“This one’s a hard one because we also like Harbor Brewing Company a lot, and it was an unfair position to be put in. That being said, I’m here tonight to stand up for my business and for my twenty-some employees that I employ all year round,” she said. “Approximately 70% of our sales are food. We are not proposing to build a food program around a beer and wine license. You know the reason why we want this license is because we need to continually add to our business in order to provide the employment that our staff needs.” 

This would be Highliner’s first and only license to serve alcohol. The brewery already has licenses to serve beer and wine, but a restaurant license would offer the business more flexibility in its serving limits and operating hours. 

Emerald Hagy is the brewery’s assistant general manager. While she said the assembly should approve both applications, she said giving AMCO local perspective is crucial. Otherwise the decision could be left up to chance, like when the brewery was competing for the community’s lone distillery license last year. She said at that time the board “explicitly expressed frustrations with the lack of weigh-in from the local governing body.”

“The decision ultimately came from drawing a name out of a dirty coffee mug,” she said. “This was disheartening, not because our name wasn’t chosen, but because our elected officials had failed to advocate in any fashion what was in the best interest of the community and allowed that decision to fall to the state.”

While state law allows the local assembly to express a preference for one applicant over the other, city staff recommended the assembly approve both businesses for AMCO’s consideration. Municipal attorney Rachel Jones said if the assembly did want to recommend one business over the other, it had to be intentional. The assembly could only weigh things like sales tax records, the number of jobs the business provides, or public safety as factors when making its decision. 

“If you make any recommendations-based public policy, it can’t be arbitrary and capricious, which would be personally liking one business more than the other, or ‘I go to this one more often. My kids like that one the best.’ That’s personal reasons, that’s not public interest reasons,” she said. “You would be wanting to distinguish between applicants on the basis of things you, as the governing body, have authority over.” 

That put the assembly in a tough spot. With friends involved in both businesses, Chris Ystad recused himself. And Scott Saline said they should just ask for more licenses.

“We should make a motion right now and tell AMCO, ‘Hey, you dudes are creating a division in our town. We’re trying to keep it together as it is. We need more,'” Saline said. “Anybody want to back me up that we vote on this right now and just get onto the next thing?” 

Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said they could ask for more licenses, but the question would need to return to the group for consideration at a future meeting. He and other assembly members, including Kevin Mosher, agreed that approving both was the right move. 

“Both businesses are great and worthy businesses,” Mosher said “But I will point out that AMCO…they’re involved with alcohol all the time. We’re not. I know we have the right, but I do feel uncomfortable just trying to pick one over the other. So I would prefer to stick with the staff and forward it on as is.” 

The group briefly considered a proposal to table the item, but ultimately voted 6-0 to approve both applications, sending them to the AMCO board for a final decision at its November meeting. 

In the past year, Sitka gained 150 new jobs and $37 million dollars in wages. When Meilani Schijvens of Rain Coast Data presented her annual update on behalf of the Sitka Economic Development Association, “The State of Sitka’s Economy,” she said it’s a new record. 

“I have a question mark on this slide, but I’m going to say this with absolutely zero question mark. You are at your peak jobs ever in the history of Sitka,” she said. “You have more jobs now than you have ever had before.”

Schijvens said jobs are up across many sectors this year, including seafood, healthcare and tourism, the three industries that make up half of Sitka’s economy. 

She said wages are up and rising at a rate faster than inflation, which is good for workers, and the community’s housing supply has increased. And it’s not the only thing that’s up. 

“I often will have good news about Sitka, and then I have to tell you your population is down, but not this year. This year your population is up by 10 new residents,” she said. “It’s the third time that’s happened in a dozen years. So it’s a small number, but I’m very happy to be reporting it to you.”

Still, Sitka is not immune to the region’s larger population trends. Schijvens said in about the last decade, Sitka has lost over 875 residents of “prime workforce” age and nearly 600 kids [590], while gaining almost 400 [380] senior citizens as Sitkans age in place. She said those demographic shifts have put pressure on the workforce. 

“So altogether, we’ve lost 975 residents, nearly 1000 residents, but we’ve gained 270 jobs. So there’s jobs, but it’s really tough to find people to fill those jobs, and so that’s why those wages are going up at a faster rate than inflation,” she said.

So what do you do when you’re losing people and adding jobs? Hire from outside. Not counting self-employed Sitkans or Coast Guard, Schijvens said about 40% of Sitka’s wage-earning workforce are non-residents. They only earn about 16 percent of the total workforce earnings, but also put pressure on the housing market. 

Housing access is a concern across Southeast, but Sitka is adding more supply to the pool than other communities. Schijvens lauded the community for developing over 400 new housing units in the past 15 years.

“I’m assuming a lot of these are snowbirds. I’m assuming some of them are vacation homes,” she said.”

However, she said the number of vacant homes has increased by nearly the same amount. While she said the American Community Survey data should be taken with a grain of salt because they don’t actually survey that many respondents, she pointed to Sitka’s property tax rate as a possible incentive for the trend.  

“You’ve got a just a much lower mill rate when we compare it to other communities. Six points compared, you know, Valdez is 20,” she said. “It almost incentivizes people to have a home here and then have a home someplace else as well.” 

Still, Schijvens said in a recent business survey, Sitka earned the best quality of life rating of any community in Southeast Alaska and a majority of business leaders felt the economy was either “good” or “very good.” 

After her presentation, Schijvens took some time to answer questions from the audience. The city’s Planning and Community Development Director Amy Ainslie asked if Schijvens had a more detailed wage and earnings breakdown to better understand how money is moving through the community.

“In local government we’re hearing from citizens a lot about economic stress in this time, and at the same time, we hear these kinds of presentations that jobs are up and wages are up, and the economy has a really bright outlook,” Ainslie said. “I’m wondering if we have a better sense of how those wages and earnings are getting distributed…throughout our economy, and to see you know what percentage of our households are not experiencing the kinds of gains that the economy is overall.”

Pat Alexander felt the data didn’t reflect many Sitkans’ experiences.

“You know, as I watched your presentation, I wondered, ‘Where is this magical place? I want to live there. I want to move there,'” she said. “But do you ever include any reality from the people who live in the place about what their perspective is?” 

Schijvens agreed that the business indicators don’t necessarily paint the full picture.  It doesn’t really factor in affordability, which she says is key to Sitka’s outmigration. 

“People are struggling in this community, absolutely,” she said. “There’s that divide between economics, between how the overall economy is doing and then the household economy, how how individuals and people are doing.” 

Schijvens acknowledged that while those experiences weren’t a part of her presentation, they are part of the fabric of Sitka. “It’s a good point,” she said. 

This year, voters will decide a three-way race for mayor, and choose two new assembly members and three school board members. This year’s ballot also includes one proposition. Voters will be asked whether to update the city’s charter to adjust the triggers for a special election. 

Currently, if a citizen petition gets enough signatures, it will require a mandatory special election. That’s how Small Town Soul’s citizen initiative to limit cruise visitation went to a special election in May of 2025.

“That was the first time that this provision of the charter had ever been triggered, and I had several questions from the public,” Municipal Clerk Sara Peterson said in an interview on September 18. “I got questions from the assembly. People wanted to know how much a special election is, and so I decided to to to bring the topic forward to the assembly and ultimately the voters.” 

Peterson said the new charter language would align with state law and how most other municipalities handle special elections. If voters approve the amendment, it would change how citizen initiatives are handled in the future.  

“If the amendment passes, then the initiative or referendum would be placed on that upcoming October ballot,” she said. “And at the same time, when I notify the assembly and say, ‘Hey, we got this. It’s going to go on the October ballot unless the assembly wants to hold a special election before then on the motion.'”

Early, in-person voting is available at Harrigan Centennial Hall on weekdays from 8:30-4:30 and Sundays from 9 a.m. to noon through October 5. Sitka’s municipal election is Tuesday, October 6. 

KCAW partnered with the Daily Sitka Sentinel this year to produce our election hub, which is now live. There, you’ll find early and absentee voting information, candidates interviews, questionnaires, and forum audio. 

Nearly 630,000 cruise passengers are set to visit Sitka in 2027, making next summer the biggest in the community’s history. The record-breaking season will be the latest of several in recent years, and follows ongoing community debate on the level of cruise traffic Sitkans want.

Voters rejected an initiative to cap cruise traffic in 2025, shortly after the Sitka Assembly narrowly approved a “Memorandum of Understanding” between the city and the cruise dock to set some parameters. In contrast to the cap initiative, the MOU was presented as a way for the city and the industry to agree on guidelines to follow, without hard, legally binding limits.

At a Sitka Tourism Commission meeting on September 10, some community members said the news of next year’s numbers means it’s time to revisit the document.

Klaudia Leccese is with Small Town SOUL, the advocacy group that filed the cruise cap initiative and continues to push for a regulatory approach. She said Sitka needs to “get a grip” on the situation, and it’s critical to start now since the industry schedules ships years in advance. 

“Increases, like what is scheduled for now for 2027, tell us that the MOU doesn’t have any teeth and isn’t working. So we’re really concerned about the MOU. It doesn’t seem like it’s a strong enough thing to make sure that we don’t have increases, or you know a creep upward,” Leccese said. “We really need to kind of come together and have something that we can all count on as being solid information, so we can really know what the community does want.”

There are roughly 22 days with more than 7000 passengers in next year’s cruise calendar. SOUL organizers pointed to data from previous community survey from 2023– in that survey a majority of respondents preferred 6000 passengers a day or less. Leccese said 630,000 visitors is too many for the small town to accommodate. But Sitka Dock Company owner Chris McGraw pushed back. 

“The numbers are not out of control. They’re not continuing to go up exponentially. We have a bump in 2027 of the days over 7000, and that 7000 number was not a cap. It was never intended to be a cap in the MOU,” McGraw said.

McGraw noted that the schedule is set to drop back down in 2028 with just over 600,000 visitors. But he said next year Sitka is ready to accommodate the increase with more infrastructure and new tour businesses to disperse passengers and ease congestion downtown. He used his own tour company, Adventure Sitka, as an example. 

“And on a busy 7,000 passenger day, we’ll have over 500 people on tour in Adventure Sitka, and that’s either on boats or kayaks, and we’ll put over 800 people through our theater. So that’s 1,300 people that in 2023 and 2024 would have just been dropped off downtown,” McGraw said. “And we’re not the only company that has added that. You see more vans, you see more boats, and the people have been dispersed. So it’s difficult to compare apples to apples from 2023 to 2026.”

Following presentations from McGraw and SOUL, the commission opened the floor up to a handful of Sitkans in attendance. Teal West is a downtown business owner and member of Safeguard Sitka’s Future, an advocacy group that campaigned against cruise limits. She said the MOU is working.

“I think it matters that we continue to talk about the data, and not the emotions. The data is that it’s working, so let’s keep doing what we’re doing,” West said. “We can’t continue to move this goalpost every time we see numbers come up. We have to listen, and we have to see, and we have to listen to the experiences that everybody is having in the community, not just a certain group of people.” 

But Phyllis Hackett, a former tourism task force member, said the commission should acknowledge the continuing effects of the industry’s rapid growth.

“The effect is positive for some and negative for some, but overall, it is dramatic. It is very dramatic, and growing pains, yes, but it’s a dramatic effect, and it does deserve some attention,” Hackett said. “And I think that you need to make a recommendation to the assembly to acknowledge that, and to work towards finding something with with the stakeholders, finding something that is going to be able to spread the effect out, so that people can see all sides of it.” 

The commission’s vice chair, Bethany Lowrance, is a local tour operator. Lowrance said while new businesses may have helped disperse high traffic away from downtown, they’ve also begun to create congestion in other areas, like Sitka’s trail system.

“I’m excited that we have so many new businesses that are getting out and getting to show off our beautiful hometown, but at the same time, at what cost? Not only to us, but to our visitors as well, giving them the experience that we want to give them,” Lowrance said. “So I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I love what we’re doing, but I feel like we’re at a point where we we need to look, because we’re in the biggest city in the world, or in the United States, but we’re very little as to where we can take [people].” 

Lowrance said she doesn’t know what the commission’s next steps should be without more community input, but she said there should be next steps.

Member Devon Calvin said the group should move toward revisiting the MOU and replacing it with a new agreement. But Chair Jeremy Plank and member Sherri Blankenship said they felt the collaboration between the city and the industry had improved the situation year-over-year, and takes time to work. Still, they felt one missing piece in the MOU needed to be addressed. That’s the addition of cruise line associations, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska (CLAA). Without them at the table, Plank said the scheduling process stays outside of the city’s purview.

“If you look at the MOU over in Juneau, they are part of that. I think that they should be at the table during this discussion, and if there’s a mechanism that we can kind of tighten to try to bring them into that conversation earlier, it’s maybe bringing them [in]” Plank said. “It’s really hard to have a discussion about what’s going on with the schedule if we have one party that’s clearly missing at the table.”

The commission recommended the city’s tourism manager investigate bringing CLIA and CLAA to the table on a 5-1 vote with Calvin opposed. 

Sitka is experiencing an ongoing childcare shortage that local advocates call a crisis. Earlier this year, a city-funded study conducted by a regional childcare nonprofit found that the local system can serve about half of the young children who need it. In July, the assembly landed on a $1 million plan that would combine workforce incentives, operating grants, and a family scholarship fund to support childcare in the community.

Tonight, the assembly will discuss how to structure and fund the proposed programs. Discussion sponsors Katie Riley, Kevin Mosher and Thor Christianson are asking the assembly to consider funding the plan through a “public-private partnership” model, which would combine funding from a dedicated city sales tax with contributions from local businesses. 

The funding scenario the assembly agrees to would come back to the table as an ordinance at a future meeting, and would ultimately require the approval of Sitka voters.

In other business, the assembly will consider setting sales tax free days following the Thanksgiving holiday, several end-of-year budget adjustments for last fiscal year, and will consider updating the city’s solid waste program to allow for a neighborhood cost-share option. 

The Sitka Assembly meets at 6 p.m. tonight at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Raven News will broadcast the meeting live, following Alaska News Nightly.

The Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crashed during a training flight on June 22. The four, onboard crew members from Air Station Sitka survived with minor injuries. The cause is currently under investigation.

The Down Aircraft Recovery Team with the Alaska Air National Guard is scheduled to retrieve the helicopter from the crash site on Tuesday [9/8]. In an email to KCAW, Coast Guard spokesperson Lieutenant Commander Pam Manns said the DART team plans to use both Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters to transport the Jayhawk from the crash site over roughly one mile of forest, to a local gated storage area. Manns said the operation is weather dependent and subject to change.

In response, the U.S. Forest Service is closing Harbor Mountain Road to all traffic. A release published Friday/last week, said the road would be closed from September 8th through the 11th to ensure public safety and safe operating conditions for the crew.  

“And what that really means is that our rainfall amount hit a level where there had been landslides in the past,” Silva said. “So it’s not that there’s always going to be landslides when that level of rain hits. You know, it happened last night, and we didn’t have any slides in town, but it did mean that other slides have happened at that amount of rainfall that we hit that last night.” 

While no slides resulted from the heavy rains, Silva hopes Sitkans will walk away with a reminder to be prepared and use the dashboard as a tool when deciding whether to leave a landslide-prone area.

“I always think it’s worthwhile to really exercise caution, because while we don’t know that a landslide will happen, it could,” Silva said.

Silva recommends having a “hazard buddy” who lives outside of landslide-prone areas. When the risk level shifts to medium, consider staying with that person for the night. Silva also recommends keeping tabs on the National Weather Service website for the most up-to-date weather information, weather.gov/ajk. As for when to check the dashboard – Silva said there are some signs to watch out for.

“Heavier rainfall than you imagine is a big one,” Silva said. “Other environmental triggers we’ve seen that you could observe with your own eyes are, let’s say, if you live near a stream, for example, and you see water that normally runs clear running muddier or sort of darker. That’s a sign that we’ve seen before landslides in the past.”

For more information, including maps of landslide prone zones and other slide signs, visit sitkalandslide.org.

In Cranford’s appeal, he says the city refused to search for, or respond to, his request for a “legal framework” for the additions, but did not confirm that the records don’t exist, so he’s fighting the decision. A brief from Municipal Attorney Rachel Jones says this portion of Cranford’s request did not ask for a public record– it was asking for legal analysis. A “legal framework” Jones says, is beyond the scope of a public records request. 

Tonight, the assembly will hear arguments from both Cranford and city staff. Acting as a quasi-judicial body, the group may grant or deny the appeal.

Cranford is a former Sitka Assembly candidate, and this the latest of several records appeals he has made before the assembly since 2024. He also sued the city in 2025, alleging censorship on the Sitka Police Department’s Facebook page. He’s the son of former police sergeant Gary Cranford, who sued the city several years ago, alleging he was unfairly demoted from sergeant to officer in breach of his union contract. The case was settled out of court for over $300,000. 

In other business, at tonight’s meeting the assembly will review an updated sub lease with Alaska Airlines. And it will consider the municipal administrator’s recommendation to hire the city’s interim fire chief, Brian McLaughlin, into the full-time, permanent position.

The Sitka Assembly meets at 6 p.m. tonight. Raven News will broadcast the meeting live, following Alaska News Nightly.

The Sitka Assembly has offered a second interview to a candidate for the city’s top job.

In a special meeting on Friday (8-21-26) the assembly interviewed Gerrie Cotter for the municipal administrator post. 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. She currently works as the administrator of Perry Township in Stark County Ohio, a community of just under thirty thousand people.

“We have police, fire, zoning, parks, and roads departments,” she told the assembly during a video call. “I’ve been township administrator there for the past year, and I’ve done quite a bit to help them modernize their processes.”

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. 

“So I’ve got a wide range of experience, much of it with local government. I really enjoy being able to see the improvements that you’re making at the local level. It’s much easier to see those improvements when you’re working in a particular community. So I do like that aspect of it,” she said.

“I’m also a licensed attorney in the state of New York,” she continued. “So I’m certainly capable of interpreting, drafting, recommending policy.”

The assembly prompted Cotter to share her experience in a variety of areas, from negotiating contracts with unions and doing public outreach, to building a budget and building a team.

“I think just being open-minded and listening to staff to hear what their concerns might be or what they’d like to see changed, and being flexible enough to consider those things is really important, especially when you’re dealing with diverse folks,” Cotter said. “I also think there’s ways that you can, you know, maybe create some more camaraderie and find commonalities and things that folks enjoy doing together to try and create that team environment too.” 

After interviewing Cotter for around an hour, the assembly went behind closed doors in an executive session. When the group returned, Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz announced that they would advance Cotter to a second interview.

Right now, Cotter is the only candidate in the running for the municipal administrator job. The assembly began its search for a new administrator when John Leach, signaled plans to resign last fall. Leach originally planned to step down in May, but extended his work with the city through December.

Cotter’s next interview date has not yet been announced. You can listen back to the full interview here.

“So we went around the other side of the house where the front door was, and began attacking the fire,” he said. “We found the fire to be in one of the first floor bedrooms, which was very, very much engulfed in fire at that point, and the house had filled pretty significantly with smoke throughout.”  

McLaughlin said the crew knocked down the initial blaze, and then began working to vent smoke out of the house. After about two hours, first responders were able to secure the scene and return to the fire hall.

He said the home was vacant at the time of the fire, and the cause is currently under investigation. While the source of ignition is still unclear, he believes the fire started in the first floor bedroom which suffered significant damage. 

“Throughout the rest of the house, there was smoke damage as well. So it’ll be a lot of cleaning and some significant repairs in that bedroom for sure,” he said.

“The person walking by, who saw the smoke and took the the minute to call us, saved that house,” he said. “If they if they just kept walking and forgotten about it, the house probably would have burned down. It would have gotten out of control.”

McLaughlin said don’t be afraid to call 911. He also asked that folks in the vicinity of a fire response keep a safe distance, and follow the instructions of emergency responders at the scene for their safety.