Sorted by date Results 1002 - 1026 of 8072
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 school district is advancing funds to cover student travel to state competition this school year, with the account at an estimated $52,000 deficit. The district is looking to the community and the newly created Wrangell Athletic Club to repay the costs before the budget year closes out on June 30. “That is our hope,” Schools Superintendent Bill Burr said in late December. Student travel to state competition cost about $46,000 in the 2022-2023 school year, which the school board voted in November to cover on a one-time basis out of reserves...
The school board has offered a three-year contract extension to Schools Superintendent Bill Burr, effective July 1, 2024, pending further negotiations. “We just wanted him to know that we want him to stay,” said David Wilson, school board president, confirming that he and the rest of the board are very satisfied with Burr’s performance on the job. “He’s doing an amazing job, that’s why we offered it to him,” said school board member Liz Roundtree. The board voted at its Dec. 18 meeting to extend Burr’s contract. Burr said in an email on Dec. 2...
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....
Russian-caught pollock, cod, salmon and crab that is processed in China will no longer be legally allowed in U.S. markets, under an executive order issued Dec. 22 by President Joe Biden. The action seeks to close a loophole that the Russian seafood industry was able to use to skirt import sanctions put in place in 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The ban is now extended to any seafood caught in Russian waters or by Russian-flagged vessels, regardless whether the seafood has been “incorporated or substantially transformed into o... Full story
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released its forecast of the number of king salmon that could return to the Unuk, Taku and Chilkat Rivers in the summer of 2024. The department did not release a forecast number for the Stikine River, citing insufficient data. “However, the terminal run is expected to be well below the escapement goal range of 14,000 to 28,000,” it said. Stikine River king salmon returns fell below the lower bound of escapement goals each year from 1975-1979, as well as 1983, 1984 and 2009, and each year from 201...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. government is entering a new era of collaboration with Native American and Alaska Native leaders in managing public lands and other resources, with top federal officials saying that incorporating more Indigenous knowledge into decision-making can help spur conservation and combat climate change. Federal emergency managers on Dec. 7 also announced updates to recovery policies to aid tribal communities in the repair or rebuilding of traditional homes or ceremonial buildings after a series of wildfires, floods and o...
The Alaska Division of Public Assistance processed more than 2,000 food stamp applications over eight days in mid-December as it works to clear a backlog that has kept thousands of Alaskans waiting for benefits. Earlier in December, food aid was delayed by more than a month for over 12,000 Alaskans. That number was down to about 10,000 before Christmas. Division Director Deb Etheridge said the week before Christmas that her employees are on track to clear the backlog in 90 days. Etheridge said after the Christmas holiday she will reevaluate... Full story
Sitkans received a $300 credit on their December utility bills after the city assembly voted to share some of the higher-than-expected sales tax revenues with the public. The assembly voted to spend just over $1 million on the program, distributing the money to every residential utility account in town. Sitka saw a record number of cruise ship visitors last summer, swelling the sales tax coffers but also inconveniencing residents. In passing the appropriation in November, assembly members said they wanted citizens to receive some compensation...
Seattle-based Trident Seafoods will scale back its operations in an economically challenging global market and wants to sell several of its facilities in Alaska, including processing plants in Petersburg and Ketchikan, but the company plans to keep its Wrangell operation. "Wrangell is a highly efficient plant that makes products that feed our value-added salmon operations," Alexis Telfer, vice president for global communications at Trident, reported in an email Dec. 12. "Petersburg is a...
The cost of clearing landslide debris, digging up the roadbed to install three large culverts to carry runoff from the mountainside, building up a new base and shoulders, and then paving the rebuilt section of Zimovia Highway with concrete will exceed $1.2 million. It could be another couple weeks before the work is finished and the highway restored to two-lane traffic, said a state official. Fortunately, the Alaska Department of Transportation had enough sections of 36-inch-diameter culvert on...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed state budget for legislative consideration starting in January includes $5 million to strengthen the century-old earthen dams that contain Wrangell’s water reservoirs. The state grant would pay to “reinforce both these dams with buttresses,” likely concrete, Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma said Dec. 15. The governor released his version of the budget on Dec. 14. Lawmakers will reconvene in Juneau on Jan. 16, with the state spending plan likely to dominate the 121-day session. Villarma and other borough...
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...
After decades of helping people remember birthdays and anniversaries, the printed community calendar may be going the way of phone books. There will be no Wrangell Birthday Calendar in 2024. The chamber of commerce decided to drop the project from its work list. The last Wrangell phone book was printed in 2020. The chamber had used the calendar as a fundraiser to provide an annual scholarship to a graduating high school senior. Last year’s scholarship was $1,500. “It was discussed and we’re somewhat short-handed over the last few years...
For years, St. Frances Animal Rescue has connected the community's cats and dogs with warm, loving homes. But after its cat shelter on private property closed in 2020, the nonprofit has been searching for a new location. After three years of collaboration between St. Frances and the borough, the assembly approved a 21-year lease Dec. 12 on an industrial lot near the junction of Bennett Street and Ishiyama Drive. The nonprofit requested - and was awarded - the borough's longest available lease...
With a deep reduction in oil revenues expected, Alaska is on track for an almost $1 billion budget hole in the coming year that will have to be filled with money from savings, according to a spending plan presented Dec. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor described his budget for the year beginning next July 1 as “status quo” in most categories. “There’s no cuts in this budget,” he said during a news conference in Juneau. There are a few targeted areas with increases, however, including more staff to help process a backlog of food stamp ben... Full story
A U.S. Senate committee last week advanced legislation to create Native corporations in Wrangell, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee and Haines — if it can win Senate and House approval in the next 12 months. The five “landless Natives” communities were left out of the 1971 Alaska Native Lands Claims Settlement Act, which created regional, urban and village corporations across the state. Legislation to grant lands to the five communities has been introduced to Congress multiple times over the decades, but this year is the first time any landl...
’Twas the week before Christmas and in the inky black night, Wrangell’s houses all shone with twinkly lights. But whose halls are the best-decked? It’s deadline time to register for the annual home decorating contest sponsored by the chamber of commerce. ’Twas the week before Christmas and it’s deadline time to register for the annual home decorating contest sponsored by the chamber of commerce. Judging is set for Thursday, Dec. 21. The winners will be announced the next day. Residents who want to enter the contest need to call the chamber a...
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...
The school district has pulled money from reserves and other accounts to cover a $46,000 accumulated deficit in the account that pays for students to travel to state competition. Covering this school year’s state travel expenses and future years is still unresolved. As students already have traveled to several state competitions this school year, including volleyball, cross country and wrestling, the account for 2023-2024 is back in a deficit until a consistent funding stream is determined. The school board voted Nov. 20 to take money from r...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said education is among his top priorities in the coming fiscal year but did not include an increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, known as the base student allocation, in his proposed budget. The budget includes about $1.11 billion to fund the formula that distributes money to school districts statewide, down almost 3% from this year due to declining enrollment. Dunleavy has proposed spending almost twice as much on next year’s Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers this past spring approved a one-time appropriatio...
Alaskans could pay significantly more next year for mailing packages to, from and within the state with two price increases planned by the U.S. Postal Service. In an effort to reduce its projected $160 billion loss over the next 10 years, the Postal Service announced it is planning a 5.7% average nationwide price hike in 2024 for some shipping options. Customers using USPS Ground Advantage for shipping within Alaska would see a 9.2% average increase. The price increases are set to take effect Jan. 21, but some Alaska mailing rates from Outside...
SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S. government said Dec. 14 it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the loss of hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them. President Joe Biden’s administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sou...
TACOMA, Wash. — The 13 largest U.S. tire manufacturers are facing a lawsuit from a pair of California commercial fishing organizations that could force the companies to stop using a chemical added to almost every tire because it kills migrating salmon. Also found in footwear, synthetic turf and playground equipment, the rubber preservative 6PPD has been used in tires for 60 years. As tires wear, tiny particles of rubber are left behind on roads and parking lots, breaking down into a byproduct, 6PPD-quinone, that is deadly to salmon, s...
The collapse of Western Alaska salmon runs has been among the most consequential climate change impacts in the rapidly warming Arctic over the past two years, according to an annual report assembled by a federal agency. The 2023 Arctic Report Card, released Dec. 12 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, includes a special chapter on Alaska salmon among its updates to sea ice, air temperature and permafrost conditions in a region of the world that is warming up to four times as fast as the global average. Western Alaska salmon... Full story