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A finalized event schedule has been put out for the 2016 Fourth of July Celebration in Wrangell, which begins tomorrow and will last through Monday evening. This year’s celebratory theme is “Back to the Rock,” highlighting the annual Fourth holiday as a time when Wrangellite relatives, former residents and family friends return to the island. “It’s just kind of that catch phrase people in Wrangell use for coming back home,” explained Aleisha Mollen, Chamber of Commerce treasurer and chair of this year’s festivities. Though she has organized the...
A survey to gauge the housing needs of Wrangell’s Native population launched last week. Wrangell Cooperative Association is conducting a housing needs assessment, following up on a community needs survey completed last year and the results of a special stakeholders meeting held in December. As housing issues ranged high among the identified community needs, this recent survey gathers demographic data and residential information from participants. “We’re trying to get every tribal household in Wrangell to take the survey,” explained WCA tribal...
The City and Borough Assembly passed a budget this week, at a specially held session at City Hall on Monday. The meeting involved a work session which gave its members time to discuss individual line items with finance director Lee Burgess. The budget which was passed works within the current property tax rate of 12.75 mills and includes several new revenue or cost-saving items, such as allowing city employees to pay 15 percent of all premiums and receive a 5-percent credit if they participate in the plan’s wellness program. Two other items w...
Wrangell officially threw its support behind a proposed accelerated high school program, after the Borough Assembly issued a resolution in favor of it at Tuesday’s meeting. Coming to view during the planning process for the former Institute property’s future development, the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program is looking to take its advanced summer curriculum to the next level with a residential facility. Currently operating between between regular school years, the program helps give rural, primarily Native Alaskan students ext...
The local district of the United States Forest Service invited public comment on different options for a proposed timber sale on Monday. An open house was held at the Wrangell Ranger District office to discuss five alternatives put forward in the project's draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), released at the beginning of this month. Of four action alternatives and a no-action alternative being proposed, the district expressed its support for Alternative 2, which would see the harvest of...
Alaska’s state ferry system is embarking on a journey to make itself more financially viable over the next 25 years, as a process to refocus and possibly restructure, spearheaded by Southeast Conference. Representing the region’s economic interests, the SEC was first started 58 years ago in order to support establishment of what would become the Alaska Marine Highway System. Appropriately enough then, the organization will help to steer that regional transportation network into the future, after a memorandum of understanding to that effect was...
A local tradition now for four years running, the annual five-kilometer (3.1 mile) jog celebrating the summer solstice took on a new dimension. Held on Saturday, the 2016 Smoke-Free Summer Solstice 5K encouraged participants to pursue a tobacco less lifestyle. Ordinarily organized by the running group the Southeast Beasts, this year's run was put on by the Partnership for Tobacco Free SouthEast, a regional coalition encompassing Petersburg, Juneau, Ketchikan and other communities in addition to...
Each summer, millions of children across the country partake in some sort of camp experience, be it for sports, outdoor adventuring or social development. The American Camp Association estimates 7.8 million young Americans will attend more than 14,000 different day and residential camps this summer. Wrangell-area girls have been able to enjoy the summer camp experience for themselves this week, put on by the Girl Scouts of Alaska (GSAK). A pair of instructors has been holding day camps out at Sh...
The planning team for future development at Wrangell's former Institute site returned this week for a second round of public discussions. At a presentation Monday night, information gleaned from previous sessions in March had been narrowed down into three different concepts. Project lead Chris Mertl of Corvus Design was joined by architect James Bibb of NorthWind Architects and analyst Meilani Schijvens of Rain Coast Data. A surveyor with R&M Engineering joined them the following day for open...
Wrangell's 64th Annual King Salmon Derby wound to a close on Sunday, with the winning fish snagged only two days before. Fishing with her family near Found Island on Friday, Malia McIntyre reeled in a 46.7 pound Chinook. Her catch not only wins her the $6,000 grand prize, but also the $500 weekly prize and $350 silver bracelet, awarded to the woman with the largest entered fish. She will join other prize winners tonight at the Nolan Center to collect their awards. The Wrangell Chamber of...
Power service went down to southern Southeast Alaska communities, following problems at the Swan Lake dam site on June 8. The hydroelectric dam is one of two major producers utilized by Southeast Alaska Power Agency, primarily servicing the Ketchikan area. This year an effort is being made to raise the dam, a $10 million project which will increase active storage by 25 percent and yield between 6,000 and 12,000 megawatt hours annually. A five-megawatt load bank being used during the project experienced a problem with its cooling circuit, which...
Wrangell's tribal government is continuing to cooperate with Central Council Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska on its baseline water testing of the Stikine River. Initiated in November by Central Council's Native Lands and Resources Department (NLRD), each month two technicians have headed upriver to collect water samples, testing them for their chemical and physical properties in order to establish average conditions. This information eventually may be used in the management of these...
In a close vote the Wrangell City and Borough Assembly approved a new fee structure for the community’s harbors and dock facilities. Already approved once on its first reading by the Assembly last month, the increases being put forward would institute a 10-percent increase to outside and inside dock face moorage, storage, port development fees and most boatyard rates. Those increases would also incorporate an anti-inflationary rise of two percent per year. Transient moorage rates have been rescheduled, shifting from flat per-foot rates to a s...
A consultancy returned with its draft findings for a feasibility study of developing Wrangell’s former mill site. A public presentation was given at the Nolan Center yesterday evening, following up on one given on Feb. 17. Washington-based firm Maul Foster & Alongi has spent the past several months assessing the Silver Bay Logging Company mill site at 6-Mile Zimovia Highway, a 110-acre property which the City and Borough of Wrangell has expressed interest in acquiring for future industrial development. “Overall it went positively,” said Micha...
A former resident is finishing a book on Wrangell's famed garnet ledge, from which residents and visitors have extracted the precious gem for over a century. Trish Neal first moved to Wrangell in 1979, and the site's story quickly caught her eye. She decided she wanted to write a book detailing the ledge's history, but soon discovered not much was known about it. The process of researching and compiling the information needed for Neal's project subsequently stretched on for nearly four decades,...
Five alternatives for a Wrangell Island timber sale were put forward by the United States Forest Service last week. On June 2 the project draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) was completed and put out by the Wrangell Ranger District, which manages the area. Of the four action alternatives and a no-action alternative being put forward, USFS expressed support for Alternative 2, proposing the harvest of 65 million board feet (MMBF) on 5,309 acres of land with the construction of...
School may be out for the season, but kids can still keep up on their reading skills while picking up some fun gear with the library's summer reading program. Starting up on June 1, Irene Ingle Public Library's annual program encourages students to read books in exchange for tickets, which can be entered into drawings for a variety of prizes and cash drawings. The vast majority of the library's books for children about 80 to 90 percent of them have corresponding tests on the Renaissance...
After putting forward an operating budget to the governor’s desk late last week, the Legislature is now looking at a measure to restructure the Alaska Permanent Fund. In a special session called by Gov. Bill Walker, legislators were retained in the capital in order to pass a budget for the coming year. The budget they placed on his desk last week, a compromisory draft of House Bill 4001 and its Senate counterpart, SB 4001, remains largely unfunded. To remedy this, late on Monday evening the Senate passed SB 128, which would restructure the e...
The Wrangell Port Commission was tasked with solving a problem with access to the boatyard, after local sight-seeing operators were presented letters by the city asking them to stop driving buses through on tours. Gold Rush Tours and Alaska Waters were sent a pair of letters apiece from Borough Manager Jeff Jabusch, requesting them to discontinue tours through the Marine Service Center. This posed a problem for both outfits, as the yard had been included on the itinerary for tours which had already been booked through the season. Brooke Leslie...
Nearly $30,000 was raised by the hospital's foundation dinner and golf tournament on May 28. After covering costs, proceeds from the Wrangell Medical Center Foundation's annual fundraiser will go toward its cancer care and scholarship fund. "We did better than last year on the auction," explained WMC's development coordinator Kris Reed. At the Nolan Center on Saturday evening, auctioneer Steven Talbot led the proceedings, which included both a silent and live component. Guests bid on a number...
A Wrangell resident brought back a number of top prizes from one of the world's largest muzzle loading shooting competitions. Don Roher was one of four men competing for Alaska's team at the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association's 25th annual Western National Shoot in March. Held just north of Phoenix, the week-long tournament drew 180 competitors from across the country and beyond. "These are the best of the western United States," Roher said. The state almost didn't have a team to send...
Meeting in a special session last week, Wrangell’s Planning and Zoning Commission approved a recommendation to the Assembly for changes to a local ordinance allowing for various classes of cannabis-related businesses. The recommendations follow several meetings the commission has held over the past couple of months to determine which activities licensed by the state would be appropriate for which zones. The memorandum approved on May 26 recommends updates to the city’s zoning regulations, which currently do not take marijuana processing or cul...
The city power department has begun upgrading Wrangell’s power infrastructure, focusing on priorities approved by the Borough Assembly in March. The upgrades are expected to be part of a long and expensive process, estimated to cost between $3 million and $3.65 million over five years by consultants at Electric Power Systems. Fixes include replacing aging poles along Church Street, Case Avenue, Zimovia Highway and Cow Alley, and replacing the existing H structure and substation supporting the grid. “The guys have been hard at it,” said Wrangell...
After 48 years of service to the community, Wrangell's chapter of the Lions Club will be wrapping up its operations this summer. "It's a sad story," said Janet Strom, speaking for the club. "We don't have the membership and we don't have the volunteers that we used to." Perhaps best known for its collection and refurbishment of glasses, the Lions Club is an organization based around the premise of community service, which takes on different forms as needed from one to the next. Over the last...
At its May 24 meeting, the Borough Assembly learned of a possible development in the works for Wrangell’s Institute property. City Manager Jeff Jabusch explained he was currently in contact with the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP), an accelerated learning program aimed at Alaskan high schoolers. ANSEP launched its Acceleration Academy in 2009, in part to address a longstanding problem Alaska’s university system has been experiencing with chronic remediation of incoming students. Compared to peers elsewhere in the cou...
