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In a series of hearings last week, members of the Alaska Legislature heard emotional testimony about the need for more education funding. As lawmakers consider the idea, it’s becoming increasingly clear within the Capitol that more funding for public schools will come at the expense of the Permanent Fund dividend. “The state of Alaska is probably facing its largest fiscal problem … in 30 years,” said Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Feb. 11. Hoffman has been a legislator since 1987. Under the governo...
Dozens of Alaska students, parents and school board members from across the state visited the Legislature on Feb. 10, painting a picture of crowded classrooms, teacher shortages, agonizing school closures, loss of learning opportunities and uncertainty about the future. "We have cut and cut and cut, year after year after year, due to stagnant funding from the state," said Bobby Burgess, a school board member from Fairbanks. "We have trimmed the fat. We have cut into the flesh, and we are...
Almost one-quarter of the jobs in the state ferry system are unfilled, and the vacancy rate is highest among the positions that require the most training, Alaska Marine Highway System Director Craig Tornga told state lawmakers last week. Among wheelhouse positions, the vacancy rate is above 30%, he said at a House committee hearing on Feb. 11. The ferry system has been short crew for the past few years, limiting the number of vessels it can put into service and further eroding its passenger revenues. To operate the cross-gulf route between...
Passenger and vehicle traffic aboard the Alaska Marine Highway System moved slightly higher in 2024 from 2023, but still is less than half its peak from the early 1990s. The state ferries carried just over 185,000 passengers and about 65,000 vehicles last year on its routes stretching from Southeast to Prince William Sound and into several Gulf of Alaska coastal communities. That’s down from more than 400,000 passengers and 110,000 vehicles 1990-1992. And it’s down from more than 325,000 passengers as recently as the early 2010s. Marine Dir...
Mass layoffs in the federal workforce ordered by President Donald Trump began to hit Alaska employees last week, with workers losing jobs at multiple agencies across the state. The scale of the Alaska layoffs wasn’t fully clear, but by Friday, Feb. 14, included around 30 Alaska employees at the U.S. Forest Service and 30 with the National Park Service, according to employees and union representatives. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said late Friday that “dozens of Alaskans — potentially over 100 in total” had lost their jobs, criticizing what sh...
Southeast Alaska residents are used to choppy waters, so while they may be getting seasick over the waves of uncertainty in federal programs and funding stirred up by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, smoother sailing is on the horizon, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a conference of regional business and community leaders Feb. 11. A mix of uncertainty, optimism and concern about the Trump administration’s impacts on the region was expressed by other federal, state and industry officials participating in the opening day of Southeast Con...
In a 5-2 vote, the Alaska Board of Fisheries rejected a proposal to cut by 25% the allowable egg harvest for Southeast salmon hatcheries. The proposal, submitted by former board member and North Pole resident Virgil Umphenour, sought to “reduce the permitted egg take of pink and chum salmon of each applicable Southeast hatchery … by 25%.” The board voted Feb. 8, the next-to-last day of its 13-day meeting in Ketchikan. Similar proposals to significantly cut the egg harvest at Southeast hatcheries have come before the board at least four previ...
Wrangell Elks Lodge No. 1595 received $19,000 in state and national Elks funds which the lodge has distributed to four separate community programs. The grant funds were distributed to the school wrestling program, Senior Center, Parks and Recreation’s youth swim program, and for grocery gift cards for veterans and their families. The checks — and burgers — were presented at the Elks Club weekly burger night Thursday, Feb. 13. “The Wrangell Elks Lodge is proud to support these programs and more in our community,” said Dawn Angerman, a lodge trus...
Maylee Martin is working to line up financing to buy Tiny’s Taxi and its vehicle, but until that comes though she is offering to give people rides for a donation. Tiny’s Taxi closed down last month, and Martin stepped in to provide donation-only rides when and where she can, while working toward setting up her own business. Tiny’s was the only taxi service in Wrangell. “I’m just doing this until … I get the loan I need,” she said last week of her work with a financial institution under a state loan program. She plans to call her new business...
The borough assembly on Feb. 11 appointed Phillip Mach and Antonio Silva to fill vacancies on the assembly and port commission, respectively. Both terms will expire in October, when Mach and Silva will have the option to run in the municipal elections. Anne Morrison (assembly) and Gary Morrison (port commission) vacated the seats in January after announcing they plan on leaving town. Candidates needed to submit a letter of interest to City Hall to be eligible for the appointments. While Borough...
The borough assembly on Feb. 11 unanimously approved an ordinance to eliminate the need for the public to approve the sale of borough-owned assets valued at more than $1 million. The decision came after borough attorneys suggested the clause in Wrangell’s charter violated the state constitution, as it allowed the public to usurp the assembly’s appropriations powers. “From a legal standpoint,” borough attorney Rob Luce said, “it’s not good practice to leave … charter sections on the books that aren’t legal or aren’t constitutional. A...
Vaccinations successfully guarded children from pertussis, a respiratory disease also known as whooping cough, during last year’s spike in cases of the disease in Alaska, a new state report says. Unvaccinated children were more than 13 times as likely as vaccinated children to get the disease during the outbreak, according to a bulletin released by the Alaska Division of Public Health’s epidemiology section. There were more confirmed cases of pertussis in Alaska last year — over 500 — than in all the years from 2016 to 2023 combined, accordi...
The number of nonresidents working in Alaska hit a new record in 2023 and all major industries are relying more heavily on workers who do not live in the state, according to the state Department of Labor. Nonresident workers in Alaska totaled 92,664 in 2023 and comprised 23.5% of the workforce, the highest percentage since 1995, according to an annual report published by the department that is mandated by state law. Typically, about one in five workers in Alaska is not a resident of the state, and certain seasonal industries, such as seafood...
Federal fishery managers took steps on Feb. 11 to impose new rules to prevent Alaska chum salmon from being scooped into nets that go after Bering Sea pollock, an industrial-scale fishery that produces the nation’s largest single-species commercial seafood harvest. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council advanced a suite of new protections intended to combat the pollock trawlers’ salmon bycatch, the term for the incidental catch of unintended species. Proposed steps in the package include numeric caps on total chum salmon bycatch, wit...
After seven years of planning and almost 18 months of construction, Wrangell's state-of-the-art water treatment plant is in the final phases. The $23 million project not only modernizes Wrangell's system but ensures the town is better prepared for future dry spells. The plant will likely go fully online this spring. The current plant started operations in 1999, and many of its pieces are being repurposed into the new plant just next door. While the current plant initially relies on an electrical...
It’s time to expand the generating capacity at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric station to handle growing demand — particularly from heat pumps — the plant’s operator said of its plans to line up $20 million in funding and a federal permit to add a third turbine to the facility. The Tyee Lake station started supplying Wrangell and Petersburg in 1984. It was built with two turbines rated at 10 megawatts each, with an empty bay at the Bradfield Canal facility to add a third turbine when needed. That time is now, said Robert Siedman, chief executi...
Some of the Southeast commercial troll fishery’s allocation of migratory king salmon will be shifted to the nonresident/resident sport fishery following a 5-2 vote by the Alaska Board of Fisheries on the 10th day of its 13-day meeting in Ketchikan. Board members voted on Thursday, Feb. 6, to adopt state regulatory language shifting the allocation from the 80%/20% troll/sport split that’s been in place since 1996 to a new 77%/23% split for the troll and sport fisheries, respectively. Reducing the troll allocation is an acknowledgment by the boa...
Wrangell’s playgrounds are old and need more than short-term patching and patchwork repairs. As it looks toward fundraising for substantial upgrades, the Parks and Recreation Department wants to hear what the community wants. The department is conducting an online survey — just half-a-dozen questions — to learn what features and equipment are important to people at Shoemaker Park Playground and the Kyle Angerman Playground near the library downtown. “We’re just trying to get a basic idea of which playground people use” and what they want t...
The Alaska Senate is considering a bill that would allow parents who are owed child support to apply for the Permanent Fund dividend of the parent who is delinquent in their payments, providing a work-around to collect from parents who do not bother to apply for their annual PFD. “The reality is that in some cases,” said Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar, the bill’s sponsor, the owing parent either forgets to apply or decides not to apply out of spite to deny the money to the other parent. Under state law, garnishment of the dividend for child...
Wrangell's Bearfest doesn't start until the end of July but organizers have come up with a unique musical event to help drum up support for the annual all-things-bears weeklong celebration. Unit Souzou, a Japanese folk drumming group, is coming to town as the first stop on their Alaska tour next month. The group also is scheduled to perform in Petersburg, Anchorage and Bethel, said Sylvia Ettefagh, a volunteer organizer for Bearfest. The statewide tour is funded by grants. "I look for...
Wondering how changing global temperatures will affect Wrangell? The Nolan Center has you covered. A new exhibit sits just inside the Nolan Center lobby. The display is free to the public and will remain up through the end of the month. It was put together by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s (UCAR) Center for Science Education in 2019, though it only began traveling again in 2022 after sitting dormant during the pandemic. Wrangell is the first stop of the exhibit’s Alaska leg. Next up it will travel to Fairbanks, Anchorage,...
The inside of the new sauna is 150 degrees warmer than the outside air this week. Parks and Rec opened a new poolside sauna on Feb. 3. No reservation is required to use the facility, though you will need to have access to either a Parks and Rec membership or a single-day pass. The freestanding sauna seats four people (though it more comfortably seats three), and availability is based on first-come, first-served. Sauna time is limited to 20 minutes, and it is recommended that 15 to 20 minutes is the sweet spot for sauna use. The wooden structure...
You'll struggle to find anyone who works harder on the basketball court than Trevyn Gillen and Lucas Schneider. Ever competitive and armed with an uncompromising desire to win, the two seniors constantly galvanize the Wrangell High School boys basketball team on both sides of the ball. For their senior project, Gillen and Schneider imparted this same passion on the next generation of Wrangell's basketball players. The two served as assistant coaches for the middle school basketball team, an...
Facing steep growth in demand, constant turnover and employee retirements, Alaska’s health care industry has a staggering need for workers, a new report says. “To meet those variables, we have to find over 9,400 new health care workers every single year,” Jared Kosin, executive director of the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association, said last month. The numbers Kosin presented at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce meeting on Jan. 27 were from his association’s newly released analysis of Alaska’s health care workforce. The report, by Juneau-b...
The state is bringing in less money than it is spending and is on pace to finish the current fiscal year with a deficit of $171 million, according to figures presented Feb. 4. Lacey Sanders, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s top budget official, told the Senate Finance Committee that spending from the Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund likely will be needed to close the gap before the Legislature’s scheduled adjournment in May. That would require support from three-quarters of the House and three-quarters of the Senate — usually a politically fraught negot...