Ketchikan officials press school district on $5.4 million health‑insurance liability, weigh repayment timetables

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Members of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly and the School Board’s liaison committee met Jan. 27 to review preliminary school district cash‑flow projections and address a roughly $5,400,000 liability tied to health‑insurance claims and premiums that auditors flagged in recent reports.

Lisa Pierce, the district’s consultant business manager, told the committee she had only arrived in Ketchikan the prior evening and had been able to produce an initial cash‑flow spreadsheet but had not yet pulled full historical outflows from district software. “I just honestly have not had that opportunity to even realistically give you anything that’s even worth looking at, to be honest with you,” Pierce said, describing the materials as a starting point that staff would expand as they gathered more data.

Assembly members and school board representatives pressed staff for clearer assumptions. The packet presented a starting general‑fund balance identified in the spreadsheet as $8,700,000 and included historical claim assumptions (one figure on…