Daily Sitka Sentinel from Sitka, Alaska • Page 1

Member of the Associated Press A I SEN-TIN EL Wednesday, March 8,1989 Sign of Spring A Seattle-labeled herring processor anchors off Sitka, in apparent anticipation of a herring sac roe fishery. The fishery usually occurs in late March or early April, with several thousand dollars in herring harvested during brief openings. (Sentinel photo by James Poulson) School Board OKs 1989-90 Calendar By Sentinel Staff Classes will start August 25 for the 1989-90 school year and end on May 25, the Sitka School Board decided at its regular meeting Tuesday. The schedule adopted by the board includes a. Christmas vacation from the close of classes on Friday, Dec.

15, to Tuesday, Jan. 2. There will be a four-day weekend for 1990 Easter vacation, Friday, April 13, through Monday, April 16. Board members said the number of in-service training days for teachers has not yet been set. The district is allowed to set up to 10 days during the school in-service training, although Sitka traditionally adopts much fewer, a district spokeswoman said Assistant Superintendent Joe Beckford said teachers, member of the high school and junior high student council and members of the Principals' Advisory Committees for Baranof, Mt.

Edgecumbe, Verstoyia and Sitka High Schools were asked for theii.opinions. Board president Michael Meier said the schedule adopted by the board was the one the reviewers favored over one that started on Aug. 28 and contained two fewer Christmas vacation days. In other business: The board decided 10 continue meeting twice a month after discussing cutting the frequency of meetings to once a month, as had been recommended by School Superintendent Art Wcodhouse. Woodhouse had said a special meeting could be called if school business required quick action.

Meier and board members Sandi Hicks and Shirley McCoy initially supported the move, but agreed to keep the number of meetings at two after board members Dennis and Harold Stockef said they opposed a Vetesse said he wished to see agendas kept lighter so more presentations of district programs could be made to board members. Stocker said he thought a month between meetings might be too to stay abreast of issues. The board is to begin using the new boardroom in the Verstovia School for its meetings starting April 4, a district spokeswoman said today. Judge Rules in Favor of APC on Air Emissions ByWILLSWAGEL Sentinel Staff Writer Alaska Pulp Company officials said today they are pleased with reports that a Ketchikan judge has ruled in the company's favor in a long-standing dispute with the state over air emissions. APC Environmental Chief Ed Oetken said Superior Court Judge Thomas Schulz had found that the mill had not violated the terms of a 1986 air emission agreement with the state, as had been charged by the Alaska Depart ment of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

The agreement, called a consent decree, outlined a number of specific steps the mill was to take to come into compliance with state air emission standards. APC did not fulfill some of the specific requirements of the decree, designed to lower emissions by altering the design of the mill's power boilers. The mill said it had taken other steps to reduce air emissions by installing better monitoring equipment and was planning to install an electrostatic precipilator to further reduce particu late emissions. In December, Judge Schulz issued a preliminary ruling that the alternate steps taken by the mill were acceptable toward the decree's goal of reducing air emissions. Schulz then gave attor- neys for DEC and for the Sierra Club, another party in the agreement, 15 days to comment on his preliminary decision because of the technical nature of the issue.

A spokeswoman in Schulz's office said the judge had issued his final decision Tuesday and that copies of the decision had been mailed to the parties involved. Oetken said he had not yet received a copy of the decision and could not comment on its details until he had. However, Oetken said he was pleased Schulz found that the mill had "what he thought was the proper attitude" toward reducing air emissions. Oetken added, though, that he was Vol. 51, No.

47 Sitka Alaska 35c House Demos Say All Areas Subject to Cuts By LARRY PERSILY Associated Press Writer JUNEAU (AP) Nothing is exempt in this session's budget-cut discussions, not even the longevity bonus program which has escaped untouched in previous debates, Hopse Democrats said Tuesday. The $56 million program distributes $250 a month to more than 18,000 elderly Alaskans, and its cost is increasing by more than $2 million a year as more people join the program. "If we're talking about cutting the budget in all areas the longevity bonus ought not to be exempt from the cuts," said House Majority Leader Mike Navarre, D-Kenai. "Other areas have as great a need." One year of Alaska residency is all that is required of people 65 and older to qualify for the longevity bonus. House Democrats had divided into three groups Monday evening to debate possible cuts and new revenues to balance next year's state budget, then the entire group met Tuesday to compare notes.

The three groups proposed cutting Gov. Steve Cowper's proposed $2.3 billion fiscal 1990 budget by $151 million to $203 million. Unless oil prices increase, state spending is cut or taxes are raised, the state faces an estimated $600 million deficit next year. "We didn't leave anything sacred," Navarre said. The co-chairmen of the House Finance Committee will use the caucus proposals as a starling point in budget work this session, Navarre said.

His group discussed a possible 10 percent cut in the longevity bonus program, and a group led by Rep. C.E. Swackhammer, D-SpIdotha, suggested a similar reduction in the cash giveaway; "It was a real lively discussion," Swackhammer said of his group's consensus for $151 million in cuts. A $5 million cut in state aid to schools, a S6 million reduction in the state share of school construction debt payments and a $15 million drop in direct aid to local governments were among the suggestions offered by Swackhammer's group. Rep.

Kay Brown, D-Anchorage, reported to the caucus that her group did not come up with specific program cuts. However, the members did agree that some trimming is needed in state employee benefit costs, state subsidies of rural power costs and trie state- funded television network serving rural Alaska. The governor is not actively campaigning for changes in the longevity bonus program as he did two years ago, spokesman Terence O'Malley said. However, if lawmakers decide they want to change the program, Cowper still favors making it based on need as he suggested two year ago, O'Malley said. Options for reducing longevity bonus costs include trimming the monthly checks to below $250, making the program based on need or otherwise tightening eligibility standards, Brown said.

1 The board discussed 1989-1990 district goals, which are to be discussed again in the future. As stated, the four goals outlined seek to promote and encourage the cooperative learning concept as a K-12 teaching tool; to create a community network to lobby the legislature For more equitable state "funding; to promote cohesjveness in the district through the active involvement of teachers, students and parents; and to decrease the drop-out rate. Meier said his latest figures showed that the rate slood at 10.7 percent, which he said was comparatively low when compared to other parts of thhe state. Sitka High School assistant pru cipal Jim McGinnis said today high Continued on page 9 Governor Endorses Tongass Compromise sorry about the amount of trouble everyone involved went to to find out what the mill already knew. "I regret the wasted time, wasted money and energy, on what I consider an unfruitful enterprise, 1 he said.

He said the mill is continuing to install the $5 million electrostatic precipitator which uses electric charges to remove paniculate matter from emissions. The precipitator will be operating by the end of 1989, Oetken said, adding that he hopes to have it on line even sooner. The consent decree requires the mill to be in compliance with state air emissions by Dec. 31,1989. Gov.

Steve Cowper Tuesday announced his endorsement of key provisions of a compromise on the Tongass National Forest supported by elected Southeast government officials, fishermen arid Native leaders. The Governor said the compromise proposed by the Southeast Conference's Tongass Committee is "fair and reasonable and realistically takes into account the political situation in Washington, D.C." cannot sit by and let a radical bill get pushed through Congress or perhaps be attached to ANWR legislation," said the Governor, who spent last week in Washington meeting with key officials on Tongass. "We've got to make sure such legislation doesn't decimate the economy and the people of Southeast Alaska. I believe this compromise meets that test." The Sitka Assembly will meet 5:15 p.m. Thursday in the Centennial Building to discuss the Tongass consensus report.

The meeting is open to the public. At issue are proposed changes to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act that directly affect people who live in the Tongass Forest. A committee of the Southeast Conference proposed a compromise, subsequently endorsed by the conference board on Feb. 20, between strict conservationist legislation and lhat supported by the timber industry. The Conference is composed of local elected government officials and Chamber of Commerce members of Southeast communities.

Cowper said he especially endorses the compromise provisions that guarantee balanced multiple use management and appropriate enough money to supply the market demand up to 4.5 billion board feet of timber per decade. He said the compromise also protects in non-wilderness s'tatus important fish and wildlife areas identified by 'local communities and provides for an economic diversification program to stimulate local economies. The Governor said his chief concern is protecting the jobs of Southeast residents who rely on the national forest, and that key elements of compromise attempt to do that. The Governor criticized bills introduced in Congress that would cancel long-term timber contracts, million additional acres of wilderness and repeal the 4.5 billion board'feet timber supply. Cowper said his visit to Washington made it clear "that the train is leaving the station on the Tongass.

We cannot afford to stand around and pretend things will get better because we'll be left at the station." he continues to review a regional economic development'pro- posal made by Sealaska which seeks to strengthen Southeast's economy. He also said he will work with the state's congressional delegation to fine-tune Alaska's strategy on Tongass. Cowper's views will be delivered, to the House Interior and Agriculture committees in Washington next Mom to See Kids for First Time Since '58 By Sentinel Staff Charlotte Robinson held out a faded snapshot, a torn and wrinkled photo of a child on a tricycle. Tears filled her eyes and it was a moment before she couldspeak. The picture, she said, was of her daughter Charlene.

Robinson, a longtime Sitka resident, said that not long after she and her first husband moved to ketchikan 31 years ago, the husband took off one day with Charlene and the couple's two sons. Charlotte Robinson never saw any of them again. all, 1- have of her right 'there," Robinson told a Sentinel reporter today, pointing to the tattered photo of Charlene on the trike. But Charlotte Robinson's years of wondering about her lost children came to an end during the last two days. After years of praying she would see them again, a chain of events suddenly brought her into contact with them by telephone.

She is now hoping to be reunited with at least two of them, and a granddaughter whom she has never seen, in Seattle within the next few After she lost track of her first three children, Robinson remarried and had four more children, all girls. One, Peggy Miller, still liv.es in Sitka. Charlotte Robinson never forgot about her two sons and first daughter. "I prayed every night," she said. She paused to wipe away, the "I knew I was going to find them." Robinson is the daughter of the late Wes Johnson of Sitka and his wife Merna.

Charlotte was young when she married, and she and her first husband had lived in Ketchikan only about two or three months before he and the children disappeared in 1958. "He didn't like Alaska, and so he took the children and left," she said. "I didn't know where'they were. We a territory then and they (authorities) said there was nothing they could do." At the time, said Robinson, she was working in the old restaurant of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Ketchikan. She can still remember the last time she saw her children.

"I was working, and he walked by where I was working," she said. "It was a nice evening. And they all waved, and I waved. "When I went home, there wasn't Continued on Page Charlotte Robinson and daughter Peggy Miller flip through a notebook with birth certificates of three children whom Robinson has not seen in 31 years. After years of searching, Robinson has located them and is making plans for a reunion.

At'far right is Robinson's only photo of her daughter Charlene, "all I have of her" until talking to her by telephone this morning for first time hi three decades..