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Wrangell Public School District has narrowed the field in its search for a new school superintendent. Current superintendent Patrick Mayer informed the WPSD Board in February his intention to move on after finishing out the current academic year. Since then the district has been working with the Association of Alaska School Boards to find a replacement. AASB had been the organization which had referred Mayer when he was hired in 2014. After working out a fee with the Wrangell district, the association put forward eight interested candidates...
The Chamber of Commerce’s annual king salmon derby has been cancelled, it announced last week, following emergency management orders issued by the Department of Fish and Game (see king salmon story). A tradition for over 60 years, initially the month-long fishing derby was to be pared down to weekends this year, given restrictions ADFG had at first countenanced that would have centered around the Stikine River’s mouth in District 8. The eventual orders released last Thursday were far more expansive, encompassing nearly all inner waters in South...
The Department of Transportation is finally able to get started on a major Wrangell road repaving project. Perforated by potholes, the borough’s Evergreen Avenue will finally be resurfaced and repaired, with pedestrian improvements and other fixes. The major project has been on hold for half a decade, surviving rounds of budget cuts to capital funding elsewhere in the state along the way. Two local right of way issues which had lately been holding up the project were wrapped up in February, allowing the project to finally move along. At last we...
The city has lowered its alert stage level for water conservation, dropping from its red-level Stage III stance to an intermediate Stage II. Citing dwindling supplies at its reservoirs, on March 13 City Hall had urged residents to dial back their water usage with the Stage III announcement, jumping from a lesser Stage I. The designations were composed by the Borough Assembly last year in an attempt to organize response measures in the event of a shortage. This followed a water crisis in the...
Safety was the watchword of last week’s meeting of the Public School Board, with parents and staff alike weighing in on security at Wrangell’s public schools. The crux of their concern was an incident involving a high school student on February 12, in which the student was recorded by peers during class discussing the setting off of fireworks or explosives at the school, with the intention of getting expelled. Faculty and the school administration had been alerted to the conversation by concerned students afterward. Superintendent Patrick May...
A free showing of a documentary highlighting the hazards of mining on transboundary rivers drew a pretty decent crowd Monday evening, with seats at the Nolan Center filling up fast. Released last year, "Uprivers" is the first film made by Matthew Jackson, of Ketchikan. Jackson previously has spent time in Wrangell working with the Alaska Crossings program, and his presentation of the film is part of a broader tour of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. Prior to showing his 30-minute work,...
Residents and city employees sat in on some crisis response training sessions last week, outlining proactive responses to conflict. James Nelson, now working as an officer with Wrangell's Forest Service office, led the courses at the Nolan Center March 15 and 16. He used to serve on the Wrangell Police Department, a position he had first taken in 2008. With scheduling in the works since last fall, his presentations last week were being done on behalf of the city, primarily for the benefit of...
The Borough Assembly in a special meeting last week adopted a letter outlining its intent to potentially partner up with Southeast Alaska Rural Health Consortium on Wrangell’s hospital. Held on March 22, the early evening meeting covered some of the pros and cons of third party partnership for managing Wrangell Medical Center. The hospital is public asset owned and managed by the borough, one of only a handful in the state still run independently of a larger healthcare service. WMC has been “hemorrhaging money,” assembly members have been...
In a special meeting of the City and Borough Assembly on March 15, members finally moved ahead toward replacing Wrangell’s water treatment plant. The outdated plant has had a number of production problems over the years, starting not long after its construction in 1999. Reliant on a combination of ozonation, roughing and slow-sand filtration before disinfection, high sedimentation from its two water reservoirs has made treatment a time consuming, inefficient process. Poor filter performance has subsequently been impacting water quality and w...
Wrangell's Head Start program will be opening its doors to families Friday evening as part of a recent educational collaboration between Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Tlingit and Haida Central Council (CCTHITA). The Baby Raven Reads program uses a combination of storytelling, songs and interactive activities to promote literacy and school readiness for Alaska Native families with children ages five years and under. At first started for the Juneau area as a pilot program in 2014, for its...
Revisiting an issue held over from its March 13 meeting, the City and Borough Assembly on Tuesday dug back into redefining job descriptions for a unionized electrical position. Being proposed is a modification to the groundman/meter reading position with Wrangell Municipal Light and Power. On the wage table, the entry-level position is among the lowest grades among staff included in the collective bargaining agreement. Consulting with former electrical superintendent Clay Hammer before his recent departure, city manager Lisa Von Bargen was...
The Alaska House on Monday passed a concurrent resolution that would urge Gov. Bill Walker to declare a state of "linguistic emergency" for Native languages. HCR 19 passed by 34-4 and will be taken up by the Senate for consideration. If adopted there, it would encourage state agencies, the Legislature, Alaska Native organizations and others to prioritize and strengthen policies aimed at promoting the continued use of Alaska Native languages. The state has already been making steps in a more supp...
Residents, guides and other users of the facilities at Anan Creek are encouraged to chime in tonight on a conceptualized redesign of its wildlife observatory. Just to its south on the mainland, Wrangell's most popular tourist attraction provides a unique opportunity to view bears reasonably up close and in the wild. Perched over one of Anan Creek's falls, the earliest portions of the structure date back to the 1960s, with sections added on during the intervening decades under US Forest Service...
Wrangell’s courthouse was not selected for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding, the city has learned. Located inside the Public Safety Building, Alaska Court System’s office and courtroom area shares the building with the Department of Motor Vehicles, and Wrangell’s police and emergency services. The imposing building has for some years been in a delicate state, with extensive repair work to its southern side undertaken in 2008. On its north side, pervasive water damage has ruined much of its siding and underlying framework, and r...
The second phase of site reclamation work at the former Byford junkyard has been put on another hold, as the state’s environmental agency responds to a new project report prepared on behalf of Wrangell’s tribal government. Wrangell Cooperative Association has taken an opposing stance to a monofill the Department of Environmental Conservation has been preparing to construct at a state rock pit, which will situate 18,500 cubic yards of treated soil removed from the Byford yard. Privately run for decades as a repository of junked vehicles, bat...
Heading to State for the first time in over a decade, the Wrangell Lady Wolves finished their season fourth among Alaska's 2A schools last weekend. After fighting for second place the previous weekend during Region V, the high school girls joined Alaska's best at the 1A/2A Basketball State Championships, held jointly at Anchorage's Alaska Airlines and Wells Fargo Sports centers. "It was a really good weekend," said Wrangell coach Laurie Brown. Her team had had a rough start at the season's begin...
City Hall jumped a notch on its alert level Tuesday, declaring a Stage III water shortage watch. The third stage is the most severe in Wrangell’s water shortage management plan, adopted last year by the Borough Assembly. The city was previously on a Stage I alert due to dwindling supplies of raw water in the treatment plant’s two reservoirs. In its notice to the public, Public Works explained that Wrangell has received no considerable rainfall over the course of the past month. Precipitation has mainly been in the form of snow, which, to dat...
Alaska Crossings is gearing up for its 2018 season, with guide training formally starting last week. The youth-oriented behavioral health program has operated out of Wrangell since its inception, back in 2001. Originally a program of Alaska Island Community Services, Crossings is now under the Southeast Alaska Rural Health Consortium umbrella since it acquired AICS last year. Designed to help people between the ages of 12 and 18 years, Crossings combines therapeutic interventions with outdoor...
Three big issues weighed heavily upon the Wrangell Assembly’s agenda Tuesday; impending crises with the city’s water supply, its hospital’s financial stability, and the state’s site selection for a monofill to house treated lead-contaminated soil extracted from the former Byford junkyard. • Water crisis The city entered its highest watch level for water conservation Tuesday, after learning that its two reservoirs only have about 30 or so days’ worth of raw reserves. (see adjoining story) Reservoir levels have reached a low point after an un...
The Federal Communications Commission last week approved the transfer of licenses from Wrangell Radio Group to CoastAlaska. A nonprofit radio and television service based in Juneau, CoastAlaska provides administrative and technical support for public broadcast stations in Wrangell, Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg and Ketchikan. Citing financial difficulties, last December Wrangell Radio Group – the entity which manages local radio station KSTK – filed a petition with the FCC to allow a transfer of its...
An incipient Wrangell business has won the 2017 Path to Prosperity business competition, which includes a $25,000 grant award for starting up. Calling her business Mighty Bear Roots, resident Dixie Booker has proposed developing an aeroponic garden to cultivate and sell fresh produce. In this method plants would be grown in specialized tray towers, rooted in a soilless medium and sustained through a blend of mineral nutrients and water, and controlled lighting. Booker said the idea for the business came to her out of a need for fresher...
The Forest Service held a public input session with Wrangell residents last week, as it puts together ideas for a 10- to 15-year project to benefit the Wrangell and Petersburg districts of the Tongass National Forest. The Central Tongass Landscape Level Analysis would plan for a major project on a large scale that would increase the number of activities authorized in a single analysis and decision. It reflects a larger effort nationwide to improve the USFS environmental analysis process, and...
The Wrangell Museum added a new piece to its public gallery, an antique cannon. Not that the piece itself is new, thought to be close to two centuries old. Nor is it newly acquired, donated in 2002 to the museum by nonagenarian Bruce Johnston, a former resident then living in Ketchikan. Handed over before the museum's transition over to the Nolan Center, during the shift the cannon wound up in one of the many scattered caches of items kept around town. By now settled, museum staff have over the...
Wrangell Medical Center Foundation last month issued a letter to supporters informing them it would forgo its annual fundraiser weekend this year. For the past ten years the Brian Gilbert Memorial Golf Tournament and fundraiser dinner is hosted in Wrangell each May in order to raise money for the Foundation. The Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to support the community’s medical needs. The funds it handles fills a few roles, primarily supporting WMC’s bid for a new facility but also procuring new equipment, funding its cancer-related tra...
