Community Playground
Dear Editor: The Sitka Community Playground volunteer group has been meeting for the past year with the goal of building a new playground at the existing Crescent Harbor playground. The playground was built in the 1970s with the last upgrade in 2000. The playground is no longer safe nor is it ADA accessible. The city had to close the Moller field playgrounds because they were not safe. The Crescent Harbor playground has remained open because our group is actively working on upgrading it. The project was chosen at the Sitka Health Summit in 2011 and 2015. The city Parks and Rec division has listed playground updgrades as a deferred maintenance priority since 2006.
The Sitka Community Playground volunteer group has taken on the task of building a new playground that is physically accessible to all, safe, low maintenance, and one that honors Sitka’s cultural diversity and natural beauty. So far, we have secured the Crescent Harbor site through a public process led by the city and our group, researched playground design firms and other playgrounds in the state, and chosen a local design team led by Monique Anderson. Monique had input from parents, community members, and Sitka kids in the school and during a public design day this past spring. The design is now complete and it is awesome! Check it out on our website.www.sitkacommunityplay.wix.com/home or on our Facebook page: Sitka Community Playground. Our goal is to build the playground in summer of 2017.
Now we have to raise money through grants, awards, and donations and soliciting in-kind contributions. Volunteers will provide much of the labor and support during the build. To do this, we need help. Please consider donating time to raise money or to help build the playground next summer. Our next meeting is Tuesday, July 26, at 6 p.m. in the Sitka Community Hospital classroom (downstairs). If you cannot make the meeting, but would still like to help out in some way, please contact me at 747-1771.
Bridget Hitchcock,
Sitka Community Playground
Budget Deficit, Taxes
Dear Editor: Unsurprisingly, after several utility rate hikes, the recent tax increase proposals have obviously drawn a visceral, negative response. The city’s tactic of focusing on a property tax increase to solve its budgetary woes is too narrow of an approach that unfairly punishes property owners. Rather than create a level playing field where everyone contributes their fair share to the cost of “running the business of Sitka,” the Assembly continues to turn a blind eye to seasonal and short-term renters who pay no property tax yet utilize schools, roads, emergency services, parks and recreational facilities. Punishing homeowners by making them pay a larger property tax, without closing existing tax loopholes for short-term residents, is unfair.
While I oppose any tax increase that doesn’t uniformly apply to any resident of Sitka, it is abundantly clear the City of Sitka needs to address growing budgetary shortfalls. Whether taxpayers realize it or not, state and municipal budgets are nearing crisis levels. Sitka’s budgetary woes are simply a microcosm of broader statewide concerns. Alaska relies on oil tax revenue to fund three-quarters of its state government, the most of any state. The state’s monthly oil revenues have dropped 75 percent since FY2015, with the deficit growing by some $300 million in one three-month period alone. By some estimates the State of Alaska has just enough money, $9 billion, in its rainy day fund to keep an unaltered government afloat for three more years. This means we must find a way to better self-control our municipal budget because local shortfalls are no longer going to be solved by liberal injections of State funds.
The budgetary sins of the past and overreliance on state funds will not be solved overnight nor will they be solved by a single “hail Mary pass” tax initiative. A solution resides in a long-term, multi-faceted approach that includes some combination of sales tax modifications, downsizing city government, more robust tourist tax surcharges, user fees, and perhaps a more palatable property tax. It will also require a collaborative effort between city government and the taxpayer. Until the threat is better managed, it must include a moratorium on capital upgrades and acquisitions to preclude multi-generational fiscal burdens like the Blue Lake Dam, Library, and Centennial Hall upgrades that proceeded to “bricks and mortar” without a complete funding plan in place.
Incumbent in any successful tax initiative subject to the taxpayers’ vote, is a visible matching effort by the city government to reduce its expenses and spending. Accurate or not, most taxpayers believe that city government has become bloated and no longer is a good steward of our tax dollars. It is imperative the city works on reducing the “spending” side of the fiscal ledger as hard as it works the “income” side of the budget. Absent a visible and rigorous effort to reduce the span of city government, any tax increase requiring taxpayer approval is destined to fail.
As a veteran living on a fixed income, I too am no fan of any ill-conceived tax increase. That said, it is clearly time for the city and taxpayers to partner together and work towards closing the budget gap before it reaches a crisis level. Ignoring the problem is no solution.
David Durham, Sitka
