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Assembly Member David Powell has filed to run for mayor, taking on incumbent Patty Gilbert in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Gilbert is running for a second two-year term as mayor. Powell is in his ninth year on the assembly. In another contested race on the ballot, Chris Buness is seeking a second three-year term on the port commission, with Tony Guggenbickler, Eric Yancey and Antonio Silva also on the ballot. The top two vote-getters will each win a three-year term. Guggenbickler has never held elected office in Wrangell, though he served...
If you’ve enjoyed City Park’s newly refurbished pavilion this summer, you might be twice as happy now. The borough recently approved a construction contract for a new pavilion in City Park, and the best part: Wrangell hardly has to pay anything for it. The new pavilion replaces the structure that was destroyed in a November 2021 windstorm. It will be built exactly where the old one stood, a couple hundred feet south of the pavilion upgraded this summer. Following the storm, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management all...
In less than four weeks, Wrangell voters will cast their ballots in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Voting is easy — cast an early ballot at City Hall any weekday starting Sept. 16, or vote at the Nolan Center on election day. The harder part is deciding how to vote. The decisions include contested races for mayor, the school board and port commission, and two ballot propositions: One question asks voters whether the borough should borrow $3 million to start repairs to the 40-year-old Public Safety Building, and the other asks if voters want t...
After five years, Wrangell High School will have a new elevator, at last. The new elevator will be installed next summer after the borough assembly approved a construction contract last week. Demolition will begin toward the end of the current school year, and Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad hopes construction will be completed by the time students walk in on the first day of school in August 2025. After an oil leak was discovered at the bottom of the existing elevator’s hydraulic ram in March 2020, the school shut down the e...
Disposing of large, derelict vessels abandoned in Petersburg’s harbors comes at a cost. The borough assembly has authorized the transfer of $240,000 from the harbor department reserves to the derelict boat disposal budget category to pay for disposal of two large derelict boats. The assembly also amended the code to make clear that boat owners are responsible for disposal costs. “It’s incredibly expensive,” Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht said at the Aug. 19 assembly meeting. “Literally, to take two boats apart and scrap them and handle an...
When the borough went out to bid to replace the dilapidated Meyers Chuck dock, there were four or five interested parties. When bids closed on Aug. 13, however, the borough received not a single one. After some delays in the project, the borough hoped to begin procurement for the dock’s new floats late this year. Ideally, construction and installation of the new 200-foot dock would take place next summer. The two-part project was estimated to cost $2.5 million, of which Wrangell would only have to pay $1.4 million thanks to a $1.1 million s...
Republican candidate Jeremy Bynum received just under half the votes in the Aug. 20 primary election for state House District 1, easily outpolling two independent candidates in a preview of the Nov. 5 general election. The three candidates are competing to replace Rep. Dan Ortiz, who is retiring for health reasons after 10 years in the Legislature. The district covers Ketchikan, Metlakatla and Wrangell, plus Coffman Cove on Prince of Wales Island. All three candidates live in Ketchikan, whose larger population dominates the district. About...
When Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola visited Wrangell on Aug. 9 on a reelection campaign stop, she did more than just meet with supporters at the Marine Bar. In a private meeting with borough officials, Peltola received multiple community project funding requests. As a member of the U.S. House, she is permitted to submit 15 requests every appropriation cycle, and Borough Manager Mason Villarma hopes she will consider Wrangell’s requests during this process. The borough proposed two items. The first, and largest of the two, is $5.5 million to build a...
While finding the money to fix everything wrong with the rot-damaged Public Safety Building is far outside the budget, the borough hopes that it can replace the deteriorated roof, siding, windows and doors. At an Aug. 12 meeting, the assembly unanimously approved moving to the next step — a public hearing — toward putting a $3 million bond issue before voters on the Oct. 1 municipal election ballot. This funding, if Wrangell also receives the $2.4 million it has requested in federal assistance, would provide the borough with enough money to com...
Wrangell’s Public Safety Building is two-thirds of its way to becoming a senior citizen. It’s not yet at the knee replacement or artificial hip stage, but it certainly needs a new roof along with replacement of siding and multiple structural pieces damaged and weakened by years of water and rot. The 40-year-old building needs work. Voters may get a chance in the Oct. 1 municipal election to schedule the building for repairs. The assembly has talked for years about whether to repair or replace the building, always scared off by price tags of...
With a little over a week left before the filing deadline, six of seven incumbents on the assembly, school board and port commission have submitted paperwork or announced plans to seek another term in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Candidates have until 4 p.m. Aug. 30 to complete and turn in the declaration form, which is available at the borough clerk’s office in City Hall. Mayor Patty Gilbert was the first incumbent to file for reelection. She will seek a second two-year term. Assembly Members Jim DeBord and Bob Dalrymple both have filed f...
When Gene Meek started as police chief last month, he probably didn’t expect such a lively first month on the job. Around the time of his arrival, police officers voted to unionize, a decision that will see the department’s staff join employees of other borough departments as members of IBEW Local 1547. Additionally, the borough budget for the fiscal year that started July 1 reduced full-year funding for two police officer positions. The money-saving cutback, proposed by the borough manager, would have trimmed back 24-hour staffing due to lig...
The state has long allowed early voting, making it easy on Alaskans to never miss marking a ballot in an election year. And now the borough is doing the same thing. Good for borough officials and the assembly to approve the change in voting procedures, good for residents and a good move for representative government, which is more representative of the public when more people vote. Rather than require voters to make time only on election day or go through a cumbersome absentee voting process to cast their ballot in advance, the assembly has...
The Aug. 20 primary election for the state House district that covers Wrangell is a preview of the Nov. 5 general election. All three primary election candidates to succeed Rep. Dan Ortiz in representing Ketchikan, Metlakatla and Wrangell in the House will advance to the November round under Alaska’s voting system that sends up to the top four primary finishers to the general election. Competing for the seat are Jeremy Bynum, a Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly member and Ketchikan Public Utilities electric manager; Grant EchoHawk, also a m...
Too busy to vote? That’s now less of an excuse. Early voting, in addition to voting by email, was unanimously approved by the borough assembly last month. The ordinance only affects municipal elections, not state elections. It will take effect for the borough election on Oct. 1. Both vote-by-email and early voting are just as secure as traditional election day voting. Early voting opens 15 days before an election and takes place in Borough Clerk Kim Lane’s office at City Hall. Voters need only to provide a form of identification, sign the...
The 10 senior centers operated by Catholic Community Service in Southeast Alaska are serving about 50% more meals than they provided before the pandemic hit in 2020. However, tightened budgets and reduced staffing are making it difficult. Meals counts spiked during the pandemic as seniors stayed home and depended on delivered lunches but, unexpectedly, demand for meals on wheels has not declined much since COVID restrictions were lifted in communities, said Erin Walker-Tolles, executive director of the Juneau-based nonprofit. The numbers of...
Need a secure, dry place to stash your stuff? John Esther and Phillip Mach may have a solution, it just might be a while. The business partners are working to get a rezone from the borough that would allow them to build a storage facility on their Zimovia Highway lot, midway between TK’s Mini Mart and Panhandle Trailer Court. According to Mach and Esther, the project “would include three metal buildings with lighting, security cameras and locked gates.” The buildings would be constructed one at a time, as Esther and Mach would need to wait...
Annual moorage rates will not increase this year, after the assembly on July 23 passed a resolution reversing a 3% fee increase it approved in April. The higher rates had been scheduled to take effect this month. The vote to roll back the rate increase was unanimous. “Realizing that it’s such a poor commercial fishing season, realizing that the tourism industry has struggled a bit this year, we felt we could drop the rate increase this year and come back to it next year,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said in an interview last week. The assem...
The assembly last week took the first step toward seeking voter approval to someday pay members for their work. The assembly on July 23 approved in first reading an ordinance that would put the question to voters on the Oct. 1 municipal election ballot; they set a public hearing on the ordinance for Aug. 27. If approved by voters, the ballot measure would not result in immediate compensation for assembly members and the mayor. Instead, it would only remove a provision from the borough charter prohibiting such payments. The assembly would need...
The borough assembly has started a lengthy process that will include a lot of public input, as it should, to possibly amend the municipal charter so that a future assembly, if it chooses, could change municipal code to pay mayors and assembly members for their work. Allowing the option of paying members a few hundred dollars a month is a good idea — not because so many other cities and boroughs in Alaska have been doing it for years, but because it takes a lot of time to be a good assembly member, more than should be expected of volunteers. S...
After developer Wayne Johnson withdrew his offer last month to purchase the former hospital, the borough now is in the process of deciding how to move forward with the property. Mayor Patty Gilbert said in an interview July 10 that the assembly will discuss options at its next meeting, scheduled for July 23. The assembly will need to regroup and think about all the options, she said. Gilbert added that there are a few parties interested in the property, but said to her knowledge there have been no formal offers. The borough owns the 1.94-acre...
The candidacy filing period opens Aug. 2 for this year’s municipal elections for mayor, borough assembly, school board and port commission. Candidates will have until Aug. 30 to complete the declaration form, which will be available starting July 31 at the borough clerk’s office in City Hall. Mayor Patty Gilbert’s two-year term expires this fall and will be on the Oct. 1 election ballot, along with the assembly seats currently held by Bob Dalrymple and Jim DeBord. The assembly seats are for three-year terms. Gilbert, who is finishing her first...
The age of presidential candidates is all over the national news, where the focus is on how old is too old. With the opening of the filing period for Wrangell municipal offices just two weeks away, the community’s focus should be on the opposite end of the age spectrum. The minimum age to serve as mayor or on the borough assembly is 18, same as the school board. Port commissioners must be at least 21 years old. Nothing against all the people in their 50s, 60s and 70s who have volunteered for public office in Wrangell — they’ve done solid work,...
Wrangell is in a Goldilocks situation when it comes to tourists. Too many is no good. It would leave the town feeling stuffed. Too few is what we have, leaving the town hungry to fill its economic bowl. Just enough more visitors to warm up the economy would be the right amount. Too bad it’s not as easy a choice as Goldilocks picking which porridge to bear down on. Wrangell is not a tourism-dominated community like Skagway or Juneau. Nor does it want to be. But a little more sales tax revenue would be a good thing, particularly if those sales t...
It really doesn’t matter why a Georgia-based real estate developer changed his mind about buying the former Wrangell hospital property and building high-end condos at the site. And it doesn’t much matter why he substantially amended his offer to the borough, months after starting negotiations, before later withdrawing the offer. Nor does it matter that he publicly blamed the Wrangell Sentinel for his decision to walk away from the development proposal, taking offense at what he perceived as criticism of his amended offer. All that really mat...
