The Fairbanks North Star Borough and the nonprofit that advocates for the SS Nenana are clashing over whether to use federal money meant for repairs on the old sternwheeler.
Friends of SS Nenana posted about their concerns on their website Saturday, calling on members of the community to reach out to the borough assembly.
At the center of the disagreement is half a million dollars included in an appropriations bill that Congress passed last March. The money was directed at mitigating wood rot by painting the SS Nenana, the wooden-hulled boat owned by the Fairbanks North Star Borough and stationed inside Pioneer Park.
“They need to get paint on the boat to prevent further deterioration, or we will lose the boat,” Patricia De Nardo Schmidt, president of Friends of SS Nenana, told KUAC Tuesday.
The funds would come through Save America’s Treasures grant program, which uses the federal government’s Historic Preservation Fund.
Schmidt’s group sought and secured the money, but the borough doesn’t plan to accept it, according to mayor Grier Hopkins.
“They did not partner with the borough on that grant. They went out and applied for it on their own and got the funding,” he said.
Hopkins says his administration is declining the opportunity because a 15-year maintenance clause tacked on to the money would foist burdensome obligations onto the borough in the future.
“That comes down to the very specific ways: the type of paint that you have, the color of the paint that you can use, the – every single time you use a consultant, it has to be approved by the Department of the Interior,” he said.
The borough had approached Friends of SS Nenana multiple times with concerns about using the funds, according to Hopkins, but Schmidt says that completely turning them down is new.
“Never – until he said this when we met with him a couple weeks ago – that’s the first time that the borough said, ‘if there’s a maintenance clause, we won’t take the money,’” she said.
Built in 1933 and retired more than 20 years later, the boat has earned status as a National Historic Landmark and claimed a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
It’s one of only three steam-powered passenger sternwheelers remaining in the United States, according to the National Park Service.
But the sternwheeler’s age has pushed it into a complicated nexus of historic value, community support and major capital costs.
In 2018, the borough blocked off entrance to the boat because its state of disrepair posed public safety issues.
That’s part of what led to the formation of the Friends of SS Nenana, which raises money and advocates for fixing up and preserving the boat.
The borough began a major restoration project in 2022, and the cargo deck of the SS Nenana reopened to the public last summer.
Earlier this year, the borough assembly approved additional funds to finish off the project’s $4 million first phase this summer. And Hopkins says keeping more decision-making power with borough elected officials will ultimately bode well for the historic landmark.
“We want to make sure that we are able to have the flexibility we need to maintain that boat as Fairbanks can and our borough can here,” he said.
But for Schmidt, refusing the funds still just doesn’t pencil out.
“Whether they take this money or not, they are still responsible for maintaining the boat. So to use that logic to say they won’t take the money really doesn’t make sense,” she said.