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A complaint over the status of the two public Wrangell cemeteries will lead to a drive to remove decorations this spring. Memorial Cemetery – known about town as the "old cemetery" – and Sunset Gardens Cemetery – known as the "new cemetery" – faced criticism at the March 25 borough assembly meeting from Wayne Kaer. At the same meeting, assembly members voted on the final step in a series of ordinance changes abolishing the borough's cemetery committee, because of a lack of interest, and because...
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation committee unanimously recommended two measures to the borough assembly at Wednesday’s meeting. The first vote recommended the assembly change the hours of operation for the pool and workout facility. A second vote recommended an ordinance for consideration related to logging in city parks. The hours change could head to a public hearing for feedback before consideration by the assembly. The ordinance will go to the borough attorney for legal evaluation before beginning the process of becoming ordinance. The c...
Jay Thomas will not be the superintendent of Wrangell Schools next year. Thomas has asked out of his contract for the 2014-15 school year for personal reasons, according to a school district statement issued Tuesday morning. The school board held a special meeting Monday, and voted 5-0 to allow Thomas out of his contract. School board members planned an additional meeting Wednesday night to further discuss the issue, though that date fell after Sentinel production deadlines for this edition. The school system has been looking for a new...
The borough assembly was set to consider hiring a part-time ordinance enforcement officer after a Facebook conversation. Discussion about the matter came up briefly during the April 8 assembly meeting. Assembly member Daniel Blake told the assembly he’d been involved in a Facebook conversation with as many as 40 people about a large amount of dog feces and loose animals downtown. The conversation originally focused around the possibility of an animal control officer for the borough, Blake said. However, in researching the history of animal c...
Let's be clear: the Lady Wolves softball team showed up in force this year. Unlike the high school baseball team, which didn't garner enough participants to field a full team (not enough relief pitching for a double-header has hamstrung the Wolves baseball team for this season), the softballers have 16 student athletes – almost enough players to stock two full teams without relief – raring to go. Unfortunately, they lack credible opposition, school activities officials have said. Officials hav...
Future Wrangell schools secondary principal Colter Barnes was in town this weekend to see the community and look for housing. Barnes will replace retiring secondary principal and athletic director Monty Buness Aug. 1. He's currently the traveling principal at Kokhanok and Igiugig schools in the Lake and Peninsula School system. He spent part of the weekend watching the multi-day middle school volleyball tournament at the high school. "Cause it's always sunny here, right?" he quipped, when asked...
The Wrangell Planning and Zoning Commission approved a final plat for a replat of the tidelands in Wrangell’s inner harbor. The board unanimously approved the plat, part of a land deal for Dave Svendsen that has been in the works for months, and creates one larger unsubdivided tideland lot out of two smaller lots in the Block 24. The commission also approved by unanimous vote a Conditional Use Permit for defense attorney Michael Nash. Nash had sought the permit in order to operate a legal services firm out of his residence. Commissioners a...
City officials are urging Wrangell residents to take steps to conserve energy through mid- May. After a diesel-free winter, Tyee Lake went down for maintenance work Monday. While Tyee will be off-line until May 12— meaning the city will run on diesel fuel imported from Washington State in the meantime— according to borough power and light superintendent Clay Hammer. The borough accumulates a diesel surcharge during this period, which is divided evenly among all consumers. This year’s run is early. “This is actually a good two weeks ahead o...
By about three-quarters of the way through Saturday night's roller derby bout, the Wrangell team had too many points. The Garnett Grit Betties hosted their first-ever home bout, known as the The Rumble on The Rock, against a group of visiting skaters from Southeast towns. After some initial uncertainty, more spectators had started to get into it. Louder and louder cheers broke out whenever a jammer – easily distinguishable by the star on the side of their helmet – broke through the pack to sco...
The president of the Thomas Bay Power Commission sent a letter this week to the chairman of the Southeast Alaska Power Agency ordering an end to negotiations for SEAPA to take over operations at the Tyee Lake Hydroelectric Project. The letter claims those negotiations – borough manager Jeff Jabusch characterized them as discussions – are being conducted in violation of section 3.40.50 of Wrangell code and a “substantially identical ordinance of Petersburg,” according to the letter from TBPA president James Stough to SEAPA board chairma...
Members of the public told port commissioners they preferred the second of three options for the proposed Mariners Memorial. At a second public workshop Thursday evening, a clear consensus emerged among attendees that while the second option offered the most pleasing esthetics and the best way for individuals to approach the monument, elements of another option appealed to them. They said they generally preferred a grand staircase visible in one of the other three possible layouts presented by...
In an unusual procedural move Tuesday, a passing vote was taken back. Assembly members initially voted 4-2 in favor of adding a cease-and-desist letter from Thomas Bay Power Commission President and borough assembly member James Stough to the New Business portion of the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. However, after Mayor Jack voted in favor of, he told borough clerk Kim Lane he had misunderstood the motion’s intent to mean it would be added to the next meeting’s agenda. As a member of the majority, he was allowed to take back the vote, essen...
While attendance figures for Saturday's health fair may not be available for some time, organizers said attendance was steady this year. The fair is a perennial draw, in part because of reduced rates offered for things like a health profile and recommended screenings, and in part because of numerous booths representing community activities. Last year's events drew between 500 and 600 adults and children to the fair. A count of returned free entry forms for an annual raffle show at least 300 had...
A long-discussed lift doubling the capacity of the Wrangell boatyard could arrive by the end of the month, officials said. The lift, which Harbormaster Greg Meissner plans for the harbor to use in conjunction with the existing 150-ton lift, shipped from Italy in March and was set to arrive in Tacoma, Wash. by Wednesday, though harbor officials have revised estimates for the arrival in the past. "My hope is it'll get here on April 22," he said. That would put the arrival one day shy of a year...
For an eighth grade student, Kayla Hay chooses her words very carefully. "In Mr. Davis's class we're all assigned certain writing ..." she said, and paused, searching for a synonym to describe work in her favorite class. "Assignments," she finished. "Is that how I should say that?" Her penchant for just the right word recently won her second place among sixth through eighth grade students in the Carl Sandburg Student Poetry Contest put on the by the National Park Service. Unable to attend the aw...
After two winter sinkings in the Wrangell area, port commissioners and the harbormaster said the time has come to discuss a possible insurance requirement. The subject has been on the commission’s agenda since the previous meeting in March. Discussion – commissioners took no vote on the issue – mentioned the requirement but also focused around possible alternatives to an outright requirement. Former port officials present at Thursday’s regular port commission meeting said a requirement had in the past faced criticism – and eventual defeat ...
The forecast for this spring: sunshine, followed by small children on pitchers' mounds. The Little League season unofficially opened this weekend with an open tryout session in the community gym. About 65 kids signed up for the perennial summer baseball league, which features travel to Petersburg. Practices will be held for the next three weeks. Opening ceremonies for the season will be held April 26. The league is structured into four categories, according to Brennan Eagle, who is among the...
The seals' death circulated via text message, phone, and word of mouth the minute they touched the shore of Shakes Island Friday. Alaskan Native Wrangellites had hunted, killed, butchered - and would eventually smoke and eat - harbor seals, long a traditional part of the native diet and permitted under strict guidelines by the Marine Mammal Protection and Endangered Species acts. Parts of the law allow hunting for subsistence and the manufacture of Native handicrafts, according to the Harbor...
One day earlier in the school year, a mother said her unidentified Evergreen Elementary School student came home with a concussion, a bloody nose, a split lip, and a sprained ankle. He had been bullied by older students off school grounds, he told his mother. His assailants had repeatedly banged his head against the ground, causing the concussion, she said. The student and his mother went to the hospital, where he was briefly treated, and then released, his mother said. Middle school students may have been involved (that later turned out not...
A planned $10-million cut in state contributions to employee retirements could affect budgets here, officials said. Legislators in both the Alaska House and Senate have trimmed $10 million from the previous year’s contribution to the Public Employee Retirement System, known as PERS. Gov. Sean Parnell’s budget had originally included a $3 billion infusion into the system. PERS is a shared burden between municipalities and the state government in order to provide retirement pensions for public employees at the municipal and state level. The sta...
Health consumers are ready to descend on the Nolan Center this weekend for reduced rates on a health profile and five other screenings. The reduced rates on a health profile, prostate screening, hemoglobin A1C (a type of diabetic screening), vitamin D screenings, and a hepatitis C test are the centerpiece of the annual Health Fair, set for Saturday from 7 a.m. to noon. Officials with Wrangell Medical Center held a preregistration March 21 and 22, but people looking to get a reduced rate on...
Middle and high school students may find themselves facing a new slate of language arts classes when fall rolls around. The changes are planned ahead of revisions to the Alaska state educational standards planned for the 2015-16 school year, school officials say. They’re also planned to take advantage of consistently improving language arts abilities among incoming sixth-graders, said Bob Davis, a language arts teacher at Stikine Middle School. The majority of changes will take place in the middle school, Davis said. “It’s partly” standar...
City officials will this month give serious consideration to purchasing the former site of the Wrangell Mill. The city had always been considering a purchase of the mill property, located near 5.5 mile Zimovia Highway, but were waiting for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to weigh in on the site before evaluating the mill. Earlier this month, the DEC notified the borough that the property had passed environmental muster and was ready for sale, said borough manager Jeff Jabusch. “There was some contamination out there, like m...
Library staff at the Irene Ingle Memorial Library will begin participating in a series of webinars intended to evaluate ways to improve service for local patrons. The online meetings, known as the Edge Initiative, are part of a push to promoting best technology practices among the staffs and facilities at 20 libraries across Alaska, said library director Kay Jabusch. “Some of the things you do well, you want to do more of that,” she said. The Initiative involves a questionnaire about how technology is used at the library, Jabusch said. A slew o...
For most Southeast residents the 1964 Good Friday earthquake is a relic of grainy newsreels and yellowed newspaper clippings. But some residents of Wrangell who lived through the disaster remember a hurried rush to higher ground to get away from a threatened tsunami they would not have been able to see in the dark. The wave never materialized, and no damage was reported. "The first thing that we knew that there was something wrong was the fire department was going around telling people to...
