Bear and human activity triggered a temporary closure of the Sitka National Historical Park today (6-10-26). In a news release, Park Ranger Bethany Cherry said staff shut down trails after visitors failed to keep their distance from a bear.

The release urged visitors to exercise caution as bears roam the park for the salmon runs, and reminded park-goers to stay on trails and be aware of their surroundings.

According to the press release, approaching, following, or chasing bears on land or in the Indian River area will be considered harassment of wildlife.

At this time, the park is open during daylight hours only. The trail between the visitor center bridge and Sawmill Creek Road remains open for pedestrians to use after dark.

Sitka’s police force will see pay increases over the next three years. That’s after the Sitka Assembly on Tuesday (6-19-26) approved the new collective bargaining agreement with the Public Safety Employees Association (PSEA). 

Assistant Municipal Administrator Josh Branthoover said labor negotiations began with the union in late April and the parties reached a tentative agreement in mid-May. 

“Union negotiations are rarely a pleasure, but all things considered, it was a very mutually beneficial session,” he said.

Branthoover said changes include an updated pay scale and leave provisions. Officers will receive a 3% wage increase annually, starting on July 1, 2027. The agreement also includes a one-time $1,000 payment for employees that have been at the Sitka Police Department for at least a year and pass their probationary period, and increases on-call pay to $5 an hour.

“For the first time ever that I’m aware of, step movements were added in,” he said. “This is going to add evaluation-based and time-based step movements with the goal of longevity and rewarding our employees that stay longer.”

Overall, the estimated increased cost to the city is $311,790 over the proposed three-year contract, which starts July 1.

The Sitka Assembly voted to allocate more than $1.1 million in retroactive federal funding to the Sitka School District at its meeting Tuesday night (6-9-26). The money comes from Secure Rural Schools, a program that supports schools surrounded by federal lands which don’t contribute to the local tax base. 

For the past two fiscal years, SRS funding lapsed. Then, last December, Congress renewed the funding for this year, along with retroactive payments for the missed ones. The money can be used for schools or roads, and in years past, the city usually split the money with the district 50/50. But this year, the assembly is going all-in on education. On Tuesday, the assembly voted to dedicate 100% of the federal funding received to schools, adding more than $800,000 to what it has already budgeted for the district. 

In the last budget cycle, some of the federal funding had been earmarked for the Public Works department for street maintenance, but the money didn’t come through until recently. 

“There are needs at the school district, there are needs at the city,” Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said Tuesday. “I could argue the school district’s needs are larger. I could argue our potholes’ needs are larger.”

Municipal Administrator John Leach said the assembly expressed a desire to move the full amount to schools given their precarious funding situation next year. Even with last year’s state funding increase, school leaders say the money hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of education, and declining enrollment over the past two decades has also cut into the district’s bottom line.

The district was already facing a $1-2 million deficit in March, when staff discovered an accounting error to the tune of about $800,000 in unaccounted for expenses. In late April, the board approved a budget that cuts 8.5 positions, half of which are certified teachers. 

Eisenbeisz said this is a one-time disbursement for the district and he doesn’t want schools to rely on the full amount of pass-through funding in future years. He advised the school board to use the money wisely. 

“I understand the crutch is needed to bridge a gap, which may or may not be changing in future administrations at the state, but I don’t want them to become so assured of this and this funding level that that becomes an issue that binds future assemblies and future school boards to an unsustainable level,” he said.

Assembly Member Tim Pike agreed that the move is a rare, one-time occurrence, but said it was important for the assembly to take advantage of this opening to help the district. 

“This is a unique opportunity for the city to support the schools,” he said. “The needs are very large, and the state has not stepped up and done their part. So this is an opportunity to bridge us through into a hopefully better fiscal environment with a governor who would be more amenable to funding education and meeting the requirements for the state.”

Several assembly members said they support a continued push for Secure Rural Schools funding when meeting with Sitka’s congressional delegation in the future, saying the funds are important for both the district and the city.

Ultimately, the assembly voted unanimously in favor of the one-time allocation. It will consider the funding one last time before a final vote on June 23. 

33-year-old Jorge Ruiz-Rivera was convicted by a Sitka jury on three counts of stalking and three counts of violating a protective order earlier this year. 

Over the past two years, Ruiz-Rivera has been indicted several times in Sitka, including once for stalking a couple at their residence, and for attempting to contact someone with a protective order against him after he was in custody. A press release from the state attorney general’s office said that evidence in Ruiz-Rivera’s February trial showed that over several years he “engaged in a course of conduct towards these victims that placed them in fear of death or physical injury for themselves and their family members.”

On May 28, Sitka Superior Court Judge Amanda Browning sentenced him to 8 years and six months in prison. He is currently in custody at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau. 

37-year-old Gilbert Sam Jr. was arrested on May 16 after he allegedly stabbed a man in the neck several times at the Sitka Hotel. The victim, a 25-year-old hotel employee, had invited Sam, who did not work at the hotel, to help him wash dishes. According to court documents, the two men ended up in a heated confrontation, and Sam allegedly stabbed the man in the neck several times. The man was hospitalized but survived.

On May 21, a Sitka grand jury indicted Sam on three counts of felony assault. He is currently in custody at Anchorage Correctional Complex. A hearing in Sam’s case is set for June 17.

Earlier in the month 47-year-old Michael Harrison was charged after he allegedly destroyed a camera in the Sitka jail while in custody. On May 14, a grand jury indicted Harrison on one count of felony criminal mischief. He is currently in custody at Lemon Creek Correctional Center. A hearing in Harrison’s case is set for June 17.

Also last month, a jury convicted a Sitka man on a sexual assault charge. 32-year-old Jordan Schauwecker was indicted by a grand jury in 2022 on seven counts of felony sexual assault. At the end of a weeks-long trial in late May, a jury found Schauwecker guilty of one count of attempted sexual assault.  On May 27, his attorneys filed a motion to acquit him of the remaining charge. Schauwecker is currently in custody at Lemon Creek Correctional Center. A sentencing hearing is currently set for September 18.

Civil cases against the city dismissed, one appealed

Two civil cases against the city were dismissed last month, but one has been appealed.  

Susan Magie, formerly Suarez was severely injured when she was hit by a car while walking on the pedestrian path alongside Sawmill Creek Road in 2023. The driver, Beth Lang, was later convicted for felony assault and reckless driving, and was sentenced to just over seven years in prison.

Magie filed a civil suit against the city and the Sitka Police Department for negligence in 2025. The suit argued that the accident could have been prevented, since police had several prior contacts with Lang for swerving into traffic and losing consciousness behind the wheel. Claims against other defendants in the case, which included former and current police staff and medical personnel, were ultimately dismissed. According to court documents, a resolution was met between Magie and several other parties in March. The case was dismissed in late May following a joint agreement with the city.

Meanwhile, the City of Sitka is still trying to get a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit in which a local man alleges the city violated his First Amendment rights.

Former assembly candidate Austin Cranford filed the case late last summer, claiming the city’s social media policy — specifically the police department’s restriction of comments on its Facebook page — violated his right to free speech.

In his court filings, Cranford says the city allowed a member of the public to comment on a police department post while restricting the comments of others, including himself. Cranford says that deprived him of his civil rights under the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason granted a motion from the city to dismiss the case in late April [4/29], [WEB: finding that the city didn’t violate Cranford’s First Amendment rights when it allowed the “public administrative query” on the police department post], but left an opening for Cranford to file an amended complaint, which he did on May 5th. The city filed a second motion to dismiss in late May, which Cranford is also challenging [5/29].  

Cranford is a former assembly candidate, and the son of former police sergeant Gary Cranford, who sued the city and settled for over $320,000 out of court in 2025. And it isn’t the first time Austin Cranford has challenged the city. He appealed the denial of a public records request he made to the city earlier this year and had two public records appeals in February of 2024 alleging city corruption and claiming his records requests were being wrongfully denied.

It was unclear, as of Tuesday, when Judge Gleason might issue a ruling on the city’s second motion to dismiss Austin Cranford’s First Amendment lawsuit.

The funding comes from Secure Rural Schools, a federal program that supports schools surrounded by federal lands which don’t contribute to the local tax base. 

For the past two fiscal years, Secure Rural Schools funding lapsed. Last December, Congress renewed the funding for this year, along with retroactive payments for the missed years. The money can be used for schools or roads, and in years past, the city has split the money with the district 50/50. Tonight, the assembly will instead consider dedicating 100 percent of the federal funding received for Fiscal Year 26 to schools, adding more than $800,000 to what it has already budgeted for the district. 

In other business, the assembly will consider approving a new labor agreement between the city and the union representing Sitka’s police. Labor negotiations began with the Public Safety Employees Association (PSEA) in late April, and the parties reached a tentative agreement in mid-May. Changes include an updated pay scale and leave provisions. Overall, the estimated increased cost to the city is about $312,000 over the proposed 3-year contract, which starts July 1. 

The Sitka Assembly meets at 6 p.m. tonight. Raven News will broadcast the meeting live, following Alaska News Nightly. 

Some Southeast Alaskans may have only stopped in Yakutat on the “milk run” flight to Anchorage. But just beyond the tarmac lies a birders paradise. From black legged kittiwake’s nesting on the jagged edges of seaside cliffs, to a posse of surf scoters, riding the ocean waves in a v-formation as they forage for mussels off of the rocks below. 

But there is one bird in particular that has motivated a pack of over a dozen visitors across the country to wander through beach dunes early on a Saturday morning, armed with binoculars and zoom camera lenses: the Aleutian tern. 

Nate Catterson is the volunteer guide leading the trip. He began birding  over a decade ago to learn more about his surrounding environment. Since then, he has worked to help track the migration of Aleutian terns, traveling as far as Indonesia. Yakutat is key to that research, since the village is home to the southernmost breeding colony of Aleutian terns. And they are not the only terns that make a pit stop here, with Catterson pointing out an Arctic tern landing a few feet ahead of the group.

The tern birding trip is one of many activities organized by the Yakutat Tern Festival, a four-day gathering organized by the Yakutat Nature Society that brings locals and visitors from all over the country to observe and learn more about terns and other wildlife in the area.

Catterson is an attentive guide, answering questions as they crop up while sharing enough facts about terns to fill up a trivia quiz. His knowledge proves insightful to everyone from beginner birders to cultivated conservationists like Paul Bannick, who is also the keynote speaker for the conference. While Bannick has photographed birds across Alaska, it is his first time in Yakutat. He looks up at the terns and smiles, clearly enchanted by them. 

“To be encountered with the story of a bird that’s traveling 1000s of miles to survive, but also their elegance and resilience and beauty. And they’re small birds, yet incredibly protective of their young and their nests, fearless. All of these things I think offer inspiration,” says Bannick.

Seth Rosenberder is a lifelong birder from Cordova. He initially got into birding under the influence of his maternal grandmother.

“She was enthusiastic about birds. I still have the field guide that she gave me when I was seven years old,” says Rosenberder.

He is attending the festival for the first time with his partner. Rosenberder says he is grateful for the opportunity to connect with birders from all over. 

“We get to come and network with each other, and meet different people and figure out different places that we want to go [birding],” says Rosenberder. “I think the community, the togetherness aspect of it, is important.”

Bannick says that events like the festival play an important role in engaging people with conservation work. That’s especially important for the Aleutian tern population in the United States, which researchers say has had a steep decline over the past few decades. 

“It’s been said that we protect what we love, and we only love what we know,” says Bannick. “If you care about conservation, you should care about creating opportunities for people to fall in love with natural systems and wildlife, and this festival gives people a doorway to walk through and find that love, which can change their life and change the lives of other people that they come into contact with.”

Melissa Allen, of Juneau, is a festival volunteer who experienced that first-hand. She was recruited by the festival’s coordinator after sharing that she was DJing at a different event celebrating Arctic terns. Today’s walk on the beach was Allen’s first time ever seeing an Aleutian tern, adding fuel to her newfound passion. 

“Last year was the first time that I learned about Arctic terns, and I feel like that’s cracked open something in me,” says Allen. “There’s a great blue heron that lives by where I live, and that’s been really special, and the mergansers and the harlequin ducks that have been coming around, I’ve started noticing birds ever since I first learned about terns… I’m not a birder, but I think I’ll get there.”

If Allen does begin to consider herself a birder, she’s with the right crowd. The festival organizers hope to continue drawing attendees, old and new alike, to expand their flock of enthusiastic birders and everyday conservationists. 

It’s early May, and five gray whales weave between the kelp as they feed on herring eggs in the water around our 20-foot inflatable boat. Researchers are taking photos to identify individual whales and measure how much weight they’ve gained since they arrived in the Sitka area about a month ago on their yearly migration north. 

“These whales are foraging, and it’s probably 10, 15 feet of water right there, and they’ve got their heads down in the sediment, probably rolled over on their right sides, and they’re kind of picking off herring eggs,” says Liah McPherson, a PhD student who is leading the ecological data collection for a research project through the Alaska Whale Foundation. 

McPherson and her research team are looking at the relationship between gray whales and herring around Sitka. The baleen whales have had a massive population decline in the past decade, but their presence in Sitka Sound has skyrocketed in recent years, coinciding with the Pacific herring spawn. Now, the team and community collaborators are asking why that is and what the downstream effects might be. 

“My favorite whale, we call him White Spot,” McPherson says, getting ready to launch a drone into the sky above our boat. “This particular animal I’ve seen in 2023, 2024, 2025, and this year, in 2026, we’ve seen him a couple times as well. So it’s like seeing an old friend. It’s like, ‘Oh, there you are. I’m glad you’re still coming here.’” 

The Eastern North Pacific gray whale population has declined by more than 50% — from roughly 27,000 whales in 2015/2016 to 14,000 whales in 2022/2023 — since a marine heatwave known as “the blob” hit the Pacific ocean about a decade ago. Since then, there have been increases in gray whale strandings along the west coast and widespread reports of whales in poor condition. 

But it appears that some whales are adapting to the ecological change by migrating to forage areas where they didn’t used to go. Around 2019, McPherson says, gray whales started showing up in Sitka in massive numbers, just as the herring spawn got underway. 

“They have always kind of had a presence here, but in very small numbers, like five to 10 gray whales,” she says. “And then local community members, organizations, scientists, they really started to see these numbers spike and go up about tenfold. Now we see about 150 to 200, maybe even more, gray whales coming in between March and May to take advantage of herring eggs.”

Gray whales have the longest migration of any mammal, traveling roughly 10,000-12,000 miles every year from their feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas to their breeding grounds off the coast of Mexico. 

Lauren Eckert, a conservation scientist based at the University of British Columbia in the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries and a board member of the Alaska Whale Foundation, says scientists think gray whales are unable to get the food they need to make their long migration, so they’re pivoting to find new foraging grounds and new food sources. 

“The big picture, what we’re seeing is adaptation in a very curious and intelligent species that’s struggling with the impacts of climate change,” Eckert says.

And other new behaviors are being documented. Researchers are starting to see gray whales, who traditionally forage on sea-bottom organisms in the Arctic, , lunge feed on adult fish off the coast of California, and feed on krill swimming through the water.

So, informed by these observations, community experts, Tribal and regional managers, and these researchers are asking: How important are herring, as prey, and Sitka Sound, as a foraging ground, for gray whales? And what impact, if any, are gray whales having on the ecologically, commercially, and culturally important Sitka Sound herring stock?

“These are sort of like canaries in the coal mine, if you will, signaling changing ocean conditions,” Eckert says.

Back on the water, McPherson and her team of interns are continuing their survey using drones, cameras, and suction cup tags to build out their catalog of gray whales coming to Sitka and later extrapolate how much blubber they’re putting on by eating herring eggs.  

Intern Adelle Wilkin climbs a ladder to get a closer look with her camera as a whale comes to the surface, and calls out the names of various seabirds she spots around us. Wilkin is trying to get photos of a specific part of the whale’s side near its dorsal ridge (a series of small bumps between its dorsal hump and tail flukes), which she says makes it look dinosaur-like.

“I started [my work] in acoustics, and I could have gone either way: birds are whales,” she says. “But there is just something about whales. They’re so special and they’re so intelligent, and birds are too, but there’s something about studying such a long-lived group of animals that have so much economic value, and [are] so culturally important in so many places that it had to be whales for me.” 

Wilkin says it’s special to be part of a project that is so important for both humans and whales. 

“Being a part of researching a species as it’s struggling, you are really, really rooting for it, and that’s probably, at the end of the day, why I love gray whales so much,” she says. “They’re resilient and they’re adaptive, and their food is declining in the Arctic, so they feed on fish, and they feed on benthic invertebrates in unique places, and they feed on herring eggs, and they’re just a species that will find a way to survive. They’ll like find a way to make it, which I love about them.”

This is the team’s second full-fledged season out on the water, and even though they’ve only recently started collecting data, Eckert says they’ve had some telling initial findings. 

“We’ve learned very preliminarily that whales, even though they’re in Sitka Sound for a short amount of time, are gaining body mass quite quickly as they’re eating,” she says. “An early estimate puts it at about a bread box worth of body volume a day while they’re in Sitka Sound, each whale feeding. And so that is starting to be the first steps of getting us to understanding how much whales are consuming in order to gain that sort of weight while they’re here, and potentially how important this halfway-to-their-foraging-ground stopover point is for whales that are skinny and struggling.”

The other piece of the puzzle, regarding the impact on Sitka’s herring population, is still far from being figured out. 

Andy Szabo is the executive director of the Whale Foundation. He says the team is slowly building out an energetics model — based on historical whaling data and knowledge about how much energy it takes for a whale to put on blubber — to extrapolate how many herring eggs gray whales are removing from Sitka Sound each spring. In turn, he hopes that data can help inform management decisions moving forward. 

Szabo says they’re studying a really complex system and complex species interaction, and their research and data is one piece of a much larger environmental puzzle.

“There was never any question that the data we were collecting from the moment we started collecting it was important and impactful, and that there was going to be stakes and rights holders who could really use and value the data that are coming from this,” he says. “And that’s not always the case.”

Szabo says they hope to run the study for as long as they have funding and as long as there’s value in the data they’re collecting. 

Law enforcement euthanized two bears in Sitka last week, and attempted to shoot a third early Friday (6-5-26) morning.  

Sitka Police Chief Mike Hall said the two bears from a family of four were killed after they made a meal of livestock in the Shotgun Alley neighborhood. 

Hall said residents reported screaming livestock on Cedar Beach Road at 3:45 a.m. on May 29. Police began searching for the family over the weekend as the bears continued to kill livestock and damage enclosures at various residences. 

On May 31, police officers spotted a male bear by the church on Shotgun Alley while on patrol. It was shot and killed while breaking into a chicken coop, according to Sitka Area Biologist Steve Bethune, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. 

Hall said U.S. Forest Service law enforcement dispatched one of the cubs the following morning on Sawmill Creek Road. 

Bear sightings in the area continued throughout the following week, and on Friday morning, police responded to a bear call at 4:41 a.m. on Sawmill Creek Road. Police shot at the bear as it ran toward tree cover. Hall said they were unable to locate it among the thick brush and it’s unclear if the bear was successfully removed.

For Sitkans with livestock, Hall said to make sure animal feed or waste is properly disposed of. Bethune said residents need to have electric fences around their farm animals.

Bethune said these were the first dispatches of the year. Sitka police are still searching for the sow and second cub. 

The Alaska Legislature is in a special session, and most of the work is being done by the finance committees. The regular session ended on May 20. Independent Representative Rebecca Himschoot of Sitka says she’s glad Southeast’s Senator Bert Stedman, who co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, is part of the special session negotiations. They’re focusing on a gas pipeline, and she says the senator, quote: “has our back.”

Himschoot represents Sitka, Petersburg, and small towns from Yakutat down to Prince of Wales Island – 22 in all. In an interview with CoastAlaska’s Angela Denning, she says there was a lot of teamwork in the regular session. But she’s frustrated that two bills that were supported statewide were vetoed by the governor – the pension bill for state employees and the election reform bill. Now, she hopes the omnibus crime bill does get the governor’s approval.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Himschoot: I have no complaints about how the session went. I think there was a lot of teamwork going on and good alignment between the two bodies for the most part on most issues. What I’m most proud of is the three major bills that passed, and what I’m most frustrated about is that two of those were vetoed and we were unable to override those vetoes. So, the one that I have been deeply engaged with is the Public Pensions Bill, House Bill 78. Since 2006, we have not offered any kind of competitive retirement system for state employees, so those are emergency personnel, teachers, etc. And we finally got a bill across both bodies that would restore a pension that is not, as I’ll just say, not as rich as the pension that a Tier One person would remember getting, or even a Tier Two, which is the pension I’m in. But it would make Alaska somewhat more competitive with other states, and we have a really tight labor market in a lot of those state positions, and I’m, of course, most familiar with teaching. So, anything we can do to make our teaching positions more competitive with other states, we need to do. And we did pass a pension bill, of course, it was vetoed, and we did not have the votes to override that. And the other bill that got vetoed that I think was a really positive bill for Alaska was Senate Bill 64. It took about 10 years to come to agreement across party lines on an elections bill that would tighten up our voter rolls a little bit. We have the automatic enrollment with the dividend, and so we’re over-enrolled, and so looking for ways to clarify who’s actually a voter in Alaska. It also had a ballot tracking system. I was especially excited about having a rural liaison who could make sure that rural voting places were open and had the right ballots. We’ve had issues with that in the recent past, and so when that got vetoed, it was painful to see all that work, I guess, go down the drain. And the third one is the Omnibus Crime Bill, which is really made up of, I think, a dozen different small crime legislation. And so, the big deal in that one is changing the age of consent from 16 to 18, except for close in age exemptions. And that’s been, I think, a tricky thing to do in Alaska, and it’s, you know, it’s a different number in every state, but 16 is on the low end, and so to move that up, I think, will help with some of our high rates of sexual assault and domestic violence. It also makes it so that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is criminalized, and then there are a whole bunch of other little things that are in there, but I think the huge victory in that bill is changing the age of consent. So, I hope it will get the governor’s support.

CoastAlaska: How does that feel to have dozens of representatives across the state affiliated with different parties, and they come to this more or less consensus on months of this work? And then this governor, he’s vetoed a lot more than other past governors.

Himschoot: I think, in short, the word is frustrating. I talked with a gubernatorial candidate who was recently in Petersburg, and I asked if that person would be interested in changing the override threshold, because Alaska has the highest in the nation threshold for overriding on appropriations, and I asked if this person would be interested in lowering that threshold and giving the Legislature more of a say, and I loved the answer, which was, ‘If I’m doing my job, there won’t be vetoes’, and I like that model of governance where the governor is present and actively engaged in helping to form ideas. You know, we talk about the 61st vote, 21 of 40 in the House, 11 of 20 in the Senate, and then you’ve got that 61st vote, and if you don’t have that vote, you end up with all these vetoes, but it’s really difficult to negotiate a direction that would make a bill agreeable to the governor if the governor is not there, and not engaged, and so the short answer is, it’s incredibly frustrating, and it makes it difficult to want to keep working on things, because you just really don’t know what’s going to happen in the end.

CoastAlaska: And kind of along those lines, moving on to education, which is, you know, you, your career was in education for decades.  At this point, we have what the Legislature approved, right? What you, as lawmakers, agreed to. So, first, like, how do you feel about what you agreed to? And then, secondly, we don’t know at this point, right, what the governor might do or not do.

Himschoot: I’m excited about what was approved with the caveat that one-time funding is just generally not as reliable for school districts. So it, you know, it helps in a pinch. No district is unhappy to get the additional support, but it isn’t something you can go to the bank on. You can’t retain programs – you can for a year – but you can’t really build your bench, you can’t really retain teachers and work with them to help them become better teachers, because you just don’t know, you don’t know how long you’ll be able to keep them, so that’s a continuing frustration, but the overall 144 million, if the price of oil stays high, it’s about a third of our budget comes from oil, and so when the prices go up and prices go down, it has a huge impact on what the state can do. But if that price stays solid, it’s, you know, that’s I think it’s about, something like $470 per student when it runs through the formula, so that will be certainly helpful, and the other wonderful thing. House Bill 28 is a bill that does a number of different things in education, but I think the part I’m most excited about is it sets up a formula for funding energy, and so this year I think it’s about 29 million that’s going to go into reimbursing districts for their energy costs, so that’s heat and electricity, and then in the future, the idea, the intent is to fund 100% of those costs, so right now districts are having to pull the money for heating their buildings and the electricity that they use out of the money they get for educating students, the base student allocation, they take that money and they use it for everything in the district, including energy, and this formula allows the Legislature to target one thing and take one thing out of the other funding stream. So, if we’re unable to raise the BSA [Base Student Allocation] significantly, at least more of what we are providing through the BSA will go to classrooms, educators, programs.

CoastAlaska: Is there anything you wanted to touch on for the specific communities that you represent in terms of this year’s session?

Himschoot: You know, there’s $105 million going into the 33 top school major maintenance projects, and that has, I think, funding for two projects in Petersburg, and funding for a project down in Craig, finishing up their middle school remodel, I think, is where that money is going to go in Craig. And then there’s quite a bit of funding for Mount Edgecumbe High School, and I think everybody can agree some upgrades are needed there, and I think Senator [Bert] Stedman did work with Governor Dunleavy to kind of make sure that the money will go where we’re hoping it will go, and then there’s renewable energy projects. I can’t remember how many we funded, but Petersburg, and I should say, the SEAPA third turbine is in that list, so that was something that they were very worried about. That is included. There’s funding for Stratton Library in Sitka to go to the court system. I think a lot of people in Sitka are curious what’s happening with that building. It’s been sitting empty for quite some time, so it’ll be interesting to see how that develops in the future. The Alaska Seafood Marketing [Institute] is going to get 6 million, and then there’s going to be 6 million, also going to the ATIA, the Alaska Travel Industry Association, I think, and so trying to grow markets, right, trying to grow that seafood market and our tourism market as well. So one of the great things about having a little bump in oil prices, as difficult as that makes things for everyday Alaskans, right. Our cost of living is going to go up, and we feel that in individual household budgets a whole lot. But one of the things that I think is good about our budget is we’re trying to – about the Legislature’s budget this year – is we’re trying to target where the needs are. So, while it’s only $1,000 dividend, that is a kind of a historic average, but then there’s also a $200 energy relief check that will go with that. We also are increasing funding to senior benefits and to heating assistance, so we’re trying to make sure that a little bit of that windfall of funding goes to people who most need it. We also expanded the infant learning program. We’re one of the last states to change our criterion from 50% delay to 25% delay. So, until we made this change, an Alaskan toddler, say a two-year-old, has to be functioning at a one-year-old level to get support through the infant learning program. We’ve now made that a 25% delay instead of 50% so kids who really need it will get help sooner. There’s one other great thing for Sitka: if the price of oil stays above $80 a barrel up through the first half of FY 27 – so that would basically be the rest of this calendar year – we’ll be able to finish up with the request for the Mariculture Training Facility that they have there, and say, I think it was half funded last year, and the other half will come this year, if that price of oil stays strong. And then there are some upgrades, also for the Craig to Klawock bike path, the Kake Ferry Terminal Rehabilitation, Kake Road resurfacing, Sitka airport lighting, and the Klawock Master Plan update. So, again, that relief or that help support is being shared across the region. I’m really grateful for that, and then my personal legislation that got through, I had a few get through, but for well over a decade, the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership has said the number one thing the state can do, apart from funding – funding always helps – but apart from funding, the number one thing we can do is provide, create a state council on invasive species, and that bill was a Senate bill that was in companion to my House bill, got through, and so that will be pending with the governor very soon, and that will, I think, you know, we have Elodea and Northern Pike, not where it should be, but for us here in Southeast, it’s definitely going to be green crabs are something that we’re really needing to take a closer look at.

CoastAlaska: All right. Well, is there anything you wanted to touch on with fisheries in the session?

Himschoot: Yeah, something that I’m really excited about is a bill that, when I first came to Petersburg and met with the Petersburg Vessel Owners Association, I was learning my way in fisheries – I still am – but they were very clear that the conflict of interest bill would be beneficial, and that bill passed and was signed into law this year. So that means that when you have somebody with expertise on the Board of Fisheries, they will be able to deliberate, which they couldn’t previously. They just will not be able to vote, and I think there’s a bit of a question mark on whether they’ll be able to amend, but for right now, we know that they’ll at least be able to stay at the table, so that the entire board can benefit from their expertise, experience. So, that, I think, was a really big deal, because that bill’s been around something like a decade, so that was a good one to get through. And then we have somebody on the Board of Fisheries again from Southeastern Alaska, it’s somebody who worked for EC Phillips and Ketchikan and is now in mariculture, Paul Cyr. So I’m really excited to have another Southeast voice on the Board of Fisheries again.

Petty Officer Ashly Murphy is a spokesperson for the Coast Guard’s Arctic District in Juneau. She said two adults were on board the 46-foot Chris-Craft vessel with their four children — a two-month-old, a three-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a 10-year-old.

All six were safely rescued with no reported injuries.

Murphy said a 45-foot Coast Guard response boat crew launched from the Ketchikan base, and a helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka set out at 5:56 p.m. The response boat crew found the family on the shoreline at 6:28 p.m. The family was taken to the nearby village of Kasaan around 8:00 p.m.

The vessel is still partially submerged while the Coast Guard works on a plan to salvage the vessel with its owner.