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Lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Dan Sullivan stopped in Wrangell May 15, part of a wider campaign swing through Southeast Sullivan is the current Republican mayor of Anchorage and says he wants to continue public service in an executive capacity. "I'm in my second and final term as mayor," he said. "I'm termed out." With a background in lobbying and work as a small business owner – Sullivan owns an Irish-themed restaurant and bar in Anchorage – he decided to run for Lieutenant Governor bec...
A ceremonial hat from the Wrangell Kiks.ádi tribe was set to go before the auction gavel in New York Wednesday. The potential auction of a priceless heirloom has galvanized tribal leaders, who say the hat never should have been sold in the first place. A rally with traditional singing and dancing was planned for Wednesday evening in Juneau. A crowdsourcing campaign to try and reclaim the hat had raised more than $21,000 in three days. The auction, being conducted by the New York chapter of...
By Brian O'Connor Sentinel writer Wilma Stokes resigned from the borough assembly Tuesday. Stokes, 84, has suffered from macular degeneration, making it difficult for her to read, she said. In her letter of resignation, she urged community members to fight for better living conditions for the Wrangell Medical Center's long-term care facility residents. "My doctor has suggested that the time has come for me to resign from the borough assembly," she wrote. "Therefore, May 13, 2014 will be my last...
It stands 48 feet, seven inches tall, instantly placing it among the tallest man-made structures in Wrangell. From strap-to-strap, it measures 65 feet, nine inches long, with a slight overhang from the metal side-beam. It can be controlled via radio remote. From wheel well to wheel well, it measures 45 feet, seven inches wide. It has wheels which can rotate 60 degrees. Most importantly, it can lift 300 tons, doubling the capacity of the current equipment. The new boat lift also cost $1.3 million...
A rooster heralded a sprawling and at-times unruly conversation about rural identity at the May 8 Planning and Zoning commission meeting. The rooster in question lives in a neighborhood along Zimovia Highway. Its crows have disturbed at least one neighbor, who has complained to the Wrangell Police Department. The police have issued a nuisance animal ticket, at a cost of $15, to Jamie Townsend, the rooster’s owner. While discussion at the meeting focused around “supporting the rooster,” borough officials have received several complaints on th...
The Forest Service's Resource Advisory Committee voted unanimously May 9 to recommend continued funding for two prominent Wrangell events. The Stikine River Birding Festival received a recommendation for $24,000 to fund travel, printing educational brochures, public outreach, and festival supplies and rental. Wrangell Bearfest received a recommendation for $24,600. The advisory committee recommendation plays a prominent role in allocating federal Title II funds for expenditure. Projects approved at the meeting also include Wrangell Cabin...
Parks officials will move ahead with hours changes for the community gym and pool facility. A sparsely attended May 7 public hearing drew only a Sentinel reporter, though officials say they have received mostly positive feedback on the proposed hours changes from the community. The proposed changes would open the facility from 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., re-opening at 3:30 p.m., and closing at 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Friday it will close at 8:30 p.m.. Saturday’s hours will be 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.. The schedule adds two hours overall recreat...
The borough assembly voted 5-0 in favor of a motion authorizing negotiations over the Tyee Lake power facility. The vote was taken on May 7 in open session after a roughly two-hour closed-door executive session with borough attorney Bob Blasco. Assembly members declined comment on the motion or the executive session, saying they were legally constrained from open discussion on the proceedings. The vote comes after a seeming impasse over the future of operations and maintenance at the facility stemming from an April 4 cease-and-desist order...
Among the questions Alice Rooney faced from Evergreen Elementary first-graders Monday: Do they have slides in Ethiopia? Rooney recently returned from a roughly three-month volunteer-teaching trip in a suburb of Addis-Abbaba, and shared some of her experiences with the elementary students. Rooney shadowed first grade teacher Arlene Wilson's class prior to leaving for Ethiopia, and then returned to issue a report on the trip to her students. Wilson's students prepared drawings for the Ethiopian...
This year's senior projects are a varied bunch. They range from a documentary movie on the Chief Shakes House rededication to middle-school wrestling programs. Whatever the subject of the senior project, whatever the personal interest of the student involved, each student almost invariably used the words “to give back” to describe their project. Senior projects with 25 community service hours are required for graduation from Wrangell High School. While the number is a bare-bones requirement, students often exceed that limit. Take Kristin Gal...
Veterans, spouses, and family members congregated at Wrangell High School Monday evening for a ceremony that was one part commemorative and one part functional. The commemoration came first. Veterans were honored for their service to the country with speeches and commemorative coins, part of a longstanding tradition that has risen to prominence among more recent veterans. The commemoration also included a traditional "empty table" memorial display for veterans who could not join the ranks for th...
Local legislators were circumspect about their accomplishments in the 95-day second legislative session, gaveled out April 25. State Sen. Bert Stedman (R – Sitka) and State Rep. Sam Kito (D – Juneau) both cited a $3 billion contribution to the Public Employee Retirement System and Teacher Retirement System, known as PERS and TRS, respectively, as among the positive steps, though they were quick to point out that legislators also extended the terms of the unfunded liability, meaning Alaska municipalities could feel a budgetary pinch down the roa...
The Wrangell ports commission voted 4-0 Thursday to approve a final draft for the Mariners Memorial. The draft plan represents features compiled from among three options presented to the commission by Juneau-based landscape artist Chris Mertl of Corvus Design. It will now head back to Mertl, who will prepare draft blueprint documents of the Memorial's features, designs which could be taken to charitable organizations, the state legislature, or other potential funding sources. The designs have be...
The ordinance review committee took up the issue of animal control in Wrangell Thursday afternoon. Discussion focused around revising ordinances related to animal control, and touched only briefly on the potential for hiring a part-time ordinance enforcement officer, who would also be trained for and tasked with controlling the town’s stray dog population. Ordinance review committee sessions are largely informal, without set agendas. Suggested changes to the ordinances are noted and submitted t...
The scale needle tipped at 74.4 pounds in summer 1955, and it’s stayed there ever since. Local and visiting anglers will have their chance at unseating Doris Iverson’s record Salmon Derby catch – still on display at the Wrangell Museum – starting this Saturday with the opening of the annual Wrangell Salmon Derby. The event has drawn dozens of anglers to local waters since 1953 in search of the elusive record-breaker – the runner up was eight pounds lighter, a 66.1-pound fish boated in 1974 by Max Dalton – or at least a fish big enough to w...
A ceremony set for May 12 will draw guest speakers from federal and state veterans’ agencies to the Wrangell High School gymnasium. Monday’s planned ceremony will honor veterans of all stripes, according to Rhonda Christian who organized the ceremony with assistance from the Alaska Department of Military & Veterans Affairs, the American Legion, the local Boy Scouts and other community groups. The presentation will start at 6 p.m. with an introduction by Forrest E. Powell III of Alaska Veterans Affairs, followed by a welcome by Mayor David Jac...
Students and teachers feted Bob Davis's Teacher of Excellence Award Friday with pizza, a short break from classes at the end of the day, and an error-riddled sign. The errors were intentional, a loving tweak of pet-peeve grammatical errors Davis has reminded students about countless times over his years as a middle school English teacher. "They're the ones I would harp at," he said, chuckling. Davis is in his 20th year as a teacher at Stikine. Teaching emerged as a career path after a long time...
If you wanted an answer to an unexpected question, Thursday was a great time to be at Stikine Middle School. Among the questions posed (and answers attempted) at the annual sixth grade science fair were: which brand of hair tie can hold the most weight? Which type of bait do squirrels and juncos prefer? Does listening to up-tempo music increase your blood pressure? Which school has the most bacteria? Students have worked on the questions, and the experiments and accompanying displays, since Febr...
State Rep. Peggy Wilson will no longer represent the Wrangell area to the state legislature, starting with the election of her successor. Wilson announced her plans Friday during a floor session of the state legislature, citing a desire to spend more time with her family. Wilson’s mother will require help around the home, and several new great-grandchildren have arrived in the family, Wilson said. “My mom isn’t well,” she said. “She’s so fragile that she hasn’t been outside all winter long.” “We’ve had four new great-grandbabies b...
The State of Alaska dismissed charges against Lavina “Lovey” Brock April 22. Brock, 67, of Wrangell, had faced four Class A misdemeanor counts of promoting illegal gambling according to a criminal complaint filed Feb. 5. The complaint preceded by one week a notice of violation filed by the Alaska Dept. of Revenue Tax Division’s Gaming Unit against American Legion Post #6. Brock pled not guilty to the charges March 4. Michael P. Nash, who represented Brock for the duration of the court case, said both parties had pushed for dismissal follo...
It started as a domestic dispute brought on by a rowdy Christmas party at a nearby American fort in 1869, according to Tlingit witnesses. Eventually, it spiraled into the full-scale artillery bombardment of native villages around Wrangell, and resulted in the deaths of at least three (possibly more) Tlingit clansmen, a white business owner living near the fort, and a woman’s severed finger. The discrepancy in casualty stems from the tendency of Tlingit oral histories to employ tales like those of the Wrangell bombardment as moral lessons, a...
A mix-up with the new 300-ton boat lift meant the five shipping containers with the unassembled lift were sent to Anchorage instead of Wrangell this week. The error apparently occurred sometime after the containers were off-loaded in Tacoma. Instead of being placed on a Wrangell-bound barge from Seattle, they were placed on an Anchorage-bound barge by a cargo subcontractor employed by AsCom S.p.A, the Italian-based manufacturer of the new lift, according to harbormaster Greg Meissner. The containers made it as far north as Juneau before being...
$4.6 million is definitely better than zero. The state’s proposed capital budget would set aside more than $1.6 million for Wrangell-based projects, up from nothing in Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed capital budget announced Dec. 12. An additional almost $3 million in proposed infrastructure “reallocations” will also be headed to Wrangell, with some slight modifications to allow the use of the funds to be more flexible. The capital funds include: $615,000 for a Wrangell connection to the upper reservoir, which will allow the Department of Public...
Hummingbirds are jerks. That was among the messages, meditations, stories and sights shared at the 2014 Stikine River Birding Festival last week. The annual festival caters to those – like guest speaker and author Noah Strycker – with birds on the brain, and took place most visibly over the weekend. The festival receives funding in part from the US Forest Service's Resource Advisory Committee, which also provides funds for Bearfest in August. As a conclusion to an hour-long presentation foc...
Discussion from the April 22 borough assembly meeting could lead to potential changes for some furry best friends in Wrangell. Hiring a part-time ordinance enforcement officer to handle a surplus of dog feces in public parks has been discussed since the April 8 meeting. Assembly member Daniel Blake asked for the issue to be added to the April 22 agenda based on a Facebook discussion of the matter which he said drew between 30 and 40 responses. Several possible changes to existing ordinances could make dog cohabitation a little less gooey,...
