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The question for the Wrangell borough assembly is how many utilities will be free to owners of accessory dwelling units. The ordinance is not clear on what utilities will be billed. The recently passed accessory dwelling unit ordinance does not state an answer to this question. The assembly gives the normal government response, which is ignore the question and walk away. Toughen up and get a backbone, assembly members. It is your job to be transparent and honest about the content of ordinances you pass. Silence is no answer. Bill...
The borough assembly has declared as “hazardous” and assigned a property value of zero to the two lots owned by victims of the deadly Nov. 20 landslide at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway, making the owners eligible to possibly receive state land as replacement for their unusable property. The owners or their estate could build on their new lots, hold them undeveloped or sell them and keep the proceeds, explained Hannah Uher-Koch, who runs the land grant program at the Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Mining, Land and Water. “There are no...
After coming up with no viable candidates in the first round of applications, the borough assembly has decided to readvertise to fill the manager job. The borough received seven applications after posting the job last fall, but the only applicant who was selected for an interview already had accepted another job before Wrangell called back, Mayor Patty Gilbert explained last week. Jeff Good resigned as borough manager last fall to take a civil engineering job with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs; he has three college degrees in...
The Wrangell school district will have to do without federal pandemic-era grants for the next school year, creating a sizable gap in revenues and requiring spending cuts and/or pulling money out of savings to balance the budget. At a work session Jan. 15, the school board reviewed with district business manager Kristy Andrew a draft budget for the 2024-2025 school year. The district has been using the federal aid to cover the salaries of its two school principals, but this is the last year that money is available. “With the exhaustion of our CO...
To ensure that potential buyers know as much as possible before putting in their bids for any of the 20 lots at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision, the borough is putting together an information fair for people to talk with builders, lenders and municipal officials. “You can go around to individual booths and talk with people,” said Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director. She described it as similar to a health fair, with information booths — not a set schedule of presentations. “Come as you are, whenever you...
State lawmakers went back to work this week in Juneau, with two familiar topics likely to dominate the budget-writing work. “The real question is what are we going to do for the Permanent Fund dividend … and what are we going to do for education,” Rep. Dan Ortiz told the Wrangell borough assembly Jan. 9. “That’s what the argument is going to be about.” Ortiz, a retired schoolteacher in Ketchikan, also represents Wrangell and Metlakatla. He’s been in the state House since January 2015 and serves on the Finance Committee, which is in charge of...
The borough will spend about $80,000 for an engineering report, cost estimates and conceptual drawings in hopes of winning a $25 million federal grant to rebuild the Inner Harbor, Reliance and Standard Oil floats. The grant application is due by Feb. 28, pushing the borough and its contractor, PND Engineers, with offices in Juneau and Anchorage, into an accelerated schedule to meet the deadline. If the federal grant comes through, the work will include new floats, ramps, pilings, electrical service and dredging, explained Interim Borough...
A Pacific Northwest seafood business owner, whose family has been active in commercial fishing in Alaska since 1981, plans to buy and expand the operations of Fathom Seafoods in Wrangell. Peninsula Seafoods has applied to the borough for transfer of the lease on a small dockside parcel at the Marine Service Center. The port commission has recommended approval of the transfer, sending the issue to the borough assembly. As soon as the assembly signs off on the transfer, which could come at its Jan. 23 meeting, Jeff Grannum, general manager of Pen...
Cruise ship operators that lighter their passengers to shore will pay higher port fees starting this summer in Wrangell. The borough assembly unanimously approved the new rate structure Jan. 9, following a port commission recommendation. The rates had been set at 40% of the cost of tying up to the dock, with the new fee structure raising that to 60%. The increase in lightering fees is intended to encourage more ships to tie up at the dock rather than anchor offshore, Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma told the assembly. Wrangell should be...
The borough assembly on Jan. 9 unanimously adopted an ordinance to institute a $300 fine for illegally cutting down trees on borough land. No one from the public spoke on the ordinance at the public hearing held before the assembly vote. In addition to the ordinance setting the amount of the fine, the assembly also unanimously approved an ordinance adding trespass to the borough code, which prohibits “cutting down, injury or removal of trees or timber from borough property without written permission.” Borough officials drafted the ord...
The port commission has recommended to the borough assembly approval of an ordinance that would require owners who moor their vessels at a reserved spot in Wrangell harbors to either provide proof of marine insurance or pay a monthly surcharge on their moorage fee. Officials have been considering since 2022 adding the new requirement to municipal code to help shield the borough from the cost of raising and disposing of boats that sink in the harbors. “The cost of recovering sunken vessels has significantly increased, and the community can no l...
The borough and the Alaska Department of Transportation have found an answer to preserve the Wrangell Golf Club’s low-cost use of 33 acres of state land on Ishiyama Drive for the nine-hole Muskeg Meadows course. When the state last year determined it needed to start charging a market-rate land rent to the nonprofit, the borough figured out it could lease the land from the state at no cost – and then sublease it to nonprofit for $1 a month. The borough assembly signed off on the deal Dec. 12. The golf club has operated Muskeg Meadows for more th...
The intent is to promote Wrangell’s unique attractions, its wildlife, culture and history, aiming to attract more independent travelers to town. “Our goal is to establish a steady stream of visitors,” Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director, said of the town’s new Travel Wrangell marketing plan. “It’s bringing in that independent traveler,” she explained in an interview last month. The objective is to have visitors “spend more money and more time” in town. The marketing plan has been under development since last May, a month a...
Installation of security cameras at eight port and harbor sites has started. “Chatham just showed up today,” Harbormaster Steve Miller said on Jan. 2, referring to Juneau-based Chatham Electric, which has a $495,000 borough contract for the work. “We did all the site inspections for the camera locations. … We’ll be working on it, and we should be done by the end of March,” Miller said. Originally intended to be installed in late summer through fall of 2023, Miller said he was unsure of the reason for the postponement, although he believes it...
Only one utility in Wrangell is metered, electricity, the rest generally are not. This leads to the attitude that we pay a bill and can use as much as we want. This is especially true of borough assembly members. They approved an ordinance to allow accessory dwelling units on single-family lots, but the ordinance does not make clear whether the new rental units would be charged for water and sewer services or if the landlords would get the services at no additional cost to their existing hookups on the same lot. The burden of paying for...
After sitting vacant for almost three years — spending about half that time on the market — the borough is finally seeing interest from private parties in buying the former hospital property on Bennett Street. Three parties have expressed interest, said Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma, adding he anticipated at least one offer by the start of the new year. Hopefully, the borough could sell off the 1.94-acre parcel by February, he said. “The value is getting rid of the property,” Villarma said in an interview before Christmas. The borough...
Wrangell could get off to a good start for 2024 if one of the three interested parties makes a reasonable offer to buy the borough-owned former hospital building, which has sat vacant for almost three years. Most any offer would be reasonable, considering that keeping the building dry and insured is costing the borough tens of thousands of dollars a year. And any offer would be improvement over the no offers that have come in since SEARHC vacated the property for its new medical center in 2021. “The value is getting rid of the property,” Int...
The Economic Development Board has recommended to the borough assembly that it put up half of the 20 lots at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision in an online auction to the highest bidders, with the other half going on sale by lottery. There would be no limit on how many lots an individual could purchase in the auction, but the board decided to recommend limiting the lottery to one lot per individual. The five-member advisory board voted unanimously Dec. 20 to forward its recommendations to the assembly, which has final say o...
People have been driving out the Spur Road and illegally cutting down trees on borough land and hauling away the logs, likely for firewood, Wrangell Police Chief Tom Radke said. In a move to combat the theft and damage to public property, the borough assembly will hold a public hearing at its meeting Tuesday, Jan. 9, on a proposed ordinance that would institute a $300 fine for illegally cutting down trees on borough land. The ordinance would add a new section to municipal code, defining trespass to include “the cutting down, injury or r...
The primary election for the Alaska House of Representatives is more than nine months away and already five-term incumbent Rep. Dan Ortiz has at least two challengers for the District 1 seat that represents Ketchikan, Wrangell and Metlakatla. Robb Arnold, a chief purser aboard the state ferries who ran unsuccessfully for the Ketchikan city council and Ketchikan school board last year, has filed for the state House. Arnold is running as a Republican, as is fellow Republican Jeremy Bynum, who serves on the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly....
I attended the Dec. 12 borough assembly meeting where members approved an ordinance to allow accessory dwelling units on lots that already have a house. The stated purpose is to increase housing and rental units. I asked several questions about utilities for the rental units. The assembly members did not answer my questions. This is why I am asking these questions in this letter: Will the landlords receive a utility bill? Will the utility bill contain all of the utilities that are on my bill? This is not stated in the ordinance, but I believe...
By the time this paper hits the stores, I’ll be on a plane to my family home in Salt Lake City for the holidays. But unlike last year, I won’t be coming back to Wrangell in January. Instead, I’ll be making a leap from the oldest continuously published newspaper in Alaska to the oldest continuously published periodical in the United States — Harper’s Magazine, in New York City. According to Marilynne Robinson, one of my favorite authors, “a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention.” For the past year and...
After a yearlong effort spanning two economic development directors, accessory dwelling units are now permissible under borough municipal code. At its Dec. 12 meeting, the assembly unanimously approved a code change that will allow self-contained, smaller apartments or rentals to be built on the same piece of property as a single-family home. The goal, wrote Economic Development Director Kate Thomas, is to “expand industry, bolster our economy and ensure that interested persons and residents can build their lives here.” Wrangell’s housi...
The borough has gone out to the public for a second time to survey their opinions on how to sell the first 20 lots of the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision, in advance of a decision by the Economic Development Board at its meeting set for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 20, at City Hall. The board is scheduled to make a recommendation to the assembly for how the lots should be sold, with the assembly expected to take up the issue in January. According to the Economic Development Department’s proposed schedule, the borough would hol...
Response to the deadly landslide continues, with extensive clearing work to remove debris from along the highway to increase safety and with fundraising for families affected by the disaster, particularly the Heller and Florschutz families that lost loved ones. More than $43,000 from 342 donations had been raised in a GoFundMe campaign for the two families as of Monday, Dec. 4. Almost $20,000 had been raised in another account to help families who were displaced or whose lives were disrupted by...
