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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving ahead with its review of the borough’s wetlands fill permit application to develop the former Wrangell Institute property for residential lots. The borough hopes to start ground-clearing work next year, Carol Rushmore, the borough’s planning and zoning director, said last week. Permit review work had been on hold while state and federal agencies and the borough coordinated an archaeological records and ground survey of the property that had been used as a Bureau of Indian Affairs Native boarding sch...
The borough will list Wrangell’s former hospital building on a nationwide surplus public property website, hoping for better results than efforts the past two months which resulted in not a single bid. “We’ve got to get rid of this,” Mayor Steve Prysunka said at the July 26 borough assembly meeting. The borough has been paying close to $100,000 a year to keep the building heated and insured, and protected against water damage. The borough ran an online auction in June to sell the property but received no bids. It then offered the buildin...
Candidates have until 4 p.m. Aug. 31 to file their declaration and signature petition at City Hall for a spot on the Oct. 4 municipal election ballot. The offices of mayor, two borough assembly seats, three school board seats and two spots on the port commission will be on the ballot. Mayor Steve Prysunka, who has served two terms (four years), said last week he is not seeking reelection. Before winning his first term as mayor in 2018, Prysunka served three years on the borough assembly. The mayor’s job is a two-year term. The terms also expire...
The process will stretch over the next couple of months, with a public hearing and a lot of public information, but it looks like the borough assembly will ask voters in the Oct. 4 municipal election to approve borrowing as much as $15 million for long-needed repairs to all of the school buildings and the Public Safety Building. Selling bonds to finance the work will mean promising to repay those bonds, which will mean higher property taxes until the debt is repaid. Anyone who has driven by and looked at any of the buildings can see they need a...
Each step was like planting my feet into water-soaked bath towels. Thirteen miles of nonstop sloshing in last Sunday’s BearFest half marathon could be viewed by some as not so fun. But for me, it was a chance to think about the past year. Most runners will tell you that the pastime is therapy, affording us plenty of time to ponder our path in life. Just under a year ago, I arrived in Wrangell, with a U-Haul full of my past life. My decision has been reaffirmed every day since. Here’s why: I came from a place where a population of 45,000 peo...
A proposal to build a boat haul-out facility in Sitka with the money the city received from selling its community hospital property will be on the Oct. 4 city election ballot. On a 6-0 vote July 26, the assembly gave final approval to an ordinance on the ballot question. If passed by the voters, up to $8.18 million from the 2021 sale of the hospital building and property to SEARHC would go toward construction of a haul-out and boatyard at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. Sitka has not had a boat haul-out — an important piece of i...
The borough assembly is considering whether to seek voter approval to sell $10.5 million in bonds for the first phase of rehab work at the rot-damaged 35-year-old Public Safety Building, and $4.5 million in bonds to help pay for roof, siding and boiler work at school buildings that range in age from 35 to 53 years old. Repayment of the bonds would come from municipal revenues, particularly property taxes. The assembly was scheduled to meet in a work session Tuesday evening to discuss the proposal, followed by the regular meeting where members w...
Few would dispute that Wrangell needs affordable, dependable child care services. The lack of child care keeps parents away from filling the long list of job vacancies around town and, when their kids are sick, can keep them away from the jobs they already hold. People need to work and want to raise children, and the community needs more children in school and more people to take jobs — child care seems a reasonable approach toward meeting all those needs. And while there are some at-home providers in town, and certainly friends and r...
The borough is applying for a $1.166 million state grant to go toward replacing the harbor float at Meyers Chuck. The 400-foot-long float is 57 years old, supported by steel pilings almost 40 years old, according to information presented at the July 11 borough assembly meeting. Assembly members approved the application for state funding. The float “has been in a poor and deteriorated condition for many years and needs to be replaced,” said a report to the assembly prepared by Amber Al-Haddad, Wrangell’s public facilities director. Total cost...
Looking to ensure that all property is taxed fairly and equitably, the borough is considering a reassessment of all residential and commercial properties for next year’s tax bills. The goal is for assessments to be consistent and “fair and equitable for everyone,” Borough Manager Jeff Good said last week. It’s not about raising taxes, it’s to ensure that similar properties are assessed accordingly, he said. Generally, the borough’s property assessor — a contractor from out of town — reviews the value assigned to about a third of the property...
No one bid on the former Wrangell hospital building, which the borough had offered to sell at a minimum asking price of $830,000. The bidding period was open for a month and closed last Thursday. The property is now available for an over-the-counter sale. “It means that the first person to come in to sign an intent to purchase with a 20% down payment (payment in full within 60 days of signing) would be the buyer,” Borough Clerk Kim Lane explained last Friday. “If that happens, I would then take a resolution to the assembly to approve the sale....
School district staff, a school board member, borough assembly members and law enforcement met on June 28 in a work session to discuss school safety measures in the case of an intruder. Ideas such as single points of entry on campuses, student identification cards, video surveillance, arming teachers and others were brainstormed as possible solutions to increase the security of each school. Nationwide so far in 2022, there have been 27 school shootings that resulted in 27 deaths and 56 injuries, according to Education Week, a publication that...
The borough last week closed on its $2.5 million purchase of the former sawmill property at 6 Mile Zimovia Highway and separately signed an agreement with the state that would hold Wrangell harmless if any past contamination is discovered at the site. In exchange for the hold-harmless agreement, the borough will need to assess the current situation at the property and monitor the site, such as if any soil contamination is found during excavation or construction on the property, Borough Manager Jeff Good said last week. The agreement with the...
The million-dollar project to extend the Mount Dewey trail, add a parking lot off Bennett Street for the new portion of the trail and connect the Volunteer Park Trail to Ishiyama Drive has been pushed back to next year. In addition to resolving a federally required payment to a mitigation bank as compensation for filling in a small amount of wetlands in the work area, borough officials need to wait for further analysis of a slope on Mount Dewey above Third Street that shows signs of soil movement. A geologist was in town in May for another...
SEARHC is continuing to expand its behavioral health services in Sitka and also to serve residents of other Southeast communities, an official of the health care provider has told the Sitka borough assembly. “I wanted to bring your attention to some of the changes, the evolution of the behavioral health service line at SEARHC,” said Dr. Elliot Bruhl, senior vice president and chief medical officer at the Sitka-based SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. He called behavioral health “one of our number of areas of emphasis in terms of our c...
After finding a solution to a contractor lien against the property owner, the borough this week completed the purchase to take over ownership of the former sawmill property at 6 Mile. “The intent is not to hold on to the property,” Mayor Steve Prysunka said at the June 14 assembly meeting. The purpose in buying the 39 acres is to guard against the seller further piecing out the land in small parcels that could hinder future large-scale development. “Site control of this area has been really important,” he said. The owner has been “chunki...
The borough is making progress on its long and expensive to-do list. The decisions are not easy and several are costly. Many have been around a long time. That’s not because anyone did anything wrong. Rather, it takes time to confront hard decisions to resolve long-standing problems. And, in many cases, it takes time to find money to pay for the solutions. But the decisions are necessary and deserve the community’s support. After wrangling over multiple options, the Wrangell assembly has put up for sale the former hospital building. The borough...
The borough has listed the former Wrangell Medical Center for sale to the highest bidder until June 30, at a minimum bid of $830,000, the value assigned by an April appraisal. The hospital has been vacant since health care provider SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium moved into its new building in February 2021. The borough has been spending close to $100,000 a year to heat and insure the empty structure, and the assembly has decided to sell the surplus property. The lot is 1.95 acres, o...
Work on an outdoor deck at Chief Shakes Hot Springs up the Stikine River has been delayed until next spring, after federal funds the Forest Service expected for the project have yet to arrive. The site, which consists of two hot tubs — one indoor and one outdoor — was supposed to get a facelift this month, favoring a higher river and tide levels for easier access at this time of the year. The project, which had been estimated at $190,000, received $81,200 from the Great American Outdoors Act — or so the Forest Service had been told, Distr...
In a May 31 budget work session to consider borough finances for the fiscal year that starts July 1, Finance Director Mason Villarma advised the assembly that the borough is working toward accepting credit card payments for property and sales taxes but will charge a fee to accept the cards. “We are still finalizing our process and we may establish fees at a certain dollar threshold,” Villarma said last Friday. “We will be sure to give folks ample notice,” he added. “This will not apply to utility or moorage credit card payments,” Villarma wr...
About one-third of Alaska’s legislators could be new to their job next year as multiple incumbents have decided to retire or seek higher office. The candidate filing deadline for the Aug. 16 statewide primary election was June 1. In addition to the state Senate president, Soldotna Republican Peter Micciche, and Senate Democratic minority leader Tom Begich, of Anchorage, eight other legislative incumbents have decided it is time to retire or take a break from elected office. In addition to those 10 who decided not to seek reelection, eight m...
At the assembly’s May 24 meeting, members unanimously approved a resolution setting the property tax levy for this year at 12.75 mills, which is $1,275 on every $100,000 in assessed value, the same rate as last year. The tax rate is 4 mills for property outside the borough’s service area, such as Thoms Place toward the southern end of Wrangell Island and Meyers Chuck. Property tax payments are due by Oct. 15. The borough estimates it will collect almost $1.8 million in property taxes in the fiscal year that starts July 1, with more than 96%...
The borough assembly and SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium have come to an agreement of voluntary payments by SEARHC of $45,000 per year for 10 years on property owned by the nonprofit health care provider in town. In negotiations that began in November, the borough had been asking for $225,000 a year, and SEARHC had asked for a refund on a $331,287 property tax bill it paid in full on the new Wrangell Medical Center in 2021. As a nonprofit, SEARHC is exempt under state law from property taxes. In the agreement approved by the...
The borough assembly is looking at updated cost estimates and options to repair or replace the ailing Public Safety Building. If the assembly settles on a plan, it could go to voters this fall to seek approval to issue bonds to pay for the work. Assembly members were scheduled Tuesday evening to review three options presented by the Capital Facilities Department on what to do with the beleaguered, 34-year-old structure that houses the borough’s police department, jail, fire department, indoor shooting range and motor vehicle department, the fed...
The borough will be required to pay an estimated $30,000 to $40,000 to fulfill a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mitigation stipulation in order to obtain authorization to fill wetlands for the Mount Dewey trail extension project. The nearly $1 million trail project will hinge on what is called compensatory mitigation, after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in March found the project will affect 0.55 acres, 0.05 more acres of wetlands than the borough anticipated, Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad said last Thursday. Compensation is not...
