When the Sitka Assembly meets tonight (5-28-24), it will consider approving next fiscal year’s general and enterprise fund budgets on final reading.
The city’s budget has grown by 14 percent this year, with spending increasing along with growing sales tax revenue, due, in large part to increased tourism and inflation. The budget includes funding the Sitka School District to the cap, the maximum allowed by state law, along with a plan to take over management of the Blatchley Middle School swimming pool, and funding for a contractor to manage the Performing Arts Center.
Rates will increase for most of the city’s enterprise funds this year as well. Water, solid waste and moorage rates will rise by 4 percent. The wastewater rate will jump by just over 8 percent, and the base customer fee for electric utilities will increase, though the rate won’t rise.
In other business, the assembly will consider a resolution supporting an amendment to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s fishery management plan to cut trawl halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea, by changing the cap from a static number to one that fluctuates with the halibut population. While the amendment doesn’t deal with Sitka fisheries, a memo from assembly members Kevin Mosher and Chris Ystad says that the amendment protects the local fleet’s access to halibut in the future. They say conservation efforts in the Bering Sea will impact Sitka’s fisheries, because as halibut fry grow, they migrate throughout the Gulf of Alaska, many of them making it to Sitka waters.
The Sitka Assembly meets at 6 p.m. tonight. Raven News will broadcast the meeting live, following Alaska News Nightly.
