Author: Katherine Rose

Sitka needs more tourism data- that’s one of the conclusions the tourism task force reached as it tried to develop next steps for the city’s response to a boom in cruise tourism. When the Sitka Assembly meets tonight, it will consider how to plan a new research initiative focused on collecting data on the impacts of the visitor industry, honing in on three areas: community, economy, and environment.

A cable repair ship is mending a broken fiber optic cable that took Sitka offline in late August, but it could be close to a week until repairs are finished. 

Although she stopped paying her professional membership dues for a while when she had a baby, municipal attorney candidate Rachel Jones has an unblemished record with the Alaska Bar Association.

A widespread internet and cellular outage in Sitka continued into the weekend. Sitka has been without internet access since Thursday (8-29-24) after an undersea fiber optic cable broke, cutting off the island from the online world. 

When the Sitka Assembly meets tonight (8-27-24), it will discuss whether to establish a permanent tourism commission, and what the responsibilities of the commission will be.

Sitka’s airport expansion project is well underway this summer, and one could say the situation is escalating. Earlier this month (8-12-24) the construction team installed the island’s first ever escalator in the new, two-story departures addition. KCAW’s Katherine Rose went over to the airport to see how the project is progressing.

The Sitka Assembly interviewed two more candidates for the municipal attorney job on Thursday (8-22-24), and advanced one of them, along with a previous interviewee, to a second round of interviews.

A permanent Sitka Tourism Commission came a step closer to reality Tuesday night, but it’s not expected to simply be a continuation of the recently-concluded tourism task force.

A helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka spent the weekend searching for a woman who reportedly fell off a fishing vessel in waters near Elfin Cove.