Sorted by date Results 951 - 975 of 1297
Five of Alaska Marine Highway System’s 11 ferries will be laid up at some point next year under a draft vessel deployment plan released on June 24. The Taku will be held in layup status the whole year, while the Kennicott will be from October until entering overhaul in early January. The Fairweather and Chenega will enter federal projects in October and mid-September, respectively, and will both be laid up starting in May 2016. The Malaspina is also scheduled to enter layup status in late May of next year. Under the draft schedule, from O...
Ahead of next month's start to the football season, Alaska's largest tribal group has made clear it will not be rooting for one of the National Football League's 32 franchises by boycotting its primary sponsor. Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska gave notice last week to all tribal employees to discontinue use of FedEx services due to its sponsorship of the Washington Redskins. The announcement follows the council’s adoption of a resolution formally opposing the N...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced late last week its revised 2015 sport fishing regulations for king salmon in Southeast and Yakutat. Starting yesterday and in effect through May 2, 2016, Alaskan resident permit-holders’ bag and possession limit is two king salmon 28 inches or greater in length. From October 1 through March 31, resident sport anglers may use two rods while fishing for king salmon. Nonresidential permit holders’ bag and possession limit is still one king salmon 28 inches or greater in length, with an annual limit...
Wrangell's City and Borough Assembly elected to update its capital projects list for the 2017 Fiscal Year at its regular meeting Tuesday. The selected projects will be submitted to the state Department of Environmental Conservation for competitive review. Water main distribution system replacement will top the revised list, with Shoemaker Bay Harbor float replacement moving up to the number-two slot. This year's list was topped by improvements to the community pool and boatyard. Projects from around the state are weighed on a point-award...
Health care staff and intrigued residents alike were invited to meet one of the state's few certified brain injury specialists last Friday. A presentation was delivered at the Alaska Island Community Services clinic by Dr. Amy Murphy, who is also medical director for Providence Medical Group Brain Injury Services in Anchorage. Brain injury is a medical subspeciality, with only 312 certified specialists in the U.S. As such, it was a unique opportunity for her visit, which was sponsored through a Rural Veterans Health Access Project by the...
The Red Chris mine in neighboring British Columbia passed its final bureaucratic hurdle, after the province’s Ministry of Energy and Mines issued a Mines Act permit amendment last Friday. The mine’s owning company, Imperial Metals, had earlier been granted its Environmental Management Act Permit on June 15, allowing Red Chris to begin discharging tailings into its tailings storage facility. From there, water can be discharged subject to provincial water quality guidelines. The Red Chris property is located in the province’s northwest, approxima...
Wrangell Medical Center interim CEO Marla Sanger last week announced her intention to conclude her contract on October 30. In a letter addressed to friends and colleagues, she explained the decision was a difficult one, but Sanger will be returning to Vancouver, Wash., to be with family. Sanger had initially been brought aboard in November 2012 as part of PeaceHealth’s leadership contract with Wrangell’s hospital. Initially the contract was to have lasted only a year, but Sanger stayed on as the hospital transitioned past a troubled att...
The United States Forest Service this month released a new fact sheet regarding wild salmon populations in the Tongass National Forest, available online and at the agency’s various offices. “It’s to demonstrate to the public just how important salmon are,” explained Martin Hutten, a supervisory biologist with the Wrangell Ranger District. The facts speak pretty clearly for themselves. The waters of the Tongass National Forest produce more wild salmon than all other national forests combined. Supporting these populations, TNF biologists have re...
This year the Rasmuson Foundation has presented a Wrangellite with an $18,000 fellowship for literary arts. Vivian Prescott, currently of Sitka, received the award in order to conduct research and complete a poetry manuscript. “It’s about migration and living among Alaska Native peoples,” she explained. Born and raised in Wrangell, her family can be traced back on the island for five generations. Prescott’s upcoming work relates the worldviews of her Saami and Finnish heritage to the landscape of Southeastern Alaska, and explores how those worl...
Working through the month of May, Hope Community Church of God finished putting a new, metal roof over its rollerskating rink. Built as an addition to the church three decades ago, metal components in the rink’s roof had rusted over time and the structure was in general need of replacement. “It was a timely venture,” said Mike Powers, with the church. “We price-checked a couple of things and it looked like the metal would work out well.” The church had been socking away funds for the project, which cost around $20,000 in all. “They’d b...
Following recommendations made to the Wrangell Public School Board in April, the school district administration is pursuing a review of its current crisis response plans. Superintendent Patrick Mayer, administrative assistant Kim Powell, and maintenance director Fred Angerman met with emergency services personnel at the Fire Hall last Thursday for the second of several planning sessions. “We’re just collecting some baseline information,” Mayer said, something to build from at future meetings. By the end of the summer he hopes to have a comprehe...
Rescheduled from June 11, Wrangell’s Planning and Zoning Commission met Friday to address a lengthy agenda. Commissioners voted to approve a conditional use permit application for hotel and commercial expansion related to expansion of the Stikine Inn. They also approved preliminary plat review of a tidelands reconfiguration subdivision requested by Bill and Cheryl Goodale. The 27,450 square feet of tidelands were previously approved for purchase by the Borough Assembly in April. Goodale had p...
Next year’s lunch program was the hottest item on the menu for Wrangell School Board’s final meeting before the summer on Monday. Previously at its May meeting the board voted to withdraw from its contract with NANA Management Services, which had supplied food and cafeteria services for the district last year. On Monday members elected to withdraw from the National School Lunch Program as well, releasing the district from its requirements to pursue its own supplemental lunch program. The plan put forward by school superintendent Patrick May...
In only their second year with the program, the girls of Wrangell’s Athletic Amateur Union team gave a fine showing at the Alaska Basketball Academy Girls Team Camp at Palmer’s Colony High School last week. “We made it to semifinals,” said Kaylyn Easterly, one of seven of the team’s 16 players able to make the trip. Wrangell was one of 41 teams at the event, which were separated into high school, college and professional divisions. Building largely on Stikine Middle School’s basketball program, Easterly pointed out her team was one of the youn...
Despite dimming income over the past fiscal year, board members for Southeast Alaska Power Agency were informed the future is still a bright one. At its June 18 meeting in Ketchikan, CEO Trey Acteson reported SEAPA remains financially strong and well-positioned leading into the next fiscal year. Sales revenues through last month were $1.3 million below budget, or about 12 percent. While weather volatility has played a hand in the shortfall, a consistent drop from anticipated power consumption by Ketchikan through the 2015 fiscal year has also...
At its last meeting for the summer, Wrangell’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board approved a new fee assistance schedule for using public facilities. Parks and Recreation Department director Kate Thomas explained the new assistance schedule would allow applicants up to a 100-percent discount for a specific activity each quarter, depending on income level and household size. For example, a three-person household making $26,120 or less could receive a 50-percent discount on an activity or 75-percent off from a pass. Guidelines follow the s...
At its regular Assembly meeting Tuesday, Wrangell's City and Borough Assembly approved a spending plan for improvements at Shoemaker Bay Harbor. Designed by PND Engineers, funding for the $10.7 million project would require $5 million to come from an Alaska Department of Transportation matching grant. The deadline to file an application is on August 1, prompting a special meeting of the Port Commission on May 26 to get things moving. Under the plan the commission put forward, part of the funds for a match would come from the Harbor Department,...
Results are in for 63rd annual King Salmon Derby, held in Wrangell from May 9 to June 7. Chad Smith will take home the $6,000 prize for the 42.7 pound salmon he caught off Ham Island on May 24. He also bagged the $2,500 Memorial Weekend prize in the process. Just behind him, Tim Dodson took second place with a 40-pounder caught off the Nose on May 20. Along with the $4,000, he won the $500 prize for week two, and the $250 Art Clark Pioneer Prize for largest fish entered by a senior. Kevin Roope...
In a pair of meetings Monday morning and Tuesday evening, Wrangell Medical Center will move ahead with shifting its billing services to an outside company. The hospital's board of trustees and the Wrangell City and Borough Assembly each approved a contract with TruBridge LLC, based out of Mobile, Ala. Once finalized, hospital staff anticipates the transition will take effect by August. TruBridge is a business and consulting services company and subsidiary of CPSI, which provides the hospital's accounting software. WMC interim CEO Marla Sanger e...
A Wrangell running club raised $1,800 in a hastily organized 5K last week, held in part to mark National Running Day on June 3 but also to assist a local family in need. "It was impromptu," said the Southeast Beasts' director, Lucy Robinson. Creating an event on Facebook only the day before, she was surprised to see around 50 participants at the community center the next evening, ready to go. Runners, joggers and walkers of all ages had come out in support of the Appleman family, which lost its...
A new display was set out in the lobby of the Nolan Center last week, featuring the artwork of the late Marlieta Wallace, a Wrangell artist. The exhibit features some of the Mardina dolls Wallace made during the 1980s, created by the hundreds in her home. Constructed from a variety of leathers, furs, feathers, felts and beads, 16 of the dolls are on display in a case outside the Wrangell Museum gift shop. The larger dolls are unique, part of Wallace's Grand'Mere doll series. Each of these came...
A skull found by a hunter near the Stikine River almost three years ago has yet to be interred. Wrangell resident Vena Stough discovered the skull while at Government Slough on Oct. 5, 2012, and brought it to the local police department. From there it made its way to United States Forest Service offices in Petersburg for further analysis. “What we try to do is figure out if it’s Native American ancestry,” explained Jane Smith, an archaeologist for the USFS for 23 years. The repatriation process is governed by the Native American Graves Prote...
The next steps have been taken on an agreement between the University of Alaska Southeast and Wrangell Public School District, with the establishment of an office for the university's technical preparation program. The tech prep program is offered for college credit through the university, and courses are taught by approved instructors using UAS syllabi. Enrolled students earn high school credits needed for graduation as well, and school superintendent Patrick Mayer explained the program will...
The Wrangell School Board elected to offer Kendall Benson the position as the new secondary schools principal during its May 19 meeting. He will replace outgoing principal Colter Barnes who served one year in the position. Barnes will be headed to Southeast Island School District to serve as an itinerant principal and greenhouse manager. Benson begins August 1 and brings with him three decades of education experience. His most recent post was as principal of Cedar Middle School in Cedar City,...
As of Tuesday, the Alaska Legislature meeting in a special session in Anchorage had still not passed a budget for the new fiscal year, which begins July 1. On Sunday, the Senate Finance Committee rejected a compromise budget passed by the House the previous day, which included some small concessions to the minority such as reversing cuts to the ferry system and per-student funding. A conference committee between the two chambers was being organized to negotiate an amended budget as legislators posture around various funding priorities....
