The Sitka Assembly at its meeting Tuesday voted to direct a multi-million-dollar state grant toward upgrading Lincoln Street. The money will go toward things like widened sidewalks, Seawalk connectivity, lighting, and drainage.
The $4.5 million grant the city was awarded in mid-August comes from nearly $38 million in unspent cruise ship passenger tax funds. It’s limited to supporting local port infrastructure, public services, and community projects affected by cruise tourism.
“This is for the one, two, and 300 block of Lincoln Street, that is from the Petro [Marine] Dock to the stoplight, so that kind of core of our economics base of downtown,” Assembly Member JJ Carlson said.
Because of the grant restrictions, the money can only go toward upgrading the parts of the street that pedestrians interact with. In all, the upgrades to Sitka’s downtown thoroughfare are expected to cost about $16 million. With this grant, the city has about two thirds of that amount.
Assembly Member Katie Riley said while she supports the appropriation, she’s concerned about the possibility of increasing utility rates for locals. If the project is expedited due to the grant spending deadline, without the city having the remaining funds in place, she worries that could happen.
“I’m very cognizant of that, and I hope that we can get this project done and pay for it in a way that we do not have to raise rates for locals to pay for this on the schedule that it’s happening on,” Riley said. “This is five-year state money, so it does have a deadline for how we have to spend it.”
Ultimately, assembly members agreed they should take advantage of the grant opportunity and voted unanimously to allocate the funding, on first reading. The issue will come back to the assembly table at their next meeting in October.
