Ferry Funding Loss
Dear Editor: The headline Monday was: “Alaska Ferries Losing Naturalists to Fund Cuts.’’ On Wednesday it was: “Parnell Goes to Europe to Study Oil, Gas Taxes.’’
The governor deprives travelers of the popular naturalists for their ferry trips, then heads to Europe for 10 days? The story says each naturalist costs the state $5,000 per year. The state wants to replace them with computers and pamphlets on the ferries. So the next time the governor rides the ferry he will have to look on a computer to find out what species of whale he sees, or learn about the geology or history of the places he passes. Couldn’t he have studied European tax policy online, or from a magazine? That would have saved the state a lot of money. Of course we all could use a vacation – but the governor shouldn’t have charged his to the state’s ferry budget.
Michael Litman, Sitka
Merit Buck Auction
Dear Editor: Mt. Edgecmbe High School’s Merit Buck Auction is such an exciting event. It is a fun-filled, exciting auction that brings smiles and joy to our students, and our last auction was yet another success.
I would like to thank the following businesses for their continuous generosity and support: Bear Country Gifts, Ben Franklin, the Cellar, Agave’s Restaurant, Brenner’s Fine Clothing and Gifts, Stereo North, Seaside Barber, Bev’s Flower’s and Gifts, the Chocolate Moose, Old Harbor Books and My fAEvorite Store. Again, thank you for your donations and your support.
We also have many supporters of the auction on our campus. Without your help, extra time, or care, this event couldn’t have happened: Katie Mulligan, Diane Weaver, Alice Cooper, Peachie Wolfe, Ivy Lanthier, Shirley Perkins, Tracy Dupee, Grace Gillian, Rose Demmert, Mr. Bernie Gurule, Nurse Kathy Eggen and Kari Lundgren – thank you.
Carl Blackhurst, you are a great auctioneer. Thank you, everyone, for your support. Your kindness makes this auction amazing.
Blossom Twitchell
Mt. Edgecumbe High School
Home/School Coordinator
Pitching Mound
Dear Editor: Everything we do at Sitka High comes back to teamwork. Sitka High School would like to thank the Alaska Trooper Academy for their help moving the baseball pitching mound. As we all know Wednesday was a great day if you are a duck, but for the rest of us it was a bit wet.
The Troopers came out (men and women) to help Mr. Vieira and his team disassemble the pitching mound in order for the Sitka Softball Tournament to commence on Thursday night. This is another excellent example of our community stepping up to lend a hand to assure that good things happen for our students. Many thanks to everyone that was there to help and especially our Troopers in Training.
Dr. PJ Ford Slack, Principal,
State Champion Lady Wolves
Softball Team,
Coaches and Mike Vieira,
Sitka High School
Harbor Project
Dear Editor: In 2007, a well-designed project to change the two unsafe and difficult-to-use parking lots at Crescent Harbor was presented to the Assembly. Harbor patrons had been asking for this much-needed project for years. The project goals were to create an ADA stall, improve traffic flow and safety (backing out into the street was one concern), hide the two unsightly dumpsters, getting rid of the standing water (measured at four inches at times) and to increase the parking by nine stalls in one lot and five in the other.
Unfortunately for us harbor and green-strip users, a loud and vocal group came out and protested the removal of ANY green. Not one of the protesters cared about the site improvements nor the ADA stalls. No concern was shown for the safety of the users. All they were concerned about was losing a little GREEN.
One comment to me as to why this project should not go through was, “I recently read an article that said when a person can look outside and see green their productivity improves.” Say WHAT? We are surrounded by millions of acres of GREEN! Land use also became an issue that we could have worked around.
The present configuration of the parking stalls take up 7 percent of the 126,324 square feet of the Crescent Harbor Green Strip. The project would have increased that percentage by a meager 2 percent. Such a travesty! Of the $636K for the project, $560K would have come from the Harbor Fund. The picnic shelters at $75K would have come out of the General Fund.
As you are reading this, there is a project under way in the same area called the Sitka Sea Walk. I think this is a great idea and fully support it. The project created necessary jobs for our community at someone else’s expense, the cruise ship head tax. So what’s my point in all this? The parking lot project back in 2007 would have removed approximately 2,700 square feet of GREEN. This Sea Walk project removes approximately 3,960 square feet of GREEN, 46 percent more. Where are all those vocal protesters now?
George Eliason, Sitka
Letter Response
Dear Editor: My friend Mike Svensen is sure right about the water temperature the past couple of years. Holy cow, 41 degrees at the end of April.
From what I read that is in keeping with climate models predicting changes in major current flows like the Japanese current we rely on for spring warming of our coastal waters. Whew! That and a 30 percent increase in ocean acidity in a century! Seems problematic to our future in fishing.
Mike and I share our suspicion of community organizers. My jaw dropped as I watched a lot of us old white working guys grow more and more suspicious of government overreach. Some started a tea party movement of independent thinkers with opinions about how to change things. Didn’t take a minute for the multi-billionaires like the Koch brothers to put community organizers with lots of money on the ground to turn it into a corporate mouthpiece led by Fox propaganda channel. Same thing happens with big environmental movements and aid agencies dependent upon corporate donations to do their work.
We all felt the pain as Exxon did its dirty dealing with a corrupt Supreme Court. Everybody and everything begins to seem tainted and corrupted.
Meanwhile we continue to lose 200 species every day to extinction and more and more people are dropped into poverty and out of the middle class. Our tax dollars go to support wars that even the politicians cease to deny are for the financial aspirations of their lobbyist clients.
There are some huge mines planned up the Stikine, the Taku, and the Unuk rivers, which given B.C.’s record of non-regulation would most likely destroy some of our most important salmon runs with heavy metal contamination. Timber lobbyists continue to argue that industrial clear-cutting of 400-year old-growth is renewable as if they can’t see down from an airplane window, which I guess they can’t from Washington.
My feeling is that scientists and teachers are working people with their sleeves rolled up. My generosity of understanding has trouble saying that of lobbyists and politicians. Mike Svensen is the best dive tender I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I hope my work on his boat has passed muster. I respectfully submit that though we are thinking about the same issues we haven’t yet been able to agree on our conclusions. Let’s keep challenging our beliefs and looking up facts and trying to find agreement.
Spencer Severson, Sitka
environmentalist socialist
