The State Board of Education has agreed to open negotiations with the Coast Guard for the sale of just over an acre-and-a-half of the Mt. Edgecumbe campus to construct a dock for a new fast-response cutter.
The board made the decision at its quarterly meeting on September 7, held at Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka.
The fast-response cutter is scheduled to homeport in Sitka beginning in 2025. It would join the buoy tender Kukui – but there’s not enough room for both ships at the Kukui’s current dock. Under a conceptual plan presented to the board by the Coast Guard, the Kukui’s pier would be torn down and reconstructed, along with a new floating dock for the fast-response cutter. The development requires the use of the upland property adjacent to the Kukui’s present dock – primarily for parking – just across Seward Avenue from the Mt. Edgecumbe Aquatics Center.
Interim Commissioner of Education Heidi Teshner told board members that the heat was on to pave the way for the new ship’s arrival.
“So obviously, there’s desire at the national level,” said Teshner. “There’s also letters in the packet signed by senators Murkowski, Sullivan, and the late Representative Don Young. The letter that I provided you extra this morning did go up to the governor’s office; the governor’s office is aware of this. Representative Kreiss-Tomkins has reached out. There is a high desire in this town to move this forward, and to bring the fast cutter to Sitka.”
Board members generally supported the idea. However, member Bob Griffin worried that this and other sales were splintering the campus. He wanted to make sure that the sale would ultimately benefit students.
“This is, I think, the third parcel that we’ve kind of chipped away at the Mt. Edgecumbe facilities in just my short time on the board here,” said Griffin. “I think concern has been in the past on what’s the upside? What is the Mt. Edgecumbe School going to get out of it? And I think focus in the past was how are the proceeds of this sale or lease (or whatever it turns out to be) going to be distributed?”
Commissioner Teshner responded that the department would negotiate for market value of the waterfront property, and the sale income would be reinvested in the school.
“Our desire is not to just give away the land,” Teshner said, “we will work for fair market value with the Coast Guard if this were to move forward, and to make sure Mt. Edgecumbe benefits from that so they can upgrade. And there’s lots of deferred maintenance here at the school, as you saw yesterday, so the proceeds would go towards
those improvements.”
Board chair James Fields hoped that the deal could be sweetened, possibly with educational and training opportunities for Mt. Edgecumbe students. Cmdr. Tracey Torba, with the District 17 civil engineering unit, said the Coast Guard was open to those types of partnerships, and already had a functioning Junior ROTC program.
Fields found that reassuring, and asked that it be incorporated into any future memorandum of understanding regarding the sale.
He also checked in with the department’s legal counsel about one other thing: Whether it was even possible to negotiate with the federal government on a transaction connected to national security.
“So I’m going to open a landmine here,” Fields said, “but I don’t know what laws oversee us as a state-owned school – but is there any way that federal overreach can just come in and say, ‘This is for the security of our country, and therefore we will commandeer, and you will be selling the land to us?’ Are we aware of anything like that?”
Torba said that really wasn’t the Coast Guard way.
“We (the Coast Guard) pride ourselves in embedding in any community that we’re in,” she said. “Really being part of our community. And that’s not that’s not a track we’re on. We want to be partners.”
The board voted unanimously to authorize negotiations with the Coast Guard for the sale of the land, with terms settled by the end of December.
