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.

Sitkans convened last week (8-6-26) to brainstorm solutions to the community’s current childcare shortage. The half-day summit, hosted by the Greater Sitka Chamber of Commerce, looked to foster discussions that would help draft a three-year roadmap for funding and care.

“We have filled this room with such a diverse amount of people and perspectives, and that was the ultimate goal,” said Rachel Roy, the chamber’s director, addressing nearly 50 community members and representatives from state and national childcare organizations.

Earlier this year, the city commissioned a childcare study from a regional nonprofit. The 30-page report said childcare capacity in Sitka only meets half of the current need.

Roy said availability mainly comes down to funding, so money was central to the conversation. Sitka School District Superintendent Diedre Jenson said early childhood care is crucial for children and the community. 

“This is an investment,” Jenson said. “We have to invest in our children because that is the future.”

The summit’s breakout sessions focused on a number of key areas, from supporting childcare career pathways, to stabilizing existing programs and examining opportunities for public-private partnerships.

Each person then shared their most promising idea and how they plan to push forward over the next three years. They landed on sustainable funding and outreach. 

Roy said she doesn’t want a lack of childcare to keep workers from accepting jobs or rising into leadership positions in Sitka. And she said the conversations at the summit are a step in the right direction.

The filing period for Sitka’s municipal election closed at 5 p.m. Friday (8-7-26), and three more candidates jumped into the race just ahead of the deadline.

Thursday evening, Lisa Lane filed to run for the mayor’s chair. She joins assembly members Kevin Mosher and Thor Christianson who filed earlier this month. 

Mary Ann Hall was the latest candidate to throw her hat in the ring Friday afternoon for one of two open seats on the Sitka Assembly. She joins Darrell Windsor, Sherri Blankenship, and incumbent JJ Carlson in the race.

Recent Sitka School Board member Matt Potter filed for a full term on the board Friday, joining fellow board members Phil Burdick and Kat Richards in the race for three open seats.

Raven News has reached out to all new candidates for interviews and will air those conversations over the next week.

Sitka’s Municipal Election is Tuesday, October 6.

Pink salmon are finally showing up in Southeast Alaska, and that’s good news for the commercial fishing industry. State biologists predicted a season harvest of about 19 million fish, but the pinks just weren’t showing up.

“It’s definitely late,” said Andrew Piston, the region’s salmon research supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “It was getting late enough in the year that I was starting to get pretty worried.”

Piston said managers have been limiting commercial openings for seiners and gillnetters because they weren’t seeing sufficient numbers.

“It’s definitely an unusual season,” he said. “I mean, the harvest through this past week was about as low as it’s ever been since, you know, the 1960s. We were off to a historically really bad start.”

But, finally, there’s a glimmer of hope. When pinks showed up this week on the outer coast, managers noticed there were more males than females. That’s a good sign, Piston said, because males typically show up before the females. So, this means more fish are expected.

“We saw catches improve dramatically in a lot of areas,” he said. “So hopefully, this turnaround will keep going for a few weeks, and we’ll end up, you know, getting reasonably close to our preseason forecast.”

The value of Southeast’s commercial pink salmon harvest averaged about $27 million a year over the last decade. Pinks run on a two-year life cycle, with even years, like this one, being weaker.

Matt Potter filed to run for a seat on the Sitka School Board on Friday (8-7-26). Potter has worked as a school administrator and teacher across Alaska, including in the Sitka School District. He spoke with KCAW shortly after filing about his interest in serving on the board. Listen to the conversation here:

KCAW: You have thrown your hat in the ring for a seat on the Sitka School Board. You’re currently a member, you were appointed last month, but you’re vying for a full term. Why why are you running for a seat on the board?

Potter: I’ve decided to run for school board because I and my family have been in Sitka for almost 10 years now. I first came to Sitka as the assistant principal at Blatchley Middle School, and we’ve kind of made it our home. We’ve a couple times have had to leave because of job opportunities, and funding cuts in education, and that kind of stuff. But really, this is our home, and my kids or my boys are both at the age where one’s going to be in third grade, one’s going to start kindergarten next year. I want to be able to kind of shape the way that their education is as they move through the Sitka School District, and everything that I have seen, everything I’ve been a part of in Sitka, we have a really great educational system. We have awesome staff members, and awesome teachers, and I want to be able to be a part of that, and help shape as we’re going forward, especially with the the way funding in education on the state level has been trending in the last couple of years. I want to be able to make sure that I have a voice in how that money and how those budgets are made, but I also want to be able to have a platform for advocacy on that statewide level as well. So I think that being a part of the school board is really going to kind of help me do both of those things.

KCAW: And can you talk a little bit about what experiences you you have that are going to inform your work on the board the most?

Potter: I have been in education my whole adult life. I started as a teacher in Anchorage, and my first administrative job was up north of Fairbanks, and then after that, that’s when I moved to Sitka as the AP at Blatchley. I was then the the principal at Seward Middle School in Seward. I came back and I was at Mt. Edgecumbe for a couple years as an assistant principal there, and I spent the last year in Oregon as a director of a middle school director of a charter school down there. So I feel like coming onto the school board with a background in education, but also a background in education that’s not just with the Sitka School District, but it’s kind of statewide and in multiple states as well. [It] kind of gives me that overarching view of how the education system works, both the city level, the state level, but also kind of nationally as well. And I think that’ll kind of help me inform my decisions as as we move forward, especially with the budgeting process, because it’s always such a big issue for the school board and for the school district as a whole.

KCAW: Can you expand a little bit more on what your goals would be if you were elected to the board for a full term?

Potter: Yeah, and you know, I don’t have one specific goal that I have in mind. I just want to be able to serve the school district any way possible, and now it’s going to be on the school board and help inform the decisions that are made, so that that both my family, my sons, as well as the students in the Sitka School District as a whole get the best education that they can get. I mean, because really, at the end of the day, right, that’s why everybody is in education, is on the school board, is because we want what’s best for kids, and I think this is the way that I can help direct that.

Darrell Windsor filed to run for a seat on the Sitka Assembly on Wednesday. Windsor owns Sitka Appliance Repair and is a long-time member of the Sitka Planning Commission.

KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down with Windsor on Friday (8-7-26) to talk to him about his bid for an assembly seat, and what he hopes to address, if elected. 

WINDSOR: Well, I’ve been in Sitka for 32 years. [I’ve] seen a lot of changes in 32 years. And I’ve been on the Planning Commission for 15 years. So, on the Planning Commission, we make recommendations to the Assembly. So, I thought I’d like to be on the other end for once, get the recommendations given to me.

KCAW: Yeah. So, I was going to ask you about that. You are a long-serving member on the Planning Commission, you’re the current chair as well, but this is your first time running for a seat on the Sitka Assembly. Why now? What are the issues affecting Sitkans that are making you want to to run?

WINDSOR: Of course, the biggest one is housing and the tourism. Those are two really hot items that we have to figure something out. I mean, I understand this is a tourist town, and that’s our main business. But it seems like half the population doesn’t want it, and the other half does. 

KCAW: Do you have specific policies you have in mind for how to address those issues?

WINDSOR: I do on the housing, but I really don’t want to say right now. But yeah, I’ve got an idea.

KCAW: So, why should Sitkans vote for you?

WINDSOR: I think Sitkans should vote for me because I’m level-headed. I like to hear both sides and try to make an intelligent decision. I just don’t jump off the bat because I feel this way or that way. I like to hear it all. So, I think if you want a balanced somebody to make a decision, I’d be good for that.

KCAW: What else should people know about you? We know that you’ve served on the Planning Commission for a long time, but what should people know about you before they vote in the municipal election this fall?

WINDSOR: Well, I think a lot of people know me. I do appliance repair, so I’ve met probably at least 40% of the population of Sitka, so they understand that I don’t jump in. You know, I try to think things through and I try to apply that with the same thing I do on my job with troubleshooting: figure out the problem, then try to fix the problem. I feel I’ll be the same way on the assembly.

KCAW: And so you mentioned these big issues of housing and tourism affecting Sitkans right now, and I know you don’t want to go into all the details. But if elected, how do you propose to address those longstanding challenges here in Sitka?

WINDSOR: Well, like I said, I’ve got an idea. I really don’t want to say it right here. [Find] a way to get some property out to people, and an affordable way of getting property out to people.

A thick slug sits on a deer heart leaf in Tiger Xu’s hands. He holds the leaf up to a large window misted with creek water. Petting it with his pointer finger, Xu tries to coax the slug onto the glass.

“I can name him Franklin,” Xu says. “I like that. It’s an arbitrary name.”

Xu is wrapping up a summer seminar called “The Art of Noticing in Multispecies Worlds.” This was a three-week course for high schoolers through Outer Coast, an undergraduate liberal arts program in Sitka.

Instead of papers or exams, students created art to showcase what they learned in an exhibition called “It’s Literally About Everything.” And they used just about anything to prove it. 

Xu is using Franklin’s goo. As the slug slides across the window, its trail of slime will be the art on display. 

“I’m putting it on a vertical surface that’s moist because we could never adhere to a surface like that, right?”

During the seminar, the students helped rehab sections of Sitka’s trails as a service project. Xu noticed how classmates would nudge slugs with their boots or chuck them to the side of the path. And that attitude is something Xu wants to change.  

“How do you empathize with a mollusk that has a face very different from yours?” asks Eben Kirksey, an anthropology professor at the University of Oxford who led the seminar.

Kirksey says Xu’s art aims to create a greater sense of “slug empathy” by spotlighting the creature’s curiosities, like its slime.

“The idea is to teach students to pay attention to creatures in our shared environment, and especially notice what get called the ‘unloved others’ that share the world with us,” Kirksey says.

Taking a closer look could lead to new discoveries. It did for Zoe Cole who stumbled across some scraps when scavenging for salmonberries. At first, she noticed discarded bathroom tiles scattered outside of a campus residence hall. The closer she looked, and the deeper she dug, Cole realized they were entangled with metal and cement. 

“How can I make this art? How can I make this actually meaningful and not just a bunch of garbage?” Cole wonders.

Her moss-covered findings now sit in the center of the exhibition. Rusted wires, chunks of concrete, and broken tiles sprawl across a folding table draped in an inside-out emergency blanket. 

“When I first found it,” Cole says, “I was like, ‘Whoa! This reminds me of an ecosystem and how everything is connected in ecosystems.’”

The more she thought about it, the more it symbolized. She says it looks like a galaxy or a family tree.

“It can be life with all the moss that’s growing on the pieces, or it can be death with all the rust that’s on the wires. It’s everything,” Cole says.

Kirksey says it was Cole who came up with the exhibition’s name: “It’s Literally About Everything.”

“It’s been all about hope. It’s been about love. It’s been about how to undergo symbiogenesis, which means becoming symbiotic. So this is what the students have done together socially, and also with the art that’s on display today,” Kirksey explains.

That idea is best represented by a branch hanging on the wall. Mariia Hryhurko wanted to literally intertwine her classmates into her art. So she twisted tendrils of moss and lichen together with their human counterpart.

“We took moss and lichen, and we weaved some braids with the hair of our participants,” Hryhurko says.

One strand is nearly a foot long. 

“It’s one of our co-creator’s, and she contributed a lot, as you can see,” Hryhurko says. “She’s very dedicated to this artwork.”

Kirksey says the seminar’s 12 students came to Sitka from all over the world with their own values and perspectives. AnnaMae Owen and Annmarie Sakar collected heart-shaped leaves, shells, and bark they found in the forest. Owen says nature is full of hopeful symbols.

“A late night that’s full of stars with the northern lights or the early morning sunrises or the sunsets, the birds chirping in the early mornings or in the dawn,” Owen says, “those are the kind of things that bring me hope for a new day and a better tomorrow.”

Kirksey says the course has been about that kind of observation, and thinking more about the creatures around us. He wants the students to ask: What’s the world like as a starfish without eyes? How does human infrastructure change where a plant might grow?

Or what’s it like to be Franklin? Empathizing may have been tough before. But as people peer at the slug leaving a trail of ooze across the glass, they now have a mutual interest: art.