Klukwan residents are still bracing for hard times, despite the Alaska Legislature passing a bill this week that promised to reverse more than $400 million in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s vetoes.
Since March, state budget talks have threatened a number of Klukwan’s institutions and resident services, including cutting $800,000 from Chatham School District, which oversees Klukwan School, eliminating Klukwan elders’ senior benefits and dental coverage, and multiplying residents’ electricity bills by defunding statewide Power Cost Equalization.
“It hasn’t been comfortable,” vice president of the Chilkat Indian Village (CIV) Jones Hotch said. “It might be like the tip of what’s to come and what kind of decisions we might be making in the future.”
“I think it’s devastating. (The governor) is really making his mark on Alaska,” village president Kimberley Strong said last week. “Those people who are on very limited income are going to choose to eat or pay for medicines.”
Hotch said that despite the legislature’s efforts this week, he and his family are still preparing for rising electricity costs by switching their light bulbs to LED bulbs. “I don’t see it getting any better. I think it’s just going to get worse,” he said.
Klukwan School
The Chatham School District, which includes Klukwan, Gustavus and Angoon schools, passed a $4,527,913 operating budget on May 29, which was a reduction of over $100,000 from the previous year. The district passed the budget, Klukwan and Gustavus schools’ principal Brad King said, without knowing how deeply it would be affected by state cuts. “The uncertainty (of the state budget) forces the district to adopt a wait-and-see type of position to things that we typically would want to get done early,” King said.
This year each of the district’s three schools lost a teaching position.
“If you lose a teacher in a school of 80 or 90 teachers, it can have an impact but it can almost be hidden. If you lose a teacher in a school with three or four or five teachers, it’s a lot harder to hide. We had to make that decision everywhere, without the hard, cold facts from the state that would have been helpful. We had to make it on our best judgement. Hopefully we made the best decisions,” King said. Since losing a teaching position from Gustavus School, King said he has been teaching classes there in addition to his administrative role.
Klukwan School is expected to start the school year on August 26 with 17 students, King said, down from 28 at the beginning of the 2018 academic year. The school currently has two full-time teachers. King said Klukwan would not regain a teaching position unless attendance reached 30 students. The district would close the school if attendance dropped below 10 students.
“Whatever happens to Klukwan School happens to the rest of the district as well. If the small and rural school funds don’t go through, everyone will have to look at where those expenditures will no longer be made,” he said.
Klukwan elders
Another group that has already felt the effects of budget cuts in Klukwan are the community’s elders. Those who had been receiving monthly supplementary income through the statewide Senior Benefits Program have not received their July payments. The program was eliminated, effective July 1, through a line-item veto.
As of 2017, 87 Haines-area residents received senior benefits. Strong estimated that some 20 Klukwan elders currently receive senior benefits.
Seventy-nine-year-old Josie Johnson said she used her $76 monthly benefit to pay for gas for her car to drive to the senior center in Haines four days a week. “But now that I don’t get that $76, I just stay home,” said Johnson. “I think I’m the only one in Klukwan who goes (to the senior center) for lunch. Why? Because I feel like it. Staying home alone is making me just watch TV all day long.”
Smitty Katzeek said the cuts would affect him badly if they go through. “I got Cornerstone and Medicaid, and the way things are going it doesn’t look good…I don’t want to waste my breath just talking about it. I want somebody to do something about it.”
“It would be harder to live in Klukwan without (these services),” Katzeek said. He has lived in Klukwan throughout his 83 years. “I’m just going to sit and wait and see if they’re going to cut all of it or some of it, or what they’re doing.”
Seventy-two-year-old elder Arlene Willard said she will be affected by the governor’s vetoes.
Willard only has one lung and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and uses electricity to constantly power her oxygen machine. The governor’s vetoes defunded the statewide Power Cost Equalization starting July 1. “I think we’ll be okay, but it would be a struggle this winter because of my oxygen,” Willard said. This winter she said her electricity bill, offset by PCE, was $400.
Willard also relies on daily visits from Cornerstone Home Care, senior and disability service provider that relies on Medicaid for 97 percent of its funding. The governor’s vetoes sought to cut Medicaid by $50 million. “Without those services, I don’t know,” she said. “I get a lot of help through Medicaid.”
She said that in 2017 she almost died and doctors were pushing her to live in a nursing home. “I said no,” said Willard.” She said even as state cuts loom, she is not considering leaving Klukwan to live in a nursing home now either. “I have my boys. They take good care of me.”
Cuts to arts, public radio hits Sheldon Museum, programming, and traveling musicians
By Jenna Kunze
The arts council that grants money to the Haines Sheldon Museum, local artists, and pays for musicians and performers to visit Haines year-round, closed its doors on July 15 after total state defunding—a $2.8 million cut.
The Alaska State Arts Council was funded by matched federal dollars through the National Endowment for the Arts. Its closing means that Alaska is now the lone state without an arts council, according to a report by Anchorage Daily News.
Without state support, the Haines Arts Council which brings worldwide artists to town will not have as much buying power, council co-president Tom Heywood said.
Though the Haines Arts Council is funded through local memberships and ticket sales, the state arts council has historically provided travel grants for visiting artists. Since 2004, $14,865 in state grant funding has been allocated to Haines for visiting arts, according to council account reports.
Last winter, world-renowned Portland, Oregon dance group BodyVox visited Haines through a state grant that funded 80 percent of their travel costs.
South African musician Vusi Mahlasela also performed in Haines last season, made possible by the same grant money.
“We would never have been able to book a group like Body Vox without having transportation grants,” Heywood said.
Though at least seven visiting artists are already booked for the fall and winter season, Heywood said an inconsistent ferry system may further complicate things.
Alaska Marine Highway System’s winter ferry is scheduled for limited service to Haines in November, and only one ferry a week is scheduled from Jan. 15 to March 1. Last week, the largest ferry workers union went on strike due to an impasse in contract negotiations with the state.
“(Artists) can’t afford to come to our part of the state if they can’t be assured they won’t have to spend extra time here,” Heywood said.
Also losing out on funding opportunities are local artists like Donna Catotti.
Catotti was set to receive a $730 career opportunity grant to help pay for framing artwork to be displayed at the Haines Sheldon Museum’s exhibit beginning Aug. 2. The promised grant money was lost when the Alaska State Council on the Arts closed this month.
In 2019, the Alaska Arts Confluence hosted a series of workshops using $1,500 in community art development grants from the state arts council.
“The funds went entirely to the artists so they were able to get a fair market fee,” Alaska Arts Confluence director Carol Tuynman said this week. She said that cuts to the arts have far-reaching consequences.
“Governor Dunleavy’s budget cuts to the arts and other basic sectors of our economy are sending a very negative message not only to the arts and artists of Haines residents, but to the whole world really,” Tuynman said.
The Haines Sheldon Museum had applied for a $5,000 grant from the arts council that would have helped pay personnel costs, director Helen Alten said.
In addition to the state Council on the Arts, Gov. Dunleavy also eliminated funding for public radio, leaving KHNS– which serves Haines and Skagway– down $75,000.
Station manager Kay Clements said KHNS will switch to a less expensive national news provider, and has eliminated two part-time positions, its morning news announcer and a production assistant.
“It means we don’t have anybody on the air in the morning,” Clements said. “Having a host to read our local news and update weather and road conditions in the fall and winter will be much more critical.”
The production assistant helped with music inventory, a process that has since “slowed down,” said program director Marley Horner.
Programming will switch from American Public Media programming to the less expensive Public Radio Exchange, and the station plans to pick up more podcasts and pre-produced programming to compensate for a lack of morning news announcer.
On July 30, Clements asked the borough assembly for a $20,000 funding to lessen the impact of the state cut. The assembly is set to discuss the request at their Aug. 1 meeting.
A budget repair bill approved by the house and senate would fully restore the arts council and public radio funding, and is pending review by the governor this month.