The Alaska House Finance Committee received public testimony from people across the state on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 21 and 22. The state is currently in its budget season again, and the finance committee held the meeting to hear what the public felt was important.
Several members from Wrangell called in from the local Legislative Information Office to give their perspective on the community's needs moving forward. Among the items Wrangellites voiced support for were the need for ferry service, a local Office of Children's Services worker, and to keep the local Department of Fish and Game office open and running.
"I just feel strongly about the importance of the Alaska Marine Highway System," said Wrangell resident Gayle Gross on Friday. "It's just been, to me, a calamity we're facing in coastal Alaska. I think we're jeopardizing our prosperity and safety in our communities with the cuts to the marine highway system that have happened."
This sentiment was shared by several other Wrangellites who called in on both days of testimony. Brenda Yeager said that the lack of ferries has hurt her ability to make a living through various jobs. As a commercial fisherman, most of her catches are transported out of town via the ferry system. As an artist, she travels around on the ferries to different art shows across Southeast Alaska, and her artwork is typically too large to put on an airplane. Yeager also runs a tour company, she said, and the lack of regularly scheduled ferry service has hurt travelers' abilities to plan trips to the region.
The ongoing issues with the ferry system was not the only topic Wrangellites voiced concern about. Assembly Member Anne Morrison called in on Friday to testify about Wrangell's need for a local OCS worker. Wrangell used to have a local social worker, years ago. However, the position was centralized in Petersburg. Morrison said that the caseload was too great for a single worker to handle, across multiple communities. She called for a local OCS position to be restored to Wrangell, so as to lighten the workload for the Petersburg worker and to ensure support systems were in place for Wrangell youth.
"During the 2018 session you passed a bill, House Bill 151, known as the 'Children Deserve a Loving Home Act.' In that bill, standards were set for the average caseload limit for a social worker not to exceed 13 cases per worker," Morrison said. "The woman in Petersburg is, right now, dealing with an excess of 60 cases in three communities."
Kate Thomas, Wrangell's parks and recreation director, also voiced support for a local OCS worker. Thomas spoke about the community's efforts to come together to support the emotional and mental health of their youth on their own, but she said that it could never replace the importance of a local OCS office. When lawmakers devalue the importance of access to programs like the OCS, she said, they are putting money over the wellbeing of Alaskan children.
Debbe Lancaster, Superintendent for the Wrangell School District, also voiced support for a local OCS office. The office can provide a community support, ways to de-escalate conflicts, and help reunite families, she said. Wrangell children need all the support they can get, she said, especially with a 52 percent poverty rate in the community and budget cuts to the school district.
"Whereas we have great individual resources for supporting our students and our families, we need a full-time presence of OCS," Lancaster said. "OCS is needed now more than ever."
On a similar topic of Wrangell losing state offices to centralization in Petersburg, many people voiced support for keeping the local Fish and Game office open. It was proposed by the Department of Fish and Game, in an effort to cut down on their budget, to close Wrangell's office and relocate one of the positions there to Petersburg. Several people voiced opposition to this idea, including Mike Lockabey, Brian Merritt, Jim Anderson, Larry Kline, and others. A common theme of everyone's testimony was that the office provided important services to locals that could not be accomplished remotely.
"Many Wrangell people use the facility for various activities that can't be done online, such as sealing hides, checking in moose antlers and lower jaws, tooth extraction from bear skulls, and other personal human-to-human interactions," said Merritt.
"This office has been an absolute necessity to me," added Kline. "I am not versed in computers, whatsoever. I barely can look things up. The time it takes me to look anything up on that computer, I can have it answered here completely and honestly and thoroughly, so I do not get into any hassles with the Fish and Game troopers, or anything like that. It's very clear to me. Trying to understand and go through this computer has been a hassle. Talking to these people ... it's been fantastic."
Recordings of the testimony, on Friday and Saturday, can be found at http://www.akleg.gov, under the "meetings" tab.
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