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Alaskans are having a harder time accessing child care now than they were five years ago, an expert told a new task force charged by Gov. Mike Dunleavy with developing a plan to make child care in the state more available and affordable. The task force, which Dunleavy formed in April, had its first public meeting on June 28 via Zoom with about 60 people, including the dozen task force members, in attendance. The group has until the end of December to deliver an initial plan to address the state’s child care challenges. At stake is the welfare o...
A Ketchikan man agreed to plead guilty earlier this month to federal charges in conjunction with a long-running scheme to sell fake Alaska Native souvenirs manufactured in the Philippines. Travis Lee Macaset's plea deal follows several other guilty pleas this summer that stem from a scheme to sell mislabeled products out of two businesses in Ketchikan. "It occurs more often than we would like," said Jack Schmidt, the assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the cases. With tourism rebounding from...
Paint, used cooking oil, pesticides and more can be safely disposed of on Thursday. The borough is sponsoring a household hazardous waste event from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the transfer station on Evergreen Avenue on the north end of the island. Fees are waived up to 200 pounds in materials and will cost $18 per load for anything over that weight, said Tom Wetor, Public Works Department director. Only household waste can be brought to the collections event; no commercial waste. The site will be closed for lunch from 11 a.m. to noon. It’s t...
Rooney Schafer, 6, sits in a Caterpillar TH83 Telehandler - a forklift with a 41-foot boom in back - at the Touch-a-Truck event last Saturday. Horns blared, sirens wailed, lights flashed and children giggled and smiled as they were able to experience what it's like to be inside different heavy equipment and emergency vehicles. Organizer Devyn Johnson said the event is the sixth one that's been held in Wrangell, with one year as a parade due to COVID-19 precautions. She began holding the event...
Alaska’s legislative session ended last month, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy has yet to consider most of the 31 bills passed by both House and Senate this spring. The Legislature’s 31 bills are the third fewest of any first-year session since statehood. The biggest bills of the year are the budget bill and the annual mental health budget. Dunleavy could veto or reduce line items within the budget before the start of the state’s fiscal year on July 1, but with a couple weeks to go, he hasn’t given any clues about his thinking. Other bills waiting...
The Polynesian Voyaging Society vessel Hōkūle’a had been scheduled to arrive in Wrangell on Monday, June 26, but due to the crew’s exposure to COVID-19 in Juneau the vessel delayed its departure from Angoon by a day. The plan is to leave Angoon on Friday, June 23. The vessel is now scheduled to arrive in Wrangell on Tuesday, June 27, a day later than originally expected. Rapid PCR tests have been conducted, none of the crew have symptoms and all are feeling well, according to a revised schedule from the crew. Barring any other delays, the Hōkūl...
When Lt. Jon Tollerud gave his first sermon in Wrangell, there was one person in the congregation, and it was a newspaper reporter covering the story of the new pastor in town. Now, three and a half years later, an average of 20 congregants gather to hear the weekly message, and Sunday will be the last one given by Tollerud and his wife, Lt. Rosie Tollerud, as they have been transferred to Fairbanks by The Salvation Army. In their time here, the Tolleruds have not only increased the number of...
The U.S. Forest Service again this year is making available permits for unguided visits to the Anan Wildlife Observatory, limited to four per day. The permits must be requested in person at the Wrangell Ranger District office, up to one week in advance. Permits, at $10 each, are required for visiting Anan from July 5 through Aug. 25, when the popular bear-viewing site is limited to 60 visitors a day on guided tours. The four unguided visitor permits are in addition to the 60. “These (four) permits are for people arriving with their own means o...
Alaska school administrators are welcoming the $175 million in additional one-time funding in this year’s state budget, but warn that they’ll again face large deficits next year. Permanently increasing the base student allocation — the state’s per-student funding formula — was a top priority for many legislators this year. School districts across the state reported being in crisis after six years of essentially flat funding, high inflation and the end of federal COVID-19 relief aid. “The legislature has offered a spring bonus rather than...
In southwestern Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which has some of the nation’s worst water and sanitation service and most overcrowded housing, vaccines proved to be valuable safeguards against the worst ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. The study, by experts from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tracked COVID cases, hospitalizations and vaccination status of the region’s mostly Yupik residents throughout 2021. It found that vaccination was 92% effec...
Since 2019, Caitlin Cardinell has worked as the liaison between members of the Stikine River Jet Boat Association and cruise lines to schedule tours and advocate for the organization. After 10 years in Wrangell and seeing the SRJBA through the COVID-19 pandemic, Cardinell is resigning her position as executive director and returning to Minnesota. Though the position has been a challenge, her reasons for leaving are to spend more time with her aging parents. She will maintain a home in Wrangell...
Wrangell High School graduate Kayla Hay was always interested in learning German. Her great-grandparents emigrated from Austria to Alaska in the 1920s, she said, and she was intrigued by different cultures and wanted to be able to communicate with her relatives who remained in Austria. Hay didn't have the opportunity to take German as a student in Wrangell (class of 2018), but when she enrolled at Montana State University in Bozeman that fall, she signed up for a basic German language class her...
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is planning to develop outdoor recreation opportunities near national forests and grasslands, part of a broader Biden administration push to help communities reap economic rewards from the growing recreation sector. Three USDA agencies — the Forest Service, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Office of Rural Development — signed a memorandum of understanding last fall pledging to collaborate on plans to develop outdoor recreation economies in “gateway communities” near nati...
Alaska's top health official discussed the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lessons learned and the need for Alaska to be ready for future public health emergencies. Dr. Anne Zink, chief medical officer for the Alaska Department of Health, was the speaker at the Beyond COVID: Pandemic Preparedness in the Circumpolar North conference on April 27 at the Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi community house in Sitka. Zink, an emergency health physician in Palmer, became the state's chief medical offi...
Tribal citizens lined up outside the WCA carving shed on the sunny afternoon of May 2 to collect boxes of herring eggs from the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. The Tlingit and Haida Traditional Food Security program purchased over 17,000 pounds from spawn-on-kelp fishery permit holders in the Craig and Klawock area, according to the Ketchikan Daily News. The eggs are being distributed in 21 designated communities, including Wrangell, which received 463 pounds of eggs in about 100 4.5-pound boxes for tribal...
On June 1, the Wrangell Senior Center will cut back its in-person meals and ride services after a loss of funding. Juneau-based Catholic Community Services, the organization that operates the senior center, announced on May 1 that there would no longer be any funding from COVID-19 emergency relief federal programs, making it necessary to reduce operating hours. “With the White House’s announcement that the coronavirus public health emergency is officially ending, there is no longer emergency relief money available to support the senior ope...
The Alaska Legislature is changing some procedures after Capitol phone lines became overloaded by public testimony for a record fifth time this year. The Capitol’s phones reached capacity on May 2, during a hearing about a bill that intends to repeal the state’s new ranked-choice voting law. The phone lines have filled more times this year than in the past six years combined, legislative statistics indicate. Overall call volume hasn’t changed significantly from past years, but Alaskans’ habits have: Members of the public are now much more li...
After waiting six months for a license to operate, an Anchorage psychologist asked Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel for help. But when the Anchorage Republican called the licensing office, she was greeted by voicemail. The person in charge of answering the phones had quit and wasn’t replaced. “Professional licenses are required to get people to work. That division doesn’t have enough people to even answer the phone,” Giessel said last month. That person wasn’t alone — last year, the state reported that 39 occupational license-exa...
The Southeast Conference is conducting its annual survey of business owners and managers, looking to gauge the economic outlook and priorities for the region. Last year’s business climate survey collected 440 responses, including 26 from Wrangell. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents had a positive view of the Southeast business climate, and half expected that business would be better than the past year as tourists returned to Alaska and travelers put COVID-19 behind them. Business leaders last year reported that the lack of available h...
When I was a kid, I suppose my role models were mostly professional athletes. Sports was everything (no offense to school or my parents or Boy Scouts leader). Though I never was very good at any of them, particularly sports or school or being an obedient kid. I managed just one scouting merit badge — in stamp collecting. I did much better imagining myself as the star pitcher, throwing the ball against the side of the house every evening as if it were the perfect strikeout pitch in the big game — until my dad yelled at me to stop thumping the...
Twentieth-century U.K. novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch once wrote that “the bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.” Grief can have intense physical and emotional effects on people, from nausea and increased blood pressure to changes in memory and behavior. Knowing how to help a grieving person can be difficult, but Rev. Julie Platson of Sitka believes that communicating with the bereaved is not only possible, but essential for healing. Platson will visit Wrangell’s St. Philip’s Episcopal Church on April 29 from 1 to 2:30 p....
The state has embarked on a mandatory income eligibility review of about 150,000 households receiving Medicaid benefits — covering as many as 260,000 people, more than one in three Alaskans. Nearly 500 Wrangell households could be in that stack. That represents about half of all the households in the community of just under 2,100 residents. The Alaska Department of Health reported an average monthly caseload of 476 Wrangell households enrolled in Medicaid in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022. The program provides health care coverage f...
As she prepares to enter the adult world, Paige Baggen is leaving behind a noted legacy at Wrangell High School. The 17-year-old is working with fifth-grade band students, specifically the clarinet players, to learn a song for this year's spring concert. Not only is it her senior project but she's doing it out of a love for music. Baggen has been playing music since she was in kindergarten, when Tasha Morse began teaching her to play. She's played clarinet since the fifth grade, so she knows...
Almost 33,000 visitors are expected to step off a ship or a plane this summer in Wrangell — more than in any year since 2005. But continuing that growth and building up the town’s tourism economy will require more side excursions and other attractions for cruise ship passengers and more overnight accommodations for independent travelers. The community makes its money — jobs and taxes — when tourists find goods or services to buy in town. “The visitor sector will need to make sure it has the capacity to provide sufficient tours to visiting...
It’s been seven years since the Wrangell Chamber of Commerce operated in the black. Each year since, it’s run a budget deficit covered by savings. Declining membership renewals and falling revenues from other sources has left the organization struggling to operate, and its board is working to find funding solutions. In 2016, the chamber’s revenues totaled $266,169 and its expenses were $205,502, producing $60,667 in income to add to savings. Since then, operating expenses have been higher than income, with the nonprofit in the red thousands of...