Finding housing in Sitka is tough. There aren’t enough affordable units, the seasonal nature of the community limits the availability of year-round housing, and there really isn’t that much buildable land between where the ocean ends and the mountains begin. But a lot of folks have empty backyards. 

That’s where Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs come in. ADUs are essentially smaller, detached units on the same lot as a larger home. At a Sitka Assembly meeting on September 22, Assembly Member Katie Riley said they’re one part of the solution to Sitka’s housing shortage.

“We’ve talked a lot about the housing shortage here in this body, and this is definitely not a silver bullet that’s going to solve it,” she said. “But it is a way to create more affordable and accessible housing on already developed land.”

Riley has been working with the Planning Commission for months on an ordinance that would make them easier to build. Housing advocates in Sitka have long said that local ADU regulations are a barrier to development. 

Under current code, a proposed ADU must meet 14 separate requirements. And if any one requirement can’t be met, the applicant has to get a Conditional Use Permit — a process that requires a public hearing before the Planning Commission.

“That whole process can take up to five or more weeks,” Riley said. “This will create the opportunity for many more property owners to be able to build [ADUs] outright, given that they meet all of the existing conditions.”

The code change would cut the requirements from 14 down to 8. It would also create a clearer pathway to construct an ADU first, so the owner has a more affordable landing pad while they build a primary residence, and would allow the owner to use an ADU as a short-term rental for a time to recoup some of their initial building costs. 

Assembly Member Thor Christianson said he’s optimistic that the changes will make a real difference for Sitkans and help with some of the community’s housing issues.

“I’ve often said that we’re not going to fix our housing issues in one big fell swoop. We have to nibble at it from the edges,” he sais. “This is more than a nibble, it’s a bite. It’s definitely a move in the right direction.”

Ultimately, assembly members voted unanimously in favor of the changes, on first reading. If they give final approval, Sitka will join other Southeast communities like Ketchikan and Juneau in taking steps to encourage building ADUs. Juneau currently offers nearly $14,000 to homeowners seeking to develop them on their properties.

The assembly will review the ordinance for a final time at its next meeting in early October.

The Sitka Assembly will offer the municipal administrator job to Gerrie Cotter. At its meeting on Tuesday, it directed city staff to negotiate an employment contract and terms with Cotter following an executive session.

Cotter was the lone finalist for the city’s top job. She currently works as the administrator of Perry Township in Ohio, and visited Sitka last week to meet with locals following two public interviews with the assembly. 

For months, the assembly has been seeking a replacement for current Municipal Administrator John Leach, who is stepping down from the position in mid-December. A previous finalist, Jenny Alber, withdrew from consideration in July. 

The position is advertised at $200,000, and is open until filled.

The city’s municipal administrator finalist mingled with Sitkans Friday night during a meet-and-greet at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Gerrie Cotter flew up from Ohio earlier in the week to get to know the city a bit better and allow Sitkans to ask questions and learn more about her. Cotter is the only candidate for the city’s top job at this point. A previous finalist, Jenny Alber, withdrew from consideration in July.

The Sitka Assembly plans to discuss next steps at its meeting on Tuesday. The body hopes to hire for the position before current Municipal Administrator John Leach steps down in December. 

Election season is underway, and local organizations, Raven Radio included, have been holding candidate forums to familiarize voters with who and what will be on the upcoming municipal election ballot. 

One candidate Sitkans haven’t had a chance to hear from much is assembly write-in candidate Mary Ann Hall. 

During a Greater Sitka Chamber of Commerce forum on Wednesday (9-16-26), assembly candidates were asked pre-provided questions on housing, childcare, and economic development. 

Hall, who serves on the local emergency planning committee said if elected, her experience in Sitka will help her on the assembly. When asked what role the city should play in improving the availability and sustainability of childcare in Sitka, Hall said elders should be part of the solution. 

“I heard about this community in the Northeast, and what they do is they use older people as volunteers to come into the childcare center and help with them, like coloring books and reading stories and teaching them art and stuff like that,” Hall said. “These retired people can teach these kids something that they know, and you could have two groups: one group [of] the older people come in four hours, and then the second group come in in the next four hours. So I think that would work.”

You can find interviews with candidates, questionnaires, forums, and a sample ballot on KCAW’s Election Hub. The Chamber is hosting a mayoral forum on Wednesday, September 23.

Sitka’s municipal election is Tuesday, October 6.

Thousands of passengers disembarked the cruise ship Norwegian Joy as it finally pulled up to Sitka’s dock on Thursday morning, three hours after its scheduled arrival. 

“There was an announcement this morning from the captain just saying that there’s an issue with a whale at the front of the ship, and that it was going to be inspected by local authorities, and until that had been looked at, we weren’t allowed to go into the port,” Lee Page told KCAW as he waited in line at the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal.

Page, from Scotland, said he boarded the cruise ship in Seattle last Friday on his first trip to Alaska. He’s one of roughly 4,000 passengers aboard the Norwegian Joy who were told Thursday morning that the cruise ship hit an endangered fin whale while the eleven-hundred-foot vessel was en route from Hoonah to Sitka. 

Page said they weren’t given much more information as they waited on the boat about two miles offshore, and a team of responders from the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network, and a tugboat removed the dead whale from the bow. 

A whale strike, Page said, wasn’t on his bingo card. 

“[It’s] quite sad, isn’t it? When you think about what we’re all here for,” he said. 

Lauren Wild, a local whale biologist and part of the stranding network response team, said while they were towing the whale from the ship to a Sitka-area beach, it sank offshore. 

“The whale is in the cove, about 40 feet off the beach, sunk onto the bottom,” she said. “But we were able to tie it off to some trees up on the beach.”

Wild estimates the fin whale is 35 to 45 feet long, and likely a juvenile male. The circumstances of the strike are still unclear — Wild said they don’t know where, en route, the whale was hit, but she hopes a necropsy, or animal autopsy, will help determine if it was already dead or if the strike is what killed it. 

“We’re hoping that we can get the whale up onto the beach at some point so we can do a necropsy and learn more about its cause of death, the health of the whale, and other life history parameters like what age demographic it was,” Wild said. “They can be really valuable specimens.” 

NOAA Fisheries declined KCAW’s interview request. In an email, spokesperson Jennifer Angelo said in total, there have been 10 documented whale strikes involving cruise ships in Alaska since 2001, but not all were confirmed, and not all necessarily resulted in the death of the whale.

“It is difficult to determine the exact number of whale-vessel strikes because it is likely many collisions go unnoticed by the vessel crew, occur in remote areas, or result in carcasses sinking or drifting away, preventing detection,” Angelo said.

This is the second documented fin whale to come into an Alaskan port on the bow of a cruise ship this summer. A pregnant fin whale was hit by a ship headed into Seward in June.

Wild said typically, fin whales are seen further offshore in the Gulf of Alaska, and it’s unusual to see them in Sitka Sound. 

“We haven’t had a cruise ship bring a dead whale into Sitka Sound, in my knowledge, at least in the last 10 or 15 years,” she said. “I think it’s an unusual thing for Sitka.” 

Wild reminded Sitkans that fin whales are endangered, and it’s illegal to scavenge or collect parts of the whale, and asked members of the public if they see the remains to steer clear. She hopes her team will be able to get the whale to shore and get more information before a forecasted storm hits the area in the coming days. 

An unnamed spokesperson from Norwegian Cruise Lines said in a written statement they are deeply saddened by the situation, and that they’re cooperating with authorities and wildlife experts in this process. 

“This is a sobering reminder of the importance of ongoing collaboration among the maritime, scientific and conservation communities. We remain committed to operating responsibly, complying with applicable laws and regulations and supporting efforts that contribute to the long-term health of marine life,” the statement read. 

The Norwegian Joy is scheduled to arrive in Skagway on Friday. 

If you see a stranded, injured, entangled, or dead marine mammal, call the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Statewide 24-hour Stranding Hotline at (877) 925-7773. 

Candidates running for mayor or a seat on the Sitka Assembly joined Raven Radio and the Daily Sitka Sentinel Tuesday night (9-15-26) to answer community members’ questions ahead of the municipal election this October. 

In back-to-back, hour-long forums, assembly and mayoral candidates laid out their stances on everything from diversifying Sitka’s economy to cell towers and tourism growth.

Outmigration in the region is a rising concern. Sitka has lost nearly a thousand people in the past decade — mostly children and working age residents.

Thor Christianson, a long-time assembly member making his second bid for the mayor’s chair, said to address the demographic shift, the city needs to work to develop land for affordable housing, continue to look for ways to fund childcare facilities, and support economic development. He said there are also some “big ticket items” he’s been looking into recently.

“The [U.S.] Coast Guard’s going to have to put those 11 new icebreakers they just are getting someplace, and they’re going to need to be on the West Coast up north,” Christianson said. “So there’s a decent chance if we work at it, we might be able to get one of them. Also, the [U.S.] Navy is looking at a large repair facility they want to have in Alaska at a deep water port. That’s something that maybe we could work on here. I don’t know if that would come to fruition, but we’ve got to work on everything and anything.” 

Lisa Lane, a first-time candidate for public office, said she’d bring a “new and different voice” to the table. When asked what she would do as Sitka’s mayor to streamline government processes to make decisions faster, she said sometimes decisions take time. 

“Sometimes you can’t make fast decisions,” she said. “You have to look at the long game. It’s like playing chess. If [you’re] rash or make a decision too quickly, you might be making something that’s gonna make a ripple that turns into a tsunami. I think everything needs to be researched and planned, even though sometimes that’s painful. Most people aren’t very patient. But a long, deep breath through your nose and a glass of water helps.” 

Mayoral candidates were also asked what role the city government should play in preparing for upcoming changes to the federal food assistance program (SNAP), access to health insurance and Medicaid, and rising heating fuel costs that could impact Sitkans. Longtime assembly member and mayoral candidate Kevin Mosher said that he’s no stranger to financial struggles, and while the city can’t directly influence many of those state and federal programs, it can point people towards resources. 

“We can make sure our utility subsidization fund is fully funded, and people know about it. We can direct people to outside help,” he said. “And I know it seems counterintuitive to work on childcare with the tax, but the housing and childcare go hand-in-hand, and it’s a long-term solution that can, in the end, help with the cost of living. And those are the kind of things we need to work on. So we need to really dig our heads in and really work hard on these things to try to help people.” 

Local business owner Sherri Blankenship narrowly lost her bid for a seat on the assembly last year, and has thrown her hat in the ring a second time. When asked whether she supports a seasonal sales tax increase to fund childcare solutions, she said as a parent to four children, the issue is dear to her heart. She said while she doesn’t yet know where she stands on a tax increase, the issue is “multi-faceted” and the business community should be part of the solution. 

“Childcare is workforce development, and it is essential to retaining employees and in retaining our population,” Blankenship said. “I think that we should aggressively pursue a private funding model, and also take our largest employers in town, such as SEARHC, bring them to the table and ask them to participate in these talks, and help the community out, and then aggressively go after federal and state funding as well, and see where our shortfall falls.” 

Candidates were also asked if a Memorandum of Understanding between the city and cruise dock company that establishes guidelines for cruise ships is working. Incumbent assembly candidate JJ Carlson said the agreement should be reviewed and more stakeholders need to be brought into the fold.  

“The MOU is an MOU. It’s a Memorandum of Understanding. It’s not binding. It’s not a contract. It’s a handshake,” she said. “But to really have it be more impactful, we need to get more people at the table. Currently, the MOU is between the City and Borough of Sitka and the Sitka Dock Company. Adding in the schedulers and the larger international organization for the cruise industry will make it even stronger. We’ve learned from it, and we’re seeing that it’s a bigger picture that we need to move towards.”

Darrell Windsor has served on Sitka’s Planning Commission for 15 years and this is his first bid for an assembly seat. He said 100% of any future housing developed on city land should be affordable. 

“Affordable for me is not affordable for you, or affordable for the CEO of SEARHC,” he said. “We were looking at these properties [at] our last Planning Commission meeting, and the big question was high density or low density? I mean, can we cram as many houses in these places as we can, or spread it out? I think in the [area behind the] high school, it should be about a 50-50 on that. Affordable housing? Yeah, [it] should all be affordable.”

The fourth candidate running for a seat on the assembly, Mary Ann Hall, did not attend the forum.

After two virtual meetings, a finalist for the city’s top job is coming to town. The Sitka Assembly agreed to invite Gerrie Cotter to meet with Sitkans following her second interview for the municipal administrator position Thursday night (9-10-26).

During the public interview, assembly members took turns asking Cotter about her experience with fiscal management and working with tribal governments, her vision for her first 90 days on the job, and what big issues she anticipates Sitka will face over the next decade.

Cotter said the city would have to continue to tackle rising costs and inflation, ongoing school funding issues, and tourism.

“The tourism factor, I think it’s one of those things that is both a positive and a negative. It’s great as far as bringing in revenue to the community. Some of the negative is just the number of folks entering your community and using its services,” she said. “I think that that’s a difficult balance.”

Cotter has a law degree from Loyola University Law School in New Orleans, and a bachelor’s degree in international studies from West Virginia University, according to her application. She currently works as the administrator of Perry Township in Ohio, a community of just under thirty thousand people.

Before moving into the township administration job last year, Cotter spent nearly 14 years working for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, where she led a statewide workforce development program for young adults, and did policy work. She has also served as a trustee for a township in Ohio, and on a local school board. 

Following Thursday’s interview, Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz told Cotter the in-person meet-and-greet will be a chance to see how she interacts with the community, and for the assembly to get feedback from Sitkans. 

“Not only do you work for us, with us, you work for the community, right? So we need buy-in from everybody as well,” he said.

It will also likely be the last part of the process before the assembly decides whether or not to offer the position to Cotter, Eisenbeisz added. 

Current municipal administrator John Leach’s last day on the job will be December 18. 

The Sitka Assembly voted Tuesday (9-8-26) to add a large-scale dumpster option to the city’s solid waste code. 

Currently, code requires all homes, businesses, and liveaboards within one mile of the road system to participate in the city’s garbage collection service. The service offers three container sizes: a 48-gallon can, a 96-gallon can, and a 300 gallon can.

Municipal Administrator John Leach said staff proposed adding a 3,000 gallon rolloff container — essentially a large green dumpster — to the list. 

“There are some places that have them already, other places that want them, but we don’t have a rate in our code that establishes a rate for roll-off containers,” he said.

Leach said the dumpster rate will depend on whether it’s for a commercial business, a public good like a school or grocery store, or a residential neighborhood.  

The neighborhood cost-share option would function similarly to an HOA, and would allow residential households to collectively use the rolloff in lieu of standard individual curbside service. 

Leach said it could help with bear issues in certain neighborhoods like the Indian River subdivision, where bears tend to get into household cans.

“So if a neighborhood says they have a bear concern, and they would rather have the garbage in a centralized location away from their home, to keep the costs equal, there’s a minimum number of households in that neighborhood that would have to agree to that, and they would lose the service in front of their home,” Leach said. “We would place a roll-off there, and then they would put their garbage into the roll-off container.”

The cost-share program would require a minimum of 40 participating households per container, but no more than 80. The program is expected to cost about $80 a month, per household.

The assembly voted unanimously to move forward with the code update on first reading. It will come back to the assembly table for a second vote later this month. 

Sitka has a childcare shortage, and the Sitka Assembly is looking at a multi-tier approach to address it. At their meeting on Sept. 8, assembly members considered a funding strategy for their plan — combining a seasonal sales tax increase with contributions from local businesses. 

Joel Markis is a local parent and board president of the Betty Eliason Early Learning Center, formerly known as the Betty Eliason Child Care Center. He urged the assembly to continue looking for diverse ways to fund childcare, worrying that relying on Sitkans to vote “yes” on a seasonal tax wouldn’t be enough.

“I’m a little bit concerned that even as much of an issue as this is, and as well as we package it and put it forward to the public, what happens if the public says, ‘We don’t want to tax ourselves more because we’re tax adverse?'” he said. “It’s really hard for people to give forward and help solve that common problem, especially something like childcare, that kind of has a short time frame in which families are impacted by it.”

Earlier this year, a city-funded study found the local childcare system can serve about half of the young children who need it. In July, the assembly landed on a 1-million-dollar-a-year plan to support childcare that would combine workforce incentives, operating grants, and a family scholarship fund. But the question remained over how the community would pay for it. 

The public-private partnership model would combine funding from the proposed dedicated city sales tax with contributions from local businesses. Assembly member and co-sponsor Katie Riley said business buy-in is important since the issue has been named as a barrier to economic growth and workforce retention. 

“Thinking about it like that, my question is really like, ‘Okay, how is the business community showing up to help us solve this problem?’ Because I don’t want the burden of this to fall on Sitka’s year-round residents, vulnerable folks, people who are already having trouble making ends meet,” Riley said. “So how can we bring as many people into this and create as much buy-in as possible?”

Local business owner Sherri Blankenship said she would support a business contribution, and that more talks should be held with the larger business community to bring them to the table. 

“As a business here in town, I can say that I would be willing definitely to volunteer $150 or whatever that fee is per employee,” she said.

The assembly ultimately decided to pursue a proposal to increase the summer sales tax by half a percent, raising it from 6 to 6.5%, with a sunset in 10 years. An ordinance will be introduced at the assembly’s Oct. 27 meeting. If the assembly gives the ordinance a thumbs up, it will go to voters in a special election, tentatively scheduled for early February.

A male brown bear in Sitka known locally as Tum-Tum drowned at Redoubt Falls earlier this summer during a state-run research project.

Researchers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are currently in year two of a six-year project to count the number of bears on Baranof Island, which covers 1,600 square miles. 

State wildlife biologist Stephanie Sell said in a statement Monday that research staff were capturing and collaring brown bears at Redoubt Lake over a four-day period in late July when the drowning occurred. She said the five-year-old brown bear, who was highly habituated, was darted and took a trail that led to salt water.

Sell said staff made every effort to resuscitate him, including rescue breathing and CPR, without success. ADF&G staff ceased all captures in the area immediately afterward.

Sell said it was “a highly unfortunate accident” that they don’t take lightly.  However, she said, wildlife management and research come with inherent risks to both staff and animals. 

“Despite the skilled and professional biologists’ best efforts, across North America, occasionally an accident occurs which results in loss of the animal,” she said.