The winter freeze on ferry service is starting to thaw, with regional routes resuming this month. But even as some ferries come back online, one Southeast community isn’t ready to celebrate yet — Tenakee Springs is scheduled to get just two sailings for the rest of the year. 

Since the ferry stopped running in October, Tenakee Springs has had just two commercial passenger trips — on chartered tour boats. So unless you’ve got a boat of your own, the only way in or out is by floatplane.

Losing the twice weekly ferry sent already high food prices through the roof: A gallon of milk used to cost around $8, but now it’ll set you back $13. 

That’s made life complicated for Nikita Chase, a single mother with four kids still at home. She used to take the ferry to stock up in Juneau — now she has to charter a floatplane 

“Being a single parent, fixed income, it just kind of punched a whole in everything that we had planned,” Chase said.    

The cost of a shopping trip by chartered plane is well over $1000, and that’s before you even factor in the groceries themselves. Losing the ferry has already pushed some people out of town. Chase hopes it doesn’t come to that for her family. 

“We have looked into moving to other areas, but really this is our home and we will fight to stay here till we can’t,” She said.

It’s been a tough winter for any town that normally relies on the Alaska Marine Highway. Budget cuts slashed service and mechanical failures disrupted an already barebones schedule, essentially shutting down service by early February. 

To make matters worse for Tenakee, the town’s dock is only configured to work with the LeConte and the Aurora. With both of those ships out of service, residents have had to come up with backup plans. 

For Gary Rice, the backup plan is paying a lot more money to get to medical appointments. 

“It’s been lousy cause I had a stroke a few years back,” Rice said.

Without a ferry, Rice has had to shell out for floatplane tickets to see the doctor in Juneau. 

“I don’t make a lot of money, matter of fact I make next to almost nothing,” Rice said. “So a lot of my income now is going to have to be flying in on a plane and flying back on a plane.”

Most people I spoke with in Tenakee agree the town can get by with far fewer than two ferries a week. But, as Rice puts it, they do want some regular connection to the outside world. 

“What if they took away all the roads, and all the road maintenance, up north? How would that work for them?” he said.

Tenakee has seen some relief recently. The state Department of Transportation contracted Allen Marine to run two passenger-only trips. 

But the only scheduled service for the rest of the year are two sailings by the LeConte in May. And that’s assuming the LeConte’s extensive steelwork gets done on time. Then, the town’s dock is getting replaced starting in July, meaning they won’t be able to get another ferry until December, at the earliest.

DOT commissioner John MacKinnon says the agency isn’t happy about towns like Tenakee getting cut off, but stands by what he describes as the original intention of the budget cuts. 

“The purpose of those cuts was to start a conversation among policymakers, and the public of how much we can afford,” MacKinnon said.

Some people think the conversation has gone on long enough.

“We’ve had the discussion, now  we need some action,” said Louise Stutes, a state representative from Kodiak Island. Her district includes towns that were left off the winter ferry schedule to begin with. Stutes also co-chairs the House Transportation committee and has led a push to restore some funding to the Marine Highway. She says getting service to stranded towns is urgent. 

“These communities will die, they really will. It’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy for Alaskans to treat other Alaskans in this manner,” she said.

Some Southeast communities saw partial service restored in early March when the Tazlina sailed back into the schedule. 

But that’s of little help to the fifty or so winter residents of Tenakee Springs. Ken Merrill, who owns the only grocery store in town, is still relying on fishermen to bring in supplies.

“Fishermen are always offering help when they know about it,” he said.   

Today, they’re unloading eight pallets piled high with a month’s supply of canned chili, dog food, beer, and more. Some of the goods have been sitting in Juneau for months. 

Jerry-rigging the supply chain is a logistical challenge, but the store has been a fixture in Tenakee for more than a century, and Merrill doesn’t imagine it’ll close anytime soon. 

“I can keep it up,” Merrill said. “We’ll keep the store open. It’s been here since 1899 so, it’ll survive.”    

Merrill thinks he won’t need to stock as much food this summer, because without regular ferries he expects most of the summer residents just won’t show up. 

Efforts to keep Southeast Alaska’s ferry link with British Columbia online continue as officials on both sides of the border express frustration over U.S. customs insistence on armed security inside the Canadian ferry terminal.

In a statement released Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection acknowledged that its agents have been routinely inspecting Alaska-bound ferries for years.

“In order to reduce security risks to the U.S, and provide safety for the traveling public and unarmed CBP officers, CBP determined that an armed law enforcement presence would be a requirement while CBP conducts its operations at Prince Rupert,” the agency said.

That means the decades long Alaska Marine Highway connection to Prince Rupert, B.C. is slated to shut down.

Addressing the Southeast Conference forum of civic and business leaders Thursday, Alaska’s Transportation Commissioner John MacKinnon placed the blame on the feds.

“I think in the history of access to Prince Rupert, the only issues that have required law enforcement have been a couple of people that had too much to drink,” MacKinnon quipped.

The new requirements stem from a 2015 agreement signed by the U.S. and Canada to upgrade border security.

“People coming to Alaska from Prince Rupert represents a real risk to this country — note the tone, the sarcasm in the voice there,” MacKinnon added.

U.S. customs agents can’t carry guns in Prince Rupert. But Canadian police say they’re stretched too thinly to provide armed backup in the near future. And then there’s the cost: the state of Alaska would be expected to pay for it.

The result is an impasse. An Oct. 1 deadline set by U.S. customs has led the Alaska Marine Highway to cancel all sailings after that date.

Prince Rupert’s city mayor Lee Brain met with Gov. Dunleavy’s chief of staff and the transportation commissioner to present some alternatives. Brain says Prince Rupert’s leaders have attended Southeast Conference meetings for a half-century or more. About as long as there’s been an Alaska Marine Highway. 

“And now that we’re at this point of a kind of a crucial hour in the ferry service,” Brain told CoastAlaska, “it’s more important for us to continually come up here and ensure that people realize how important those ferry services to Prince Rupert and our residents, as well as to the local economy.”

He says he’s presented some proposals — the details of which he hasn’t shared publicly — designed to satisfy U.S. security requirements and keep ferries running

“If we can figure out some of these federal kind of border protection issues, we may be able to see reinstatement of the winter schedule as soon as hopefully the next three weeks to a month,” Brain said.

Coastal communities throughout the panhandle are grappling with reduced service due to budget cuts. At one point in the budget cut discussion the Dunleavy administration proposed eliminating all service to Prince Rupert.

But MacKinnon told CoastAlaska that service to B.C. is a priority — something he’s assured officials from Prince Rupert. 

“You know, and that’s what the mayor and I have committed to work on and do that and (the governor’s chief of staff) Ben Stevens — the administration is on board,” he said in a brief interview.

The ability of U.S. customs agents to demand armed protection is only one of myriad requirements the Department of Homeland Security seeks to upgrade the border.

To that point, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a recorded address to Southeast Conference says there will be other issues to work through to keep the ferry connection to Canada.

“We may be able to secure the law enforcement resources that are necessary to open the port,” she said in taped video remarks. “But we will need to start towards significant investment in new clearance facilities either in Ketchikan or Prince Rupert.”

As it stands, the last ferries in and out of Prince Rupert are slated to sail on September 30.

The Turnagain Marine Construction barge Brightwater stands ready to drive piles for the floating dock (pictured just behind the barge) at Sitka’s Gary Paxton Industrial Park. At press time, the project was awaiting a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers — a permit which required additional biological consultation due to the presence of marine mammals (humpback whales, Steller’s sea lions) in Silver Bay. The footing for the drive-down ramp is in the foreground. (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)

Both parties in a lawsuit over the construction of an industrial dock in Sitka have asked the court to forego a trial, and to reach a judgement based on underlying legal principles.

Former Sitka mayor Marko Dapcevich filed a motion for summary judgement in the case in early September. The City of Sitka filed one of their own about two weeks later.

The outcome won’t affect whether the dock gets built, but it may change the way Sitka does business in the future.

Downloadable audio.

Note: A hearing date is pending in Sitka Superior Court, on the motions for summary judgement in the case of Dapcevich vs. City of Sitka, Matt Hunter, and Mark Gorman.

According to his attorney, Joe Geldhof, former Sitka mayor Marko Dapcevich doesn’t want anything other than the simple acknowledgement that he is right.

“What Mr. Dapcevich is asking the judge to rule on is the meaning of the charter. Does it in fact require competitive bidding?”

The Sitka Charter plainly does require competitive bidding. But it is a foundational document — Sitka’s constitution, basically — and like all other constitutions it is subject to interpretation.

John MacKinnon is a former Deputy Commissioner of Transportation and 4-term member of the Juneau assembly, who is now the executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Alaska. Competitive bidding — as it existed when Sitka was incorporated in 1971 — is still a thing, especially on small projects or equipment. But he says governments everywhere have begun to look at overall value when they put a major project out to bid, rather than just the lowest number. MacKinnon says nowadays it’s about who can deliver the best project for a given amount of money.

“You get to a point in design where the contractor is asked to give their final estimate, and if it’s within budget, the owner is able to say, Okay, move on to construction and you have to build it for the dollar amount you said. The beauty of that is the price that is determined at that point is the guaranteed maximum price of the project.”

That’s exactly what happened in Sitka. In 2012 Sitka received a grant for $7.5 million for a new dock at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. Some of that money was sliced off for design and preparation, leaving $6.8 million to actually build it within 5 years (note: the city would later ask for, and receive, a one-year extension).

The project was put out to bid in 2016, and all four bidders came in above the amount of available money.

In the view of former mayor Marko Dapcevich, that means one thing, says attorney Geldhof.

“The normal — and very common — response if the bids come in high is you either cancel the entire procurement and start over again. You know, reformat the purpose and need and design, and put it out to bid again.”

That’s where Sitka officials chose another path — a path that is becoming increasingly common in large municipal projects: City Hall went back to all the bidders and asked if they could design a project that would fit within the budget. Three of the four responded, an Turnagain Marine Construction’s $6.2 million proposal was considered to be the “best value.” The contract was approved by the board of the industrial park and the Sitka assembly, and signed by Sitka’s then-administrator Mark Gorman.

John MacKinnon considers this competitive bidding by another name.

“It wasn’t a sealed bid with a number on the bottom line. It was more of, Give us a proposal and a number, and work with us on getting to that finished product. I think it was probably the lowest bid; they just arrived at it in a slightly different manner.”

The project is already underway in Sitka. A 250-foot floating barge is in the water at the industrial park, and should be operational by the end of the year.

What if the court now says it was illegal?

Geldhof says it boils down to a matter of principle.

“I’m not sure that Mr. Dapcevich wants to stop the project, and I’m not sure that the judge as a matter of equity would grant an injunction stopping it. But the law is the law here. And I think the judge will come to a resolution and say, No the charter doesn’t mean what it says and you can do whatever you want, or The charter means what it says and competitive bidding is competitive bidding. It’s not just a procurement schmooze-a-thon just because it’s more expedient when you run out of money.”

If the court agrees in the strict interpretation of the charter and rules in favor of Dapcevich, it may result in nothing more than expensive slap on the wrist for the city, which is racking up legal bills contesting the suit. But when his initial demands for a settlement went unmet, Dapcevich upped the ante: Again, citing specific language in the charter, he named former Sitka administrator Mark Gorman and current Mayor Matt Hunter co-defendants in the suit, holding them individually liable for any difference between what Sitka has paid for the dock, and what it might have paid if the project had been procured legally.

Geldof says that making Gorman and Hunter pay — quite literally — is not the big fish.

“The charter and following the competitive bid standards in the charter are a nice big piece of chinook. Whether Gorman and some of the other people got cute or creative or didn’t follow the law — that’s basically the parsley on the side of the plate here.”

Geldhof admits that the dock project may have been expedient — even if illegal — and governments are under pressure from rising costs to not prolong the procurement process. Sitkans might actually prefer that the city seek “best value” on big jobs, rather than cling to competitive bidding in the strictest sense.

During the municipal election in Juneau this October, voters were asked to amend their charter to allow “best value.” The existing clause in the Juneau charter was virtually identical to Sitka’s regarding competitive bidding. In the 1980s, a citizen activist sued both the City of Juneau and then-mayor Fran Ulmer on virtually the same grounds.

Geldhof this fall editorialized in the Juneau Empire opposing the new language, arguing it would give local bureaucrats too much discretion in approving projects.

Nevertheless, Juneau voters approved the charter amendment by a two-thirds majority.

Until Sitkans do the same, Geldhof — and his client Marko Dapcevich — are resolved that the existing language on competitive bidding should be strictly followed. “The charter is the charter,” Geldhof says.