Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 322
A Sitka-based contractor working with the Alaska Community Development Corporation will conduct hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of winter preparations on local homes. A six-man crew from Alaska SafeTech industries will work in, outside, and on top of local houses to prepare them for the winter. Between 30 and 35 local residents have already elected to have their houses weatherized and have registered ahead of time, according to SafeTech president Ron Waldron. The crew arrived and began...
Lawrence Bahovec spent a significant portion of his birthday watching football in his bathrobe and waiting for his granddaughters to call. The occasion was subdued for a 97-year-old fisherman who spent decades wresting his living from local waters. Bahovec was born in 1917 in Chicago, near the end of World War I. His father was a fisherman and carried the family name from Yugoslavia. After fishing in Western Washington for a few years, the family relocated to Wrangell. While his father was out...
The Wrangell Ports & Harbors commission voted 4-0 three times Tuesday night. Commissioners unanimously approved a no-bid professional services contract with Juneau’s Corvus Design. The vote means, pending approval by the borough assembly, port officials would repurpose approximately $11,372 of state money for the construction of floats and upland improvements for Heritage Harbor. About $24,000 would remain from those funds, any unused portion of which will be lost by June 30, if the assembly approved the contract, commissioners said. The c...
The Wrangell girls’ basketball team racked up a single win and two losses in Ketchikan this weekend at the Clarke Cochrane Holiday Classic. “The tournament went well for a lot of my players,” said head coach Edna Abella-Nore. “For every girl except one, none of them had played at a big tournament before. There was a lot of nerves.” The tournament opened Friday with a lopsided 53-11 loss to Chugiak. The team scored a single point through two quarters then added eight more in the third, including a 3-pointer by Wrangell baller Kaydee Howell an...
Mobile phone service for Wrangell AT&T customers was sporadically available and then unavailable starting Christmas night. The outage lasted until Friday afternoon. Customers in and around town, many of whom use smart phones, said voice and data were limited to the range of the device’s Wifi adapters. A statement issued by AT&T acknowledged the outage and blamed inclement weather. “Some AT&T Alascom customers in the towns of Ketchikan, Lena Point, Juneau, and surrounding areas may have experienced a disruption in service recently as dense fog...
Local bar patrons might have to go a bit further to get that nicotine fix on the weekends. Rayme’s Bar plans to be non-smoking as of Jan. 1, and that means Rayme’s will become the first dedicated bar without smoking in Wrangell. The Stikine Inn’s dining room and lounge also contains a bar, which has been smoke-free for years, but the other mainstay alcohol establishments will remain smoker friendly for the time being. The switchover means another haven lost for the tobacco cloud crowd, though bar owner Sam “Reme” Privett III says he’s simp...
For the second straight year, the Salvation Army’s local kettle campaign beat expectations. The news this year might be whose expectations they beat. Local Captains Ronnie and Debbie Davis said contributions – most of which were deposited through the metal slot in the top of this perennial red kettle – totaled $3,611. That topped the local goal of $2,500 by more than a grand, but Wrangell also defied state and national trends, Ronnie Davis said. “In the division, which is the state of Alaska, we’re down by nine percent, but our kettles w...
The Wrangell High team brought three straight losses home from the Clarke Cochrane Invitational this weekend. Wolves fans can take solace in the fact that the team has shown improvement in critical areas, even if the scoreboard lists the smaller number on the Wolves' side, said head coach Ray Stokes. Competition at the tournament also involved larger schools, Stokes added. "We lost all three of our games, but it was really pretty good competition," he said. "We're young and inexperienced, and...
Sentinel writer The hospital board voted 6-0 to renew the contract of CEO Marla Sanger. Sanger has been the Medical Center CEO since Nov. 5, 2012, after the departure of former CEO Noel Rea and a recall election led to a period fraught with political instability for the Wrangell Medical Center Board of Directors. On her first day, Sanger was the Center’s fourth CEO in less than a year. The WMC board terminated Noel Rea in June 2012 after being recalled in a contentious election. Interim CEO Kendall Sawa departed for another job in Washington s...
Despite uncertainty over the continued existence of the Thomas Bay Power Authority, commissioners voted 5-1 Dec. 19 to renew the commission’s travel and liability insurance for another year. The uncertainty stems from the possibility the TBPA in its present form may be placed on idle status as a result of negotiations between the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, and representatives for the Petersburg and Wrangell borough assemblies, set to begin after both assemblies authorized negotiation. Commissioners initially asked whether a six-month r...
Tots flocked into the American Legion Hall to see the Big Man Saturday. For the third year in a row, the post hosted a holiday get-together and gift giveaway at the hall, though several changes this year were designed to make things easier for organizers and especially parents. The Big Man, in this case, is Santa Claus. The party comes with its annual set of challenges and rewards, said Marilyn Mork, who helped organize the annual holiday hootenanny. That includes a scramble to make sure every...
After leading by as many as five points in two games against the visiting Panthers this weekend, the high school boys basketball team marked a pair of single-digit losses. Craig varsity took the opener Friday night 53-50 in overtime on the back of a pair of three-point shots, one by senior Keyan Bird and the other by sophomore Bryar Backman. They repeated the feat a night later, beating the home team 44-40 in regulation. "We got out-rebounded terribly, especially tonight," said head coach Ray...
Sentinel writer Wrangell Public Schools Superintendent Rich Rhodes will resign effective June 30. The board voted 4-0 to accept a letter of resignation dated Dec. 16. Rhodes said the primary reason he's resigning is to return to northern California, where he lived before taking on the position of superintendent – and later the position of Evergreen Elementary School principal as part of budget constraints – in 2010. Rhodes opted for a resignation and not a retirement because he's relatively you...
Two concerts and an art auction showcased the talents of local youth this week. Student musicians from Stikine Middle School and Wrangell High School participated in the joint high school and middle school concert Dec. 11 in the high school commons. Elementary school students sang and performed at the elementary school concert Dec. 12 in the elementary school gym. The older students' concert also included – for the first time ever – an auction of dozens of objets d'art produced by students and...
Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed 2015 budget does not include any capital money for Wrangell projects. The budget, released last Thursday, allots $2,360,655 for capital projects in the other constituent municipalities of what will become state House District 36 after a court-approved redistricting takes effect before mid-term elections this year, according to figures released on the Alaska Office of Management and Budget website. The Alaska legislature could revise the budget before it is enacted, though State Sen. Bert Stedman (R-Sitka) said t...
The Alaskan Native Sisterhood and Brotherhood hosted their annual Christmas party at the Stikine Native Organization building last Saturday afternoon. Children watched movies, sang Tlingit versions of famous Christmas carols, decorated cookies and counted the sugar-filled hours until Santa comes (though he was unable to make a scheduled appearance Saturday). Each child got a bag of popcorn and a stocking filled with goodies. Mark Gunderson provided oranges. This year marked the first party held...
Early defeats resulted in a somewhat disappointing finish for the Wolves. At last weekend’s state meet in Anchorage, Jeffrey Rooney, Jr. secured a fifth-place finish. Rooney was the only wrestler to place, and the five Wolves wrestlers ended up in 22nd place overall among 49 teams represented. “We lost a couple early matches and that really didn’t help our cause,” said head coach Jeffrey Rooney, Sr. “It was a really tough competition, obviously. We didn’t perform quite as well as I thought we were gonna.” Seeding may have contributed t...
First-year girls basketball head coach Edna Abella-Nore has high expectations for the upcoming season unrelated to the team record. "My expectations for the season ... the biggest one is that every one of them work really hard," she said. "That's the most important thing. If they come to practice every day and work 110 percent and apply that not only in practice but also during games, I think it's going to be very successful." The uncertainty about where the Lady Wolves will stand at the end of...
The high school basketball team hopes to be competitive for the Region V tournament March 5 to March 8. Nine weekends of conference play and an invitational tournament in Ketchikan stand between them and the season's end, as well as a relatively untested squad, said head coach Ray Stokes. "Our goal for the season: To get better every game, and hopefully come tournament time we'd like to be competitive and in the hunt for the regional tournament," he said. "We're a very young team. I don't know...
Southeast Alaska Power Agency board members recessed into executive session at the end of the monthly board meeting Tuesday to discuss future operations at the Tyee plant. The item was mentioned briefly during the CEO report section of the eight-hour meeting before noon, and was on the agenda as an executive session that evening. The Wrangell borough assembly approved a resolution to direct borough manager Jeff Jabusch to enter into negotiations over the future of operations at Tyee and the Thomas Bay Power Authority. The issue has been under...
While Wrangell High School students involved in monitoring the Shakes Glacier may have been iced out this year, the program has plans for the data they have collected. Local high school students have participated in using survey equipment to monitor the glaciers in Petersburg and Wrangell for years. Petersburg students have measured the LeConte Glacier since 1983, and over the years have helped – and received help from -- the University of Alaska Southeast. The Wrangell program has monitored t...
While officials at the National Weather Service say they can’t predict with certainty how much snow will fall this winter, they’re pretty sure temperatures will be colder than normal. How much colder? It’s hard to say, really. “We can say with 40 percent confidence that temperatures will be lower than usual,” said Rick Fritsch, a forecaster with the Service’s Juneau office. “In climate terms, that’s pretty confident. What I haven’t said is how much colder it will be.” The average temperature for Wrangell, based only on data from between 1991 a...
Volunteers were hard at work in the Nolan Center Nov. 26 preparing to bring a little holiday cheer into the community. The annual Christmas Tree Lane display and Christmas tree auction opened Tuesday. About half the proceeds from the annual auction go to volunteer hospice care, organizers said, though it's up to community groups and individuals who sponsor individual trees to decide how much to give. Volunteers provide decorative sometimes-intricate trees typically built around a central theme....
The borough assembly voted 5-0 Tuesday night on a draft resolution which — if approved next week — could begin the process of putting Tyee Lake operations in the hands of the Southeast Alaska Power Agency. Assembly members instructed Borough manager Jeff Jabusch to look through and fine-tune the resolution, which would empower him to enter into negotiations on a formal written offer for the SEAPA transfer “which essentially accepts the terms of the August 19, 2013 memo from the SEAPA CEO to the TBPA President,” the measure reads. The draft r...
The borough assembly’s special energy committee voted 7-0 Monday to send two options and a recommendation to the borough assembly meeting Tuesday night. The options represent borough manager Jeff Jabusch’s assessment of possible futures for the Thomas Bay Power Authority. The options, delineated by the committee in discussion at a previous meeting, amount to a list of positives and negatives for either the City and Borough of Wrangell or Southeast Alaska Power Agency running the Tyee Lake hydroelectric facility. A two-page memo drafted by Jab...
