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Zach Taylor of Muddy Water Adventures is a self-described "small-town person." He likes striking up a conversation with his barista and greeting the familiar people he passes on the street. However, he acknowledges that life in small towns like Wrangell may not be for everyone. "Folks who grew up here, (Wrangell) they either stay here and they really like it," said Taylor, or they "have never been back, not for any reason." The Alaska Department of Labor is interested in the factors that...
Alaska's rugged and frigid Interior, where it can get as cold as minus 50 Fahrenheit, is not the place you'd expect to find an electric school bus. But here is Bus No. 50, quietly traversing about 40 miles of snowy and icy roads each day in Tok, shuttling students to school not far from the Canadian border. It works OK on the daily route. But cold temperatures rob electric vehicle batteries of traveling range, so No. 50 can't go on longer field trips, or to Anchorage or Fairbanks. It's a...
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom on Feb. 15 appointed a longtime state employee and Republican Party supporter to lead the Alaska Division of Elections. Carol Beecher, who led the state's child support enforcement division for the past nine years, will now administer Alaska's elections. Her first day was Feb. 15. Beecher grew up at a logging camp on Zarembo Island and graduated from Wrangell High School in 1980, according to the lieutenant governor's office. She succeeds Gail Fenumiai, the division's...
Oil-dependent Alaska has long sought ways to fatten its coffers and move away from the fiscal whiplash of oil’s boom-and-bust cycles. The newest idea, promoted by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, would have the state capitalize on its oil and gas expertise to tap into a developing industry — carbon storage — as a way to generate new revenues without curtailing the industries that underpin Alaska’s economy. It’s also being pitched as a potential way for petroleum and mining companies to head off legal challenges over greenhouse gas impacts....
Marlene Ann Clarke passed away Feb. 7 in the Wrangell long-term care facility. She was born on April 3, 1936, to Nellie Prescott and Howard Messinger in Wrangell. She spent most of her childhood in Wrangell except for short stays in Juneau, Haines and Anchorage. She came back in the third grade and graduated from Wrangell High School in 1954. Working summers in the shrimp and fish canneries gave her the push to move to California to try something different after graduation. She took business...
Armchair historians and amateur genealogists rejoice — the entire Sentinel archive will be digitized and easily searchable online. The Friends of the Library has received a $17,000 Rasmuson Foundation grant, which, combined with community donations, should cover the estimated $24,000 project. The Irene Ingle Public Library is partnering with Alaska Resources Library & Information Services (ARLIS) at the University of Alaska Anchorage to digitize, assemble and upload the entire catalog of Sentinels going back to its founding in 1902, and even m...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has appointed Jude Pate of Sitka to the Alaska Supreme Court, making him the first justice to come directly from someplace other than Juneau, Anchorage or Fairbanks since 1960. Before Pate, the last justice who met those standards was Walter Hodge, who came from Nome and served on the court in 1959 and 1960. Dunleavy announced the appointment by email Jan. 20. Pate was appointed to fill a vacancy created this month by the retirement of Justice Daniel Winfree, who is reaching the constitutionally mandated retirement age of...
For decades, Alaska’s economy has depended on the harvest of natural resources — industries like pumping oil out of the ground and cutting timber. Now, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy wants the state to make money by leaving trees standing, and by pumping carbon emissions back into the ground. Investment is currently flooding into those kinds of projects, driven by the increasing urgency to slow global warming by cutting human-caused carbon emissions. Dunleavy has long rejected the scientific consensus that those emissions are causing cli...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — After tidal surges and high winds from the remnants of a rare typhoon caused extensive damage to homes along Alaska’s western coast in September, the federal government stepped in to help residents — largely Alaska Natives — repair property damage. Residents who opened Federal Emergency Management Agency paperwork expecting to find instructions on how to file for aid in Alaska Native languages like Yup’ik or Inupiaq instead were reading bizarre phrases. “Tomorrow he will go hunting very early, and will (bring) nothing,” r...
For the 10th year in a row, more Alaskans moved out last year than new residents moved in. That’s a draining fact, with no real plan to plug the leak. To confirm the Alaska Department of Labor’s statistics about population and persistent out-migration, drive no farther than U-Haul. America’s do-it-yourself movers reported this month on its annual numbers for traffic into states and one-way rentals leaving each state. The traffic count for Alaska is not good. The state fell 25 spots in the nationwide ranking of growth states, from 16th place...
Alaska’s population rose in 2022 according to new estimates released Jan. 5 by the Alaska Department of Labor, marking a second consecutive year of increases after four years of declines. The new Alaska population estimate, 736,556, is the highest since 2018, but the state continues to see more people moving out than moving in, and 2022 marked the 10th consecutive year of negative net migration, said state demographer David Howell. The state gained about 450 people despite that migration loss because the number of births was greater than the n...
Alaska has violated state and federal law by failing to process Medicaid applications in a timely manner, according to an Anchorage-based civil rights law firm that settled a class-action lawsuit in federal court with the state three years ago. The Alaska Department of Health’s figures last week showed that there are 8,987 outstanding Medicaid recertifications and applications to be processed by the state Division of Public Assistance, which is contending with a major backlog in application processing that officials attributed to a staffing sho...
It's been 45 years since Dave Rak and his wife Paula came to Alaska. It's been 45 years since he accepted a job as a soils scientist with the U.S. Forest Service. And now, 45 years later, he's retiring. Rak's last day as a full-time employee with the agency was Dec. 31. In that time, he's held a few different positions, worked with many different people and seen the Forest Service change in lots of different ways. Fresh out of graduate school in 1977, Rak applied with the Forest Service to be a...
Snowplow and bus drivers are exceptionally critical occupations this time of year — but they’re in short supply statewide. A new Juneau-based program may change that. The $1.7 trillion federal spending bill recently passed by Congress includes $750,000 for University of Alaska Southeast to establish and operate a commercial driver’s license (CDL) education training program at the UAS Juneau campus. According to UAS Chancellor Karen Carey, the new program will help fill the many positions for CDL-certified drivers currently vacant across Southea...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced a first-draft $7.3 billion state budget last week, meeting a legally required deadline but acknowledging that the spending plan is likely to change significantly as the administration negotiates with lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session. “This budget that we’re submitting, as always, is a talking point with the Legislature,” Dunleavy said. “It also reflects values, what our revenue picture looks like, and where we’re headed.” The biggest single expense in the entire proposed state budget is $2.5 billio...
A new study found that killing thousands of wolves and bears did not make for better moose hunting in a popular Southcentral game unit over nearly four decades. The study, by retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game and University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers, focused on an area between Denali National Park and the Copper River that attracts hunters from Anchorage, the Matanuska Valley and Fairbanks. The study’s authors say their findings raise questions about the state’s longtime practice of culling wolves and bears to increase deer, moo...
More people moved out of Alaska than moved in every year between 2015 and 2021. If not for a healthy birth rate, the state population would have shrunk even more than it did. Wrangell has steadily lost population over the past 20 years, with the decline projected to continue. These are not good statistics. Even worse, these are self-fulfilling projections of future economic troubles. Fewer residents means fewer available workers, which means labor shortages for the goods and services people need. Business across the state already suffer from a...
For the past seven years, the Alaska economy has performed “at or near the bottom” nationally in four key measures of economic health, according to a report released Nov. 17 by the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development. Taken together, the state’s poor performance between 2015 and 2021 — in employment growth, unemployment, net migration and gross domestic product — place Alaska’s economic health at the bottom of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, said Nolan Klouda, the center’s executive director and lead author of the...
Alaska’s economy shows signs of prosperity. But it’s also facing an emerging crisis. A veteran economist described these contradictory forces in a presentation Nov. 16 at an industry conference in Anchorage. “We have the strangest and weirdest economy that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been following the economy for a long, long time,” Neal Fried of the Alaska Department of Labor told the Resource Development Council for Alaska. By many measures, Alaska’s economy is in good shape, said Fried, whose economic presentations have become a staple at the...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy cares about Alaska and wants good things for its citizens. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has done serious and likely permanent damage to the state ferry system; that he has not supported adequate school funding; that he sliced the University of Alaska budget, cutting into student enrollment; and that his fixation on the size of the Permanent Fund dividend is politically popular but fiscally irresponsible. If re-elected, will Dunleavy’s second term be a repeat of his first year in office in 2019, when he was hea...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska is burning this year in ways rarely or ever seen, from the largest wildfire in a typically mainly fireproof southwest region to a pair of blazes that ripped through forests and produced smoke that blew hundreds of miles to the Bering Sea community of Nome, where the normally crystal clear air was pushed into the extremely unhealthy category. As of late July, more than 530 wildfires had burned an area the size of Connecticut — and the usual worst of the fire season is ahead. While little property has burned, some res...
In November of last year, Tlingit & Haida Community and Behavioral Services opened a healing center in Juneau to provide care to tribal citizens and other Alaska Natives. At the time, care was provided through Zoom Health or over the phone. The center was able to open its doors this year for in-person appointments but still relies on telehealth to reach a greater number of patients who might not have access to such services otherwise. Healing center staff provides a mix of wholistic healing and western treatment for crisis and access help,...
In front of more than 5,000 cheering supporters in Anchorage on Saturday, former President Donald Trump fulfilled a year-old promise to campaign in Alaska against incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of seven Republicans who voted in favor of his impeachment following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that targeted Congress. With a 90-minute speech that included a story about a trip to Iraq, conversations with foreign leaders and his thoughts on a variety of issues, Trump endorsed Murkowski's...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding state authority to prosecute some crimes on Native American land is fracturing decades of law built around the hard-fought principle that tribes have the right to govern themselves on their own territory, legal experts say. The June 29 ruling is a marked departure from federal Indian law and veers away from the push to increase tribes’ ability to prosecute all crimes on reservations — regardless of who is involved. It also casts tribes as part of states, rather than the sover...
Former President Donald Trump plans to attend a campaign rally in Anchorage this week for candidates he has endorsed in the state, including former governor Sarah Palin who is running for U.S. House. The five-hour event is scheduled for Saturday at the Alaska Airlines Center on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus. According to preliminary details released by the former president’s office, the event will begin at 11 a.m. with entertainment. A series of speakers will begin at 1 p.m. and continue until 4 p.m., when Trump is scheduled to d...
