Yes to Prop 2
Dear Editor: I support Proposition 2 to invest in a boat haulout at Gary Paxton Industrial Park. I am a boat owner with a lifetime of experience living on, fishing off of, and working on our family boats starting when I was 4 years old.
I, like a lot of boat owners, have experienced emergency situations where hauling out was necessary for immediate repairs. A working haulout is essential infrastructure to support our fishing, subsistence, liveaboard, guiding and recreational vessels.
It was wonderful that we had private enterprise providing that infrastructure but without it the city needs to help. I just read a long letter in opposition to Proposition 2 where the writer says “using funds we already have to build a yard is respectable and obviously astute.” But then he goes on to claim he can’t support it because we don’t have “full knowledge of the details.”
I attended a boatyard tour where numerous questions about details were asked and responded to in great detail. As a longtime successful fisherman and fisheries development planner, and innovator I understand that a secret to success is often to be “solution agnostic,” to be open to adaptation and change as your project, your idea, matures and blossoms.
I believe a lot of good work has been done by city and local maritime industry leaders with more to come. Please vote for Proposition 2.
Eric Jordan, Sitka
Boatyard Support
Dear Editor: I own and operate a welding shop here in Sitka. I’ve been professionally working on boats here in town for the past 20 years.
I got involved with the haulout a little over two years ago at the exact time Lee Hanson was given the old pulp mill dock at the GPIP park. I contested the city giving him the dock because I knew the city would need a new vessel haulout and the dock was the perfect location for a new travel lift slip. I have no problem with Hanson owning the dock as he does a great job in the salvage business. However, he is ill informed to think that there isn’t a plan for the haulout at Sawmill Cove. In fact, there are multiple plans.
The city has been looking at the GPIP for a new vessel haulout for a long time. If you’re interested in seeing the history of the decisions and studies, please log into Sawmillcove.com. All of the GPIP meetings are recorded on this site along with maps, appraisals and mission statements for the park. If you read through these meetings, you will see that the city paid for a study to determine the value of building a vessel haulout at the industrial park. This study surveyed vessel owners and businesses throughout Sitka, and compared other haulouts in Southeast Alaska. The study concluded that if there was only one haulout that it would pay for itself on operating revenues alone. Keep in mind that this study was done when Halibut Point Marine was still operating their boatyard.
There is also another plan designed by Silver Bay Seafoods for a haulout. They proposed to build a vessel haul out long ago in exchange for the right to purchase some of the property. This plan didn’t materialize due to potential conflicts with other land and business owners.
The third design that I can reference is a PND engineering design for a travel lift pier near the NSRAA hatchery along Sawmill Creek. We also have a design from PND for a ramp type haulout near this location. The city paid good money for this PND haulout design and cost estimate. You can find the PND design and cost estimate on the Sawmillcove.com. The city contracted PND engineering for the design and cost estimate because it was clear that eventually the cruise ship dock was going to choke out the boatyard and we would need a well-researched plan on how to move forward with a new boat yard facility.
The last few years have been hard on the state budget as well as Sitka. The city decided to see if a private investor could build the yard. No private businesses stepped forward to make it happen. Instead, local fishermen, fishing organizations, and marine professionals (myself included) saw the problem, formed a Sitka Community Boatyard group, and invested our own time and money in designing, creating a business plan, and funding a new yard.
We paid an engineering firm and pile driving company over $40,000 to engineer a haulout and draft an environmental building permit to meet Army Corps of Engineer requirements. We decided that we needed to spend the money for the design to get an accurate quote for the construction of the piers as well as satisfying potential lenders.
While designing the boat haulout, wash pad, and travel lift runway, we drew on past studies that the city conducted at GPIP to construct the industrial dock and permit Silver Bay Seafood’s bunkhouse. The city has conducted extensive bathymetric surveys and core samples of the bottom to aid in driving pilings, in addition to a base line environmental study.
The city also paid an attorney to develop a lease and operating agreement for a shipyard operator. In sum, the city has conducted extensive research, and invested in both engineering and business planning – as has the Sitka Community Boatyard group.
After designing the haulout and getting revised quotes, our boatyard group realized we could not afford to build the haulout infrastructure for the four million quoted by the construction company. Because we did not own the property we could not borrow against the value of the land, nor could we protect our investment in constructing haulout infrastructure on land we didn’t own. That is why we reluctantly stopped our efforts to build the yard and why expecting private enterprise to construct the boatyard on city land is uneducated and unreasonable. That said: we want this land to stay in city ownership because then the land will remain a haulout/boatyard to serve our community, but retaining city ownership means the city has to invest in building the yard or Sitka will not have a yard. It’s that simple.
That is how we have ended up with the Proposition 2 – the city plan for a shipyard at GPIP. It’s good plan and the right time. Ten years of design and engineering is enough.
A lot of people have devoted thousands of hours to make sure that Sitka has a haulout, regardless of who runs or operates it. I personally have given all my free time to this cause in the last two years and have offered my knowledge and experience to anyone interested in the history, design, engineering and business of building a haulout and boatyard here in Sitka. I support Proposition 2 and I hope Sitka voters will turn out to show overwhelming support.
Jeremy Serka,
Sitka Custom Marine
Supplies to Ukraine
Dear Editor: Sitka School District’s former music teacher John DePalatis is getting needed medical supplies into Ukraine.
John works with his Ukraine friend Julia, a former flight attendant turned military medic for the war.
To learn more, Google ‘‘John and Julia save.’’
Spike and Jean Arnold, Sitka
Vote for Dr. Wein
Dear Editor: As the day approaches to vote for our new Assembly members and propositions, I would submit the following for your readers to consider concerning candidate Dr. Richard Wein. Dr. Wein has served our community for decades in his lifelong career as a brilliant surgeon, and more recently as an Assembly member, where often he stood alone bucking the tide.
When there is continual ‘‘unanimous’’ voting on the Assembly, one must ask if anyone has done their own research on the issue at hand. Dr. Wein has a proven track record for having researched items extensively, and come to conclusions that would only protect, promote and benefit our community to which he is devoted as a public servant. Not only was he well researched and thoughtful as an Assembly member, but he returned faithfully to almost every Assembly meeting as a ‘‘person to be heard,’’ to present his findings to those seated on the Assembly as a concerned citizen in hopes that his voice might be heard by the decision makers.
Our Assembly desperately needs a diversity of representation, and not just ‘‘business as usual,’’ as the City and Borough of Sitka rolls on with the unaddressed massive debt due to the Blue Lake Dam project, and the new expenditures that continually crop up. Yes, Dr. Richard Wein is fiscally conservative which is welcome to me, during these unstable economic times in which we are living.
Dr. Wein is not ‘‘against’’ the shipyard, rather ‘for’ it with needed stakeholders financially committed to this project prior to allotting the Sitka Community Hospital proceeds ($8 million) towards this much-needed addition to our economic infrastructure. He understands that $8 million, although a lot of money, is not enough to bring the project to fruition, leaving the city and taxpayers scrambling to make it happen. I believe Dr. Wein will collaborate heartily with community members to secure those stakeholders for this project. Dr. Wein’s highly educated perspective is always fresh and new, as he does not belong to any particular persuasion, and has no self interest, but rather presents an unbiased, objective, open-minded stance on any issue that may come before the Assembly for the betterment of Sitka. I have also appreciated Dr. Wein’s humorous anecdotes, his words of wisdom from his life well-lived, his mental acuity and his precise detail-oriented orations, while I listen to the Assembly meetings on KCAW. Please vote for Dr. Richard Wein, and let’s get Sitka back on solid financial ground.
Thank you for your consideration.
Karen Lucas, Sitka
