Lallette Kistler for Ketchikan City Council

I would like to continue my efforts              

• To make sure Ketchikan remains a top destination for visitors and find room for new residents with adequate housing.
• To make the docks a profitable venture, and fund repairs in cooperation with cruise ships.
• To keep expenditures to a minimum, while working towards repairing deteriorating infrastructure and strategic planning.
• To make sure that the new seasonal sales tax reporting is simplified for service companies that work jobs over reporting quarters. 
• To work to make sales tax more fair for lower-wage residents. I want to find a way to make healthy food items non-taxable, and reorganize the residential rent so that discounts are geared more towards the lower rent folks who need it most. With the current cap system there is no relief at all for those paying rent under $1000, and they are the ones who need it most.
• To work to organize and coordinate all the services helping the homeless, and those with mental health issues and debilitating addictions. There are so many wonderful organizations who want to help, which causes duplication and gaps that need to be worked out for a more successful effort.
• To explore funding and feasibility of a detox center. 
• To explore funding and feasibility of a Social Services EMT Van for non emergency calls and welfare checks.
• To continue to support the arts and other non-profit organizations that help make Ketchikan a great place to live.

I followed my husband up to Ketchikan in 1982 and brought the two kids up soon thereafter. We now have 6 grands and three great-grands. Initially, I worked restaurant jobs to pay the rent, then I found Tatsuda’s and spent 7 ½ years working in many different areas of the store: checking, stocking, meat department, and managing and starting up a deli. I was also a radio personality for the Tatsuda Birthday Book, and union shop steward for the store. 

Looking for more challenges, I took a job at the local State Farm, where I enjoyed 29 years helping people understand the complicated world of insurance and financial services. I was well-known by agents across the state for my knowledge of every aspect of the business, selling and servicing all lines of insurance, Auto, Fire, Life & Health, along with Banking and Securities sales. Many questioned why I was not an candidate to get my own agency, but that would mean leaving Ketchikan, which was a non-starter. 

With my day job secured in 91, and weekends off, I finally had the time to use my college training in Music and Theater, so I started teaching voice lessons and became active with First City Players. In addition to all my onstage and conducting activities,  

I spent five years as chair of the Performing Arts Center committee, and helped bring consensus between two dissonant groups, successfully petitioning the City Council and Borough Assembly to fund the purchase the building where the First City Players currently resides. 

As a partner/performer in the "Ketchikan Frontier Review" I also gained invaluable insight into the visitor industry.

I have been doing bookkeeping for the family music and drywall businesses since 1986, and answered the call from a church and a contractor that needed help after I retired from insurance and finance. I started work on their books in the height of the Covid pandemic, and both are now organized and have been brought into the 21st century. 

Over the years, music, which started out as a side job, has become my main source of income. Originally just teaching voice, I expanded to piano in the late 90s. The mill had shut down, and with unexpected openings I gave in to the demand.  Always looking for new and improved opportunities, I got training in Kindermusik for the very young and later started offering Ukulele lessons. 

Running out of new things I wanted to do, I finally took the plunge into politics, which I had contemplated for decades, and here I am running for reelection. I hope my strong common-sense abilities will continue to be helpful for the city to which I have dedicated nearly my entire adult life.