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I have lived here through the good times, when money and the 

 economy were at the peak back in the good-and-old days, and now 

 through the times when most Sitkans are hanging on to what they 

 have just to survive and try to maintain a home here in Sitka. 

 Being employed in commercial radio, I now see what the impact of 

 the closed Alaska Pulp Mill has meant not only to my business as 

 far as advertising revenues, but also what it has done to some of 

 the other businesses here in Sitka. The first year after the mill was 

 closed, people had severance pay and money in savings. Now that 

 it has been almost four years since that devastating event, things 

 are not quite as rosy. The price of real estate has gone up since 

 the closure due to the fact that most homes sold on today's market 

 are going to people from out of town. Some of the sky-high prices 

 are getting pretty crazy. My own home is a good example. I bought 

 a duplex five years ago for $130,000. It was assessed two months 

 ago at $176,500. My house is not worth the pilings it is built on. 

 It seems to me that that is quite a jump in value. My home is not 

 the only one. Ask anybody who has a recent assessment of their 

 house, and they will tell you the same thing: Theirs went up quite 

 a bit. 



Sitka cannot just rely on what is going on today. It is nice that 

 we have tourists that come to Sitka and come to spend their money 

 in our stores and stuff, but we cannot rely on just that. 



We have had a cutback in commercial fishing just to pacify the 

 neighbors over in Canada. Well, we are going to have to rectify 

 that problem, also. No logging whatsoever for Sitka or for 

 Wrangell. That means the loss of a lot of jobs. We are approaching 

 some very hard times. A lot of folks say that it is going to get hard- 

 er. 



It already is, for my business, as well. Most of my business cli- 

 ents still advertise in some form or another but not on the scale 

 that they used to. Just as an average, my company has lost an av- 

 erage of $10,000 a month of revenue since the pulp mill closed. Put 

 that all together, we are talking close to a half a million dollars. 

 Take 15 percent of that half a million dollars, and that came out 

 of my personal pocket. My income relies on advertising revenues, 

 and if I am not out there hustling every day, day in and day out, 

 you do not make a whole lot of money in this town. A lot of families 

 have also left town. We have a show everybody knows called "Prob- 

 lem Corner." Take a listen and see what is for sale: Houses, cars, 

 boats, furniture, moving sales. Every day seems to be an added list. 

 A lot of businesses have been sold. Had a lot of new people come 

 to town and buy a new business to try to make it work. The school 

 enrollment has stayed pretty close but, still, a lot of long-time Sitka 

 residents have moved south just to survive. 



After the closure of the A.L.P. Mill, the Chief of the Forest Serv- 

 ice, Jack Ward Thomas, came to town and had a public meeting. 

 He decided to have a media meeting over at the Sitka Airport. It 

 was supposed to be a private meeting. Anybody know a place in the 

 airport where you can have a private meeting? Pretty wide-open. 



Well, I got to borrow the Avis office, and we had a closed-door 

 meeting. It seemed that every question I asked Mr. Thomas, every 

 time I asked him a question, the comment I got was "No comment." 

 He would not answer my straightforward questions. It was kind of 



