Students and staff gather for the all-school meeting, which happens weekly at Pacific High School. The school is about to embark on a major renovation, but first it must get approval of its design from the Sitka Assembly. (KCAW file photo/Ed Ronco)
A planned renovation of Pacific High School will either move ahead or go back to the drawing board when the Sitka Assembly decides whether to approve preliminary designs during its regular meeting Tuesday night.
A major remodel of the alternative high school was approved by the school board last month. The plans call for large classrooms with modular walls, a commons area and a roof deck that can be used by students.
The City of Sitka owns the public school buildings and some Assembly members expressed concern about the roof in December. They worried that a flat roof is a poor choice for rainy Sitka. The proposed roof, in fact, has a low slope, but Assembly members asked for alternate designs.
Earlier story: Pacific High plans include commons, roof garden
The alternate designs will be presented to the Assembly, which will decide whether to approve them.
Rebate program
The Assembly also will discuss whether to establish an energy rebate program for energy efficient appliances. Such a program would sunset in June of 2013. The materials made available before the meeting did not spell out how the rebate program will be funded.
The meeting begins at 6 p.m. inside Harrigan Centennial Hall. Click here to link to tonight’s agenda packet.
Coming soon
It won’t happen at this meeting, but the Sitka Assembly could soon discuss changes to the city’s tax code.
During a work session Monday night to discuss the city budget, Municipal Administrator Jim Dinley recommended some changes to the way Sitka handles sales taxes. Revenues into city accounts are flat at best, and costs are going up. And the federal Secure Rural Schools and Communities Act, which means hundreds of thousands of dollars for the city, could soon expire.
The city proposes several changes, including requiring nonprofits like the Salvation Army store, the White Elephant store and the Sitka Summer Music Festival, to collect sales tax. The recommendations also raise the sales tax cap to $3,000. Right now purchases over $1,000 are exempt from sales tax.
The recommendations also propose replacing the senior citizen sales tax exemption with an annual rebate of $300. It also would no longer exempt newspapers from collecting sales tax.
The city has a $50 million budget, about half of which is its general fund. The annual budget process begins in late spring.
At the moment, the recommendations are just that, and are a long way from enactment. Assembly members said they would need to read them in detail before going any further. But Mayor Cheryl Westover said something needs to change, and that she knows it won’t be easy.
“Nobody likes change,” she said. “But a lot of these tax issues have been on the books since the pulp mill days when times were good, and we had young families here making good money and being able to spend good money.”
Westover wanted the work session to be a discussion of budget philosophy among Assembly members. And last night’s conversation covered broad topics. Pete Esquiro suggested cutting 8 to 10 percent out of the budget and setting it aside to handle maintenance and repairs to things that are starting to fall apart. Sitka has been struggling to repair roads, roofs and other pieces of city infrastructure.
But Assembly members and Dinley also zeroed in on some specifics, saying the budget process might include talk of cuts. Maybe the library would close one day a week, or Centennial Hall would reduce the hours it’s open to the public. There was talk of raising harbor rates, doing away with summer grounds crews known as “grasshoppers,” and cutting grants to nonprofits.
“Those aren’t necessarily what we will do,” Westover said. “We just want to see the cost of specific things that could maybe add up and help the budget over the period of a year.”
Dinley didn’t have exact dollar figures from the cuts. Assembly members asked him to bring back some numbers.
Still, even if the Assembly does none of those things, Westover says the fact they’re being talked about illustrates that the next budget year is expected to be difficult, and that nothing is off limits.
“I think everything’s sacrosanct to somebody,” she said. “But we’re going to have to come to where we agree on what we are willing to cut and willing to not cut.”
