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PETERSBURG — With the state fiscal crisis swallowing Alaska’s political debate since 2014, the Alaska House races in Districts 35 and 36 are being fought on almost identical grounds. House District 35 includes the northern and more populated half of Prince of Wales Island. While Ketchikan’s Rep. Dan Ortiz is an independent, both he and Rep. Jonathan Kreiss Tomkins, D-Sitka, are members of the Alaska House minority caucus. They won their races after unlikely campaigns as political underdogs. Kreiss-Tomkins was first elected in 2012, while Ortiz...
The Alaska Marine Highway System’s M/V Columbia is scheduled for a trip to Oregon for repairs after divers noticed a bent starboard propeller late last week, according to Jeremy Woodrow, Alaska Department of Transportation spokesman. “Not a huge bend, but there was a noticeable bend,” he said. “That was the only visible damage the divers noticed.” Earlier in the week, the vessel was traveling Lynn Canal to Haines or Skagway when those onboard noticed a vibration. Soon after, it was discovered the vibration happened when the vessel exceeded...
As this week's Sentinel hits the streets, Southeast Conference's 2016 Convention and Membership Meeting will be wrapping up in Petersburg. Designated by the state and federal governments as Southeast Alaska's organization for regional economic development, SEC includes 180 member organizations, representing 1,200 people from 32 regional communities. One of the highlights of its annual fall meeting in recent years has been its By the Numbers Report, which looks at economic and demographic trends...
As the fisheries industry continues to expand and Wrangell’s Marine Service Center’s services demand increases, I believe Wrangell’s economy has nowhere to go but up. However, to accommodate this growth, the state must maintain their services in Wrangell. I am particularly concerned about the conservation of state jobs in Wrangell. Several years ago, Wrangell lost its social worker and its fisheries biologist. Now, the loss of the Wrangell trooper and the potential of reduced funding to the city jail weigh heavily, as Wrangell’s state jobs sl...
A steering committee has been selected to head up restructuring of the Alaska Marine Highway System. In May the office of Gov. Bill Walker tasked regional economic forum Southeast Conference with revitalizing the state’s maritime transportation network, a two-phase process which will involve looking both at its organizational structure and business model. To that end, a committee representing AMHS’ varied user base was selected from around 25 applicants. “We had quite a few names to choose from,” commented Robert Venables, transpo...
Following the July 4 weekend, last Wednesday Wrangell's Public Works Department began closing off Wood Street for resurfacing work. The project is expected to last into September, with contractors laying out underground utilities and paving the road in concrete, from where it meets Zimovia Highway to the entrance of the Alaska Island Community Services clinic parking lot. The city made resurfacing the road a priority for the new year, as a grant acquired for the project expires in June 2017....
Wrangell's annual Independence Day celebration draws hundreds of visitors, from former residents and current ones' relatives to returning tourists. Among the weekend's visitors were Sen. Bert Stedman of District R and Republican candidate for House District 36 Bob Sivertsen. On a brief break before returning to Juneau for a special session beginning on July 11, Stedman explained the purpose of his visit to Wrangell was twofold: catching the first two days of its Fourth festivities and visiting w...
Navigating the Wrangell Narrows can be tricky, if not treacherous, depending on the vessel size and time of year. On June 14, Britta Adams of Ketchikan became the first known individual to swim the body of water from south to north. "I just knew that I had a tide, and I had six hours," she says. "My goal was to get from Marker 1 to Marker 42, the end of Pinball Alley, and everything beyond that was just a bonus." The water was 48 degrees when Adams jumped in at 4:45 a.m., and 15 minutes later...
Alaska’s state ferry system is embarking on a journey to make itself more financially viable over the next 25 years, as a process to refocus and possibly restructure, spearheaded by Southeast Conference. Representing the region’s economic interests, the SEC was first started 58 years ago in order to support establishment of what would become the Alaska Marine Highway System. Appropriately enough then, the organization will help to steer that regional transportation network into the future, after a memorandum of understanding to that effect was...
An economic plan surveying the coming five years was adopted this week by Southeast Conference. The Southeast Alaska 2020 Economic Plan released on Tuesday looks at various economic and demographic trends in the region and lays out targets for improvement. The plan also highlights the importance of sound economic planning in light of impending cuts to federal and especially state government spending in coming years. The economic plan is the result of a year-long collaborative process in which more than 400 regional leaders were consulted....
A draft for the Alaska Marine Highway System’s post-summer schedule was released last week. AMHS general manager Captain John Falvey Jr. reported the new schedule will be based on expected funding levels for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Presently, the ferry intends to run 330.2 operating weeks for nine of its vessels; the Taku and Chenega will both be on layup for much of the next fiscal year as cost saving measures. Entering its second year of inactivity, the Taku may be on the road to divestment. “We’ve announced this briefly,...
Stopping in Wrangell last week, District 36 Rep. Dan Ortiz (I-Ketchikan) was able to share with the Sentinel some his perspectives on how the state's current budget negotiations are headed. House Bill 256 and Senate Bill 139 are each chamber's proposal for a state budget, which currently is set to exhaust the Statutory Budget Reserve and draw from the Congressional Budget Reserve, which at current spending levels may run out by 2019. The CBR fund is where all oil tax settlement revenues are...
The Borough Assembly received a disappointing update that plans to pave Evergreen Road this year have been delayed until at least 2017. The news came while the Assembly considered a proposal to amend the design contract for Wood Street improvements, which was previously expected to be bid ahead of the Alaska Department of Transportation’s Evergreen project. The city had hoped for efficiencies in equipment costs by having both projects undertaken at around the same time. First expected complete in 2013, the Evergreen paving project would r...
Local spending appears to have dropped substantially during the last holiday season. The latest sales tax figures collected by the City and Borough of Wrangell indicated that for the 2016 fiscal year’s second quarter – or from October through December 2015 – only $506,216 in sales taxes were collected, a 16-percent drop over the corresponding period the previous year. Sales tend to be lower through the third quarter than the second, picking up again during the spring and summer seasons. So in 2015, from January to March the city colle...
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – A newly released study found that every dollar put into the Alaska Marine Highway System has double the economic benefit to Alaska. The state contributed $117 million in general funds to the ferry system in 2014. The report from the McDowell Group, which was funded by the ferry system, shows that the total economic impact was $273 million, The Ketchikan Daily News reported. According to the study, the ferry system is responsible for 1,017 jobs and indirectly responsible for 683 jobs, which would be for people e...
Alaska's Legislature returns to work next week to begin its second regular session, and by far its biggest task will be to make the state's budget sustainable. Convening in Juneau on Jan. 19, legislators in the House and Senate will begin putting together budgets for the 2017 Fiscal Year, which will have to address a projected $3.6 billion spending deficit. Last month the office of Gov. Bill Walker released its budget plan, which proposes $100 million in net cuts to agency spending and $360...
The Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) on Tuesday announced the release of its upcoming summer schedule, covering May through September. The release of the schedule also coincides with the implementation of the new reservations and manifest system. AMHS has planned a phased implementation of the new reservations system starting with the reservations call center, then followed by online reservations for summer travel. Implementation will continue with new hardware installations in terminals and aboard vessels through the spring. The system...
Communities around the country took time to commemorate the men and women this Veterans Day, and Wrangell was no exception. A pair of hearty dinners were served by local service organizations to commemorate the service given by its men and women. At the Elks Club on Nov. 5, the Emblem Club No. 87 hosted its traditional Veterans Day dinner. One of the few times the club opens its door to non-members each year, around 50 guests were served dinner – better than half of these were veterans, r...
In the early-2000s, the Alaska National Guard (ANG) relied upon a rural presence. Guardsmen of that rural force were deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, which was the first time ANG members were deployed to a combat zone since WWII, according to Guardsman Matthew Duddles. The ANG rural presence sharply declined after the deployments ended, and the decline continues to this day with the 761st Military Police Battalion of the Guard in Southeast scheduled to be deactivated by the end of 2017....
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – Southeast Alaska residents are worried ferry service will fall next year to what may be the lowest level in decades. Concerned residents filled the room and overflowed into hallways at Friday’s listening session in the Sitka Legislative Information Office, the Ketchikan Daily News reported. Speakers made a number of suggestions to raise revenue for the Alaska Marine Highway System, like selling assets and imposing tolls on roads to the north. “The Alaska Marine Highway System is basically Alaska’s only toll road. W...
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – A tour boat company based in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, is considering running a weekly ferry service to Ketchikan next summer. Owners of West Coast Launch and its subsidiary, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, Debbie and Doug Davis said they are interested in making trips to Alaska next year, especially as the Alaska Marine Highway Service reduces service, The Ketchikan Daily News reports. Debbie Davis said at the Southeast Conference on Wednesday that as the Alaska Ferry system drops from twice-a-week service in t...
Delegates from around the region traveled down to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, this week for the 2015 Southeast Conference. The bulk of the three-day conference took place Tuesday and Wednesday, wrapping up this morning. SEC executive director Shelly Wright said 125 people preregistered for the conference, with 150 or more expected to participate in all. Wrangell economic development director and SEC board member Carol Rushmore is representing the community at the conference. Accompanying her will be Assembly member Julie Decker and Chris...
New economic data for Southeast Alaska was unveiled at this year’s Southeast Conference in Prince Rupert, British Columbia (see adjoining article). The “By the Numbers” look was compiled for the regional association by Juneau-based analysts Rain Coast Data using information gathered by state, federal, industry and other sources. The study looked at economic and demographic statistics for the period spanning from 2010 to 2014, when the latest information was available. Examining the past five years, the study found the region to have added...
Wrangell’s Port Commission decided it didn’t “have a dog in the fight” over a tidelands purchase proposal submitted to it for review. Meeting Thursday, it had to consider an application by BW Enterprises to purchase 6,240 square feet of city tidelands adjacent to its property near the state ferry terminal. With tidelands purchase proposals, both the Port and Planning and Zoning commissions have the opportunity to make assessments and forward their recommendations to the Assembly, which has ultimate say in such matters. Speaking at the meeting...
District 36 Rep. Dan Ortiz stopped into Wrangell over the weekend, both to enjoy some of the Bearfest 2015 events and meet with constituents. The Ketchikan Independent has put his first session under his belt after being elected last November. And it was an interesting year to start with, after an atypical pair of special sessions were called by Gov. Bill Walker as legislators struggled to pass a budget. “In this last session we were able to cut the budget by $800 million,” Ortiz noted. However, he pointed out the state is still left with a m...
