Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 255
Members of the Parks and Recreation Department, the Wrangell Rod and Gun Club, The Stikine Sportsmen Association, and the Forest Service held a meeting last Wednesday, Sept. 11. The purpose of the meeting was to review some recent renovations to the outdoor gun range on Spur Road, and to discuss priorities for future improvements. Renovations to the gun range began back in May, thanks to a $14,500 grant from the NRA Foundation. According to a document passed out by Parks and Rec Director Kate...
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation Advisory Board sat down to workshop a set of proposed increases to fees for youth sports programs last Wednesday, Sept. 4. Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas said that there are two main youth programs that use the P&R facilities: The Wrangell Swim Club and AAU girls basketball. The proposed fee change to $15 per hour would see the swim club pay a total annual fee of about $6,000, while AAU will see a bill of about $2,000. According to documents provided...
The Fourth of July was a hot and sunny day in Wrangell, but that did not stop many people from getting out and having a good time. Like all previous years, this year's fourth was the culmination of a whole week of events to celebrate Independence Day. There were numerous events, games, food booths, and other things to do to keep everyone busy last Thursday. While this year stood out because of a lack of fireworks due to ongoing drought conditions across Southeast Alaska, it still brought out...
The Wrangell Borough Assembly sat down for a continuation of their ongoing series of budget workshops on Tuesday, May 14. The assembly has been putting together their FY 2019-2020 budget for the past month, and are getting closer to final approval of it. Each workshop has covered a different portion of Wrangell's facilities and their financial needs. Last week's meeting took a look at capital facilities maintenance and improvements. The capital facilities department is looking at a budget of...
The Wrangell High School class of 2019 set up shop in the gym the afternoon of Tuesday, May 7, to give presentations on their community service projects. The projects are a requirement for graduation, according to Principal David Macri, worth about half a credit. The senior students, individually or in small groups, are supposed to spend at least 20 hours on a project or series of projects that help the wider community. Afterwards, they then put together a poster board reporting on what they...
The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board met to review some proposed fee changes last Wednesday, May 8. The fee changes discussed in the meeting were mainly for streamlining and reformatting, according to Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas. She said that most of the altered fees were either moved into a different category of the department's spreadsheet, or eliminated altogether. For example, the $5 fee for use of the showers at the community pool was removed, as Thomas said those fees...
From building flower pots to repairing walls, a group of AmeriCorps volunteers will be spending six weeks volunteering in Wrangell. "Green 3," as the team is called, came to Wrangell at the request of the U.S. Forest Service to help with a wide variety of community service projects in the area. They arrived on April 24, according to a press release from the National Civilian Community Corps, and will be working in the area until June 3. "The team overall is excited to be in Wrangell for the firs...
The Wrangell Borough Assembly held an emergency meeting last Thursday night to adopt a "surplus property agreement" with the Nome Joint Utility System. The surplus property in question is a pair of diesel generators currently sitting in storage in Nome. Power has been a topic of concern around Wrangell, and amongst the assembly, thanks in part to the recent hydropower shortages at Tyee and Swan Lake. Wrangell currently has four diesel generators which it can use for power in the event of an...
The third Helping Our Parks Project, according to Wrangell Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas, was a huge success. The HOP Project is an annual event organized by the parks and rec department, where volunteers come out to parks around Wrangell and help with cleaning and upkeep. Thomas said that they saw 61 volunteers at Volunteer Park last Saturday morning. This was on the higher end of the number of volunteers they have seen. In a previous interview, Thomas said that they see between 50...
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation Advisory Board met for their monthly meeting last Wednesday evening, April 3. Two of the main topics covered in this month's meeting were the upcoming "Helping Our Parks" project, as well as how the parks and recreation department can best prepare for potential budget cuts. Kate Thomas, director of the parks and recreation department, said that the HOP Project has been one of her main priorities for the past few weeks. The project, which will be taking place on...
The Helping Our Parks Project, or "HOP" Project, is an annual community service event organized by the Wrangell Parks and Recreation Department. Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas said that this is the third year it will be held and it's coming up on April 20. The HOP Project began in 2017, she said, when the department and local volunteers came out to Volunteer Park to clean up and repair the place. In 2018 it took place at City Park. This year, they are coming back to Volunteer Park,...
Music, dancing, celebration, awkward photographs, there is a lot that goes into a prom that makes the evening special. For most people, going to prom ends after graduating from high school. In Wrangell, however, the party just keeps going. Wrangellites over the age of 21 are invited to the second annual "adult prom" at the end of the month. Lucy Robinson, with the Parks and Recreation department, and Caitlin Cardinell, with Alaska Waters, have been working to help organize the prom. Dawn...
In 2018 The Walker Foundation provided nearly $50,000 in funding to four Wrangell organizations that support health-related projects. The board selected Community Roots, City of Wrangell Parks and Recreation, City of Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department, and Southeast Beasts as recipients out of numerous applications. Community Roots is a local social support group for the LGBTQA community. The Walker Foundation awarded Community Roots with a $1,000.00 grant to help support QPR GateKeeper Suicide Prevention Training in March. City of Wrangell...
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation Advisory Board held their monthly meeting last Wednesday, Feb. 13. Among various topics of discussion was the list of priorities for the department with the new year. Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas lined out some of the priorities she felt needed the most attention. One is to increase the hours of the recreation coordinator position from 30 hours a week to 40. She also said she would like to hire a lifeguard to a permanent position to monitor evening...
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation department is offering lifeguard training, starting on Jan. 10. The courses are open to all eligible candidates over the age of 16. Those wishing to participate must pass a few tests. The first test is a 300 yard swim, either a front crawl or a breaststroke. Second, participants must be able to tread water for two minutes continuously with only their legs. The third test requires swimmers to swim 20 yards, dive underwater to retrieve a 10 lb. brick, return to the surface, and swim back while holding the brick...
The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board met on the evening of Wed., Dec. 5. It was the first meeting for two new members of the board, Annya Ritchie and Keeleigh Morelli. One of the first items on the agenda was board member reports, about parks and recreation related events or ideas in Wrangell. Ritchie, who is also a member of the school board, reported that the school is in the process of looking at its PE and health curriculum. She said she has been looking into ways the school system and...
It was a long meeting for the Wrangell Borough Assembly on the evening of Oct. 23. Nearly reaching two hours long, a large portion of the meeting was devoted to a proposed amendment to the municipal code, which would remove the invocation as a mandatory part of assembly meetings. Mayor Steven Prysunka explained that this has been brought up because of a recent ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court, when they found that the invocation policy of the Borough of Kenai Peninsula was unconstitutional. The court recently ruled that an assembly cannot...
BRAVE, the Wrangell organization advocating for stronger community relationships, will be hosting a Family Resilience Fair on Oct. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Nolan Center. According to volunteer Maleah Wenzel, the fair is meant to provide Wrangell families with information about what resources are available to them. She added that the event was originally going to be held at the high school commons, but it has outgrown the space and was moved to the Nolan Center. “Basically the purpose of this is to make sure people in town know what resources t...
The youth basketball program hosted by the Wrangell Parks and Recreation Department has been a part of the community for many years, according to Lucy Robinson, who played from fourth through sixth grade. She said that the program is a good opportunity for children to get a good foundation on the basics of basketball while also having lots of fun. The youth basketball program is open for kids from the second to the fifth grade. Robinson said that it is open to sixth graders, as long as they are...
"Alaska Sprouts – Seeds of Change" is a new group in the city of Wrangell, recently funded through grant money received by the Wrangell Cooperative Association. Their goal, according to the organization's Facebook page, is to help make a brighter future for the city's youth. One of the ways this all-volunteer group hopes to do so is by hosting "teen nights." Jillian Privett is the main organizer of Alaska Sprouts. She said the teen night is aimed for eighth through twelfth-graders, and is m...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association recently received a $50,000 grant from SEARHC. According to WCA Tribal Administrator Esther Ashton, several other communities with First Nations entities also received similar grants. The "Healthy is Here" grant is meant to help promote public health within their community. "The way that it was defined was really left up to the tribal board to determine how they wanted to promote health and culture within our community," Ashton said. "So the board went...
Late last week, a tree collapsed along the Mt. Dewey hiking trail. The public was first made aware about the tree via Facebook by Wrangell resident Karl Torgramsen. According to him, the tree fell near the top of the trail and was difficult to get around. Kate Thomas, director of the Wrangell Parks and Recreation Department, said that several community members had called to inform them about the tree over the weekend. She added that, as of 9:30 Monday morning, the tree had been removed. "There...
Lucy Robinson started her running group, Southeast Beasts, in 2012. The group is meant to offer both new and experienced runners an informal, fun place for people to exercise and enjoy the Alaskan outdoors. Robinson is now helping spread her love of running to the next generation. Once a week, volunteering with the Wrangell Parks and Recreation Department, she leads a group of kids on a fun run through Volunteer Park, next to Evergreen Elementary school. "We do this every Monday that we can,...
The snow around Wrangell has at last abated, temperatures are above freezing once again and spring is in the air. Left behind in the sweep of this seasonal change, a winter’s worth of litter, rubbish and debris have reappeared along city streets and facilities, which several initiatives planned for this month hope to address. First up, this Saturday Wrangell’s annual community cleanup is being organized at Evergreen Elementary School. The site will be a staging area and meeting point for volunteers through the morning. Starting at 8:30 a.m...