Faulk, Scott (OST) 

From: 

Sent: 

To: 

Subject: 

Dear Mr. Faulk, 

Olen Harris <olen@nprha.com> 

Monday, March 23, 2015 2:52 PM 

Faulk, Scott (OST) 

Tatitlek Essential Air Service Docket DOT -OST -2013-0030 

North Pacific Rim Housing Authority is the Regional Indian Housing Authority for the Chugach Region of 

Alaska and provides affordable low income housing, community infrastructure, and related services to the 

community ofTatitlek. NPRHA currently manage 6 affordable rental housing units, approximately 15 homes 

under a homeownership program, and the two community docks in Tatitlek. One of the docks is an Oil Spill 

Response Dock for a major section of Prince William Sound and also where the Alaska Marine Highway ferry 

berths when it serves Tatitlek. NPRHA is also planning on construction of new teacher and Village 

Public Safety Officer housing and a new youth activities center over the next several years in Tatitlek. The 

remote nature of Tatitlek, being only accessible by air and boat, requires that the community has reliable, 

reasonably priced, and frequent enough air service that the essential functions of the community and 

organiz~tions that serve the community can effectively be delivered. 

I would like to offer North Pacific Rim Housing Authorities full support for the proposal submitted by J&M 

Alaska Air Tours, dba Alaska Air Transit. NPRHA many times has to send out staff to Tatitlek to perform tasks 

that require a higher skill level than our local staff possess as well as perform tasks to meet all of our obligations 

under our federally funded programs and these trips usually are 2-3 days in length. Having service twice 

weekly would enable us to obtain seat fares for both legs of the trip for a majority of the trips. 

NPRHA also has to ship all of the supplies, materials, and equipment necessary for maintaining our facilities to 

the community, there is no local store located in Tatitlek and everything must be shipped to the community by 

air or boat. All of the residents in the community are in the same situation and if they need a part, often for a 

critical system of their home such as the oil fired boilers in most of the homes in the community, they must 

order it from Anchorage and wait for the next available flight to receive it. This creates a very dangerous 

situation if the home is without heat and in danger of freeze-up in the winter time. The majority of the residents 

of Tatitlek are low income and do not have the luxury of maintain an expensive stockpile of parts to account for 

anything that might go wrong with their heating systems. Having flight available 2 times per week would make 

the delivery of these parts much more timely and potentially save homeowners thousands of dollars in repairs 

from having a home freeze up. 

Please let me know if there are any additional steps that I need to take to have North Pacific Rim Housing 

Authorities comments on the proposals part of the record for this solicitation and selection. 

Sincerely, 

Olen Harris 

Executive Director 

North Pacific Rim Housing Authority 

8300 King Street 

Anchorage, AK 99518 

Phone 907-562-1444 

Fax 907-562-1445 

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