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The borough assembly has postponed for the second time a decision on a proposed increase in water rates, and is now considering a 30% boost instead of the 21% rate hike originally suggested by staff. The assembly last month delayed a decision on the 21% rate increase after several members said they wanted to hear more public comment on the issue. At the April 12 assembly meeting, Assemblymember David Powell said he doesn’t put much stock in future assemblies honoring the incremental rate increases over several years included in the original p...
Wrangell’s Marine Service Center has seen a 20% to 30% increase in haul-out requests after Sitka’s boatyard closed April 1. “We’ve been getting overflow from Sitka since February,” Port Director Steve Miller said April 13. Normally the busy time starts April, May and June, “but we’ve been going hard since the first of March.” Like most people in need of a haul-out, a lot of the Sitka boat owners are looking for a fresh set of zincs on the bottom of their vessels to prevent corrosion and a pressure wash. “We call it a shave and a haircut,” M...
Just hours after a federal court judge voided the federal face mask mandate for air travel and other public transportation, Alaska Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines on Monday afternoon said masks would be optional on their flights. Other airlines are expected to follow suit. Alaska Airlines said in a statement that because of the judicial decision, passengers and employees effective immediately would have the option to wear a mask while traveling in the U.S. “While we are glad this means many of us get to see your smiling f...
With energy usually reserved for sports competitions, middle school students cheered and clapped for their classmates embroiled in a battle of words. That is, how to spell them correctly. Stikine Middle School held its first spelling bee in three years on April 12 in the high school gym. At stake were bragging rights and a $50 gift certificate for J&W's Fast Food. All that stood between students and glory were words like fiesta, shingles, normality and battlement. The rules were simple....
April 20, 1922 Messrs. Hansen and Lystad arrived here from Seattle recently and will enter the mild-curing seafood business. They will be located where the Ripley Fish Co. formerly had its station, and they will also have a scow near Shakes Island where the shrimp cannery was recently in operation. This firm will ship salmon and trout. Both members of the firm are old-timers in Alaska, and are by no means new in the fish business. Wrangell welcomes this new firm and there is every reason to believe that their venture will be a success. April...
With more than 260 would-be ferry passengers stuck on a waitlist for travel out of Bellingham, Washington, and sailings full until late July, the Alaska Marine Highway System has scheduled an extra run of the Matanuska to bring the people and their vehicles to the state. The additional sailing is scheduled to leave Bellingham on May 25. There was time in the ship's schedule, which ferry management had been holding open in hopes the Matanuska could restart service that week to Prince Rupert,...
The borough assembly has rejected a staff proposal to remove the cap on sales taxes payable on individual purchases. Dropping the limitation, which shuts off Wrangell’s 7% sales tax on the purchase price above $3,000, could have generated an estimated $500,000 a year in additional revenue for the borough. The assembly April 12 accepted moving to second reading the other provisions of the ordinance that would make some administrative changes to the sales tax code, but deleted the change to the tax cap. The ordinance is scheduled for a public hea...
The community is short of public restrooms near the City Dock and could be short port security staff this summer if people don’t apply for the jobs soon. One is an immediate concern, while the restroom shortage requires a longer-term solution. Tour operators and borough officials met last Wednesday to discuss the upcoming visitor season, which could be a challenge for borough staff and tourism operators, said Port Director Steve Miller. “Finding a driver, finding security. No one is applying for the jobs,” he said. “I haven’t jumped on that y...
Just when we thought Alaska politics couldn’t get any sillier, we now have so many candidates running for Congress that debate organizers will need to borrow the microphones from all the karaoke bars in the state to accommodate everyone on the stage. Just imagine harmonizing 48 voices in “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Almost twice as many candidates have filed to run in the June primary for the late Don Young’s seat in the U.S. House than lost to the congressman in his unbroken streak of 25 consecutive election victories. If you believe in heaven,...
Amid all the legislative debate over the size of this year’s Permanent Fund dividend, the amount of state support for schools and loud pleas from communities across Alaska for more money for docks, sewage treatment plants, roads and building repairs, there is a bill that draws only a few people to its hearings. Senate Bill 45, sponsored by Kodiak Senator Gary Stevens, would bring vaping products, also known as e-cigarettes, under the state’s tobacco tax and regulation statutes. Stevens and other supporters have been trying for years to win legi...
I would like to thank everyone who wrote a letter on my behalf to the chamber of commerce. I am deeply touched and humbled by the award I received at the April 9 dinner. There are so many people in the community who are more deserving, and I am overwhelmed that I was chosen. Thank you again for all your kind words, I am very honored. Sarah Merritt...
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Whipping up a dessert to donate for a fundraiser should be a fun experience, but like every creative endeavor, I end up being too hard on myself, cooking the joy out of baking. A few months back, Amber Armstrong, our office manager, asked if I wanted to donate a dessert of my making to a chamber of commerce event. I responded that I’d be happy to before I had a chance to think it through. Would I have the time? What would I make? Why me? Oh, yeah. I bake all manner of desserts and then share them with e...
Finding a home or business in the modern age is made easier with apps like Google Maps, but what happens when an address doesn't appear in those digital location services? The problem can be made worse if the place doesn't have an address nailed or posted on the building. Such was the case when high school senior Tyson Messmer was trying to find someone's home at Panhandle Trailer Court. It helped him decide on his senior project. "I couldn't find it anywhere," Messmer said. That experience and...
The annual Stikine River Birding Festival has a busy first weekend planned. It starts up Friday with a 1 p.m. virtual storytime at the Irene Ingle Public Library, then continuing the educational fun agenda with a Birding 101 class at 6 p.m. Friday at the Nolan Center, led by Bonnie Demerjian. The library event will present an Earth Day theme, with activity kits available for pickup at the library. The meeting ID for the Zoom event is 935 4298 0052, passcode 8743535. There are three events on Saturday’s calendar. A community cleanup is p...
A full house at the Nolan Center listened as the chamber of commerce honored Mia Wiederspohn as Wrangell’s youth leader of the year, Barbara Neyman as educator of the year, and Sarah Merritt as citizen of the year. The chamber presentation described Merritt, who has worked at the legislative information office in town since 1996, as “an outstanding citizen … understated, kind, solution focused, and devoted to the democratic process.” Merritt said she returned to Juneau after earning a degree in political science in South Dakota, later decidin...
Dealing with a shortage of pilots until more can be trained, Alaska Airlines has announced it will cut 2% of its roughly 1,200 daily flights through the end of June. “We don’t believe it will have an impact here in the state of Alaska,” Tim Thompson, company spokesman in Anchorage, said April 12. Even without changes to the daily flight schedule into Wrangell, the cutbacks could affect travelers making connections in Seattle to other Alaska Airlines’ destinations. The airline canceled several hundred flights the first weekend of April due to...
Juneau-based Alaska Seaplanes will add Wrangell to its route map starting May 26. The company, which operates a fleet of 14 single-engine aircraft, mostly nine-passenger planes, will run a daily flight from Sitka to Petersburg to Wrangell and back to Sitka. Encouragement from SEARHC “was instrumental” in starting the Sitka-Wrangell service, Andy Kline, Alaska Seaplanes marketing manager, said last Wednesday. SEARHC is based in Sitka where it operates the Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, providing acute, specialty and behavioral health care ser...
When Michelle Lopez opened Taste of Asia nearly seven years ago, it was after her boyfriend had become her ex-boyfriend. She had come to Wrangell to be with him from Juneau, where her parents had moved from the Philippines 30 years ago. She stayed in Wrangell to make a life for herself and her kids. When she came here, there were no places that served rice, she said. "I was so hungry. I thought maybe I should look for a place to put a little business." The owner of the Front Street building Tast...
The borough is moving to solve the problem of dwindling burial space in town. The community this summer will get a new columbarium, a structure for keeping urns, and the borough assembly has approved an expansion to Sunset Gardens Cemetery. The expansion, in two phases, will add 100 burial plots. Only three plots remain in Sunset Gardens at 1.5 Mile Zimovia Highway, on the uplands side of the highway, and four in Memorial Cemetery at 1 Mile, on the water side of the highway. But even that number is iffy. “The borough has been reluctant to s...
The commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Revenue was called into a special meeting last month to discuss a problem: The Permanent Fund Dividend Division was under cyberattack. In a short period of time, more than 800,000 attempts were made to get into the division’s systems, which are in charge of paying the annual dividend to Alaskans. The division shut down its computers, the department’s firewalls held, and “no Alaskans’ data was accessed,” said Anna MacKinnon, director of the division. “Our system repelled, as it should, the assault o...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries has adopted a revised king salmon Southeast management plan in a compromise that will see sport fishery limits set before the start of the season based on a tiered system of abundance instead of changing during the season. The revised plan is expected to be in place by the 2023 season. The hope is that the 80/20 split between the commercial troll and sport fisheries will be maintained, while allowing non-residents who travel to Alaska to catch king salmon the opportunity to do so, rather than being shut down at a...
For the sixth year in a row, federal managers have closed the Stikine River chinook subsistence fishery to help preserve weak runs of the returning salmon. Clint Kolarich, Wrangell District Ranger with the U.S. Forest Service, announced the decision last week, under authority delegated by the Federal Subsistence Board. The closure will run from May 15 through June 20. “The preseason forecast for the Stikine River is 7,400 large chinook salmon (greater than 28 inches in total length), which is below the escapement goal range of 14,000 to 2...
The Alaska Volcano Observatory said that as of last Thursday the number of earthquakes under Mount Edgecumbe was declining. The earthquake activity is beneath the 3,000-foot high dormant volcano 15 miles west of Sitka on Kruzof Island. The volcano observatory sent out an information statement a day earlier about the "swarm" of small earthquakes under Mt. Edgecumbe, with an accompanying message that there is no cause for alarm by the public. "We're getting information out and trying not to alarm...
A federally funded mortgage relief program to help homeowners hurt financially by the pandemic drew 10,737 applications in Alaska, with 43 from Wrangell. The state received $50 million in federal funds under a nationwide program to help homeowners who lost their jobs or income due to COVID-19 shutdowns or cutbacks. The Alaska Housing Finance Corp. is administering the statewide program, reviewing the applications to ensure people meet the income loss and other criteria in preparation to start disbursing aid. The 10,737 applications represent...
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has determined that about 5,300 gallons of diesel spilled from the March 21 grounding of a tugboat in Neva Strait, near Sitka. The agency calculated that about 700 gallons were recovered by surface skimmers after the accident that left the tug Western Mariner stranded on the beach and leaking fuel. Additional fuel was removed from the water by deployment of absorbent materials, the state said. Before the tugboat was refloated on March 30, all of the fuel in the undamaged tanks on the vessel...
