Voters will choose two borough assembly members, a school board member and a port commissioner in the Oct. 3 municipal election — but only one of the four seats is contested.
There are two candidates for the one school board seat on the ballot.
John DeRuyter, a clinical psychologist, is running for a three-year term on the school board. Incumbent Esther Aaltséen Reese, tribal administrator for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, is seeking reelection to the board. She was elected to a one-year term last year.
DeRuyter is a self-employed clinical psychologist; he operates Hope Counseling and Consulting. He has served the past two years on the high school advisory committee.
“I realized there are a ton of people in this community” who want to participate, sharing their concerns and ideas for the schools, he said. As a board member, DeRuyter said he would want to ensure that community concerns raised with the school board get a response, not merely an acknowledgement.
The Sentinel was unable to contact Reese in time for this week’s newspaper.
The candidacy filing deadline closed Thursday, Aug. 31.
Incumbent Anne Morrison and Michael J. Ottesen are running for two three-year terms on the borough assembly — both will win a seat in the Oct. 3 voting unless there is a large turnout for a write-in candidate.
Morrison is in her fifth year on the assembly, having won elections in 2018 and 2020.
“When I came up for reelection, I really thought about it. It’s time for somebody else. But no one else stood up,” she said last week.
Morrison said she believes in finishing work already underway at the assembly, including deciding on repairs to the rot-damaged Public Safety Building, repairs to aging school buildings, development of the borough-owned 6-Mile waterfront (former sawmill) property, and completion of the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) residential subdivision near Shoemaker Harbor.
“There are a lot of economics things” she would like to finish, Morrison said. “There is a real positive attitude in town and a really positive attitude on the assembly.”
The Sentinel was unable to contact Ottesen in time for this week’s newspaper.
The port commission race features one candidate for the one open seat on the five-member board: Gary Morrison, first elected in 2016, is running for a fourth term.
“There are some things I would like to see followed through,” he said. That includes installation of security cameras in all the harbors and adding corrosion-inhibiting zincs to the steel pilings in Heritage Harbor, which he said were “inadvertently not put in” during construction in the late 2000s.
Morrison also said he “has been wrestling with the idea” of insurance requirements for uninsured boats in the harbors. When an uninsured boat sinks or burns, the borough often gets stuck with the cleanup costs, he said. “That’s not right for the rest of us.”
One other item on his list is a second boat ramp at Heritage Harbor, which Morrison said would be useful, particularly at busy times when the one ramp gets backed up. Because of the cost of adding a second ramp, the borough would need a grant to pay for the project, he said.
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