No Tax Increase
Dear Editor: Since my retirement from the City and Borough of Sitka’s finance department, I have kept relatively silent regarding the actions of our local government. When I left my position as the tax accountant in 2014 (which I had held for 11 years), I told my co-workers that I could see the writing on the wall. Our administration would soon be looking at ways to increase taxes (whether it be sales taxes or property taxes). I did not want to be a part of that decision so I took another position within the finance department and a year later retired.
Since the hire of a new finance director who then negotiated to become the financial and administrative officer, I have witnessed a drastic change in financial management. This is evident through the failing financial audits and the lack of financial management on the biggest project the city has ever undertaken – the Blue Lake hydroproject. The administration and Assembly has continued to take a blind eye to our community’s financial distress and continued to make decisions that only contribute to it.
Until our city government becomes better at managing its current resources, I will not vote for any increase in the revenue stream. Manage what you have before asking for more money. I am extremely conservative and will always vote for cutting expenses before increasing revenue especially when we can look at the increasing costs of living in Sitka which can be largely contributed to our city government’s unrealistic increase in utility costs over the last several years.
Furthermore, be careful of blind promises. The ballot measure states that you are voting for an increase in property taxes to 8 mills. It does not tie this increase to any promise of reduced sales taxes, a decrease in electric rates, or any other promise that has been discussed. Vote no on Proposition 1 to increase the property tax mill rate. I am a longtime Sitka resident.
Brenda Calkins, Sitka
Library Hours
Dear Editor: In 2010 our Assembly asked the state to give them millions of dollars to build a new library. Let me share their reasons.
The city stated our existing library and services would be fine if it just served the residents of Sitka because the population hadn’t increased here in decades, but the truth was the library was providing free services for thousands of independent and cruise ship travelers, Mt. Edgecumbe High School students, University of Alaska students, seasonal workers, visitors, and state agencies that it was never designed to do. They said it was a hardship to provide the extended evening and weekend hours these non-Sitkans needed without a new library.
If the Assembly cannot provide these students and others the services they promised through extended evening and weekend hours perhaps they should return the monies they received to build the new library so we are not perceived by the rest of the state as slightly dishonest in our funding requests.
Clyde Bright, Sitka
Economic Development
Dear Editor: An economic council held recently in Petersburg seriously discussed a return to reliance on the timber industry. This is a time when the timber industry has relocated to parts of the world where they do not have to observe environmental control, pay fair wages, or worry about safety. The Tongass National Forest is a marginal resource. We impose the costs I just listed. Our old growth has a high ratio of cull material, good only for pulp. Our second growth faces a world-wide glut of second growth. In order to sell our timber, we must do what the Forest Service has always done, cheat the public by selling public timber below market rate. We must subsidize timber giants.
Instead of trying to sell common resources, such as timber and oil, which we must give away in order to milk the royalties and the benefit of jobs, we should capitalize on what we have that is rare and special. That would be abundant hydro power and a high quality lifestyle.
Sitka is ideally situated and prepared for an economic boom. Instead of going backwards to resource exploitation and depletion, we should sell Sitka as the ideal site for clean industries that need abundant relatively inexpensive electricity.
Las Vegas sold itself as the inexpensive and attractive alternative to Silicon Valley, for high tech industries. After several years of relocations, Las Vegas is running out of electrical generation capacity. Solar and wind generation are not taking up the slack. Washington state’s hydro-generation is near capacity. We are one of the few locations in the world with jet service, harbors, the same distance to Asia as from Seattle, and hydro-power in abundance. Add this to our quality lifestyle, and we have an incomparable product to sell.
This can be Sitka’s future There will be some logging in the region. I think we don’t want another polluting pulp mill. It seems that the fisheries are sustainable. But the future is in attracting quality industry, high-tech industry that needs lots of electricity.
Let’s get our sales mentality firmed up, and sell, sell, sell. If Las Vegas could do it, we can do it better.
John Welsh, Sitka
