Kevin Mosher

Age: 50

How many years have you lived in Sitka and in Alaska? 31 years

Occupation: I am a staff accountant for Shee Atiká, Inc., the Native corporation for Sitka. My professional training and experience as an accountant has been helpful in understanding and analyzing City finances.

Family: I’ve been married to my wife Theresa for 27 years. We enjoy going for walks and spending time at home reading or watching TV when we are not at work. We have experienced the financial challenges of raising a family in Sitka. Some of our five young adult children are still living with us, saving money so they can become financially independent. That is much of my motivation for serving as a local elected official – I want to help bring down the cost of living in our community so families like mine and yours can afford to live here.

Have you previously run for public office? When and what office?

I first ran and was elected to a three-year term on the Sitka Assembly in 2018. I was elected to a second three-year term in 2021. I ran an unsuccessful campaign for Mayor in 2022 but kept my Assembly seat. Since that time, I have served as Deputy Mayor.

Previous government or other relevant experience: 

My experience in government has been primarily on the assembly.

 

Community involvement, past and present:
I was involved with the schools when our children were young, but my primary start in community involvement was with my first term serving on the Assembly. That was when our children were old enough for me to be able to take on responsibilities in addition to my family and job.

 

 

Why are you running for a seat on the Sitka Assembly this year? 

Serving as an assembly member these past six years has been an honor. It has challenged me in many ways, helping me grow professionally and as a person. When I began my assembly service, I thought I knew how to solve the challenges facing our community. After two terms, I have learned that there will always be challenges – some of the same ones, and some that are new and unexpected. I now know that the best way to address them is through listening – to constituents, City staff, and the business community – and through dialogue with my fellow assembly members to reach decisions that are in the best interest of the community. This job comes with a steep learning curve, and after six years, I feel like my experience is an asset. I would like to continue to work for this community and with the assembly for three more years, if Sitka will have me.

What are your top priorities if elected? 

My first priority is to continue to support our children and families by fully funding Sitka’s schools as much as we are allowed to. Children are our future, and we must continue to provide certainty so that we have experienced teachers who are able to impart knowledge, develop critical thinking skills, and provide social and emotional support.

Housing is another top priority. Having a place to call home is a basic need for all Sitkans, one that is becoming increasingly difficult to afford, and putting great strain on families. I want to continue doing everything possible to help in this area using all tools available.

Finally, we must maintain our public infrastructure. The state funded many infrastructure projects in the 1970s and 1980s with oil money. Those projects, like our hydroelectric dams, sewers, and roads are now our assets, and our responsibility. The years of free money from the oil fields are gone forever, whether we like it or not. Maintaining our infrastructure, expensive as it is, is cheaper than rebuilding or abandoning it. I will do everything possible to fund repairs with as little of a tax burden as possible for Sitkans, because failing to do so will just transfer the burden to our children and grandchildren.

 

 

Tourism

Do you support a cap on cruise visitation? Why or why not? 

I believe we should put a cap on cruise visitation, but only through a voluntary MOU. I do not believe forcing a hard cap is a good idea. We will be much more successful by working with the industry to come up with a daily number of visitors that works for both the city, and them. There is no way around this…it is a challenge to do so for sure.

One of the assembly’s tasks is to draft a “Memorandum of Understanding,” or an MOU with the cruise industry, which could mean either the local dock operator or the cruise lines. Who should the city make an MOU with and what should be included in that MOU, in your opinion? 

The city should be working with the owners of the HPR cruise ship dock. As of this writing, the assembly has directed the city administrator to do just that. If we can work with them to come to a number that works well for the community, it bypasses the need to do so with the cruise industry, because there are no other private docks. The city owns and operates the lightering facility and smaller docks, and has control of how they are operated. The MOU should address the daily numbers of cruise ship visitors, possible slow days, days just for Sitka, and any other issue regarding cruise ship visitation.

As an assembly member, would you support directing the municipal attorney to help draft a citizen initiative limiting cruise tourism? Why or why not? 

I would not support that. Our attorney’s job is to represent the City of Sitka, and by extension the entire town so to speak. If we direct that person to draft a ballot initiative, we could be giving preference to the organizational body that is requesting this, rather than the city at large. Also, if we did this and the city was sued, it would be very difficult for our attorney to defend us in court, because the city will have effectively crafted the ballot initiative.

 

Education 

Do you support funding the Sitka School District to the maximum allowed by state law (a.k.a. the “cap”)? Why or why not? 

Yes. Schools should be our priority, because children are our future. Unfortunately, the state’s BSA (Base Student Allocation) has not kept up with inflation since 2016. Because of this and because of high inflation, Sitka has had to try to continue providing the same level of service with less buying power every year. Even after the city took extraordinary measures this year to support our schools fully, by taking over operational costs of school facilities, the Sitka School District had had to lay off several teachers. This is a travesty, because when the district has to do that, our community is losing years and years of expertise in education. We need to be doing everything possible to support our children’s education.

 

The assembly has taken extra steps to bolster its support for Sitka’s schools, taking over maintenance of school buildings, taking on management of the Blatchley Pool, and funding a contract for management of the Performing Arts Center. Do you agree with these decisions? What further measures would you take as an assembly member to support the Sitka School District, if any? 

I absolutely agree with these actions that the assembly has taken. In fact, I have been a very strong supporter of the schools since I have been on the assembly. I have always fought to make sure we are doing everything we can.

 

 

 

Housing

Do you see a need for further regulatory measures to ease Sitka’s housing crisis, such as limiting short-term rentals? What tangible actions can the assembly take to relieve some of Sitka’s housing stress?

I believe anything we can do to relieve Sitka’s housing stress should be explored. I supported changes to our zoning ordinance a few years ago to place limits on short-term rentals in residential districts, and I am open to considering additional limitations to ensure that rental units remain available for year-round residents and seasonal workers. However, regulation of short-term rentals will not solve all of our housing problems, which result from a complex interaction of geographic and economic conditions as well as policy choices. We have a limited amount of developable land in Sitka, and development costs are high. The city has a land study moving forward with the purpose of identifying available municipally owned land that can be sold for housing development. I do not know how much we will be able to use when that study is done. However, I firmly believe we should not just sell off land to the highest bidder. Rather, I prefer a planned community development model. I can see a situation where we give some to the land trust, then sell some land with requirements for either high density housing, trailer courts or modular homes, or all of the above. Perhaps we can sell some land at high value to pay for the development of the rest.
Other than this land study, I think we should be looking at regulatory changes that could possibly allow for high density development within this community on privately owned land. I also support working with the Tribe and BIHA to leverage our collaborative relationship to have a better chance of receiving federal or state funds for housing. This will not be a situation where there is one key to this problem, but it will be a combination of several things.

 

Haulout

Sitka will open a city-owned marine haulout in 2025, but developing a full-fledged boatyard will take considerably more time and money. Should the assembly continue to appropriate resources to this as a public project?


Yes, I believe the city should do so. Sitka residents voted to allocate almost $8.2 million dollars from the sale of Sitka Community Hospital to the haul out project by a wide margin. That is an indication that this is a priority for people in this community. People want to continue to support the fishing fleet, and I think we should too. Fishing has been the backbone of Sitka’s economy and soul for a long time. Extra sales tax revenue could be used to help fund this.

Also, Sitka’s economy, although benefiting from things like tourism, needs to be diversified. Supporting the maritime industry by continuing to put resources to this project is a way to do that. If we can start hauling out boats soon, we can save families thousands of dollars that they would otherwise have to spend by leaving Sitka, to go to another town to make crucial repairs and upkeep on their vessels.

 

Labor

The city is struggling to fill a number of vacant staff positions. What can the assembly do to support filling these positions? 

This is an issue not just in Sitka, but across the state. We can start by making sure that our pay and benefits are competitive, and that we treat our municipal workers with respect while holding them accountable for their performance. Sitka has a lot to offer, and I think we should make a better effort at reaching out to our young people to encourage them to look into and learn about jobs within the city. This could be done by partnering with the university, the city, and the schools. Kids need to know what the opportunities are, and that they are not out of reach. Housing is a part of this too. Many times we have had people interested in coming to Sitka to work, only to find that they cannot find a place to live. We could consider offering housing incentives for municipal workers in addition to our other efforts to address community-wide housing challenges.

Budget

Revenue growth in the city’s general fund has outpaced Sitka’s other enterprise funds due, in part, to tourism growth. Do you have thoughts on directing the rapid growth of sales tax revenue into projects outside of Sitka’s general fund, like harbors, water or the electric department? 


The growth of sales tax revenue has had an enormous positive impact for this town. It has helped us fund the schools to the maximum extent allowable in several ways, including funding instructional expenses to the cap, taking over school maintenance, and funding a portion of PAC operations, so we can continue investing in our children. It has allowed us to reinstate the Parks & Rec department programming and reopen Blatchley Pool to the public. All of these things have positive impacts on the whole community. In addition, we have been able to fund a sustainability coordinator, who, with assistance from the sustainability commission, not only advances our goal of protecting the environment, but that position has been able to apply for and receive several million dollars’ worth of grants that will ultimately help us control municipal expenses. Some of these grants have had a direct impact on electric utility payers, by helping to prevent some increases to people’s monthly costs. These are just some of the ways we have benefited from the increase in sales tax revenue from tourism.

However, in addition to funding these things, we also need to invest in our infrastructure. Our roads, sewers, and public utility infrastructure is old and in dire need of repair and care. Before tourism dollars increased, we were not investing much into this, but now, every year for the past few years we have been able to put several million dollars into upcoming infrastructure projects. Long overdue road and sewer projects will be moving forward within the next couple of years, largely because of this influx of funds. We’re also able to repair and expand our airport, leveraging millions of dollars of federal funding with our investment of municipal funds. Even with our recent commitments of sales tax revenue, we have hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs that remain unaddressed. I firmly believe we need to continue to invest some of our extra resources into the infrastructure funds, for our and our children’s futures.

 

 

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