Kevin Knox, Evy Kinnear, Aaron Swanson, Alexander Allison, and Aaron Bean take questions from listeners during Raven Radio’s live call-in forum on Tuesday (09-26-16). (Emily Russell/KCAW photo)
On Tuesday night (09-20-16), Raven Radio hosted the five candidates for Sitka’s Assembly in an election forum. All agreed that Sitka’s financial struggles must be solved internally, and they each painted a slightly different picture of the solutions. KCAW’s Emily Kwong has this snapshot of a lively, 90-minute discussion.
To listen to a full recording of the forum, broken up by question, click here.
All five candidates for the Assembly had the same battle cry: grow the economy. And they all had different ideas for what could be Sitka’s silver bullet.
Evy Kinnear: A downtown dock is one of the things that would bring a lot more money to Sitka.
Aaron Swanson: The city has a lot of vacant land that they could be selling. I have a feeling with less and less money being handed out from them, that I could see the potential that the state is going to give the city land.
Kevin Knox: Silver Bay Seafoods is looking at ways to keep those seasonal workers here longer by adding value to the product that they put out. Canning more. That’s great.
Candidate Alexander Allison has built his whole campaign around his big idea: building a marine haul out to support the fishing fleet. “When you lose your starter, you bring in your back up. And the pulp mill was our starter. And our back-up – and it’s a hell of a back-up – is our fleet. We need to expand their influence in our economy in many ways,” he said.
While keeping an eye on what’s possible, the Assembly candidates also debated what’s practical: what revenue streams are at the city’s fingertips right now?
The current Assembly decided to put a ballot question before voters to raise the cap on property taxes. If property taxes were to be increased by 2 mills next year, that would bring in 2 million dollars. Half would go towards balancing the budget and the other to subsidize the electric fund.
Allison and Knox both supported the measure, saying it would maintain Sitka’s quality of life.
Allison: It’s a whole lot easier to fix the train while it’s still on the tracks. Before the market crashed. Before oil crashed, we had it pretty easy. And now we have to step up.
Knox: If we end up having to look at $2 million in cuts and an increase in sales tax, I think we do more damage to ourselves there. Sales taxes hit people disproportionately – especially those on the low income and the fringe.
Knox’s point: if any tax has to be raised, property taxes are most forgiving on lower income families. But given Sitka’s affordability challenges, Bean thought the city shouldn’t even consider raising taxes at all. “It’s not going to help people’s cost of living. If anything, it’s going to make it worse,” Bean said.
Kinnear said she’s not convinced the “sky is truly falling,” and that the city was making cuts in the wrong places, such as closing the library on Sundays. “What is has been put in front in of the public is, ‘We’re going to cut schools. We’re going to cut libraries. We’re going to cut things that are highly visible,’ and that makes everybody scared. And I think that’s a tactic. I don’t think that things are as bad or as unfixable…I think things are fixable.
Aaron Swanson,who currently serves on the Assembly, says he’s undecided because he’s not a property owner.
In their questions, listeners tested the Assembly on a variety of issues: working with tribal government, the role of the city administrator in relation to the Assembly, an excise tax on marijuana, and how they’d allocate budget cuts.
Kinnear said she’d want to hire a consultant, to evaluate how the city is run, and cut salaries down at the upper tier. Knox and Swanson disagreed, saying they would rather cut public works projects, and leave staff untouched. “Streets are going to have to be put on hold. Any public infrastructure that is the project of the year is going to have to be put on hold,” Swanson said.
If the candidates agreed on one thing, it was that Sitka needed to act now to keep people – and their dollars – in town. Bean, who owns a marijuana business, commented, “I’m hedging my bets with Juneau with the marijuana company that I’ve started because of the future and looking down the road. A lot of these shops close up and go to Hoonah and I think you gotta ask yourself why.”
The state projects Sitka will lose 25 people in each of the next five years, at the current rate of out migration. And all those running want to be a part of the Assembly that reverses that trend.
