporting goods store Russell’s, and this year also has a retail space at the cruise ship dock.
    Addressing a question about high cost and low availability of housing in Sitka, Mason pointed out that a number of units remain empty for much of the year, as they are rented out to tourists as vacation units in the summer.
    “You can look at the price of housing as being one of the big challenges that gives us this situation. People are purchasing houses and making changes such that they can pay their mortgage by renting it out at much higher costs during the tourism season. This has cascading effects on the whole thing,” Mason said. “A lot of what we’re dealing with in terms of inflation is based on housing and the cost of housing, so that affects everything we’re dealing with as well. So there are a lot of very complex, very hard conversations that have to be had if we’re going to make housing affordable and accessible, because when you look at the details in the census data you see that we do not have any argument for building additional housing. The last time I looked at it, there were something like 700 vacant units, and that’s because they take this data in March, and as we all know that in March we don’t have a vacancy problem. What we have in March is a long-term rental availability problem.”
    The 2020 U.S. Census reported 718 vacant housing units in Sitka, with 3,421 units occupied, and a year-round population of 8,458.
    Mason said short-term rentals pose a challenge for the community because so much housing is tied up for non-residents.
    She said the problem is not going to go away “unless we have a hard conversation about the value of housing and who it serves.”
    Eisenbeisz said the housing crunch is far from unique to Sitka, and expressed interest in opening land for building new housing.
    “It’s an issue in all of Alaska; it’s an issue all over America right now, so it’s something that’s worthy of us looking further into,” he said. “The Assembly did recently authorize a substantial amount of money to study additional lands for opening up for housing development.”
    He added that “the hardest part about that is I don’t think affordable home ownership is a reality in Sitka anytime soon, just due to the cost of the bare materials, the cost of putting in infrastructure and the cost of building that home.
    “I don’t think affordable home ownership is a reality in Sitka anytime soon, just due to the cost of the bare materials, the cost of putting in infrastructure and the cost of building that home. We studied No Name Mountain, and determined it would be so incredibly expensive to put in basic utilities that the lot prices up there wouldn’t pay off for anybody anymore. And I think that’s the situation we’re in with a lot of the available land.”

Tourism
    This summer has set a new high water mark for levels of tourism in Sitka and across Southeast, which Eisenbeisz sees as an economic opportunity, with some caveats.
    “Visitor industry jobs in Sitka haven’t grown as much as I thought they had,” he said. “It was a very marginal amount of visitor industry job growth. So that was interesting to me, because I, in my peer group, have a lot of friends who are attempting to capitalize on an opportunity that they see to stay in Sitka. They’re using this opportunity that’s been presented for them to provide for their families so that they can stay in Sitka long term, as opposed to having to look outside.”
    He expressed hope that Sitka will retain a degree of economic diversity into the future.
    “That’s one of the most telling things for my generation, is that we do see these as economic opportunities. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a slump in fishing right now,” he said. “Indicators would say that fishing, the prices will rebound here shortly, but it’s been a tough year, and so if we don’t have tourism, if we don’t have fishing, we’re left with SEARHC as our main employer… I definitely don’t want to shrink our economy down to where we’re reliant on sole-sourcing.”
    Mason was concerned Sitka may become a more seasonal town if tourism becomes the dominant force in the local economy.
    “You have to look at prosperity and doing well, and where we all want to be in the long-term, within a framework that says that the environment we’re in is important, and so is the community… An economy is not just external currency, and a community cannot be continued with a seasonal population, which is increasingly what we’re seeing. And that is where Skagway is, and that is where a lot of communities who have taken on tourism in the way that we are looking to do, have gone,” Mason said.
    Speaking on closures of Lincoln Street on high volume tourist days and other impacts of the industry in town, the candidates diverged. Eisenbeisz said he opposes limits on cruise tourist numbers, while Mason thinks the issue should be put before voters.
    “I do not personally support a ballot measure to cap tourism,” Eisenbeisz said. “Right now, the more that I’ve thought about this, I’ve realized that I have a fiduciary duty to the city, and if I was to put that ballot on there and then get sued, I think I’m in question of my fiduciary duty to the city. I’ve also realized that industry – and I’m not talking cruise industry – but I think local businesses that are members of the Chamber would sue. So that’s an issue to me.”
    The city clerk has rejected several applications for petitions to put a cruise tourist limit on the ballot of a city election.
    Mason said she thinks Sitkans should be able to vote on the matter.
    “I would support putting an ordinance to the people. We talk a lot about people having had their say. They have not. They have not been allowed to have their say,” Mason said. “... We cannot just sell our community and its quality of life to whoever passes by without giving the community a chance to say something about it.”

On Child care
    Regarding child care, which like housing is in short supply in Sitka, Eisenbeisz said he supports looking into some sort of subsidy program to ensure parents of young children have viable options.
    “Child care right now is something I’m intimately familiar with. I have a child who is in child care right now. When we first found out my wife was pregnant, I got on the waitlist and it took us 26 months, I think, after he was born… Unfortunately, child care will need to be subsidized in order to continue at a rate that the community needs,” Eisenbeisz said.
     “Teachers don’t get paid well enough to do the job that they do, and you can’t charge enough tuition in order to pay those teachers, because then you wouldn’t have anyone in schools either. We have plenty of capacity in Sitka – SJ, I believe, is licensed for 50 children, and there’s something like 25 or 30 in there right now, and that’s due to a lack of teachers,” he said.
    He believes there’s room for “a discussion for the community at large to have if they want to use some of the (municipal) general fund monies to start subsidizing child care.”
    Mason said two issues are involved – preparing kids for school and allowing parents to hold jobs outside the home.
    “If what we’re doing is we’re trying to free up as many people to participate in the workforce, that gives you one set of solutions. And if what you’re looking for is preparing children for school, that’s another different set of solutions with different training requirements and different payment requirements there,” Mason said. “... We are looking at potentially licensing more people to take care of children in homes, that would free up people for workforce, it would also employ more people. However, if what you want is adequate preparation for schools, then you’re looking at a very different situation. How we want to go about sorting out what works for us again needs to be bigger than the small group of people who are trying to solve it in their own ways.”

On Governance
    In Sitka the mayor is a voting member of the Assembly whose main duty is to preside at meetings; mayors here have no veto power.
    Asked about her leadership style if elected, Mason said she would aim to ensure all voices are heard.
    “Leaders are more facilitators. Leaders need to know who’s in the room and what they can contribute,” she said. “In my opinion, at a community level, everybody who has a stake in the situation has a right to make a contribution to both understanding what the problem is, but also coming up with solutions.”
    Eisenbeisz said he tries to run meetings with decorum and in a manner that allows for action rather than bickering.
    “I’ve wanted to bring a calm meeting. In years past, we’ve seen meetings that I think people would call the ‘popcorn hour.’ They’d sit down on their TV and just watch the Assembly go back and forth,” he said. “I don’t think that’s effective, which is another thing I want to bring to the table. Our meetings, I want there to be a purpose to them. I want the community to know that when we meet, there is a reason for that, and that we are going to effectively get stuff done. I want to be efficient. I want to make a great use of not only the community’s time, who shows up for the very end agenda item, but also efficient for the staff.”
    Mason told the Chamber she believes collaboration between parties is key to good governance.
    “Most problems can be solved by everybody talking to each other. So I think having an open line is fantastic and having a networking system that allows us to know exactly what resources and skills and expertise and knowledge we all bring to the situation,” she said.
    Replying to the same question about collaboration with the business community and the Chamber, Eisenbeisz said he’s open.
    “If we have a business question, we can reach out and talk to the Chamber and see the temperature of its members, and that’s very important for us as we move forward and make decisions, because they hold those keys, and they are the representatives of the business community in town,” Eisenbeisz said. “So I think that’s a key way to continue to collaborate.”

Fishing and the Haulout
    On the future of Sitka’s fishing economy, Eisenbeisz touted the work the Assembly has done regarding the construction of a new marine haulout at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park.
    “Fishing has always been here, and I hope will always continue to be here, not only on the commercial side but on the sport side as well. I think the ability to sport fish king salmon here is why a lot of people live in town,” he said. “The city does contribute to commercial fishing, and needs to continue to contribute to commercial fishing. We fund and maintain one of the largest harbor systems in the state; we are actively working on building a haulout for our fleet. We continue to invest and reinvest infrastructure dollars back into the commercial fishing fleet so that they can be here.”
    Mason emphasized both the financial and subsistence importance of fisheries.
    “Fishing is a cornerstone. It supplies people with actual food on their table, and I think that’s an incredibly important role,” she said. “As Stephen said, we have industry that puts money into the city coffers, and that’s important to the city. But again, as I said earlier, we have a fish economy. People exchange fish, and that is part of a trust and a community building thing.”
    She supports the city’s effort to work on the financing and construction of a haulout.
    She said the facility “could be both an asset economically, but also a huge boost to the fishing fleet that is here. I think there’s a lot more that we can do in terms of making that fishing fleet ready for a new age, when the price of fuel makes it almost impossible to fish the way we know.”

Term Limits
    Talking about the possibility of term limits for municipal offices, Eisenbeisz said it’s “something to consider.”
    “Someone with tenure brings a lot of knowledge and experience. However, I think at some point they should probably not serve forever,” he said. “I don’t want this to be a lifetime opportunity, but that’s also in the hands of the voters. So the voters would decide whether someone has had too long of a tenure.”
    A model of governance that would include a broader scope of people, Mason said, might be more ideal.
    “The Swiss do a lot of really interesting things electorally,” Mason said. “And one of those things is they kind of force everybody into public service. And I think that it would be really valuable for everybody to take a turn in making decisions for others. I think it’s a really important skill set to develop, and it changes your perspective... I’m a participatory democracy person. I think that you run the risk with very long term limits of entrenching particular ways of doing things that will increasingly favor the people who are in charge.”
    Early voting is now open at Centennial Hall from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each weekday until the election, as well as Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. On election day, Oct. 1, voting will be open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
    There are four candidates for the two open seats on the Assembly, but only one candidate has filed for school board, which has two three-year seats to be filled. The election code permits write-in candidates to be elected, but a write-in vote will not be counted unless the candidate has registered with the city in advance of the election as an official write in candidate. The period to register as a write-in candidate will close Sept. 26.
       The Oct. 1 ballot also has two ballot propositions, both of which would make technical changes in the city charter, one regarding Sitka Community Hospital, which has been sold to SEARHC, and the other making the rules for voter recall of an elected official comply with those in state law.

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