By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Assembly has put the rebuilding of the Katlian Street seawall on track with the introduction of an ordinance to match a federal $7.8 million RAISE grant.
The ordinance, which the Assembly approved on first reading last Tuesday, will appropriate $2.1 million as the city’s share of replacing the sheet steel retaining wall at the Marine Service Center and the general purpose deep water dock next door. The project also calls for replacing the two-ton crane at the dock.
The city received word in August that it was successful in its third bid for the competitive federal RAISE grant, totaling $7.8 million, which requires a 20 percent match.
“We earned that RAISE grant and now it’s time to true up on the match money we approved through resolution,” City Administrator John Leach told the Assembly.
The ordinance calls for half of the $2.1 million to come from the Harbor Fund and half from the Marine Service Center fund.
“The wall and crane are assets of the harbor fund; however, the integrity of the Marine Service Center building is dependent on this wall as the building has ties that are connected to the wall,” the ordinance says.
The project calls for building a new 356-by-36-foot seawall on the seaward side of the current wall, which is of a similar size, city staff said. The wall was built in 1976 and is now “gone beyond its useful design life,” the grant application said.
“The Marine Service Center cold storage building relies on the port wall for its structural integrity as the land it sits on is held up by the wall,” the staff memo says.
The 2-ton service jib crane, which is used by the fishing fleet and businesses to load and unload products, also will be replaced.
Any revenues that come in above expenses will be shared between the harbor and the MSC fund, said Melissa Haley, city finance director.
“We’ll find an equitable arrangement,” she said today.
There were comments from the public and questions by Assembly members about how revenues would be shared, and how the match would work. Two Assembly members passed on their compliments to city staff for the successful grant application.
The vote was 6-0 to pass the ordinance on first reading.
On another budget item up for first reading Tuesday, the Assembly approved spending $104,918 on a DataCenter Disaster Recovery System, to improve data security in the city’s IT system.
The explanation in the ordinance said it is needed to provide for business continuity and disaster recovery should the DataCenter be rendered inoperable through malware or physical damage, in the event of a natural disaster.
The Assembly approved the ordinance on a 6-0 vote.
The staff memo stressed the importance of having a secure datacenter.
“Whether we are protecting against ransomware or floods, a proper datacenter backup solution should include a full backup of critical systems on a geographically diverse storage device,” said the memo from IT director Grant Turner.
At present the datacenter is backed up locally on the same storage equipment that houses the city’s production data. The city has 20 terabyte storage equipment (“arrays”) to replicate some of the city’s data, “but we are unable to back up everything,” Turner said.
“These arrays are also at end of life and are no longer supported,” Turner said. “Our primary array has 5.1 TB left in space but if we were to fill this up we would have a degradation of performance in access to city data.”
Turner said the appropriation will cover the cost of updated equipment, additional storage, more up-to-date technology, and a separate location for data storage.
“By approving this ordinance we will expand the current 30 TB array to 82 TB and upgrade the processors to the current standards as well as future-proofing it,” Turner’s memo says. “It also includes the purchase of a second 82 TB array to be placed remotely to the primary array for one-to-one backup of city data.”
The memo cites Goal 4 of the recently adopted Sitka Strategic Plan: “Planning and investing in sustainable infrastructure, as well as an action item to maintain service levels.”
The funding in the supplemental appropriation is designed to cover the cost of hardware and software and maintenance of the system for three to five years.
