HARBOR SYSTEM MASTER PLAN - City and Borough of Sitka

A variety of grant funding sources may be available to keep down the cost of making harbor
improvements. A few of the capital improvement projects shown in Table 8 are assumed to be
partially grant funded. Funding is anticipated to come from (Tadic, 2012):
ANB harbor: 50/50 match in the Governor’s FY 2013 budget, which amounts to $4.1 million
of funding.
Seaplane float: 95 percent funded by the Federal Aviation Administration, amounting to
$10.6 million.
Crescent Harbor Upland Access and Parking: fully funded by Legislative Grant Funding,
which amounts to $1.3 million.
Crescent Harbor Boat Launch Upland Access and Parking: fully funded by Legislative Grant
Funding, amounting to $118,000.
Section 3.1 considers additional grant funding under optimistic and very optimistic scenarios.
Other grant funding may be available but is less certain. Funding may be available through the Alaska
Municipal Harbor Facility Grant program, which matches local government funds, dollar per dollar,
up to a limit of $5 million, subject to annual legislative appropriation (ADOT&PF, 2011). This funding
is competitive and has a scoring process used for project selection. Implementing the recommended
rate increase will presumably improve Sitka’s scoring relative to other communities given the weight
applied to financial ratios within the grant application score matrix.
Facilities related to recreational boating and sport fishing, such as the fish cleaning floats, may be
eligible for grant funding from the Boating and Angler Access Program (ADF&G, 2012). Other facilities
may be eligible as well.
In addition to state sources, grant funding may be available through the Economic Development
Administration (EDA) or U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The EDA is an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that partners with distressed
communities throughout the United States to foster job creation, collaboration, and innovation. EDA
helps to improve Alaska ports by providing funding for both infrastructure and equipment. EDA
helped to fund Sitka’s Marine Services Center. Other recent examples of EDA funding of port and
harbor improvements are in Port Lions and Bristol Bay Borough. The City of Port Lions received a
$1.5 million grant to renovate 35 slips and increase the capacity of the Port Lions Small Boat Harbor
with an additional 21 slips (EDA, 2010). Bristol Bay Borough received $2.4 million for the purchase of
a crane and two forklifts for its dock in Naknek (EDA, 2009). Each of these projects supports
development of the local fishing and ecotourism industries. EDA requires funding applications to
show jobs that are created or legitimately saved as a result of proposed improvements.
The USDA Rural Development section oversees several programs intended to improve the social and
economic conditions in rural America, offering business and cooperative loans and grants to promote
business and employment. Of the various programs USDA administers, two stand out as programs
that could potentially provide financial support to Sitka’s harbor system construction projects: the
Rural Business Opportunity Grants and the Business and Industrial Loan Guarantee Program. The
grants are intended to improve economic conditions in rural communities with 50,000 people or