Author: Ed Ronco, KCAW

Closing a large budget gap will take a combination of help from the legislature, cost savings and, very possibly, position cuts from within the Sitka School District. On Wednesday night, the school board presented its budget to the public.

Sitka’s Long Range Planning and Economic Development Commission is one step closer to being disbanded. The Sitka Assembly voted last night 5 to 1 to do away with the commission.

Anthropologist Linda Green studies the social consequences of poverty, warfare, and other issues on indigenous people across the Americas. She's the newly-appointed Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona. She'll hold a community conversation in Sitka tonight (2-9-11) at 7 PM at The Loft. Green joined Island Institute co-director Carolyn Servid and KCAW's Robert Woolsey for the Morning Interview.

In part two of our two-part interview with the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, director Linda Behnken and member Dan Falvey warn that the big cuts in halibut fishing may not be at an end: How halibut are split among various areas of the Gulf, and a reduction in the harvest rate, are both factors that could lower quotas next year even if halibut stocks increase.

ALFA's Linda Behnken and Dan Falvey discuss the IPHC's survey methods, and the prospects for young fishermen in the longline fisheries.

Despite the steady downward trend in the commercial harvest recently, the International Pacific Halibut Commission in the last two years has not made cuts as large as recommended by their staff scientists. That practiced ended this year, and the Commission approved significant decreases for most fishing areas in the Gulf of Alaska. In part one of a two-part interview with Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association director Linda Behnken and member Dan Falvey, KCAW’s Robert Woolsey asked the pair to throw some light on the Commission process, as it sets the quota for the year.

A suggestion to locate a visitor’s center inside Kettleson Memorial Library caught library staff off guard, along with many Sitkans. But the idea is, at the moment, just that: an idea.

The CEO of the Pebble Partnership says the success or failure of the proposed copper mine in Southwest Alaska could be a bellweather for future resource development in the state.

A former Sitka math teacher and his family have made it safely out of Cairo. Dan Langbauer, his wife Sandra, and son Seth were greeted last night (2-6-11) at the Sitka airport by a large group of Sitka High faculty, friends, and well-wishers. The Langbauers left Egypt on Friday, where Dan was in his third year teaching at Cairo American College, a K-12 international school. When we last reported on the Langbauers, the protest in Tahrir Square had been going on for about a week, and they felt fairly secure in their neighborhood in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo. Nevertheless, Dan told KCAW then that he and Sandra were taking the situation “hour-by-hour.”

In the last couple weeks, we've told you a lot about the Hames Center, which re-opened to the public on Wednesday. But it's only one part of the Sheldon Jackson campus that will soon be coming back to life, as the Sitka Fine Arts Camp takes formal ownership of the campus this week.