Sitka Assembly Member JJ Carlson filed Thursday (7-23-26) to run for a second full term. She’s the first to bid for an assembly seat this year. 

Carlson works for Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum. She’s served on the assembly since she was appointed in the fall of 2022 to fill a vacancy left by Rebecca Himschoot, who was elected to the state legislature. Carlson was elected to a full term in 2023. 

KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down with Carlson to talk about her decision to run again.

TRANSCRIPT:

CARLSON: I think I learned a lot in my first four years. I was appointed and then elected, and you know, there’s just a learning curve. There’s a lot that this municipality does. We run all of our own utilities, and it takes a bit to understand how that all fits together and see that big picture. I think at this point, I have a really good grasp of that big picture, and so now in my second term, I think I’d be very good at piecing together details that see a multi-level approach to getting some good decision making and some good things moving forward for this community.

KCAW: And tell me a little bit more about yourself.

CARLSON: Yeah, the other side of the story, right? You guys probably all know me as the assembly member JJ, but I do a lot around. I have a nonprofit management job. I volunteer quite a bit. I’m in the running community. You maybe see me painting crosswalks, being in the arts community here, doing stuff with kids, participating in some programs for our elders as well. It’s really hard to really pin me down. You know that’s the Sitkan. We’re always wearing multiple hats and serving our neighbors in different ways, and I really fit into that. So thanks for that question because that’s what Sitka is: that kind of community approach, and you might see someone in one light, but you know there’s so many different angles.

KCAW: What do you see as some of the biggest issues facing Sitkans right now? And if elected to a second term, how would you address those?

CARLSON: There’s a lot of cost of living concerns. There’s a lot of things facing my generation, the kind of working middle, and it’s an expensive place to be. It’s a lovely place to be. We have a great community. There’s so many attributes. It’s the financial side that is really stressing people out and causing maybe some unnecessary moves out of town. And the place of an assembly member can be to balance some of that. We have to cover our costs, but maybe we can do it in a way that doesn’t burden, you know, that working family.

KCAW: During your four years on the assembly so far, what are some of the things that you’re most proud of?

CARLSON: So many little things, but the big ones were kind of starting that tourism task force, and then starting that tourism commission to really look at how to best manage the situation that we found ourselves in in the last five years with that visitation from the cruise industry. And you know it’s something to be worked with. Limiting ourselves was an option. The town decided not to do that, so the management approach was what we went with, and I was a big part of bringing that to fruition.

KCAW: And you’re from Sitka. Does that play a role into you running for the assembly?

CARLSON: Absolutely. Born and raised here, an ’80s kid in Alaska was just a dream of so many, and I was able to live it. And you know, having that background, seeing really what we come from and the challenges that developed over time, that could have maybe been addressed a little bit sooner, I’m looking at that as a lens, seeing what was going on now and how to kind of adapt and and create solutions that don’t perpetuate forward. This is a great place to raise a family. I was blessed with that as a kid, and I’d like to see my neighbors, my classmates from high school, you know, myself being able to do that here. And there’s a lot of that kind of stuff that you wouldn’t quite pick up on as a potential concern or an immediate concern if you didn’t have kind of some decades here in this state, and I just want to be able to bring all of that knowledge that’s just kind of embedded in me forward to best serve this community. I think being on the assembly is a good way for me to kind of balance my skills that I developed that decade or two that I was gone and brought back, and really using that decision-making capacity that my master’s degree of decision-making is basically what architecture school is, and apply that to the place I love and the place I want to be and the place I want to succeed, you know, most in this world.

KCAW: Well, I don’t know that I have more questions right now. Is there anything else that I should have asked you, or you’d like to share?

CARLSON: Sitka is a great spot, and I think if we all work together, we can keep this place being the dream that we live. And I’m just wishing that Sitkans can trust and see that I did a good job in the last four years with the detailed work and with the big picture work. You know, I’m a steady voice. My decision making, my record shows, is pretty solid. I add to the conversations and deliberation, and sponsor a few things here and there too that really, really bring some good things to Sitka. And you know I’m very open to listening and hearing what the community wants, and then considering that and folding it into how I vote at the table.

Investors looking to ship bulk water out of Sitka are asking for another extension. At a Gary Paxton Industrial Park board meeting last week (7-16-26), leadership from Arctic Blue Waters Alaska Inc. said climate change and geopolitics have made the prospect of selling Sitka’s water more possible than ever before. But they still need more money to develop a plan to collect and ship it.

In 2021, the City and Borough of Sitka agreed to sell Arctic Blue the right to purchase water from Blue Lake. Under the agreement, the international bulk water shipping company had a few years to engineer and build a pipeline to collect water from the lake on its own dime. As they neared their deadline last year, Arctic Blue approached the Gary Paxton Industrial Park Board, and were granted an extension to September 30th of this year to submit their plans.

With the new deadline approaching, Arctic Blue is again asking for another year to deliver the project design, and wants to extend its deadline to ship the water to October 2028. 

Arctic Blue’s business development director Tomasz Tarasiewicz said shipping bulk water has become less of a pipe dream. He said both climate change and the wartime targeting of desalination plants in the Middle East [link] have decreased water security around the world, making the prospect of shipping bulk water more viable.

“12, 24 months ago, nobody was thinking that due to Middle East intervention, Iran is going to shoot desalination plants in Qatar, Bahrain, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia,” Tarasiewicz said. “All of these countries who have already an issue of water supply just realize that a $2 or $3 billion desalination plant is a very easy target to destroy, and they end up having no water.”

While Tarasiewicz said it was more possible than in years past, there are still hang ups that have forced them to ask for the extension. The company’s COO and co-founder Fred Paley said they’re still trying to secure $1.5 million for the final engineering report. And then there’s the cost of fuel- which has skyrocketed. 

“It’s an extra half a million dollars in order to move a load of water. Hopefully, within a year, that’s come back to normal, but it’s it’s hard to say what’s happening in the Middle East,” Paley said.

And shipping water is a relatively new model. Tarasiewicz says that means securing initial funding is a challenge

“So nobody’s really willing to come to come and pay $1.5 million to say, ‘Oh yeah, let’s do an engineering study because it makes sense.’ No, everybody’s waiting to see if this is doable, if this is feasible, if this is bankable,” he said. “So we have an uphill battle here. The only big change in the last 12 months is geopolitics have been showing that countries that have a water supply have to think differently in how they secure their water supply.”

Several park board members, including Chad Goeden, were open to extending the agreement with Arctic Blue for another year, but felt it was reasonable for the company to pay a fee to keep their place in line. 

“If there is going to be as much demand as Thomasz says there is, and I hope you’re right, then I would think you would have investors lining up to give you money to be involved in this project, which would very easily cover this, in the grand scheme of things, fairly small amount to maintain that option,” Goeden said. “So I understand what you’re saying that you think this is going to be huge, and I hope you’re right. But to me, that would mean you’d have investors tripping over each other to be involved.”

The board agreed to recommend an extension for a $25,000 fee. It passed 3-1 with Scott Wagner opposed. 

Lowering the winter sales tax rate, and upping the summer one. That was a popular proposal discussed at a Sitka Assembly work session on Tuesday (7-21-26) aimed at addressing the island’s childcare shortage.

Finding available and affordable childcare in Sitka is tough. Organizations trying to solve the problem have named it a top concern for young families in the community. 

“I’m very lucky to be in the situation I am to have daycare lined up, but it took until my child was five months old to know that I had a space available for her, and I signed her up the month I found out I was pregnant,” Skyleen Bottani told the Sitka Assembly on Tuesday.

She’s a parent to a seven-month-old and works as a mortgage lender at a local bank. 

“I do mortgages, and I’m seeing more parents stay home so they can help raise their grandchildren, or take equity out of their home to help kids buy homes to stay in Sitka,” she added. 

Bottani, along with several other community members, testified to the assembly on the importance of finding an affordable solution that includes career development.

Annette Evans heads up the Betty Eliason Child Care Center, which has operated in Sitka for nearly five decades. She said after setting up their second infant room, it took three months to get the staffing lined up so parents could finally enroll their kids. 

“It really comes down to the staffing,” Evans said. “We could add more children to our facility if we had the staff. We could keep children in our facility if we [could] keep our staff.”

And assembly members agree. They hope to incorporate a career pathway into a $1 million a year plan to address the childcare issue. But how the city is going to pay for the plan is still a question. Assembly members have discussed a winter sales tax increase, an alcohol tax, and removal of the sales tax cap, but finding a stable, dependable funding source has proved difficult for a city with already narrow budget margins.  

“We have spent the last year trying to figure out something besides the sales [tax],” Assembly Member Thor Christianson said. “Everybody’s been throwing out everything, and I haven’t heard anything that works, and if somebody has an epiphany, great. But it has to be stable, and it has to be something that we can know how much to put into the fund. And ultimately, Sitka is going to have to decide how important this is to them.”

But on Tuesday, at the suggestion of Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz, the assembly asked staff to look into how much a summer sales tax increase and winter decrease would bring in — that would put the summer sales tax at 7% and winter tax at 4%. Sitkans already pay a seasonal sales tax. Voters approved a permanent 6% summer tax rate in 2023 to establish a fund for school infrastructure projects.

“If we do a 1% sales tax up in the summer, and then 1% down in the winter, it’s kind of a give and take there,” Eisenbeisz said. “We’re easing the burden on those who stay here throughout the winter, while taking advantage of revenue streams that come through town in the summer.”

Eisenbeisz also suggested the city look at where it can tighten its belt and find money in its existing revenue streams to put towards a solution.

The assembly plans to discuss the issue again at its regular meeting on September 8. A sales tax change would ultimately have to go before the voters for approval.

Current Sitka Assembly Member Kevin Mosher has filed to run for mayor. Mosher, who is two years into serving his third term on the assembly, has served as an assembly member since 2018. He also threw his hat in the ring for the mayor’s seat in 2022, but lost to incumbent Steven Eisenbeisz. 

Mosher has lived in Sitka for more than three decades and has worked as a staff accountant at Sitka’s urban Native corporation, Shee Atiká, for 15 years. 

KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down with Mosher on Tuesday (7-21-26) to talk about why he’s making another run for elected office. 

TRANSCRIPT:

MOSHER: I ran for mayor one time, and I did not win, and that’s okay. And I’m kind of glad I didn’t win at that time. I don’t think I was ready for it. But the reason why I’ve decided to run for mayor this time is because, well, one, I think I’m qualified now. I think I have the experience, the wisdom, the city leadership skills, and I feel like there’s a lot of change happening. You know, our current municipal administrator won’t be there for much longer, and that’s a huge change. And I feel like I have good working relationships with the assembly members, with the staff. Over all these years, I built trust, because that’s a part of effective governance as well as building trust within the community and with the staff. And I’ve done that, and I understand how the structure goes. You know, I usually communicate with [Municipal Administrator] John [Leach], and then we get another sponsor on something. We have a meeting, we collaborate together, and then the staff gets involved. So I’m very proud of the work I’ve done. I think the biggest compliment I’ve gotten so far for all these years is that I come in with an open mind, and I do my homework, I do my research, meet with people, listen — a lot of listening, and when I come into an assembly meeting, if I’m presented with different information or a different point of view, and I’m willing to change my mind, and I have several times, I think it’s really important to have an open mind. So that kind of leadership, I think, is necessary, and I am looking forward to this opportunity to serve the community.

KCAW: And so, like you said, you’ve served on the assembly for nearly a decade now. What are some of the biggest issues facing Sitkins right now? And if elected as mayor, how do you propose to address those?

MOSHER: Well, the mayor is one vote of seven, so that’s something to keep in mind. There’s lots of issues. The cost of living is looming large over people. Housing is huge. Childcare is huge. We’re working on that right now. There’s lots of other things like that. Some big things. You know, people want to live here, and sometimes they can’t afford to live here. Whether they’re born here or get a job here to come here, they can’t find a place to live, and they can’t find childcare. I mean, I talked to my wife about this. We could probably sell our house for a pretty penny, but then we’re going to turn around and we won’t have a place to live. So there’s no real mobility there. So you know, basically the cost of living and the quality of life. And we have a very beautiful town, and we do have overall a very nice quality of life, but it takes a lot of hard work to maintain that. A lot of our infrastructure in town is aging, and so that has to be paid for. A lot of this infrastructure was built with state or federal money, so the current tax base doesn’t have the funds to pay for those repairs and maintenance. And so we’re trying to get federal and state grants. We’re trying to be business friendly to have responsible business growth, so we can have the tax revenue to help pay for these things [like] basic services like police, fire, roads, things like that, as well as supporting the schools, which is a basic requirement in my mind. I think the entire assembly agrees with that. So, in my mind, being mayor will be listening and guiding gently the assembly and the public to maintain the good things that are happening. There are a lot of good things. We’ve gotten some grants, we’ve got lots of infrastructure projects planned and also ongoing, and also we’re growing in other ways. We’re trying to make better communication within the city. There’s a communication plan. So there’s always room for improvement and grow. So in my mind, there’s two things. One is to help maintain the things that are good that are going on, especially in a time of big change, and then also at the same time to help facilitate pathways forward to help see if we can address things like childcare or housing affordability and things like that. And those are big things. And so they are things that community is going to have to decide if they want to work on together and tackle together. And I’m willing to work on that with other assembly members, and there’s a lot of excitement on the assembly to move forward with things like that, and I believe I have the skills now, at this point in my life, to be able to lead in this way.

Firefighters tamped out a fire at the Sitka Hotel on Friday night.

Around 10 p.m. on Friday, the fire hall received reports of smoke in the building of the Sitka Hotel alongside an alert from the hotel’s fire alarm company. In an interview with KCAW, Acting Fire Chief Rob Janik said 18 fire hall personnel, including nine staff and nine volunteers, responded.

When they arrived on the scene, they found light smoke throughout the building, but could not identify where the smoke was coming from. They explored each floor of the building from top to bottom, using thermal imaging detectors to search for hotspots in the walls. 

Shortly before 11:30 p.m., they located the smoke’s source inside the wall between the hotel restaurant’s kitchen and bar area on the first floor. Janik said the fire hadn’t burned through the wall yet, but the paint in the area was beginning to bubble. The team used tools to tear the wall apart and started applying water to the blaze. Janik said it took around five minutes to get the fire under control, but they had to remove more of the wall afterwards to ensure they extinguished the entire source of the burn. 

No injuries were reported. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Janik said Friday’s response was a team effort, and was grateful for support from police, city administration, the city’s electric department, and volunteers who helped ensure the problem was safely solved.

Janik asks that Sitkans pay attention when they hear a fire alarm, take appropriate action like calling the fire department, and evacuate the area. 

The city has been advertising for the role since current administrator John Leach submitted his resignation last October. Leach will step down from the position in December.

The Sitka Assembly publicly interviewed two candidates multiple times earlier this year, including Alber, who currently works as the deputy director of the City of New Orleans’ Department of Safety and Permits. Alber has a law degree from Charlotte School of Law in North Carolina, as well as a masters in public administration from Auburn University in Alabama. She also earned an associate’s degree from Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka in the early 1990s, according to her application. 

The city had been planning two public meet-and-greets with Alber later this month to allow Sitkans to ask questions and learn more about her. But in Monday’s announcement, staff said the community receptions would no longer be held. 

Seven Sitkans are taking turns chucking wood scraps into a round metal pit. They’re hauling them from Darren McAvoy’s truck bed where twigs, branches, and logs tower high over the cabin of his pickup truck.  

“We don’t need million-dollar high-tech machines to do this really important process of carbon storage,” McAvoy says. “It’s available to anybody in the home, farm, ranch, backyard.”

Or in the outfield of Mt. Edgecumbe High School’s old ballpark. McAvoy, a professor at Utah State University, is in Sitka with the local branch of the University of Alaska Fairbank’s Cooperative Extension Service leading a workshop on how to make biochar. That’s charcoal that stores carbon and improves soil quality.

“If worldwide in the next 30 years all agriculture adopted this approach, we’d have more carbon in our soil than we ever put in our air for the entire Industrial Revolution,” he says.

Waste wood is often openly burned or left to rot. Both of these scenarios emit 100% of the wood’s carbon. If turned into biochar, McAvoy says only a third goes back into the atmosphere. The rest is stored as a solid of almost pure carbon. 

To make biochar, you need large pieces of waste wood and a kiln. McAvoy’s kiln is a simple machine: just two rings of metal kept together by thumb screws. It comes up to his ribs and is about the size of a hot tub.

The bottom is packed with sand to keep air from seeping in. Using a lighter, he ignites small bundles of kindling on top of the spruce and birch branches. Both of these steps are crucial to deprive the kiln of oxygen.

“Pretty soon a flame cap forms over the top of it, and it consumes all the smoke, all the combustibles coming up,” McAvoy says. “So it’s very clean burning.”

Thick smoke and ash billow from the damp wood now roaring with flames. 

“It’s more productive and easier and less smoky if the wood is a little bit dry, which is not so easy in Sitka.”

The wood needs to burn for about an hour. That means there’s time for lunch. 

“I have hand sanitizer. I have foil. I have bean and cheese and beef and bean burritos. I recommend you grab one and some foil and wrap it up and put it on the top edge of the kiln,” McAvoy says. “Hope your expectations for a good lunch weren’t too high.”

The pile that once poked out above the kiln’s walls has shrunk. Small pieces of dark, black charcoal litter the bottom. The next step requires perfect timing. 

“Like when you’re sitting around a campfire late at night, you’re kind of falling asleep, and it poofs out, and it’s just coals,” he says.

That’s when it’s time to quench the burning wood. McAvoy douses the kiln with a garden hose. This stops the biochar from turning to ash. He knows it’s cool enough when he can run his bare hands through the char.

McAvoy says biochar is like a sponge that soaks up compost’s nutrients when mixed together. And there’s another upside according to Andrea Fraga, a gardening teacher at Pacific High School.

“As I get older, my back gets sore. I think about not turning compost piles,” Fraga says. “So if you don’t have to turn them as much, if they’re full of biochar, that’s great.”

For drier climates, the char holds onto water to keep soils moist. Biochar also has its benefits for wetter regions like Southeast Alaska. 

“It’s known to hold the nutrients on site and help to prevent the leaching that the heavy rainfall here creates,” he says.

Though it’s not widely used, McAvoy hopes his demonstrations across the country will educate and inspire more people to try it out.

He scrapes up a few handfuls of char and plops it into garbage bags to send home with gardeners. McAvoy hopes his workshop plants a seed for what will grow into a more common practice.  

When the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board met on Thursday (7-16-26), it approved an agreement and waiver for owners of uninsured boats. The document would allow owners to haul their uninsured vessels, as long as they agree to assume financial responsibility if the boat is damaged or spills fuel during the lifting process.

The owner must also pony up a substantial deposit. Board Member Casey Campbell said that was the only part giving him pause. 

“That $5,000 is going to be hard for people to deal with, and I almost feel like we just take it out. I don’t know what it’s gonna get us,” Campbell said. “We all know it’s not gonna solve an environmental spill or anything like that. So it’s kind of like we’re doing it because it feels good, but then it’s not gonna help the people who are trying to get hauled out.”

Park Director Garry White said while the money wouldn’t cover much more than a small spill, it was important to include it. 

“If there’s a big event, it’s not going to cover that, obviously. And then, this document has recourse to go after…whether the recourse is achievable or not,” White said. “But it also shows that some of these boat owners will have skin in the game, and understand that there is some issue going forward to the citizens in town if there is a spill.”

At the previous meeting, the board asked White to investigate whether any insurance companies could help cover the upfront cost for vessel owners through a loan, or bond. White said he’d had little luck courting insurance companies, but a private individual had expressed interest in providing bonds.

The board made one change to the document, adding that the $5000 spill fee could be covered with cash or bond, then approved the waiver unanimously. White said now city staff will work with Highmark Marine, the haulout operator, to negotiate adding the waiver to their operating agreement. Ultimately the Sitka Assembly must approve any changes to the haulout contract. 

Former Assembly Member Chris Ystad will serve on the Sitka Assembly until the next municipal election. This comes after former Assembly Member Tim Pike stepped down last month. 

Ystad, a local fisherman, served on the assembly from 2022 to 2025. He said while he’s enjoyed his time off the assembly, there are still things he wants to see through, like finding a solution for hauling uninsured boats at the new, city-owned, contractor-operated shipyard.  

“I still want to serve the community,” Ystad told the Sitka Assembly on Tuesday. “It’s a community I care for very much, and I do have some unfinished items that I would like to see across the finish line, [and] at least help get there if it doesn’t happen within these three months. [During] my time away, I’ve also thought of a few other things that I’d like to try to address. Three months is a tight timeline, but maybe I can at least get the ball rolling and the discussions started.”

The assembly unanimously voted to appoint Ystad over Jeremy Plank, a local accountant and business owner who currently serves as the chair of the city’s tourism commission.

Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said he voted for Ystad because of his previous experience on the assembly, and said he supports keeping Plank in his seat on the tourism commission. 

“I find his operation and running of the tourism commission to be extremely valuable, and I think that we would be benefited the most by keeping him in that role, and then having Chris serve out the remainder of the term,” Eisenbeisz said.

Ystad was sworn in at the assembly meeting on Tuesday, where he was also appointed as vice deputy mayor. He said he does not plan to run for re-election in the upcoming municipal election.

The Sitka Assembly is moving forward with a discussion over whether or not to put $20,000 towards a Parks and Recreation Master Plan. At its regular meeting on Tuesday (7-14-26), the majority of assembly members rejected the funding, but the issue still advanced because of a rule in the city charter. 

Leaders and supporters of the Sitka’s Parks and Recreation program are developing a plan for its future. The Sitka Recreation Foundation, an outside organization that advocates for parks and green spaces, is leading the charge.

They hired a contractor, Corvus Design, to complete the multi-phase plan. The project launched in June. Parks and Recreation Manager Kevin Knox said it’s far overdue. 

“I do want to note that the last time we had a comprehensive recreation plan for the city was 1991,” he said.

Knox said the plan, which they hope to have finalized by January, is expected to cost at least $61,000. 

The city entered into an agreement with the recreation foundation earlier this year to help raise money for the project, and contributed about $15,000 as seed funding. Knox said while the foundation has already raised 20K with plans to raise more, they need more support from the city to complete the “visioning, community engagement, and conceptual design phases.” 

“Active community discussions have highlighted pressing infrastructure deficiencies lately that we plan to address, specifically regarding athletic fields, dark park accessibility, and modernizing our other outdoor recreational facilities,” he said.

Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said the agreement indicates the recreation foundation will do the heavy funding lift, and its request for additional funding doesn’t necessarily align with that. 

“Do we want to do it? That is the question to me. Do we want to do this? Originally, we were talking about ownership of the project, right? And we were going to have a little seed money in this, and it was going to be SRF’s thing. At this point, this has become our project,” he said. “Does the municipality want to own the project at this point? Because I don’t think any of us are debating the worthiness of it. It’s the ownership of it.”

Assembly Member JJ Carlson said she was on board with the city’s initial contribution, but now it seems like they were “sold something that hasn’t been delivered.”

“This is becoming different than I thought we were getting into six months ago,” she said.

Assembly Member Thor Christianson said there’s a lot of public interest in the plan, and for him, it isn’t so much about the dollar amount. It’s more a question of if this plan is actually a priority for the city. 

“It’s no surprise to me that they are having to struggle to raise money from donations,” he said. “And it’s no surprise that it’s costing more than they really thought it was. I mean, almost everything we do these days is that way. The real question is, do we want to do this? Do we want this plan to happen, and are we willing to spend some money to do it?”

Ultimately, assembly members Christianson and Kevin Mosher voted in favor of the appropriation, with Carlson, Scott Saline, and Eisenbeisz opposed. While this would normally kill the item, the city’s charter requires a majority of seven for an ordinance to fail, even if there aren’t seven assembly members present. 

The assembly will discuss the item again at its meeting on July 28.