The House and Senate Transportation committees, meeting for a joint session Tuesday afternoon, forwarded Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities Commissioner Pat Kemp’s name to the full Alaska State Legislature after a confirmation hearing.

The committee reports will be presented to the Legislature, which will consider Kemp for confirmation to his current position. Kemp was appointed last month by Republican Gov. Sean Parnell after serving as acting commissioner through the fall of 2012.

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Following her daughter’s death in 2006, Bett Jakubek wanted to donate money in Milisa’s memory.

“I would have given the money to some kind of memorial fund had there been one in place,” she said. “And there was not, so what I did was, my husband and I decided that we would divide the money up that had been given in her name to the different organizations in town that she had been involved in.”

But, she said, it would have been better to keep the money in one big chunk, invested in a way that the interest could be used year after year for local needs. That sparked an interest in the concept of a community foundation. Jakubek returned to school after retiring, and earned a certificate in nonprofit management and development.

“ One of my questions in my learning was to learn about community foundations and their ability to impact small communities in particular, somewhere like Ketchikan, and assuming that the people in Ketchikan knew what their needs were better than people from afar, or government agencies,” she said.

Through her studies, she talked with officials at the Rasmuson Foundation, Alaska’s largest charitable organization; and the Alaska Community Foundation, the umbrella group for numerous state funds and endowments. They asked her to see whether a community foundation would work for Ketchikan.

“After quite a bit of research, and an opportunity for four of us to go up to Anchorage and learn about community foundations in general, and specifically about the workings of the Alaska Community Foundation, we realized that it was a great opportunity,” she said.

The statewide organizations take care of investing donated funds, as well as legal and financial issues for the affiliates. The local boards decide what the community’s needs are, and distribute funds once the endowment starts earning interest. As a new affiliate, the Ketchikan Community Foundation has a big incentive to raise money.

“If we are able to raise $25,000 locally of unrestricted monies, then Ed Rasmuson and his foundation say that they will give us $50,000, and in addition to that another $5,000 that we can grant back to the community to charitable works,” she said. “And he will do the same thing in 2014.”

That’s a hundred thousand dollars in the first two years, a pretty nice kickstart for the local group. And Brooklyn Baggett of the Alaska Community Foundation said more is possible.

“We have five current affiliates that the Rasmuson Foundation has been offering match grants to every year since they started, so it’s definitely an ongoing opportunity,” she said. “I think that they like to give a bigger one at the start to try and help really grow the initial endowment for the community.”

Baggett said the affiliate model provides local control and oversight for grant funds.

“The local people obviously know tremendously more than we could ever know because they’re there every day and they can see the needs of the community and try to figure out grant opportunities that will help support the community,” she said.

The next step for the Ketchikan Community Foundation is to form an advisory board. Jakubek and the other organizers, George Shaffer, Dawn Allen-Herron, Agnes Moran, Tom Shultz and Sue Pickrell have heard from many people who are interested in supporting the foundation. From that pool, the six organizers hope to select between nine and 13 advisory board members.

Jakubek said one big goal will be to gain widespread support, rather than just one or two people donating large chunks of money. She would prefer smaller donations from many residents.

“People who have a heart for Ketchikan, who feel this has been a good place to raise their families, who have maybe made their livelihoods here and want to give back,” she said. “Thinking in the long view, like this is building an endowment, kind of like a permanent fund. We get out dividends back every year personally, this will be a way for Ketchikan as a community to get a dividend back every year that can be spent for whatever our needs are.”

In addition to Ketchikan, new affiliates have been formed in Sitka, Kodiak and Fairbanks. Other affiliates have been operating in the Mat-Su, Chilkat Valley, Kenai Peninsula, Seward and Petersburg.

Recommendations from the Indian Policy and Procedures Committee will be a discussion topic at the Ketchikan School Board meeting Wednesday.

The recommendations were submitted in mid-January, and were developed by the committee with input from members of the public. The recommendations call for the superintendent and other district staff to meet quarterly with local Native officials to assess education opportunities for Native students. They also call for an increase in the amount of Alaska Native culture taught in the schools.

Additional recommendations include cultural training for school staff, regular discussion of Native education by the School Board, and research into different instruction methods for Native children.

Also Wednesday, the School Board has an executive session scheduled at the end of the meeting to discuss the evaluation of Superintendent Robert Boyle.

The meeting starts at 6 p.m. in Borough Assembly chambers at the White Cliff Building. Public comment will be heard at the start of the meeting. A half-hour work session with the Tongass School of Arts and Sciences will precede tomorrow’s regular meeting.

The University of Alaska Southeast Ketchikan Campus director search committee has narrowed the list of candidates down to three finalists. The university has invited each to visit Ketchikan.

While here, the finalists will give public presentations, and people attending the events will be invited to offer opinions and recommendations to the search committee. Each candidate will discuss a current topic in higher education and answer questions. The presentations will allow audience members to meet and interact with each candidate.

On Feb. 14, Cathy Anderson will give her presentation. She previously served as vice president of academic affairs at Western Dakota Technical Institute.

On Feb. 28, Voytek Panas is scheduled to speak. He is campus director at the Pima Medical Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

On March 7, the final candidate, John Garmon, will give his presentation. He is the editor and education consultant for Native West Press in Prescott, Arizona.  He formerly served as Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs for Dhofar University in the Sultanate of Oman.

Each presentation starts at noon at the UAS Campus Library.

Southeast gillnetters will be able to fish for just over a thousand tons of herring in Seymour Canal off Admiralty Island this spring. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced a guideline harvest level of 1014 tons in the sac roe fishery, which is somewhat above average for the past half-decade. Gillnetters had GHL of just under 1300 tons last year, but they never got to fish it. That’s because the herring never congregated in large enough schools to have an opening.

While the fishery was a bust last year, the herring population itself is in good shape, according to Juneau Area Management Biologist Dave Harris:

“The return of herring to the area and the spawn was just fine as a matter of fact. The fish didn’t present themselves last year in a way that would lead to a viable commercial fishery. Although we waited on the grounds for, gosh, almost three weeks, it was all agreed between the department, fishermen, and processors present that there was never really an option for a fishery,” Harris said.

The department tries to open herring fisheries just before the major spawn, when the females are the ripest with eggs and large schools of fish mass near the beach. Fishermen target the herring for their roe. Older, bigger fish generally have more roe and according to Harris, the forecast for this spring looks good on that front.

In an undated photo, a seafood worker displays the roe inside a Southeast herring. Photo by KFSK.

“Predominantly, a good portion of the fish are the eight-plus, the older fish. About 30 percent of the return is forecast to be those sizes,” Harris explained, “The fish generally start recruiting into the fishery at age three and then age 4 is about another 30 percent or so of the return is anticipated there, with kind of the remaining ages of three to seven sort of about the same but spread out in there. So, it will be pretty-much larger fish the gillnet fleet will be targeting this year.”

Seymour is the only herring fishery scheduled to open for Southeast Gillnetters. It typically takes off in late April.

A smoldering electrical fire gutted the interior of a 41-foot pleasure boat in Petersburg’s South Harbor in the late Friday night. No one was aboard the motor vessel Sea Haven, which was moored at B float. Assistant Fire Chief Dave Berg says the department was called out just before eleven that night.

“The boat, when we got to it, didn’t look like it was on fire or even had really flashed over but there was a significant level of heat damage inside the vessel that caused a great deal of interior damage basically from the ceiling to the floor,” he said.

Berg said the department was still investigating the cause, but it looked like it involved a bad outlet and extension cord connected to a heater.

“You know this time of year, people are using all kinds of heat sources on boats and they are real suspect, especially if you are not watching them, or maintaining them. Anytime you’ve got a cord that’s running a heater or kind of a high amperage load on it, the cord can overheat very easily and even cords that appear to be not very warm, or hot to the touch, can significantly degrade over time in our weather. Salt air and other moisture causes a lot of trouble with extension cords. When you don’t have a good connection the heat builds up in the connection. You may pull them apart and see black tongs on the plugs or excess heat building up. So, that’s really something to watch out for when you are using alternative heat sources on boats.”

According to Berg, the boat was shut up tight enough that the lack of oxygen kept it from spreading to the exterior. However, harbor staff moved a neighboring boat just in case.

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Sitka Jazz Festival directors John DePalatis and Mike Kernin talk about this year’s festival lineup, which includes Jeff Collela, Barbara Morrison, and — for the first time — dancer Katherine Kramer. The festival opens noon on Thu Jan 31 with a brown bag concert at Harrigan Centennial Hall. The main concerts are 6 PM Fri and Sat, Feb 1 & 2, at the Sitka Performing Arts Center. This year, an all-Festival pass admits the public to clinics and concerts. For complete information, visit the Sitka Jazz Festival online.

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Public, scientists disagree on cruise ship wastewater during Senate Resources Committee hearing. SE halibut fishermen to see small increase in 2013 catch limit, following IPHC winter meeting. McDonald’s to adopt sustainably-harvested fish in all restaurants.

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JUNEAU — House Democratic leader Beth Kerttula says she's hopeful that legislation will be introduced this year to re-establish a coastal management program.

Kerttula says she's heard that something is being worked on. Last week, Rep. Bryce Edgmon, chairman of the House Bush Caucus, said he expected a coastal management bill to be introduced but didn't know who would do it or what it would look like.

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Alaska's senior senator has once again introduced legislation to rename Mount McKinley as Denali.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski says Denali might not be the name that people in the Midwest recognize. But she says it has long been the name in Alaska, the state where North America's highest peak is located.

Denali is an Athabascan word meaning "the high one."

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JUNEAU — A vice president for BP Alaska has been promoted to president.

The company announced Tuesday that Janet Weiss (WEESS) will succeed John Minge, who was appointed chairman and president of BP America Inc.

Weiss' appointment will take effect Feb. 15.

Weiss currently serves as vice president of resources for BP Alaska. In her new role, the company says she will be responsible for BP's oil and gas exploration, development and production activities in Alaska, plus BP's interests in the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

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JUNEAU — An Anchorage senator has proposed legislation aimed at greater accountability for the way state legislators spend money for their offices.

SB34, from Democratic Sen. Berta Gardner, would require that all office expenses be accounted for and that any unspent funds revert to the state general fund.

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ANCHORAGE — Alaska prisons officials refuse to say how confessed serial killer Israel Keyes obtained a razor before his jail-cell suicide.

The state Department of Corrections denied a public records request from The Associated Press that seeks to determine why Keyes was able have a razor in his Anchorage cell. Keyes slit his wrist in December with the blade of a disposal razor that was imbedded in a pencil. He also strangled himself with a bedsheet.

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JUNEAU — The state has paid nearly $8.7 million in student scholarships under a program championed by Gov. Sean Parnell as a way to transform Alaska’s education system.

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A dissenting member of the science advisory panel asked legislators to slow down work on a set of bills that would alter a citizens initiative requirement for cruise ship waste water discharge.

The main contention comes from how House Bill 80 and Senate Bill 29 remove the requirement that cruise ships meet wastewater standards at the point of discharge – at the mouth of the black water pipe. The bills allow for mixing zones around moving and stationary large commercial passenger vessels while in Alaska waters.

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Some 46 percent of general fund allocations for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities in Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed operating budget are marked for the Alaska Marine Highway System, House Finance Committee members were told Monday.

That $165 million “slice of the pie,” as represented on a pie chart in DOT&PF Administrative Services Director Mary Siroky, is the largest component of general fund allocations for the department in Parnell’s fiscal year 2014 operating budget proposal, topping highways and aviation combined.

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A Holland America ship at anchor in Sitka. (John Bromley/Flickr)

A bill that would relax the wastewater standards placed on cruise ships by Alaska voters is on the fast track in the Senate.

The Senate Resources committee took the first public testimony on Senate Bill 29 last Friday (1-25-13). Proponents of the bill advocated for the lower standards, saying that the current law unfairly puts ships under tighter rules than Alaskan communities. The leading opponent of the bill was a marine ecologist, who was dissenting from her colleagues on the science advisory panel that studies cruise ship wastewater.

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Gov. Parnell is putting his weight behind SB29 to expedite permitting for cruise lines by this summer.

Karla Hart, with Alaska Community Action on Toxics, urged the Senate Resources committee to slow down.

“The risk of quick action on your part is that you’ll betray the voters of Alaska, who voted to have this higher standard of clean water.”

Hart reminded the committee that the amount of discharge was significant. More people visit Alaska on cruise ships each summer than live in the state. She did not think leveling cruise ship discharge with local communities made sense.

“If an Alaska community doesn’t meet discharge standards, it’s in our front yard. We know where it comes from. We know who’s responsible, and we have to clean it up. Ships discharge anywhere, so remote areas that you might go to for subsistence harvests or commercial fishing that you might go to because you think they are clean, because they are far away from any apparent discharge, could be getting a pretty substantial burden over time, because a lot of these things are heavy metals that bioaccumulate.”

Alaska voters in 2006 passed the statewide Cruise Ship Initiative, which set wastewater standards “at the point of discharge.” The Department of Environmental Conservation subsequently granted cruise lines temporary relief from these requirements, to allow them time to install the necessary treatment systems.

Putting ships on a different standard than Alaskan communities was a major argument against the initiative. John Kimmel, with Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska told the committee that Senate Bill 29 would correct a flaw in the law that voters adopted.

“The cruise ships really need to be held to the same standard as everyone else. The original initiative held them to a higher standard than everyone else. This fix is going to make it more fair for the cruise lines.”

A variation of this theme has made it to the table from a different direction: The Alaska Cruise Ship Wastewater Science Advisory Panel, in a preliminary report, says that many ships now meet or exceed Alaska water standards, except for a few key heavy metals, like copper. The report concludes that there would be little, if any, environmental benefit to requiring cruise ships to adopt additional treatment methods in the future.

The report gave advocates of the cruise industry an opening to talk about science. This is Andy Rodgers, the deputy director of the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce. He testified that his organization has now adopted a position “Advocating for legislation and regulations that are based on sound science, as opposed to a precautionary method.”

And this is Bob Janes, a tour operator from Juneau.

“I am not a scientist, but I think this subject is all about science.”

But at least one bona fide scientist who testified before the Senate Resources committee disagreed with the conclusions of the Science Advisory Panel – which she herself sits on. Michelle Ridgeway, a marine ecologist in Juneau, believes the other members of the panel underestimate the potential harm from the consistent discharge of heavy metals.

“Quite frankly, I think we’ll be appalled by the long-term degradation to the marine ecosystem if we allow this to go forward in this form.”

Ridgeway thinks applying rules for shore-base treatment plants – which allow for mixing zones – to cruise ships will ultimately create a kind of Sophie’s choice for the state.

“I believe it will be exceedingly excruciatingly difficult for Alaskans to concur on where it is between a 0 to 3 nautical mile area – our state waters – that we find it’s acceptable for vessels to discharge water that contains copper, zinc, nickel, and ammonia at levels that are known to be acutely and chronically toxic to marine life that we all depend on.”

Read an open letter from Michelle Ridgeway to DEC Commissioner Larry Hartig.

Chip Thoma, president of Responsible Cruising in Alaska, said it was his organization’s preference that ships discharge all waste in federal waters. He urged the committee to maintain the water quality standards set by voters, saying it was likely that much of the copper contamination would eventually be reduced as ships modernized with the use of flexible plastic plumbing.

Senate Resources chair Cathy Giessel scheduled another hearing on SB29 for Monday afternoon, January 28, at which she invited members to propose amendments. A companion bill in the House, HB 80, was heard in that body’s Resources Committee on Monday afternoon as well.

(Photo by Anne Brice/KCAW)

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Naushon terminated the voyage of a fishing vessel near Sitka on Friday after finding several safety problems on board. The Naushon was on a routine patrol in the area.

The crew of the Naushon boarded the Snark — a 46-foot wood hull fishing vessel — in Sitka Sound. The Coast Guard discovered missing survival suits and cracks in a flotation device. The Snark was ordered to fix the problems and prove to the Coast Guard it’s in compliance with safety regulations before they head back out to sea.

The Coast Guard performs regular at-sea inspections. Mariners who want to make sure their vessels are up to code can call their nearest Coast Guard sector to schedule a free safety check.

Sitka: 966-5454
Ketchikan: 225-4496
Juneau: 463-2448
Anchorage: 271-6700
Homer: 235-3292
Kodiak: 486-5918
Dutch Harbor: 581-3466

From left are Kaileigh Krosse, Lora Starr, Jillianne Fazakerley and Hana Lee Oshima. Photo by Gail Klein.

Four Ketchikan students have been selected to receive 2013 Sam Pitcher Music Scholarships. They are 11th grader Jillianne Fazakerley; 10th grader Hana Lee Oshima; 9th grader Kaileigh Krosse; and 9th grader Lora Starr.

The Sam Pitcher scholarship started after Sam’s death in 2003 at age 16. Sam was passionate about music, and participated in Ketchikan High School and community bands. The scholarships are open to Ketchikan students in grades 7 through 12 to attend summer music programs.

The $500 scholarships are awarded on the basis of merit, goals and musicianship. Jillianne plans to attend Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, and the other three plan to attend the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.

Over the past decade, the program has awarded 43 scholarships, totaling more than $20,000.