Author: Melissa Marconi Wentzel

Former Sheldon Jackson College students, completing their credits through the University of Alaska, graduated this weekend (5/2-5/3). The final graduating class of the defunct historic college received their degrees at a number of UA institutions, including UAS's Sitka campus. Melissa Marconi Wentzel has this audio postcard from the ceremony.

The US Forest Service is midway through a multi-year study to determine how many people visit the nation’s forest, and what they do once they get there. On the Tongass, the nation’s largest forest, this seemingly straightforward work is complicated by the fact that there is not a single turnstile or ticket booth on any of its seventeen million acres. In the Sitka and Hoonah Ranger districts, recreation planners instead are relying on statistical modeling – and old-fashioned legwork – to find and interview visitors on any of two-hundred bays, lakes, cabins, and trails.

With the exception of Sawmill Cove Industrial Park, the city’s enterprise funds are all budgeted in the black next year. The Sitka assembly Thursday night (5-1-08) took their first look at the '09 budgets for the electric and water departments, solid waste, harbors, the airport, and the marine services center.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has canceled the Yakutat Bay spring troll fishery for the third year running. As Melissa Marconi Wentzel reports, low king returns to the Situk River are again standing in the way of this fledgling commercial fishery.

Sitka electrical director Charlie Walls has observed that only a fraction of the energy consumed in Sitka is produced by our two hydro plants. The lion's share of energy, by far, comes from oil -- as fuels for homes, cars, and boats. During an assembly budget meeting Thursday (5-1-08) Walls defended his department's research budget for wind and geothermal power, arguing that the time is now to plan for life with less petroleum. An excerpt from his assembly presentation.

Beginning May 11th and continuing through the summer, Sitkans will be able to ride the fast ferry Fairweather to and from Juneau 5 days a week. People are calling this summer’s ferry schedule one of the best to hit Sitka in years. But city officials fear, if Sitkans don’t use the improved service, they may just lose it. So, the City is kicking off an intensive marketing campaign to encourage ridership. It just happens to coincide with a similar effort on the part of the Alaska Marine Highway.

One year after launching a community-wide effort to raise awareness and improve safety, Sitka is officially a bike-friendly community. The Washington DC-based League of American Bicyclists today (5-1-08) awarded Sitka, and seven other communities around the country, a bronze designation for bike friendliness. The awards increase the number of official bike-friendly communities nationwide to eighty-four, in thirty-one states. Sitka is the first community in Alaska to win the designation.

Filming for the Sitka-based Disney movie “The Proposal” almost began here in Sitka this spring, that is until Hollywood found Rockport …Sitka’s stand in. (Click on "More" once you open the news story for links to pictures and articles.)

Despite a substantial municipal revenue sharing package from the state, Sitka’s budget for next year is starting out in the hole. The Sitka Assembly heard a first reading of the 2009 municipal budget at a special meeting Thursday (4-24-08) in Harrigan Centennial Hall. The featured speaker of the evening was city finance director Dave Wolff, who gave a blow-by-blow of the anticipated general fund deficit, which stands now at just over $400-thousand dollars.

Sitka’s recycling program logged another milestone this month. Just a couple of weeks before Earth Day the city test-ran a new bailer that will allow Sitkans to recycle more plastics than ever before.