A new report commissioned by the cruise industry outlines the financial boost cruise ship visitors have had on Sitka’s economy. 

The report was prepared by global advisory firm Oxford Economics for CLIA — the Cruise Lines International Association, and was published last week. 

Sitka Tourism Manager Judson Rusk told the Sitka Assembly on Tuesday (8-11-26) the study is part of a larger project launched in 2024 that looks at 10 different cruise ports across Europe and the Pacific Northwest. 

“The goal was to create a consistent framework for understanding cruise activity at the individual port level, and then ultimately what that activity means economically for that destination,” he said.

The 40-page report breaks down economic impact on Sitka into three categories: direct impact — meaning the money spent in town by cruise passengers; indirect impact — meaning the money businesses spend to purchase goods and services to help their operations; and induced impact — meaning what employees of those businesses then go spend their wages on in town. 

“So a visitor spends money at a business. That business spends money with suppliers and pays their employees. Those employees spend some of their earnings elsewhere,” Rusk said.

The cruise industry yielded $105 million in direct spending in Sitka in 2024, according to the report. And every cruise passenger, on average, spent $136 during their visit. 

Sitka cruise activity directly supported 569 jobs, according to the report, and indirectly supported an additional 185 jobs, for a total of 754 jobs supported across Alaska.

The report says cruise demand in Alaska grew by 40% between 2019 and 2024 — more than double the global rate. But it projects demand will slow down moving forward.

“It shows that Alaska holds a very strong position as being a premium and in-demand cruise market, but that there is also reasonable and sustainable projected stability in the foreseeable future, which I think is a very good news for a community like ours,” Rusk said.

In other business…

The assembly gave final approval on a fee waiver program for large groups planning winter-time events at the city’s convention center on Tuesday. Assembly members also approved an updated agreement between the city and Sitka Recreation Foundation regarding the development of a parks and recreation master plan, and held an executive session to discuss municipal administrator candidates.

Stephen Lawrie sits at a booth in the Pioneer Bar in Sitka and points to a painting behind the counter. It’s a portrait of Art Petraborg, whose windswept white hair whisks across a canvas filled with dark clouds.

“He’s got braided sideburns,” Lawrie points out. “Are you kidding me? I mean, that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.”

The two met nearly 50 years ago when Lawrie started trolling, and he still remembers their first interaction. Lawrie’s 30-some paintings hanging in the bar look to capture these types of stories.

The collection is called “This Thing We Call the Ocean Part II: Names discovered, stories told.” It’s similar to last summer’s exhibit — in name and content — but this time it also honors some people from the past. 

“They are no longer with us, but they formed sort of the core, or they set the tone for fishing in Pelican and in Sitka,” he says.

A downtown bar might not be a traditional gallery space, but Lawrie prefers it that way. 

“This is where ordinary people come and that’s the audience that I’m interested in,” Lawrie says.

Earlier this summer, Lawrie accepted the People’s Choice Award for one of New Zealand’s most prestigious painted portraiture contests, the Adam Portraiture Award competition. He was recognized by the New Zealand Portrait Gallery for a painting of him and his sons aboard the fishing vessel Born Again. It hangs with his other works at the Pioneer Bar.

The bar’s walls are typically covered in small, framed photographs of fishermen, their boats, and the ocean. But Maite Lorente, who helped Lawrie curate this collection, says there comes a time when you start to ignore the photos. 

“If you want to see a work of art that you have in your place, or you really want to see it, once time has gone by, you need to move it. You need to shake it,” Lorente says. “When we remove these paintings, those stories come back with a louder voice.”

Lawrie’s paintings help bring a new perspective.

“It feels different, not better, not worse, but different,” Lorente remarks.

Lorente helped Lawrie find stories and family photos for him to paint, though the artist seems to know quite a few of his subjects. 

“He was so kind to me when he could have been really tough on me,” Lawrie remembers as he looks at a portrait of Jake Phillips.

Lawrie says he admires how fishermen would help one another, even when they didn’t have to. He knows fishing is a stressful job — he was a troller for 43 years — but he wants to capture the lightness of his subjects, not just their grit. 

“Painting someone like Moses Johnson Senior there, that guy was one of the best fishermen in this town, just totally low key and not at all pushy. He was a really mellow guy. His biggest thing was his basketball when he was a young man, but he caught fish like crazy,” Lawrie says.

There’s a portrait of Bill Hills, a name Lorente came across when researching Greentop Harbor on Yakobi Island, not far from Pelican. Hills started fishing in Alaska in the late 1930s, a time, Lawrie notes, before float planes and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters.

“You’re on your own,” he says, “so it becomes a community of people keeping an eye on your neighbor, even if he cuts you off every now and again. You’re still keeping an eye on him.”

Lawrie remembers a time when there’d be picnics on the beach if fishing was slow. He says the shortened fishing season has made the job more competitive over the years, and he hopes his paintings are a reminder of how essential a close-knit community is to fishing in Southeast.

Updated 8-13-26 at 4:00 p.m.

Searchers have recovered the body of a hiker who went missing  near Port Armstrong earlier this week (8-10-26). In a press release, Alaska State Troopers said they found the body of 22-year-old Ben Le today/on Thursday at the base of a tall cliff, concluding a three day search. 

The official search for Le started Tuesday morning (8-11-26) after he didn’t return from a planned day hike the day before (8-10-26).  

On Wednesday, a helicopter search crew spotted a body in a gully below a cliff around where Le had gone missing. Wildlife Troopers went back to the area today/Thursday to confirm the body was Le. 

Troopers say Le’s next of kin have been notified. 

____________________________

Original Post, 8-13-26 at 11:45 a.m.

Alaska State Troopers are searching for a hiker in Port Armstrong after he didn’t return from a planned day hike earlier this week (8-10-26).

Troopers say the missing man, 22-year-old Ben Le, is an employee at a hatchery in the community on the southeast side of Baranof Island. In a press release issued Wednesday (8-12-26), troopers said he left for a hike Monday morning and was expected to return by 4:30 p.m. later that day. 

Ground and aerial search efforts started Tuesday morning (8-11-26) with help from Alaska National Guard, Juneau Mountain Rescue, Alaska Wildlife Troopers, SEADOGS, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Sitka Fire Department Search and Rescue was called in Tuesday afternoon, and provided a K9 team and two field members.   

Responders searched until around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday before breaking for the night. The search started up again Wednesday morning with help from the National Guard, Alaska Rescue Coordination Center, and a thermal drone team. 

Sitka Interim Fire Chief Brian McLaughlin said field and K9 teams from Sitka and Juneau withdrew from the search Wednesday morning.

Troopers say Le was last seen wearing a black windbreaker with a blue short sleeve t-shirt underneath, black hiking style pants, rubber boots, and black biking type gloves. They ask anyone with information regarding Le to contact the Alaska State Troopers in Juneau at 907-465-4000.

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and may be updated.

The Sitka Assembly voted to postpone a conversation concerning a major overhaul of the city’s commercial transportation code on Tuesday (8-12-26) after several community members spoke out against the proposed changes. 

Sitka’s current taxi code has remained largely unchanged for nearly three decades. At assembly meeting, Municipal Administrator John Leach said the city has been working for several years to update it to more accurately reflect the community’s current transportation landscape. 

“The chapter in place has remained largely unchanged since the late 1990s,” he said. “The existing chapter regulates only taxis. It does not account for tours, shuttles, limousines, human-powered vehicles such as pedicabs, all of which operate in Sitka today.” 

The updated code city staff developed would introduce an endorsement system divided into three classes, folding in the updated transportation methods. It would not allow taxi operators to hold any other endorsements, a change Leach says is intended to ensure dedicated public taxi service. The new code would also update the existing fare structure to a flat-rate system based on pick-up and drop off zones, rather than a metered one. 

“Under the current chapter, a person who believes they’re hiring a taxi at a regulated rate can find that the trip is billed as a tour or a sightseeing service at a rate the city does not regulate,” Leach said. “That’s a hard position for a passenger who has no way to know the difference, and it’s not fair to the operators who do charge the published rate.”

Leach said changing the city’s taxi code is contentious. The “painful process” began with community conversations in 2023, but the city’s efforts were stalled after a taxi company sued the former police chief over his interpretation of the taxi code. The case was settled last summer, allowing the city to revisit the issue.

“Nobody’s touched this in 27 years because every time we try to touch it, this is what happens,” he said. “And most people have said, ‘This is not worth my time and energy.’”

Even though a few years have passed, the issue still got pushback at Tuesday’s meeting, where several community stakeholders said they don’t support the proposed updates, and that if approved, it will hurt business. 

Elias Carroll works for Tidal Taxi and Tours. He said taxi demand has decreased in recent years, as hotels, fishing lodges, and cruise terminals have started to provide their own shuttle service. He said a few local calls and walkups a day isn’t enough to maintain the cost of running a taxi business. 

“As regulations on taxis increase, drivers will soon not be able to survive in Sitka’s high costs of living,” he said.

Sig Rutter agreed. He said throughout his tenure as a cab driver in Sitka, he’s sold taxi, tour, and shuttle services, and he wants to keep it that way. 

“I believe it’s completely inappropriate for the assembly, or chief of police, or the administrator to try to force us to choose whether we’re going to be a taxi, tour or a shuttle,” Rutter said. “I’m entitled to continue doing business the way I have for the last 16 years.”

Assembly Member Scott Saline said he wants more public engagement before voting on the code update, and suggested postponing the issue until later this year. 

“I’m just afraid we’re going to end up with like a haulout that can’t haul out boats, and we’re going to end up with cabs that can’t pick people up,” he said.

Assembly Member Katie Riley agreed with the postponement. She said balancing the affordability needs of residents with the needs of providers to make a living is a tough line to walk.

“I would love a little bit of thought to go into this process because it has been talked about for 27 years, and there keep being impediments,” Riley said. “So there needs to be some dedication to getting a comprehensive look at what all the comments are on this proposal, where all the little rub points are, and then what can we do about that.”

Ultimately, the assembly voted unanimously to move the issue to its meeting on Nov. 24.

Wild said the Sitka Police Department reminds the public to please use the designated turn lanes for their intended purpose: making turns. They are not extra lanes for merging, passing, or getting ahead of traffic.

If approved, the code updates would introduce an endorsement system divided into three classes – taxis, shuttles and tours, and human-powered vehicles, like pedicabs. It would not allow taxi operators to hold any other endorsements, a change the memo says is intended to ensure dedicated public taxi service. The new code would also update the existing fare structure to a flat-rate system based on pick-up and drop off zones, rather than metered. 

In other business, the assembly will consider an updated agreement with the Sitka Recreation Foundation for the creation of a Parks and Recreation Master Plan. It will also consider, on second reading, a fee waiver program for some winter events at the city’s convention center. And at the end of the meeting, it will go behind closed doors in an executive session to screen candidates for the municipal administrator position. 

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 Sitka Fire Department tamped out a woodland fire late last week. 

On Friday (8-7-26), around 10:30 a.m., a 911 caller reported smoke coming from a tree near the Indian River trailhead. 

Interim Fire Chief Brian McLaughlin said one engine and five firefighters responded to the scene, where they found a fire brewing under the exposed root system of a Sitka spruce. He said responders didn’t find anything obvious that started the fire. 

“But what our guess is, just due to the nature of the fire and where it was located, and it was really kind of in the the peat moss of the ground, that probably something like a cigarette butt or a firework that had gone off several days prior, or even a day prior, had started a small burn that just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter until it started smoldering and creating enough of a smolder to smoke up before it actually caught the tree itself on fire,” he said.

McLaughlin said the crew pushed water directly into the ground for about an hour, saturating the area to avoid any reignition. The overall response took less than two hours. 

He said living in a rainforest won’t necessarily prevent fires from happening, and Sitkans should be cautious, especially with the recent sunny, dry weather. 

“It doesn’t take that long for our rainforest flora to dry out enough to be a little bit more easily combustible,” he said. “It just takes the right conditions and the right baseline fuel, air, and heat to make it happen.”

Quick action also prevented a fire at a DeGroff Street home on Sunday from spiraling out of control.

McLaughlin said it appears a homemade wooden smoker was the source of the blaze. It caught the side of a lean-to garage and porch on fire. 

“It just so happens one of our off-duty firefighters was walking by, saw the smoke, [and] called it into us right then, and helped the tenant start putting water on the fire with the tenant’s garden hose,” he said. “And we were there shortly thereafter with a couple fire trucks.”

10 firefighters, two engines, and an ambulance arrived on scene around 1:45 p.m. and put out the fire quickly. McLaughlin said there was some damage to the structure, but nothing “catastrophic.” The total response and investigation took about an hour and a half. 

McLaughlin reminds Sitkans to not hesitate to call 911.

“If you think you need us, just give us a call,” he said.  

Local business owner Sherri Blankenship filed to run for a seat on the Sitka Assembly last week (8-5-26). 

Blankenship is a nutritionist and owner of Highliner Coffee. She ran for an assembly seat last year, narrowly losing to incumbent Thor Christianson. 

KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down with Blankenship on Monday (8-10-26) to discuss her bid for a seat and what her priorities would be, if elected.

TRANSCRIPT:

KCAW: This is your second time running for the assembly. Tell me a bit about that decision.

BLANKENSHIP: Well, I have the same desire to run for assembly this year that I did last year. I have the same goals, and I was pretty close last time, within just a handful of votes. It was disappointing, but at the same time, I felt like that was a growing experience because I went the route that mentors told me to do, which is join commissions, be more involved, and that’s what I did all this year, is I grew.

KCAW: So tell me a little bit about how you’ve been more involved.

BLANKENSHIP: I joined the tourism commission. I feel like I have an indirect-facing business to tourism, but it affects my business in some ways. But I have a neutral position in a lot of ways because I know what tourism does for our town, but I also represent everyone, and I want it to be comfortable at the same time. So I don’t want it to be the only industry that we focus on.

KCAW: There are a lot of issues facing Sitkans right now. What do you see as some of the biggest? And if elected to the assembly seat, how would you help solve those?

BLANKENSHIP: I really haven’t seen the needle move much from last year. I really think that all of those issues that we concentrated on last year are still remaining. We’re still dealing with them, and I don’t really expect that we would have them solved by now. But I would really like to see that needle move a little faster. I do believe that we also need to focus on wellness in general for our community. Mental health is really important, and I would like to see better programs, or the programs that are existing to be more bolstered, more supported, and [not only] supported by business, but supported by our city as well. So that is one of the areas that I want to concentrate on.

KCAW: You mentioned some of these issues that have been affecting Sitkans for a long time, including last year. For those who might not have been in the loop last year during election time, or are new to town, can you expand on some of those issues that you’re talking about?

BLANKENSHIP: Well, we’ve always had a housing issue, but the issues that we’ve been dealing with as a community is housing, economics, as far as being economically healthy, supporting local industry, making sure that they’re all supported the way that they need to be, and also [that] small businesses have the support that they need. But the cost of living is another issue that we’re dealing with, and that one’s a hard one because that’s not something that we can change necessarily on the assembly. You know, that is something that we have to be empathetic to our residents and know what they’re dealing with, and try to come up with more ways to bring money into our community so that in the end, it can bring down the cost of living.

KCAW: And as you mentioned, last year, you just narrowly lost in the election. Why should Sitkans vote for you this year?

BLANKENSHIP: I know that I represent a larger demographic here in Sitka. I have four children that have gone through, two that remain in the school district, two grown children, and I also own a business. I’ve also not owned a business while I lived in this town, so I’ve seen all levels and phases of living here. I’ve lived here for 22 years, actually almost 23, and I can say that I think that I represent that middle ground where I still am young enough to represent the younger crowd, and I’m old enough to know what those struggles were and survive them, but I’m also not too old to be out of touch.

KCAW: Is there anything else that you think Sitkans should know about you before the municipal election this October?

BLANKENSHIP: I’ve grown a lot, I think. I think in this last year, I took a lot of direction to heart. I’ve learned to listen a lot more, and I think that is really important when being on the assembly. Being able to listen closer to the larger group and see what those needs are, and be able to change your mind if you get new information that would validate a change. And I believe that’s a metric that has definitely changed with me, and I’ve seen that growth, and I think reflection is really important.