Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 32
The most recent draft of the school district’s 2025-2026 budget shows a deficit of $271,000. With City Hall hamstrung by cuts to federal funding, the school board could need to make sweeping cuts to balance the books. The district is not legally permitted to operate in a deficit and its operating reserve is nearing empty The draft budget assumes that the borough will fund the schools at the maximum amount allowed by state law, around $1.8 million. However, both City Hall and the school district anticipate that number will likely be closer to $... Full story
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...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association will hold an electronic waste collection event Friday and Saturday, March 7-8, paired with an unofficial grand opening of its new transportation center on Zimovia Highway. The center will be open for the first time to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday as the drop-off site for e-waste. The 5,000-square-foot maintenance and warehouse building is next door to WCA offices on the upland side of the highway, just south of TK’s Mini Mart. Kim Wickman, the WCA Tl’átḵ | Earth...
ELECTRONIC WASTE DROP-OFF noon to 4 p.m. Friday, March 7, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 8, at the WCA transportation warehouse, 1003 Zimovia Highway. “Electronics with a brain and a cord” can be dropped off for proper disposal. Suggested $5 donation to help cover shipping. Call 907-874-4304 or email igaptech.wca@gmail.com for more information. COMMUNITY MARKET from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, March 8, at the Nolan Center. Check out the locally grown and handcrafted item. ATTIC and CLOSET TREASURES SALE 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Mar... Full story
March 5, 1925 The rivers and harbors bill containing an appropriation of $500,000 for the dredging of Wrangell Narrows has been passed by Congress and signed by President Calvin Coolidge, according to a cablegram received by the publisher of the Sentinel from Alaska’s congressional delegate, Dan Sutherland. There are 14 reefs or shoals in the 21-mile channel between Sumner Strait and Frederick Sound. The project which has now been authorized calls for the first four stages of work. This will result in the removal of the worst five of the r...
Jacob Vibbert, of Cheney, Washington, has been charged with illegally killing a mountain lion on the south end of Wrangell Island. According to the state’s report, Vibbert shot the mountain lion on June 3, 2024. There is no mountain lion hunting season in Alaska. The offense, a misdemeanor, can be punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $25,000. Vibbert was charged in January; his arraignment was scheduled for March 4 at the Wrangell courthouse. The kill was reported by Charles Davis, who was hunting and sport fishing with V... Full story
Amid the widespread uncertainty and mass budget cuts under the new administration of President Donald Trump, Wrangell’s municipal leadership is not particularly concerned about the completion of any of the borough’s ongoing projects. Currently, City Hall awaits two reimbursements from the federal government: one at around $18 million for the water treatment plant and another at $1 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster recovery costs after the November 2023 landslide. Borough Manager Mason Villarma said City Hall has...
After a monthlong closure to in-person dining and a temporary suspension of van rides, the Senior Center is back open for both. The center reopened with prepared lunches last week, and will reopen for in-person dining Wednesday, March 5. Van rides are expected to resume this week, too. The center had been closed due to temporary staffing issues; John Waddington was hired last week as the new driver. As of March 5, the center will be open Tuesdays through Fridays for in-person dining and van rides for senior citizens to medical appointments,... Full story
A team from Oregon State University’s Sustainable Tourism Lab wants to hear from you. The borough linked up with the academic team to better understand the community’s opinions about tourism. The survey is available at http://beav.es/wrangell and the deadline to complete the short questionnaire is March 20. On Feb. 21, a member of the team joined City Hall’s monthly economic development coffee chat at the Stikine Inn, and community members offered up ideas to better understand Wrangell’s tourism economy. For example, one community member... Full story
The borough received two proposals in the past few months to buy some of its land at the former 6-Mile mill site. One was a pretty firm proposal. The other was a concept. Tideline Construction, part of the half-century-old Juneau-based Channel Construction operation, applied in January to buy more than nine acres of borough-owned land at 6-Mile. Tideland offered to buy two parcels at the assessed value of about $250,000 and would like portions of three neighboring lots. It wants to grow its scrap metal recycling operation and expand into...
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... Full story
In 1975, Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president of the United States. 1975 was 50 years ago — a half century. The U.S. civilian federal workforce was approximately 2.1 million. The population of the United States was 216 million. This made the federal workforce 1% of the U.S. population. In 2024, Joe Biden, a Democrat, was president of the United States. The U.S. civilian workforce was 2.2 million. The population of the United States was 336 million. This made the federal workforce 0.66% of the U.S. population. Over the past 50 years the U...
I love the fact that I can access all the Wrangell newspapers published back to 1898 through the Irene Ingle Public Library’s website. I recently searched the keywords “Bradfield road” and found these articles extremely interesting. Would you please consider reprinting all the Bradfield road articles on a weekly basis? I recently moved back to Wrangell. I was very disheartened about the lack of growth in our economy. City Hall’s archives are full of economic development studies. Instead of wasting money on another study, the community should...
The borough’s public works team will no longer provide regular repairs and maintenance to the 30 sewage grinder pumps located on private property that serve only one house each. In cases of emergency, however, the borough will still be able to provide repairs or even replace a broken pump. The ordinance will go into effect on June 30. The reason for the ordinance change, which the assembly unanimously approved after a lengthy public hearing on Feb. 25, is both legality and liability. Borough Attorney Robe Luce explained that the borough’s cur...
Keaton Gadd knows who he is. He knows what he likes, he knows what he doesn't. He knows what motivates him and he knows what scares him (planes). Gadd is direct. He speaks in short, swift sentences - not due to a limited vocabulary, but because of an involuntary compulsion for his speech to match his thinking: undeviating and without waste. "I like being pretty straightforward, just doing what it takes," he said. "No extra steps." For his senior project, Gadd is doing something that matches...
Alaskans were among the hundreds of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees who began receiving firing notices last week, a blow to an agency that provides everything from weather forecasts to fisheries management to cutting-edge climate science in Alaska. The cuts - part of a broader effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to drastically slash the federal workforce - came after other agencies, including the National Park Service, had abruptly fired probationary... Full story
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...
Legislative leaders on Feb. 27 wrote to Alaska’s congressional delegation, urging them to block deep cuts to federal programs that they say would “endanger the economic prosperity and social well-being of Alaskans.” “It is our duty to inform you that the legislature cannot fix the financial havoc that is being wreaked on Alaskans by the federal government,” said Kodiak Republican Senate President Gary Stevens and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, in a strongly worded two-page letter. Stevens and Edgmon warned about the...
All seven members of the powerful state Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 24 proposed rewriting the payment formula in state law for the annual Permanent Fund dividend, renewing the Senate’s effort to replace an obsolete, 43-year-old law that hasn’t been followed since 2015. If signed into law, Senate Bill 109 would split the annual earnings transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury: 75% of that transfer would be reserved for state services, and 25% would be used for dividends. This year, the PFD would be about $1,420 per... Full story
Measures to raise new state revenue were introduced in the Alaska Senate on Feb. 26, including one that would substantially increase taxes on oil companies. Legislators are facing a widening deficit this year and a worsening fiscal outlook due to declining oil revenue. The Republican-led Congress is also expected to make deep cuts to programs such as Medicaid, adding to Alaska legislators’ concerns that costs will be shifted to the state. The nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division has projected that the state faces a $536 million deficit o...
As many as 100,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if budget cuts supported by President Donald Trump and Republicans who control the U.S. House are enacted, according to Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital CEO Joe Wanner and other state health officials. The Trump administration and House Republicans are backing a spending plan that cuts Medicaid by up to $880 billion during the next decade. Wanner, during a meeting of Bartlett’s board of directors on Feb. 19, said the cut would affect 72,000 Alaskans who have been added since Med...
President Donald Trump’s recent threats to start a trade war with Canada and to turn it into the 51st U.S. state have not landed well with the populace of the sovereign nation to Alaska’s east. Canadian sports fans have hurled boos at the U.S. anthem at recent hockey and basketball games. Leaders of border towns like Windsor, Ontario, long-integrated with Detroit, have protested by pulling funds for cross-border bus service and event sponsorships. But in the far north, the historically tight bond between Alaskans and Yukoners has remained int... Full story