All-Star Tourney
Dear Editor: Sitka Little League recently hosted a 9-10 year old All-Star Tournament at Moller Field. Despite all the rain, it was a fun weekend of baseball! Sitka competed against strong teams from Juneau and Ketchikan.
We would like to thank SEARHC for sponsoring this tournament. We appreciate their generous support. This event was also made possible because of the tremendous support from so many in the community including Twila Keaveny and the Community Schools staff and the following local businesses that supported this event through generous donations: Baranof Island Brewing Company; Sea Mart Quality Foods; AC Lakeside; Big Blue Fisheries; Westmark Sitka; Fish Eye Coffee and Common Grounds.
The tournament was held on Moller Field thanks to the efforts of Brandon Marx securing funding from Silver Bay Seafoods for a new pitching mound. Alaska Marine Lines donated the shipping and the Sitka High girls softball team provided bases and fencing for the field. Volunteer umpires were Keith Perkins and Woody Woodmark.
Many thanks also to the players’ parents for making this tournament possible for these young players.
Thank you, Sitka, for supporting youth sports!
Sitka Little League
Vehicle Tax
Dear Editor: ‘‘Sitka Officials Seek $100/Year Car Tax.’’ This official headline is deceiving compared to the content of the article, it probably should read car tax is increased at a variable rate depending on what you own.
It looks to me like our city fathers is once again scrambling to get money without regard to whom they are getting it from.
The variable rate which they want to charge is supposed to be according to size and use as it appears in the paper. But as we all know, the damage from a motorcycle driving down the road cannot be measured so that knocks off the $50 they want to charge for them.
As far as noncommercial trailers, approximately 50 percent of all the trailers and Sitka get used once or twice a year. This means instead of receiving a tax for these items, people will get rid of them and the city will not even get the property tax for them.
Even the other 50 percent do not use the roads more than a couple times a year to the penalty for them is too high – $200 noncommercial vehicles, this arbitrary decision to charge people for the right so own a vehicle is insane. I’m assuming that according to the article the city wants to charge people who use the road for the maintenance of the road. If that is the case, the only fair way to charge is for the amount of mileage put on each vehicle and the size of the vehicle and the weight it carries to determine the amount of damage they do to the road.
A three-cylinder car weighing 1,500 pounds driven three miles to work and three miles back per day does not cause as much damage as a dump truck carrying 60,000 pounds driving from the gravel pit to its destination once.
According to this article, all the funds generated from vehicles that use the road should come from commercial vehicles carrying great weight. This is all fine and good until you realize that these commercial vehicles are carrying products for you and me.
The owners of these vehicles are going to pass the expense directly to you and me and this charge is going to limit or eliminate the products we buy. So now to make a few dollars on the road we have eliminated the property tax for owning the vehicles. We have eliminated the sales tax for the materials these vehicles carry, and we have eliminated the growth of the individuals buying these materials. Have our city officials really taken our best interest at heart, or are they stabbing at the dark hoping to sensationalize the article in the paper to make them look good? This is up for you to decide, sometimes a third-party looking in from the outside is able to see the forest for the trees.
Robert Gateway and Brian Bickar,
Sitka
Donation Thanks
Dear Editor: Sitkans Against Family Violence would like to thank Sitka Community Schools for several donations we received recently. Two groups of young students in the Ventures program baked cookies and cupcakes, sold them, and chose to donate the considerable earnings to SAFV. Besides that, our residents received a huge pan of pancakes and sausages just in time for a wonderful breakfast.
We want to thank Ms. Alarcon and her students, Mira Mayo Davidson, Kaiya Tugman, Gemma Diehl, Morgan Crenna, Banyan Mayo, Abby Ward, Jade Kubik, Kaylen Tubman and Henry Ward for their generosity, dedication and hard work.
We are impressed that Community Schools offers opportunities where students can practice altruism and learn the pleasures of giving. We are deeply moved that they picked SAFV. On behalf of the children and women who reside here we thank them from the depth of our hearts.
Martina Kurzer for
Sitkans Against Family Violence
Staff Members
Caroline’s Carts
Dear Editor: We would like to thank all of the people who helped make the Wash Away Hunger event on Saturday successful. We were able to collect over 250 pounds of food for the Salvation Army and enough money to purchase 1 Caroline’s Cart! A special thank you to the Sitka Fire Department, especially Chief Miller, Assistant Chief Stevens, and engineers Snowden and Ranke for helping us get organized and they even helped wash cars!
Our goal is to purchase three carts (one for each grocery store!) so we are still looking for donations. We will be at Super Saturday, July 26, at the Fire Department with Girl Scout cookies!
Thanks again for helping with this important project.
Allison Winger
and Ariana Strickland
Girl Scout Troop 4140
The Prudent Alaskan Oil Man
By Sen. Bert Stedman
Alaska State Legislature
During legislative deliberations, advocates of the Senate Bill 21 oil tax consistently used North Dakota as an example of the ideal tax regime that Alaska should emulate. We were told that because of North Dakota’s tax structure they are more competitive than Alaska resulting in huge increases in industry investment and rapid increases in production. If Alaska would just lower its tax to be more aligned with North Dakota, we would also benefit from rapid increases in investment and production. However, the oil boom in North Dakota, along with Texas, is a result of the advancement of fracking technology that releases hydrocarbons previously trapped in shale rock and the private land ownership of the surface and subsurface. This boom is not tax driven.
In 1830, Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Samuel Putnam established the Prudent Man Rule, a legal foundation for professional financial management that has been a guiding fiduciary principle in our country for nearly 200 years. Stemming from the case Harvard College v. Amory, Justice Putnam’s Rule states, “All that can be required of a trustee to invest is that he shall conduct himself faithfully and exercise a sound discretion. He is to observe how men of prudence, discretion and intelligence manage their own affairs, not in regard to speculation, but in regard to the permanent disposition of their funds, considering the probable income, as well as the probable safety of the capital to be invested.”
The State of North Dakota levies a combined production and extraction tax of 11.5 percent on the gross value of oil at the wellhead. In addition, the individual landowner, as the owner of the subsurface resource, negotiates a private royalty payment that averages 20 percent on the gross value of oil. But in Alaska, the citizens of the state own the subsurface resources collectively and the Alaska State Legislature has the constitutionally mandated fiduciary duty to set a fair sale price for public resources.
Referring back to almost 200 years of Judge Putnam’s Prudent Man Rule, I assure you that the prudent North Dakota farmer would never intentionally sell his hydrocarbon resources for less than the going rate, nor should Alaskans as owners of Prudhoe and Kuparuk - the two largest conventional oil fields in North America.
So how does Alaska’s net tax and royalty regimes compare to North Dakota’s gross tax and royalty system assuming the same number of barrels produced? In fiscal year 2013 (the last full year under the ACES oil tax), Alaska’s tax and royalty generated $763 million more than we would have under North Dakota’s tax and private royalty regime.
Now that ACES has been replaced with Senate Bill 21, using fiscal year 2015 forecasts (the first full year under the new Senate Bill 21 oil tax), Alaska’s tax and royalty will bring in $1.5 billion less than if we had North Dakota’s tax and royalty. Since the goal of Senate Bill 21 was to make Alaska a more competitive place to invest by lowering our tax rate to something comparable to North Dakota, we missed the mark by $1.5 billion. In addition, North Dakota hasn’t provided fiscal incentives for the oil industry since 2004, whereas the per barrel credit in Senate Bill 21 is projected to average $6 per barrel produced at a cost to Alaskans of $953 million in fiscal year 2015 alone. That equals an effective tax rate of 21.9 percent, well below the 35 percent base tax rate that supporters of Senate Bill 21 want you to believe is what the industry pays.
Furthermore, the fact that no incremental year after year sustained production increase is expected is a substantial deviation from what the Senate Bill 21 supporters were promised.
The prudent Alaskan man or woman would never accept the terms in Senate Bill 21 in setting the sale price of their subsurface oil. It’s up to you, the owner, to go to the polls on Aug. 19 and tell your government whether or not you believe we’re selling your oil for a fair price. A “no” vote on Proposition 1 will retain the Senate Bill 21 oil tax and a “yes” vote will repeal Senate Bill 21. As for me, I am voting “yes”.
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(Sen. Bert Stedman represents Senate District Q in the Alaska State Legislature. He is the recent past chairman and a current executive committee member of the Energy Council and also a current member of the National Petroleum Council.)
