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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...
Repairs caused delays for those expecting to ride the Alaska Marine Highway System last week, after M/V Columbia was held up in Juneau. On its way south through Wrangell to Ketchikan and eventually Bellingham, Wash., the Columbia was not able to leave Juneau as scheduled on July 14. It eventually departed three days later. “It took a few days while it was in Juneau to discover the problem,” explained Jeremy Woodrow, public relations officer for the Alaska Department of Transportation. “It had an issue with the starboard engines—one of its gover...
The Alaska Department of Transportation (ADOT) has cancelled the scheduled summer sailings of the M/V LeConte that would have utilized the South Mitkof ferry terminal near Petersburg due to maintenance-related delays of the Alaska Marine Highway System’s (AMHS) vessels. Once a month sailings from May to September between Juneau, South Mitkof and Coffman Cove were planned to show the terminal was being used for its intended purpose and to avoid possible penalties or having to pay back federal funds used to construct the terminal. “We built tho...
Five of Alaska Marine Highway System’s 11 ferries will be laid up at some point next year under a draft vessel deployment plan released on June 24. The Taku will be held in layup status the whole year, while the Kennicott will be from October until entering overhaul in early January. The Fairweather and Chenega will enter federal projects in October and mid-September, respectively, and will both be laid up starting in May 2016. The Malaspina is also scheduled to enter layup status in late May of next year. Under the draft schedule, from O...
In the works for awhile, Rainforest Islands Ferry Service has been delayed yet again. The ferry was set to sail June 14, then postponed to June 28. “We were so close” to that start, spokeswoman Heather Hedges said, but work at the shipyard was delayed. The 65-foot landing craft made its way up to Ketchikan from Anacortes, Wash. on Monday and sea trials have just begun with another U.S. Coast Guard inspection scheduled. The first delay was due to a wait on USCG certification. “As long as everything goes smoothly,” Hedges said, service is expe...
As of Tuesday, the Alaska Legislature meeting in a special session in Anchorage had still not passed a budget for the new fiscal year, which begins July 1. On Sunday, the Senate Finance Committee rejected a compromise budget passed by the House the previous day, which included some small concessions to the minority such as reversing cuts to the ferry system and per-student funding. A conference committee between the two chambers was being organized to negotiate an amended budget as legislators posture around various funding priorities....
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT) announced this week that Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) ferry service for summer 2015 will proceed as scheduled with the exception of one significant revision. Governor Walker restored funding to the AMHS fiscal year 2016 operating budget by allocating $5.5 million of unused fiscal year 2015 fuel trigger funds. The additional funding allows for ferry service to run as previously scheduled, with the exception that the M/V Taku will not sail in July and August this year. “T...
The Alaska State Legislature is in special session. We adjourned out of regular session on the evening of April 27 without fulfilling our constitutional duty as appropriators for the State of Alaska. In response, Governor Walker called the legislature into special session to deal with the state budget, Medicaid expansion and House Bill 44 (Erin’s Law), which relates to sexual assault prevention programs. Although we are days into the special session, we have not addressed any of those topics. The issue we have been discussing is where and w...
At its regular Tuesday-night meeting, Wrangell's City and Borough Assembly passed an amended ordinance proposal, creating a chapter on abuse of the 911 emergency system and amending chapters 10.32 and 10.36 of the Municipal Code regarding the carrying of concealed firearms in town. First reviewing the proposal in January, objections were raised by various Assembly members and residents about some preexisting language in the ordinance, such as where firearms could be fired in relation to the borough limits and near roadways. Subsequent meetings...
Wrangell residents and other Alaskans from around the state were given more opportunity to voice concerns over impending cuts to state programming during a public hearing held Monday evening for the draft of next year's budget being considered by the Senate Finance Committee. Six Wrangellites came to their local Legislative Information Office to provide testimony via telephone, along with residents of Petersburg and Ketchikan. “I am speaking in opposition to the cuts to the Alaska Marine Highway System,” borough manager Jeff Jabusch told the...