SITKA, ALASKA
It all started with a single sentence, published in the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
The sentence reads as follows: “The Sitka Convention and Visitors Bureau requested a multi-agency Visitors Center to be located in Kettleson Library.”
It’s from an advertisement the city placed asking for input on a list of suggestions for how Sitka should spend money it gets from a state tax on cruise passengers.
Putting a visitors’ center inside Kettleson – and therefore requiring the library to relocate – is one of those ideas. It caught library Director Sarah Bell by surprise.
“I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls and people coming in saying, ‘So, what’s going on with Kettleson? What’s going on with the visitor’s bureau?’ There’s been a lot of questions,” Bell said. “Of course when the first one came, I had no idea.”
The phones have been ringing at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, too. Executive Director Tonia Rioux says callers have been wondering what her organization is planning for Kettleson.
“There is no plan at all,” she said.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau has been aiming for a visitors center of some sort for a long time. Rioux says the idea to explore Kettleson as a possible location came up almost as a footnote.
“There were members of the public at our meeting, and someone had mentioned the idea of possibly having a visitors’ center housed inside the building that the Kettleson Memorial Library is in,” she said.
So a two-sentence letter was sent to Municipal Administrator Jim Dinley to add the idea to the list of possible projects for the head-tax money.
“But it literally was just a very general idea,” Rioux said. “I believe when the meeting was held, it was in December, so we only had two or three weeks. It was going to be our only meeting before the comment had to be in. So we said, ‘Well, we’ll put it forward and it can be sorted out later and fleshed out.’”
And later begins now. The city has opened up public comments on that and the other proposals for using the cruise tax money. Those ideas include providing $6 to $8 per passenger for transportation between a private cruise dock at Halibut Point and downtown, using $300,000 for a major renovation to the Sitka Historical Society and Museum, and $5,000 for the Harbor staff to build two security guard shacks at the cruise ship lightering docks.
The cruise money can only be spent on projects that relate to the visitor industry. Public comments or additional suggestions must be sent to Municipal Administrator Jim Dinley by Feb. 15.
Dinley will make the final recommendations to the Assembly, which will consider them during the city’s annual budget process in the spring.
Mayor Cheryl Westover said she doesn’t want to speculate on what, if any, traction the idea to move the library would have at the Assembly table. She says she’s had conversations with people about the idea, but wants to learn more.
Bell, the library director, says a study is underway on the feasibility of expanding, but that an outright move is “not on my radar.”
© Copyright 1970, Raven Radio Foundation Inc.
