By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
For the first time since his reelection in November, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan visited Sitka Tuesday, where he said he intends to keep pushing for a resumption of cruise travel this summer.
Sullivan touched on several issues during his two-hour meeting with an audience assembled by the Sitka Chamber of Commerce in Centennial Hall.
He was critical of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he characterized as unresponsive.
“We’re not out of the woods by any stretch, but we have seen on the cruise ship issue just in the last week some progress… The threshold issue on whether we’re going to move on cruise ships this summer is the CDC, period. If the CDC doesn’t move, isn’t more accommodating in terms of recognizing that it’s not March of 2020, but it’s May of 2021. We’ve made huge progress in a whole host of areas, particularly the vaccination issue - it’s going to be a challenge. They have been very difficult to deal with, not responsive at all,” Sullivan said.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan speaks with members of the Sitka Chamber of Commerce Tuesday at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Sullivan was in town for the day visiting with civic leaders and touring the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. Accompanying the senator and his wife, Julie were Dana Herndon, delegation representative from Juneau; and Michael Soukup, digital marketing director. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
On its website, CDC has announced a phased approach to the resumption of cruise travel, including tests of passengers and crew, protection measures, and test voyages.
In a subsequent interview, Sullivan said the coronavirus vaccine is a critical factor in the safe resumption of cruising. He also hoped for health and fiscal considerations to be taken into account.
“The biggest thing that’s the game changer is the vaccination rate… A complete shutdown in this sector of the economy is just not sustainable… They (CDC) admit to me that they’re almost exclusively focused on the health related to the virus. OK, they’re scientists, that’s their job. My point has been you have to be also related to the health impacts of the dramatic economic impacts,” he said.
Hoping to override the CDC’s conditional sailing order, Sullivan co-sponsored a bill in April which would have ended the order. The bill is stalled in the Senate.
But the CDC is not the only obstacle keeping cruise vessels out of Alaskan waters. The closure of Canadian ports to large passenger vessels is another barrier.
The senator hopes to bypass federal legislation that requires foreign flagged ships sailing within the United States to make a foreign port call.
“We haven’t given up yet on the cruise ship season… We’re pressing this issue on the Passenger Vessel Service Act, trying to get it changed: a short-term suspension of it passed into law. As you know passing a law on anything isn’t easy,” Sullivan said after the meeting. “And if that doesn’t work, our Plan B is to work on what would be a technical compliance where you could pull a ship into Canada that would comply from a technical perspective with the PVSA and come up here. The closing of all Canadian ports and borders to the United States is obviously becoming a very challenging situation.”
During his wide-ranging presentation, Sullivan also expressed concern about ocean acidification and hoped that trans-boundary mining disputes between the U.S. and Canada would be resolved. He said he’s pushing for a new Coast Guard vessel in Sitka.
The senator touted his work regarding the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, signed into law at the end of 2020.
Sullivan described the bill as “the most comprehensive ocean cleanup legislation ever.”
The bill includes an assessment of waste presently in the ocean, establishes a marine debris foundation, and began a competition “to encourage technological innovation with the potential to reduce plastic waste, and associated and potential pollution, and thereby prevent marine debris.”
While the senator stressed the importance of clean oceans, he pointed blame away from the United States.
“Ten rivers in Asia and Africa account for close to 70 percent of all the plastic debris in the ocean in the world. A solvable problem,” he said.
The senator also fielded comments from local businesspeople.
Speaking from the crowd, Chris McGraw, owner of cruise-dependent Halibut Point Marine, said any sort of cruise resumption would be welcome, even if cruise numbers were limited or the season shortened.
“With no cruise ships, our revenue has been zero for the last year and our first ship would have been last Thursday. Kind of looking forward to this season – it would be great if we could get ships mid-July at this point, because something is better than nothing… Anything that can be done to get the ships sailing again, because obviously if the ships aren’t sailing anywhere out of the U.S. they’re not making money,” McGraw said.
Speaking for the Sitka Economic Development Association, Garry White summarized the economic toll the pandemic has wrought on Sitka. He noted the loss of a cruise season hit Sitka harder than it hit Alaska as a whole.
“Our average was about negative 15 percent jobs. We got hit 15 percent, the state got hit 9 percent. If we look at the wage numbers, Sitka lost a little over $20 million in wages between January and September once again. We lost 12 percent of our average wages coming in, versus the state lost 3 percent, so we got hit harder there… In business sales, we’re estimating we lost about $60 million coming in, which is about a 15 percent drop from before 2019, so that’s a huge hit. A majority of it is due to having no cruise ships,” White told the senator.
Unemployment insurance claims also went through the roof.
“Total unemployment insurance payments in 2019 we had $215,276 that went out in payments. Last year it was $7.6 million. So it completely skyrocketed. Unfortunately, that hit more of the lower income folks that were unemployed,” White reported.
The economic ripple effects also hurt Sitka Tribe of Alaska, Economic Development Director Camille Ferguson said. She said Tribal Enterprises had big plans for the summer of 2020, ranging from dancing to tours.
“The dancers were not hired, the buses remained parked, the Naa Kaa Hidi convention center was pretty much closed because of capacity… The conference which was going to kick off in three weeks (in the spring of 2020) had all the speakers lined up, money raised, community buy in, didn’t happen,” Ferguson said. The recession also led to furloughs at the Tribal Tannery.
“What we had envisioned was contributing almost $2 million of funding that would circulate around our community providing jobs,” she summarized. “I hate to say it but it didn’t happen.”
The lack of cruise traffic shuttered a small art shop as well, Tracie Harang told Sullivan. She owned Cabin Fever Gallery and Gifts until the shop closed in late 2020.
“Unfortunately we did close our store December 31. We are a small artist co-op… Because of everyone closing down and no passengers then our numbers from January to August compared to 2019 we were down 88 percent, which is just tough,” Harang said.
Owner of the Beak Restaurant Renee Trafton expressed concern about the local labor pool.
“I had to let all my staff go… Labor is one of my higher costs, my restaurant is gratuity free, so we start at $15 an hour,” Trafton said.
She noted that if the minimum wage was higher, people would find it easier to pay bills and be more willing to work.
“Something that I worry about in the future is the pool of people who will work for $15 an hour out there, because I had a couple employees who left Alaska in the spring. And I hired high school kids and they’re leaving also. And I don’t find there is a very big labor pool here, and if the minimum wage was higher as well it would be easier for people to pay their bills. I have some people say it’s their second job. It’s just hard,” she said.
The senator asked Trafton if her workers were not returning because they preferred to be on unemployment, but she said that this is not the case.
“We’re hearing from some of the businesses throughout the state that the extended unemployment benefits that go through September that they’re having hard time getting the employees that were temporarily furloughed to come back, are you seeing that at all?” Sullivan inquired.
“It hasn’t been, people have gotten different jobs and people have left town. But I haven’t experienced that,” Trafton answered.
Like Trafton, Beverly Caldwell, of the Longliner Lodge, said hiring has been a challenge recently.
“Hiring help was almost impossible, but the good part is we’re fortunate to live in this city, and we are thankful for that,” Caldwell said.
Looking forward, she told the senator she simply hopes to keep the business going.
“I’m concerned about how long this is going to go on… I’m just hoping we can stay alive on this,” she said.
Sitka Sound Science Center executive director Lisa Busch said the center adapted to difficult circumstances, but also had to let some employees go.
“We did more with less. We are a hands-on kind of place… but we pivoted quickly to offer online content for the school district for science in the schools, we also created a science-on-the-go for youth van, so we could drive vans into low income neighborhoods and deliver science education to kids who normally wouldn’t have gotten it… Keeping our employees healthy was extremely challenging, especially our essential workers,” Busch told Sullivan. Like many of the others at the table, Busch said the federal Paycheck Protection Program helped carry her organization through 2020.
She noted that without cruise passengers, the aquarium hasn’t been a money maker.
Busch also warned that a new wave of the pandemic could trigger a surge in psychiatric problems.
“That’s the next epidemic for Alaska and the country, it’s going to be a big side effect of COVID,” she said.
Sullivan agreed.
“I totally agree with your assessment on the mental health next wave. Julie (his wife) and I were at the hospital Bartlett (in Juneau) yesterday and you can’t believe the numbers of mental health challenges that have spiked among adolescents. It’s really, really shocking,” he said.
Speaking from the city’s perspective, planning director Amy Ainslie talked of federal support with hydropower and a marine haulout.
“Our main focuses are supporting and stimulating the economy and keeping the cost of living down. And federal assistance in those particular areas would be helping out with the Green Lake project, helping with sustainable and locally produced, hopefully less expensive energy for our residents and other investments in the working waterfront in Sitka,” Ainslie said.
President Biden is currently advocating a $2.25 trillion infrastructure bill that would fund a wide range of projects from housing and low-carbon energy to roads and ports.
While Sullivan said he supports infrastructure spending, he didn’t offer support for Biden’s proposals.
“As it stands it’s called infrastructure, but there is a lot in there that is not considered infrastructure. You can’t just paint a label on something and magically it becomes infrastructure,” he told the Sentinel.
Instead, he hoped for a much narrower view of what constitutes infrastructure. Senate Republicans have introduced a bill which is about a quarter the size of Biden’s plan. The senator wants a bill to include permitting reform for construction projects too.
“It’s ports, harbors, bridges, roads, broadband, pipelines. That’s pretty much what we’re focused on… It sounds like a wonky issue, but it’s permitting reform. You could have a $5 trillion infrastructure bill and if you don’t streamline and bring certainty and predictability to how we permit infrastructure projects, it doesn’t matter,” Sullivan said.
For either bill to pass the Senate, bipartisan support would be required or the Democratic majority could pass its own legislation with just 51 votes through budget reconciliation.
