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The borough and Alaska Court System are awaiting results of air quality testing at Wrangell’s Public Safety Building before courthouse services can be resumed. ACS shuttered the office space it rents there just before Thanksgiving, citing safety concerns for its staff. Long-term water damage and rot to exterior walls of the court offices had been revealed back in September when maintenance workers opened up the drywall, following reports of a carpenter ant infestation. A judicial officer had to be relocated to another part of the office w...
Until further notice is given, the clerical offices and courtroom at the Wrangell Public Safety Building have been closed down temporarily. The closure began Monday morning, with the Alaska Court System citing air quality concerns for staff using the premises. The space is rented from the city, which maintains the entire facility and surrounding property. "We've got some water issues that need to be addressed," explained Neil Nesheim, area court administrator for the First District Court. He...
The biggest year classes of Alaska fishermen are phasing out of the business and fewer young cohorts are recruiting in. The Alaska Young Fishermen’s Summit has convened over a decade to help stanch that outward flow, and facilitate a future for fishing leaders. The average age of a commercial fisherman in Alaska was 50 in 2014 compared to 40 in 1980. At the same time, the number of Alaskans under 40 holding fishing permits fell to just 17 percent, down from nearly 40 percent of total permits across the state. The Summit coming up this year A...
The City and Borough Assembly authorized a pair of grants to be applied for in its name while narrowly nixing a third. Meeting Tuesday, the first item the body considered was participation in the Community Development Block Grant program offered by the Department of Agriculture. An application put forward to the program for $304,297 in funding would fund just over half of rehabilitation work to the building envelope of the Public Safety Building. A recently revised cost estimate for the project put together by Jensen Yorba Lott totals...
At last week’s Park Board meeting, the department head reported the lack of qualified lifeguarding staff has been causing problems. Parks and Recreation director Kate Thomas explained last Wednesday that Wrangell’s public pool operates 63 hours per week, requiring 105 lifeguard hours to operate. While 10 available staffers would be ideal, the department currently only has four to try and cover shifts. Both herself and the assistant director have been spending up to half their time filling in at the pool. The pool is the most heavily used ame...
Members of the Wrangell Assembly commiserated with Wrangell Cooperative Association leadership Tuesday evening to discuss possible alternatives to a proposed monofill for the Byford cleanup. The Department of Environmental Conservation proposes interring 18,350 cubic yards of treated, lead-contaminated soils in a rock pit managed by the Department of Natural Resources. The material was removed during cleanup of acres of property at the former Byford junkyard, which the city had previously acquired through foreclosure. DEC stepped in to manage...
At the second school board meeting of the new year on Monday, staff and returning members welcomed newly elected fellows Dave Wilson and Jessica Rooney. Officers were selected for the reshuffled board, with Georgianna Buhler retaining her position as president, Tammi Groshong being elected to vice-president in a 3-2 vote, and Aleisha Mollen named board secretary. Perhaps the biggest news of the evening though had been an announcement from secondary schools principal Bill Schwan and Secondary...
In its Tuesday evening meeting this week, the City and Borough Assembly decided to shift focus for block grant funding to remodeling the Public Safety Building. Sited centrally to town at the start of Zimovia Highway, the aging facility has already neared the top of the city’s capital improvement priorities. In its project outline, city staff recommended putting the building forward as a candidate for Community Development Block Grant funding, a competitive program sourcing $2.4 million of Housing and Urban Development funding each year into A...
An argument between several residents last week quickly grew out of control, with discharge of a firearm and assault among several crimes alleged. Michael Allen Stephens, 57, was arrested outside his Evergreen Avenue residence on September 11, allegedly following an argument and altercations with several residents. The trailer and property belongs to Rosemary Ruoff, with whom he shares a residence. The criminal complaint filed with the court last week is partly based on the testimony of Leon Harvey, Ruoff’s brother-in-law. Harvey told police he...
At its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night, members of the City and Borough Assembly pondered different options for participating in the Community Development Block Grant program. In discussion notes, city economic development director Carol Rushmore explained grants are distributed statewide through a highly competitive application basis, based on an applying community’s income level. Wrangell has since 2015 been considered ineligible due to its population falling beneath the l...
Bad luck came in threes for Wrangell's Public Safety Building last month, the latest in a long line of problems with the facility. A failing elevator, water damage and a colony of carpenter ants have disrupted activity at the building, home to the city's emergency services, courthouse and Department of Motor Vehicles office. The first setback, that of the elevator, occurred on August 14. "As far as the elevator is concerned, we had a power outage," said Amber Al-Haddad, head of Public Works. A...
A full complement of events is being arranged for next week's Bearfest, the eighth held since the festival's inception. It was started in 2010 by Alaska Vistas operator Sylvia Ettefagh, in order to highlight Wrangell's robust bear population. One of the prime places to see the area's brown and black bears together in one place is at Anan Wildlife Observatory, a short jump south of the island on the mainland. Several thousand visitors come to the island each summer in order to visit the Forest...
At Tuesday evening’s meeting of the City and Borough Assembly, the operating budget for the new year was adopted. The fiscal year begins July 1, and for the coming year will use about $457,311 in previous-year surpluses to cover the difference between revenues and expenditures. A number of critical capital expense items have made the borough's list of priorities this year, including exterior repairs to the Public Safety Building and swimming pool, and acquisition of a new excavator for the waste transfer facility. Property tax rates will r...
Wrangell’s Assembly mulled over a sizable list of capital priorities for the coming fiscal year Monday. There were 103 items on the list, which finance director Lee Burgess ranked from critical to moderate necessity. He recommended 20 of these requests be funded, 13 coming from the city’s General Fund in the amount of $594,000. Topping the list was an addressable fire alarm replacement for the Public Safety Building, as well as new heating system piping, roof repair and considerable siding repair. Together these four items would amount to $33...
The Wrangell Borough Assembly passed on first reading several ordinances related to marijuana, including an additional excise on that cultivated on the island. Under one proposed code change, a new section would affix a $10 tax per ounce on "the sale or transfer of all marijuana from a marijuana cultivation facility ... to a retail marijuana store or a marijuana product manufacturing facility." "The cultivator pays the tax," explained city clerk, Kim Lane. It and the other ordinances were put...
After four decades of public service, City Hall will bid farewell this month to its longtime finance director and recent borough manager, Jeff Jabusch. "It's going to be kind of strange, every morning getting up and not driving into this parking lot after forty years. My car will probably just come here automatically after that length," he said. "It's been very rewarding," he said of his tenure. "I've got to meet a lot of interesting people, and working with a lot of people, both staff people an...
We join with the community in thanking Jeff Jabusch for his 40 years of service to the citizens of Wrangell. Jeff has maintained the public’s checkbook for much of that time and kept it balanced through boom times and busts. During Alaska’s oil boom era, the city built its public safety building, high school and municipal pool. When the Wrangell Mill closed in 1994, “it was scary bleak,” as Jabusch put it. Later, Alaska’s rich uncle, Sen. Ted Stevens secured a $37 million relief grant that public officials along with Jabusch leveraged into $200...
An exhibit built by Wrangell craftsmen is now one of the first sights visitors see when entering the new Alaska State Museum in Juneau. The museum, formally named the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff Library, Archives and Museum Building, was completed and opened to the public in June, and features more than twice the floor space of its predecessor. Completely replacing the capital's previous museum, the $139 million project was the largest scale project the city had seen in over four decades. Soon...
The City of Wrangell is applying to the United States Forest Service to give a historic boat a new home. The M/V Chugach was one of 11 ranger boats operating in the state during the first half of the 20th century. Built at the Lake Union Dry Dock and Machine Works in Seattle in 1925, the vessel was assigned to Cordova for work in the Tongass and Chugach national forests. It remains the last of its kind in the USFS fleet, continuing service until last year. The boat was restationed in Petersburg in 1953, it served from there more than 60 years....
At its regular meeting Tuesday the City and Borough Assembly approved a request by Wrangell Medical Center to pursue a housing assistance grant of up to $550,000 to build a quadruplex for its staff. Hospital CEO Robert Rang explained the amount was the maximum provided by Teacher, Health Professional and Public Safety Housing Program grants through Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. As a four-unit housing complex would likely cost more than that, he said the hospital would approach the Assembly with the specifics of additional funds needed as...
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....
The City and Borough Assembly passed a budget this week, at a specially held session at City Hall on Monday. The meeting involved a work session which gave its members time to discuss individual line items with finance director Lee Burgess. The budget which was passed works within the current property tax rate of 12.75 mills and includes several new revenue or cost-saving items, such as allowing city employees to pay 15 percent of all premiums and receive a 5-percent credit if they participate in the plan’s wellness program. Two other items w...
On May 12 the Planning and Zoning Commission presided over a lengthy workshop and meeting meant to iron out which cannabis-related businesses would be appropriate for nonresidential zones in Wrangell. In particular, commissioners looked at the community's only such business being proposed, a mainly retail shop with small-scale cultivation and manufacturing capabilities to be opened in the old hotel behind the Diamond C Cafe. Restaurateur Kelsey Martinsen is already going through the state...
With its last meeting of the academic year, the Wrangell Public School Board looked back on its progress as measured against its 2015-16 strategic plan goals. The plan started to develop in February 2015, with faculty and members of the community collaborating on ways to improve students' experience in four primary areas: academic achievement, technical education, safety and facilities improvements, and technology. "Everyone had a hand in the final product," school superintendent Patrick Mayer s...
Community members were given a first peek at the budget being proposed for the next fiscal year, in the first of several planned workshops held on Monday. “This is a draft budget. It's certainly the starting point,” Borough Manager Jeff Jabusch pointed out. “The budget here is balanced up to this point,” finance director Lee Burgess summarized, presenting the draft. While the budget draft presented Monday is currently balanced, Burgess pointed out there are still several looming concerns. Rent revenues from the state for use of the local j...