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.

Southeast Alaska Independent Living (SAIL) is a local nonprofit that works with seniors and people with disabilities. Every summer, the organization hosts a number of programs and events that culminate in a celebratory community picnic. Joel Hanson, program director at SAIL, Jordan Tanguay, recreation and employment director, and siblings Brayden and Shawtay Holder, who are part of the organization’s summer work program, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss plans for the upcoming annual picnic and other summer programming. The picnic will take place from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, July 24, at the Crescent Harbor Net Shed. SAIL will provide hamburgers and hot dogs, and asks community members to bring a side dish. Listen to the conversation here:

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 Three Sopranos — Rhiannon Guevin, Karen Neal and Mina Brooks-Schmidt — joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss their upcoming concert. Set for July 25, 7 p.m. at Odess Theater, the concert will feature classical, bluegrass, and musical theater music, and will include guest artist performances. Listen to the conversation here:

Admission to the concert is by suggested donation. All proceeds will benefit the restoration of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp’s North Pacific Hall.

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. 

One year ago on July 18, the rescission bill eliminating federal funding from Raven Radio was passed into law. Raven Radio was hit with a 24% cut to our budget, a loss of $178,595 in FY26 and FY27, with no restoration of funding in sight.

It was a tough day here at Raven Radio. But I also already saw the silver linings. In the runup to the rescission, you showed me how much Raven Radio meant to you. You called and wrote to our representatives. You left messages of hope and resilience with your donations. You stopped me on the street to say you cared, or left cookies and a note on our kitchen table at the Cable House.

And all year, it just kept happening. You kept stepping up.

New members and long-time supporters alike decided to keep Raven Radio around. Our message of the year became “Defunded, not defeated.”

Because of you, that’s still true. We didn’t cut a single on-air program. We kept our journalism residency program intact, and our newsroom fully staffed. We had our most successful drive ever. We trained new volunteers; opened our studios to students and community members; and brought music, stories, and joy to the airwaves 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We also made some hard choices. Our staff is smaller now, and our budget is tighter too. We’re working hard, alongside stations across Alaska and the country, to build a sustainable future.

But I am happy to say that one year out from the loss of federal funding, we are still going strong. Federal funding has not returned, but you’ve shown me it’s possible for Raven Radio to continue to thrive.

Thank you.

With hope,

Mariana Robertson

KCAW General Manager

Next month, the Greater Sitka Chamber of Commerce and Sitka Early Childhood Coalition are hosting a childcare conference to help address the urgent need for affordable childcare in Sitka. The summit will bring stakeholders together to look at sustainable funding strategies to increase access to childcare and strengthen Sitka’s workforce and economy. Participants will learn about the current childcare landscape, discuss funding strategies, and help identify practical next steps for the community. The Sitka Childcare Funding Summit will take place on Aug. 6 from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the UAS campus. Kari Sagel joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the upcoming event, which you can register for here. Listen to the conversation here: