Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 416
Numerous challenges are stopping the resumption of Alaska Marine Highway service to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, the ferry system’s director said at a conference of Southeast officials last week. During a Southeast Conference transportation symposium in Juneau on Feb. 8, Ketchikan Vice Mayor Glen Thompson asked for an update about service to the Canadian port, which was a regular stop for Alaska ferries for decades until 2019, with only a brief return to service in 2022. Craig Tornga, the ferry system’s marine director, listed the cha...
To keep Alaska communities safe and workloads manageable, Department of Public Safety Commissioner Jim Cockrell said he would need 35% more state troopers than he has now. After he fills the 62 vacancies in the department, he wants to ask for about 90 more positions. But he said things used to be worse — at one point last year the department had 70 vacancies of 411 trooper positions. “The bottom line is we’re making steady progress,” he said. “We’ve made some huge steps forward between the administration and the Legislature.” The Department of...
Robb Arnold has withdrawn his candidacy to represent Ketchikan, Wrangell and Metlakatla in the state House. Arnold wrote in a statement to the Ketchikan Daily News on Thursday, Feb. 1, that he had ended his campaign. Under state law, Arnold could not continue in his job as a chief purser for the Alaska Marine Highway System and run for state office for the same time. It appears he was unaware of the law when he announced for the Legislature in December to challenge incumbent Rep. Dan Ortiz in District 1. Alaska statute says that, with some...
I am Robb Arnold and I plan to run for the District 1 seat (Ketchikan, Metlakatla and Wrangell) in the Alaska House of Representatives. I came to Alaska in the early 1990s to work with my dad at a logging camp on Kuiu Island, near Sitka. Rowan Bay changed my life. The challenging work, the forest, the bears, hunting and fishing — it made me fall in love with life in Southeast. I worked during the summers, then came back in 2000. For years, my home has been in Ketchikan. I was hired in 2006 as a crew member for the Alaska Marine Highway S...
A Republican legislator from Wasilla has proposed legalizing electronic gambling aboard Alaska Marine Highway System ships to raise money for the state-run ferries. But his proposal encountered rough seas during its first committee hearing as legislators questioned the financial gain and limited opportunity aboard vessels that don’t often travel in waters open to legal gambling. House Bill 197, from Rep. Jesse Sumner, would allow Vegas-style slot machines and other electronic gambling and is envisioned as raising money for the state in the s...
Unless the Legislature decides otherwise by mid-March, Gov. Mike Dunleavy will take over appointment of the entire nine-member Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board. State law reserves four of the seats for appointment by legislative leaders, but Dunleavy on the first day of the legislative session Jan. 16 introduced an executive order that changes the law so that the governor would control all of the appointments. The change will take effect 60 days after the order was issued — unless a majority of the 60 legislators vote in a joint s...
The state ferry schedule is available for bookings for the summer season, May 1 through Sept. 30, though it opens with no stops in Wrangell until May 12 due to crew changeover between vessels. The overall schedule is the same as recent years: A weekly northbound stop in town Sunday afternoon or early evening, and a southbound port call every Wednesday morning. The Alaska Marine Highway System will operate the Columbia, the largest ship in the fleet, on the weekly run between Bellingham, Washington, and through Southeast Alaska up into Lynn...
The 2024 Alaska legislative session started Tuesday, Jan. 16. My main committee assignment will be to serve for the eighth year on the House Finance Committee, which is responsible for moving the operating and capital budgets to the full House for approval. The challenge we always face is allocating limited revenue to meet the nearly limitless funding requests, including the annual Permanent Fund dividend. We will begin our work this session with the spending plan submitted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, which includes a deficit of $987 million and...
The director of the state agency that manages the food stamp program for tens of thousands of Alaskans says the staff is again overwhelmed with work, delaying benefits for thousands of households by months. That’s months without the food assistance they need and that most are entitled to receive — all because the state has failed at its job for more than a year. That’s months relying on friends, family, food banks, or just going without adequate nutrition. It’s not because they did anything wrong. It’s that the state failed to maintain...
With the rusty Matanuska out of service pending repairs, the Kennicott scheduled for tie-up due to lack of crew and the Tazlina in the shipyard to add crew quarters, the state ferry system’s draft summer 2024 schedule is limited by the number of vessels in service and looks about the same as this past summer. The Columbia would make a weekly northbound stop in Wrangell on Sundays and a weekly southbound visit on Wednesdays on its run between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska. The marine highway system released its draft schedule D...
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has sent a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, urging him to include $23 million in his coming budget for the replacement of a state ferry. Dunleavy spokesperson Jessica Bowers declined to say whether the governor’s draft budget — due by Friday, Dec. 15 — would include the matching funds needed to secure a $92 million federal funding award that Murkowski announced last month. The Alaska Marine Highway system has already been promised $416 million in federal funds through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act....
Response to the deadly landslide continues, with extensive clearing work to remove debris from along the highway to increase safety and with fundraising for families affected by the disaster, particularly the Heller and Florschutz families that lost loved ones. More than $43,000 from 342 donations had been raised in a GoFundMe campaign for the two families as of Monday, Dec. 4. Almost $20,000 had been raised in another account to help families who were displaced or whose lives were disrupted by...
The state ferry system has hired more crew members than have left the agency over the past four months, Marine Director Craig Tornga told a public advisory board on Friday, Dec. 1, a rarity for the system which has been plagued by a net outflow of workers. If the hiring gain continues, the Alaska Marine Highway System may be able to run both of its largest ships, the Columbia and Kennicott, next summer, which could allow for restoration of cross-Gulf routes and maybe even bringing back service to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The ferry...
A petition is being circulated, asking the state ferry system to change the name of the LeConte, the latest in a series of efforts around the country to strip the names of people who enslaved others from public spaces. The change.org petition, posted Nov. 12 by Petersburg resident Terrence Daignault, asks the Alaska Marine Highway System to add the topic to an upcoming meeting agenda. “Joseph LeConte was a slave-owning Georgian who believed in racial superiority,” the petition states. “He never once stepped foot in the state of Alaska and d...
The 50-year-old state ferry Columbia has been pulled from service, with the Alaska Marine Highway System reporting repairs is expected to take a week. The problem is in the steering system, Sam Dapcevich, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation, told the Ketchikan Daily News on Friday, Oct. 27. “It’s going to require a fairly extensive repair that’s going to take place down in Bellingham, (Washington),” Dapcevich said. The Columbia left Southeast Alaska on its regular southbound sailing Monday, Oct. 30, heading from Ketchik...
For the next week, Alaskans have a chance to register their opinions on the future of the state ferry system through an online survey that will be used to help create a long-range plan. The survey responses will be used over the next year to craft the “2045 Long-Range Plan” for the Alaska Marine Highway System, intended to establish its goals for service levels and operations beyond the more reactive, short-term decisions that have guided the system in recent years. AMHS General Manager Craig Tornga opened an Oct. 24 public meeting by des...
On Friday, Sept. 15, I and other stakeholders and community leaders participated in a ferry system focus group workshop for the southern Southeast service area. As state ferry service is one of the very essential elements of Southeast culture and lifestyle, sustainability of this important resource is a priority for me and the constituents of our legislative district. The first meetings of the group began last May. At that time, the Alaska Marine Highway System was soliciting feedback from stakeholders on the service schedule. The most recent...
Alaska has gotten more money per capita from the federal infrastructure law passed in 2021 than any other state, according to participants at a news conference where the latest injection of funds for the state was announced. Alaska’s member of the U.S. House, Rep. Mary Peltola, and officials from the Biden administration used the event at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage to announce awards totaling $100 million for broadband service in three rural areas. That brings Alaska broadband funding from the Infrastructure Investment a...
We’re all happy to have the administration’s winter schedule for the Southeast ferry system. However, there are a few downsides. The first is the exception noted in the Columbia’s schedule, which leaves several communities without service in November and December. It’s clear that the Alaska Marine Highway System has had a difficult time weathering the storms of the pandemic which resulted in a substantial decline in revenue as well as adequate crew availability. It’s unfortunate that the ferry system does not have an operational vessel in...
The state wants to send the Matanuska, the oldest vessel in the Alaska Marine Highway System fleet, into a shipyard for the equivalent of a full-body scan. Management wants to find out just how much of the ship’s steel has rusted, and how far the rust has eaten into the thickness of the metal. The 60-year-old Matanuska has been tied up at the dock in Ketchikan since last November, waiting for the state to decide whether to repair the vessel and restore it to working order, or give up on the ship. “We know we have bad steel,” Craig Torng...
A year after an effort that failed to attract any bidders, the state is again looking to hire a shipyard to build a replacement for the ferry Tustumena. Design work is still not complete, however. The new ferry, which will mostly serve Gulf of Alaska communities, is expected to cost almost $325 million, with the federal government picking up much of the cost. It would give Alaska its first new mainline ferry in decades. In a meeting with the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board on Aug. 25,...
Employers everywhere are finding it hard to recruit and retain employees. But it sure seems that the state of Alaska, under the disengaged leadership of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, is sinking to new lows of high vacancies. The empty desks and undone work are degrading public services and hurting Alaskans. The administration’s reactions have been to express concern, provide excuses, talk about doing better and, in some offices, shuffle around available personnel to plug the biggest holes. And the governor proclaimed May 10 as State Employee A...
The Alaska Marine Highway System Operations Board — an advisory panel created last year — wants the Dunleavy administration and the state Legislature to grant emergency powers for hiring personnel to the ferry system’s marine director. The system has suffered chronic shortages of workers for more than two years, forcing cuts in service to coastal communities. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants’ reports, hiring bonuses and paying a private firm to recruit new employees, the system remains far short of its hiring...
Age is a major issue behind the Alaska Marine Highway System’s pending master plan, which will go to state legislators this month. The state ferry Columbia, which turns 50 next year, had been sidelined at the Ketchikan ferry dock for about three years until February. Management’s decision to park the vessel was based on the large expense of operating the ship, the costliest of any ferry in the fleet. Things changed when it was discovered that the 60-year-old Matanuska, which had suffered a series of maintenance setbacks, had more serious iss...
Aug. 23, 1923 Mrs. Stephen Grant has resumed her duties as community nurse following a vacation which she took for the purpose of entering a summer class in community nursing given in Portland under the auspices of the Red Cross. Mrs. Grant finished the six-week course in five weeks by diligent work, and has been given a university credit for her efforts. Her work with the Junior Red Cross will begin with the opening of school activities and promises much for the good of Wrangell. Aug. 20, 1948 B. Frank Heintzelman, regional forester for...
