By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Upcoming infrastructure projects, strategic planning, city finances and a host of other topics were in city administrator John Leach’s annual report to the city at Wednesday’s Chamber of Commerce meeting at Centennial Hall.
Leach touched on a wide range of issues – including asset management, electrical generation, sales tax trends, and government transparency – and cited progress on many, in his hour-long address on city government operations.
John Leach (Sentinel File Photo)
With limited resources, he said, many operations boil down to optimization.
“Asset management is focused on optimizing the balance,” Leach said. “That’s the important part (of) the balance between risk, cost and service levels to bring the best value to the citizens of our community. To achieve this optimized balance, the city’s asset management team collaborates to develop a sustainable system that incorporates asset management best practices at every level within the organization.”
Specifically, he cited management of physical assets such as dams, harbors and other infrastructure, rather than fiscal assets. A wide range of infrastructure projects are on the docket, he said.
“We have an airport expansion and remodel, we have the haulout that was approved by a vote of the citizens that’s starting down at the industrial park, a marine service center, bulkhead and seawall.”
He listed other items including changes to municipal trash disposal, the planned seaplane base and a variety of upcoming sewer reconstructions.
Looking back on 2022, he emphasized several completed city projects.
“Highlights from ’22: the critical secondary water treatment plant was successfully brought online, under budget and on time to avoid losing our surface water treatment waiver, a boil water scenario and to allow the critical Blue Lake dam inspection and maintenance to take place,” Leach summarized.
“The Knutson Drive slide repair was completed on schedule and within budget… The Blatchley heat pumps were replaced – that was an emergency project.”
The administrator also highlighted the city’s decision in the fall to undertake a strategic planning process.
“What we wanted to do was identify the mission values and critical strategic initiatives, high level goals and a reporting framework to guide the city’s work over the next five years. The plan was approved by the Assembly in September,” Leach said.
With Sitka’s electrical needs growing, he said a recent federal grant has helped the town look toward the future.
“The expectation for electrical load growth is high, with regular requests for additional home and business services along with the interest in carbon reduction efforts that aim to use renewable hydroelectric power. So for FY22, we were awarded a Department of Energy (Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project) grant… They really came in to help us analyze all of our sources of energy here, how to capture that energy and how to distribute it and use it effectively. Our electrical power right now is 99.8% hydroelectric.”
In addition, the city is conducting a cost-of-service study to evaluate the expense of maintaining electrical power to some harder-to-reach places, he noted.
“That one’s well overdue,” Leach told the Chamber. “Essentially, every single person in the City and Borough of Sitka pays the same electricity rate regardless of how hard or easy it may be to deliver that electricity… We have some island homes that require pretty regular and very expensive repairs.”
The city also has installed wind telemetry equipment on high points near town to gather information on the feasibility of wind power, he said.
On financial matters, the city collected about $80,000 in unpaid sales tax last year, and overall sales tax revenues have risen from the 2019 total of $13.3 million to last year’s $16.4 million, Leach said.
“This was attributable to a strong independent travel season in July through September of ’21. Continued increases in tax revenue on remote sales – it was zero in ’19 – we kicked off that program and it was $1.2 million in ’22,” the administrator said. “And (there was) a rebound in cruise tourism in April through June of ‘22... Our FY22 revenue is still less than what would have been expected by this point if, let’s pretend, COVID didn’t happen. But part of that is inflation. Things are getting more expensive, that drives up the sales tax revenue too.”
Finally, Leach stressed the importance of fiscal accountability in city government.
“Transparency is very, very important to me. So if you go to our website now there’s two tools that are there,” he said. “One of them is Open Finance and the other one is Balancing Act. Open Finance is our way of hoping to engage citizens and increase transparency.”
Both financial tools are posted on the city website homepage, cityofsitka.com, under the “Financial Transparency” tab. Open Finance provides an overview of how the city generates and spends money, while Balancing Act allows Sitkans to comment on specific budget items.
Leach, who became city administrator in 2020, has a degree in operations research from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a master’s in industrial administration from Purdue University.
