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In the Oct. 4 municipal election, Wrangell voters authorized the borough to sell or lease the 6-Mile mill site, a 39-acre parcel of land on Zimovia Highway. As they explore options for developing the land, borough officials will seek community feedback at an upcoming public forum. The forum represents an effort to “look at what the community would like to see out there,” said Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore. How does the community think the property can best be utilized for its benefit, she asked. At the Oct. 19 meeting of the bor...
Soon after Carol Rushmore stepped into her role as economic development director in 1993, Wrangell’s economic landscape changed forever. The sawmill, which had been the borough’s economic mainstay since the mid-1950s, shut down, setting off a chain reaction of job losses and business closures that affected the entire community. “We lost 20% of our workforce overnight,” Rushmore said. “It was extremely bad for a good 10 years.” But 29 years and countless grant applications, public forums and infrastructure projects later, Rushmore is planning...
When you’re trying to sell an unlivable house that needs an awful lot of expensive work — a fixer-upper, as it’s politely called — you keep dropping the price until someone comes along who wants the property and can afford to completely rebuild or maybe tear down and build a new home on the lot. No matter what you think that worn-down house with all its problems and unusable floor plan is worth in memories, it’s only really worth what someone else can make of it. The unused former Wrangell hospital is that fixer-upper, which is costing t...
After Wrangell voters chose not to take on debt to finance repairs to the Public Safety Building last month, the facility’s future is uncertain. Borough officials are racing against time to identify alternative sources of funding before the building, which houses essential government services, becomes unsafe for workers. At the Oct. 4 municipal election, the community approved $3.5 million in bonds for school repairs but voted down the ballot issue that would have approved $8.5 million to repair the Public Safety Building, which would have b...
The almost-four-decade-old Wrangell Public Safety Building still needs millions of dollars of repairs due to water damage, rot and aging equipment. The fact that voters defeated a municipal bond issue last month to pay for those repairs doesn’t in any way change the reality: The work is needed, and money is needed to pay for the work. “This community has to have this, whether they believe it or not,” Assemblymember David Powell said during assembly discussion of possible next steps last week. “We can’t be looking five years down the road at t...
After a recent fire put the Ketchikan harbor department at risk of a lawsuit for not requiring boat owners to carry insurance, the Wrangell Port and Harbors Department is considering issuing an insurance requirement for vessels, though the decision-making process is still in the early stages. At the Ketchikan harbor, the owner of a boat damaged in the fire aboard a nearby vessel has threatened legal action against the city for losses. According to Wrangell Port Director Steve Miller, the borough harbor department is weighing its funding needs...
The design for Wrangell’s new water treatment plant, which will improve water quality and accommodate potential population growth, is over halfway complete. During an Oct. 25 borough assembly work session, DOWL engineers reported that the project is on track to accept construction bids by February 2023 and that the bidding window will likely last for six weeks. “If we have a longer bid window, we’re more likely to get more than one contractor interested,” said engineer Chase Nelson. “We get bids in, we evaluate them and we have to make the...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that its updated permit for the Wrangell wastewater treatment plant will contain stricter limits on the amounts of bacteria the facility can discharge into Zimovia Strait. Wrangell will need to update its treatment operation to include disinfection of discharged wastewater, which will decrease fecal coliform and enterococcus bacteria counts. The borough will have five years to comply with new requirements. Disinfection will be “a major project for us,” said Borough Manager Jeff Good. He est...
Restoration of Inter-Island Ferry Authority service from Coffman Cove on Prince of Wales Island to Wrangell and Petersburg would take money. The service ended in 2008, and the two communities will talk about what it would take to bring back the run, how much it would cost and who would pay. The Petersburg borough assembly last month voted unanimously to send a letter to the Wrangell assembly to start talks on possibly restoring the route. Wrangell assembly members at their Oct. 25 meeting directed Borough Manager Jeff Good to talk with his...
When Matthew Gore arrived in Wrangell on the evening of Oct. 21, he took his dogs for a walk in the park before getting on his boat, the Andromeda, which he had been storing at the Reliance Float since late June 2021. Immediately, something “felt off.” As he walked down the stairs, he tripped over objects that he didn’t remember placing there. After inspecting the entire vessel, he discovered that it had been stripped. The generator, charger, batteries, fans, power cable, laminate flooring and more had all been removed and the anchor had been...
Wrangell registered voters have the option to cast their ballots early if they will be out of town on election day Nov. 8 or would prefer to get it out of the way in advance. Early voting opened Monday and is available 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays through Nov. 7 at City Hall. The state is offering early voting sites in more than 150 communities across Alaska. Election-day voting in Wrangell is set for 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 8 at the Nolan Center. Alaskans will be using the state’s new ranked-choice voting system, just as they did in the August s...
Alaska House District 1 candidates Dan Ortiz and Jeremy Bynum took turns at a Ketchikan community forum on Oct. 13 promoting why they deserve to win the Nov. 8 election for the district that represents Ketchikan, Wrangell, Prince of Wales Island and Metlakatla. About 50 people attended the forum, which was moderated by Ketchikan Gateway Borough Attorney Glenn Brown. Ortiz, the incumbent, drew nearly all of his answers and arguments back to his experience and accomplishments; his experience...
The Wrangell School District could face a financial squeeze in the next several years, forcing hard decisions over which programs get cut, what classes go away and how much staff is left. It’s not that the administration or staff did anything wrong. Just as school districts statewide, Wrangell has been waiting on some legislators and governors to put aside their biases against teacher unions, their personal views on political issues and their tendency to hold schools responsible for every shortcoming in society, and move to approve an i...
The borough assembly unanimously approved a resolution to amend Trident Seafoods’ lease of the borough-owned cold storage facility. The new five-year lease establishes building maintenance guidelines and raises the rental rate from $1,370 to $2,990 per month, with 2% yearly increases to account for inflation. The changes are part of the borough’s ongoing effort to update its leases, explained Borough Manager Jeff Good. Though the company’s new agreement lasts longer than its previous one-year lease extensions, Trident is still deter...
The borough assembly unanimously approved a $574,000 contract with Sitka Electric to install new fire alarm systems at the middle and high schools. The majority of the project will be funded through state Community Development Block Grants, though the borough may contribute up to $180,750 in local funds. Though the fire alarm system meets the code that was in place when it was installed in the 1980s, it needs to be updated to meet current standards, explained borough Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad. The system has become difficult...
Wrangell voters last week defeated a proposed $8.5 million bond issue that would have paid for needed repairs at the almost 40-year-old Public Safety Building, which suffers from water damage, rot and other problems. Despite general grumpiness around town over property taxes, borough spending, the economy and inflation, the defeat was not overwhelming. The proposition lost by just 65 votes out of 583 ballots cast, 44.4% to 55.6%. That is not an insurmountable margin to overcome — and it is margin that the borough assembly needs to confront. R...
Patty Gilbert was sworn in as mayor last Thursday, and in her first days in office plans to “(continue) the heavy work.” She hopes to revitalize the borough’s economic development committee, support local businesses and promote new ones. “It’ll be a full agenda,” she said. The borough assembly certified the election results last Thursday. The ballot proposition to issue $8.5 million in bonds for Public Safety Building repairs failed 259 to 324 in the Oct. 4 election. Since the building is still in need of costly repairs, the assembly wi...
The borough assembly has granted Manager Jeff Good the authority to negotiate a short-term lease with Channel Construction to use a portion of the 6-Mile mill site for a scrap metal recycling operation. Juneau-based Channel Construction has been running a regional metal recycling operation at the property, which the borough purchased for $2.5 million this summer. Owner William “Shorty” Tonsgard Jr. initially applied for a long-term lease that would allow him to continue operating at the site after the borough took over the land. The port com...
The borough assembly unanimously approved the sale of 29,274 square feet of public lands to Helen and Robert Molinek for $45,000 at its meeting last Tuesday. The sale of a portion of the former Byford junkyard property is part of a longstanding effort by the borough to move public lands into private ownership, where they can be taxed. The parcel at 4-Mile Zimovia Highway used to be part of the junkyard, which the state Department of Environmental Conservation finished cleaning up in 2018. Since then, the borough has negotiated with nearby...
It’s been almost three years since SEARHC started its move out of the borough-owned hospital building on Bennett Street into new quarters. It’s been almost five months since the borough embarked on multiple efforts to sell the unused property. Since then, there have been no buyers, no serious expressions of interest, not even a prescription to ease the financial pain of maintaining the empty facility. The $830,000 asking price for a decades-old building with a lot of problems is about as attractive as an old pickup truck that needs new tires, a...
A Republican Ketchikan Gateway Borough assembly member is challenging the four-term incumbent to represent Ketchikan, Wrangell, Metlakatla, Coffman Cove and other communities of southern Southeast Alaska in the state House. In Jeremy Bynum's first time running for state office, he got 44% percent of the votes in the August primary to Rep. Dan Ortiz's 52%. Both live in Ketchikan. About 4% of voters chose Wrangell resident Shevaun Meggitt, who has since withdrawn and will not appear on the...
Patricia Gilbert is the likely winner in Tuesday’s mayoral election against Terry Courson, leading the in-person vote tally 275-219. With slightly more than 100 absentee and early votes still to count, Courson would have to win those votes by more than a 3-to-1 margin to overtake Gilbert’s 56-vote lead. Voters approved by a wide margin, 311-to-170, approved borrowing $3.5 million for repairs to all three school buildings, but a proposed $8.5 million bond issue for repairs to the Public Safety Building appears headed to defeat. That ballot pro...
Wrangell has received $291,566 that it was owed by the state but never expected to receive, and could hold it as a cushion to soften the debt payments on bonds to repair school buildings and the Public Safety Building. Borough Finance Director Mason Villarma said last week he would recommend to the assembly that it move the money into the debt service fund, keeping it there if needed to help with payments on the proposed bonds, easing the pressure on property tax payers. Wrangell voters are being asked in the Oct. 4 municipal election to...
It’s been 12 years since Wrangell voters were asked to approve the borough taking on debt, and next Tuesday’s municipal election ballot will include two such proposals to repair worn-down public buildings. The Oct. 4 ballot also will include the election of a new mayor, two borough assembly members, two port commissioners and three school board members. In addition, the ballot asks voter permission for the borough to sell or lease the former sawmill property at 6-Mile. The borough bought the property this summer for $2.5 million, and is loo...
Time may heal all wounds — but that doesn’t apply to old buildings. Time just makes them worse and more expensive. That’s the case with Wrangell’s school buildings and Public Safety Building, which are all three or four decades old. All are showing the signs of rot, mildew, ventilation, roof and siding problems, in addition to boilers, fire alarm panels and other safety features that need a contractor’s care. The only thing that lasts forever in a rain forest without maintenance is the muskeg. After years of dodging the costly building...
