Dear Editor: This coming Tuesday’s City and Borough of Sitka Assembly meeting will be addressing the issue of the further attempts by Chris McGraw and co. to establish a bus depot in a small mixed-use neighborhood, adjacent to the school.
At the recent Planning meeting this plan was voted down. There was 100% negative reactions to it. Now they are trying again.
People who live nearby, for example in the Monastery Street cottages, will be negatively impacted by breathing in the particulate matter emitted by all the bus traffic. Given the zero-lot-line, Tommy Joseph who has a carving business from his home, will be unable to avoid breathing the fumes.
Children in the nearby school ... those little lungs endangered by the constant shuttling of buses bringing more and more cruise ship passengers to town and dropping them off there, is that what we want?
We already have a perfectly good location for deploying the buses, it is called Harrigan Centennial Hall.
Consider the demolition of a beautiful brick building and the Crescent Court Apartments where people, Sitkans, have their homes to create more ‘‘shopping possibilities.’’ To create a ‘‘cattle chute’’ where tourists are funneled past businesses owned or controlled by McGraw.
Where will the evicted residents of the Crescent Court Apartments go? Will they join the ranks of the housing- challenged in Sitka? We all know of the housing problems in town. To make it worse, to remove low-cost housing and replace it with rows of shops seems to me counterproductive.
Seems rather cruel, in fact.
The cruise ship industry is what it is, many people make money, but not necessarily locals. Have we not all seen the tacky fur jockstrap in the window of a main street shop, which is empty all winter long?
Many local Sitkans are negatively impacted.
Tourists come and go, and we might rather have them, in smaller numbers, visit a small friendly town instead of a congested fleece-the-tourist sideshow.
Smaller tourist numbers mean increased interpersonal positive interactions between visitors and ... us.
Personally I love having meaningful interactions with visitors on a one-to-one basis.
Seasonal workers come for the summer then go, and lifelong Sitkans are left struggling.
It is my hope that the plan for a bus depot to be created downtown will not be permitted. Gunalchéesh,
Nancy Metashvili, Sitka
