Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 815
Alaskans have until 11:59 p.m. Monday, March 31, to file for this year’s Permanent Fund dividend, whether they file online or mail a paper application to the PFD office. But if they mail the application, it absolutely positively must be postmarked by March 31. Anything dropped in the mail after that date will be rejected. Last year’s dividend was $1,702, though this year’s amount — which will be set by legislators during the budget-writing process this spring — likely will be at least several hundred dollars less. The state is facing a combine...
Starting next week, SEARHC patients will be able to schedule appointments, message their medical team, renew prescriptions, check lab results and more, all through a new online portal. The online service is optional, and there is no charge. “We’re really excited about the MySEARHC portal,” said Dr. Cate Buley, SEARHC’s chief medical officer. “It’s really a step up.” It will be available to patients in every Southeast community served by SEARHC. Outreach to publicize the new service will start Saturday, March 29, Buley said. Everyone who has a c...
Alaska’s two U.S. senators both believe that President Donald Trump’s pro-development administration will be good for the state’s natural resource economy, creating jobs, boosting tax revenues and building long-term prosperity. Both support the president’s initiatives to unlock resources that had been placed off-limits by the administration of Joe Biden and others before him. And both want the federal government to operate efficiently and reduce spending. Beyond those shared beliefs, however, the two came across as worlds apart in their a...
The Salvation Army has cut back from opening its food pantry every week to every other week until it can restock the shelves with enough donated food to meet demand. “I feel that in the past couple of months, we’ve been receiving less donations,” said Capt. Belle Green. The Tuesday pantry serves an average of 25 to 30 households a week, she said. The two grocery stores in town, City Market and IGA, are the biggest donors to the food pantry shelves and “have been unbelievably supportive” in donating, she said. Individuals, food drives at the sc...
Juneau has done it the past three years. The city of Ketchikan and the Ketchikan Gateway Borough will start doing it this year. And Wrangell may do it too. “We’re considering it,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said of amending Wrangell municipal code to require cruise ships and tour boats to collect sales tax on goods and services they sell while in port. Juneau changed its code in 2021 to apply to onboard sales when the ship is tied up at the dock or in Gastineau Channel in front of town. Both the city and the borough of Ketchikan chang...
The chamber of commerce is surveying its more than 100 members to ask where they think the town’s barge ramp and freight yard should be located. The borough earlier this month closed down the facility on the downtown waterfront after an engineering report cited structural issues with the 47-year-old, 140-foot-long steel ramp. Even before the shutdown decision, the borough has been looking at moving the freight loading and unloading facility and staging area to the former 6-Mile mill property, which the borough purchased for $2.5 million in 2...
Confronted with an engineering report that cited “concern for potential failure of the ramp,” the borough on Thursday evening, March 13, notified freight haulers that the municipally owned barge ramp downtown was closed, immediately. The borough made arrangements for the weekly freight barge to use the old sawmill dock at the Marine Service Center as a temporary unloading and loading site, Borough Manager Mason Villarma said Friday, March 14. “This should have happened some time ago,” he said of shutting down the 47-year-old steel ramp which s...
The annual assessment of property values in town resulted in an overall increase of about 12% for taxable property, though an owner’s tax bill will depend on the tax rate set by the borough assembly in late May. State law requires municipalities to assess property —all land and buildings— at “full and true market value.” The borough’s contract assessor’s March 3 letter to the assembly said, “Our evaluations indicate that the overall market (value) … continues to grow despite the high cost of living and rising interest rates.” The annual assessm...
The Alaska House passed a bill on March 12 intended to boost annual state funding for public schools by $275 million, starting with the 2025-2026 school year. If approved by the Alaska Senate and the governor, the legislation would increase state funding for the Wrangell school district next year by about $600,000, according to Kristy Andrew, the district’s business manager. The sizable increase in the state’s per-pupil funding formula approved by the House will face challenges winning approval from the Senate and the governor, however, as the...
I am having a problem as I age. Well, sure, lots of problems, like my legs moving about as smoothly as an engine with cold motor oil on a winter day. Or a memory that drains faster than a smartphone left on video streaming overnight. Or an arthritic neck that moves about as easily as a frozen, rusted bolt. But I can handle those. They are physical reminders of aging. I know they are inevitable and cyclical, like the tides. So I just wait for the tide to change and go about life, though I did add a second handrail to the staircase at home. But...
Though a $5 million federal grant to help pay for expanding the generating capacity at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric station is “clearly frozen,” the head of the Southeast Alaska Power Agency hopes the funds will be released soon and the project can stay on schedule. The agency’s lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and others “feel fairly confident … that freeze will be thawed,” Robert Siedman, chief executive officer of the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, or SEAPA, said earlier this month. The Tyee money is caught up in the nationwide spending fr...
Elon Musk is right, there is waste in government. No question about it. Just as there is waste in most every household and every business in America. There is no such thing as 100% efficiency. Not everyone gives 110%. Not every good idea, new product or well-intentioned program bats a thousand. And not every kid eats everything on their dinner plate, including the green vegetables. That doesn’t mean you get rid of your kid, close down every business, cancel every project or fire every worker. A responsible leader would look, learn and listen be...
The Southeast Conference hopes to know by the end of the month whether $38.6 million in federal funds to help install electric heat pumps in coastal Alaska communities will come through on schedule or whether the Trump administration will pull the plug or turn down the power on the project. “We’re moving forward cautiously, carefully,” said Robert Venables, Southeast Conference executive director. The new administration has ordered widespread halts to federal contracts, loans and grants, as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Effic...
A Juneau-based business that shares ownership with the company which has been leasing land at the former 6-Mile mill property for a scrap metal recycling operation has told the borough it wants to buy more than nine acres at the site to build a permanent operation. “If an agreement is made on a purchase, our first improvement to the property will likely be establishing utilities such as water, sewer and electricity,” Tideline Construction wrote in its Jan. 24 request to the borough. The company offered $250,000 for two parcels at the sou...
No one could remember it ever happening before, but the Wrangell Cooperative Association was ready when it did happen last month. The annual tribal council election on Feb. 27 ended in a tie for the fourth seat. WCA election rules designated a coin toss to decide the winner, said Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese. Einar Haaseth, the tribal council election chairman, researched online the proper way to toss a coin, Reese said. He studied how NFL referees do it at the start of every game. Tribal Council President Ed Rilatos brought in...
Tumultuous certainly applies to the goings-on in the nation’s capital. And not in a good way. While in Alaska’s Capitol, the goings-on are surprising too, but most definitely in a good way. Unlike congressional leadership, which is putting up no public resistance to the Trump/Musk dishonest assault on public services, people’s lives, the rule of law and human compassion, Alaska’s legislative leaders are standing up to do their job. And they are doing it honestly, unlike the deceitful duo of Trump and Musk who seem to be vaccinated against...
It will not be easy, but the Alaska commercial seafood industry needs to figure out how to turn a 25-cent-per-pound pink salmon into a fish worth 45 cents a pound. That math lesson came from Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. “What everyone is talking about is how do we make more value out of our fish,” Woodrow said during a panel discussion at the midwinter meeting of the Southeast Conference. The marketing agency has succeeded in establishing wild Alaska seafood as a premium brand, he said, with con...
The barge ramp, freight staging and storage area has been downtown for decades, but maybe not the next decade. The borough assembly has created a six-member special committee “to review and oversee the transition of barge service operations to the 6-Mile mill site property.” The borough purchased the former mill property for $2.5 million in 2022, with the intent of developing it or selling or leasing it to private parties to develop for industrial uses. The intent behind moving the barge ramp and freight yard to 6-Mile would be to open up the...
It may not look like it matters to most Alaskans, but it does. Not just for the money it would raise for the state treasury, but because it highlights a 45-year-old problem. A first-year Wasilla senator has introduced legislation to collect state corporate income taxes from Hilcorp, a privately held company that bought out BP’s North Slope assets in 2020. Similar legislation has been introduced in past years but failed to pass. It’s not that Hilcorp is cheating on its taxes, it’s simply following state law, which has always exempted such priva...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has decided to cancel plans to replace the controllable-pitch propellers aboard the state ferry Columbia next year, opting to keep the 52-year-old ship in service until a replacement vessel is built. The propulsion system project was estimated in 2022 to cost as much as $20 million. The Columbia, the largest vessel in the fleet, serves the ferry system’s longest and most heavily traveled route between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska. It had been scheduled to head into a shipyard for much of next y...
Amid all the upheaval in the nation’s capital — where the only certainty is that the Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln memorials haven’t been sold off — comes a new idea to help school children nationwide. Regardless of what anyone thinks of efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, cut funding for programs that encourage vaccinations of children or allow appointed federal officials to dictate what and how colleges should teach, there was news last week that could have long-lasting, positive impacts on students for years. Unknowi...
Passenger and vehicle traffic aboard the Alaska Marine Highway System moved slightly higher in 2024 from 2023, but still is less than half its peak from the early 1990s. The state ferries carried just over 185,000 passengers and about 65,000 vehicles last year on its routes stretching from Southeast to Prince William Sound and into several Gulf of Alaska coastal communities. That’s down from more than 400,000 passengers and 110,000 vehicles 1990-1992. And it’s down from more than 325,000 passengers as recently as the early 2010s. Marine Dir...
It’s time to expand the generating capacity at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric station to handle growing demand — particularly from heat pumps — the plant’s operator said of its plans to line up $20 million in funding and a federal permit to add a third turbine to the facility. The Tyee Lake station started supplying Wrangell and Petersburg in 1984. It was built with two turbines rated at 10 megawatts each, with an empty bay at the Bradfield Canal facility to add a third turbine when needed. That time is now, said Robert Siedman, chief executi...
Wrangell’s playgrounds are old and need more than short-term patching and patchwork repairs. As it looks toward fundraising for substantial upgrades, the Parks and Recreation Department wants to hear what the community wants. The department is conducting an online survey — just half-a-dozen questions — to learn what features and equipment are important to people at Shoemaker Park Playground and the Kyle Angerman Playground near the library downtown. “We’re just trying to get a basic idea of which playground people use” and what they want t...
The Alaska Senate is considering a bill that would allow parents who are owed child support to apply for the Permanent Fund dividend of the parent who is delinquent in their payments, providing a work-around to collect from parents who do not bother to apply for their annual PFD. “The reality is that in some cases,” said Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar, the bill’s sponsor, the owing parent either forgets to apply or decides not to apply out of spite to deny the money to the other parent. Under state law, garnishment of the dividend for child...