Sorted by date Results 2706 - 2730 of 7954
A 21% increase in sewage rates will take effect in May, adding about $8.50 a month to a residential utility bill. The borough has not raised the rate since 2015 and anticipates costly upgrades will be needed to the community’s sewage treatment system to meet state and federal standards. The assembly unanimously approved the increase at its March 22 meeting. Though a similar rate hike for water service was on the agenda, the assembly postponed action and set another public hearing on the issue for April 12. In addition to the 21% boost in sewage...
Wrangell schools need substitute teachers, and they’re looking anywhere and everywhere. The substitute drought has been a problem for a few years, but it’s been made worse by COVID-19 and a lack of people willing to work. “Currently, we have 16 substitutes on the list, which means three or four are available on any given day,” said Kimberly Powell, administrative assistant for the school district. “We could use 10 more.” Powell said in the past they have had 25 substitutes on the call list, making it easier to cover for any staff — from teac...
A Wrangell couple that escaped Prague during the 1968 Soviet Union-led invasion of Czechoslovakia is finding parallels to the Russian invasion of Ukraine - and it is bringing back old memories of escaping Prague shortly after they were married. Ivan Simonek, 78, and Gina Simonek, 77, arrived in Wrangell in November 1968 with swimsuits packed - not because they were planning to take a dip in the Zimovia Strait, but because the couple, 25 and 23 at the time, had a honeymoon planned in Yugoslavia....
The hooligan are back. When the eagles disappear from town and the sea lions start hauling out on the beach at Lesnoi Island, it's a pretty sure bet hooligan season is upon the Stikine, said David Rak, forester at the U.S. Forest Service in Wrangell. If you go to the north side of Wrangell Island, Rak said, you can hear the sea lions barking from a spot where hundreds haul out on the beach at Lesnoi Island. "When the eagles all disappear from town, they're over there," Rak said last Wednesday....
The borough set a record last year for sales tax collections, exceeding budget estimates for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2021. And so far this year, sales tax receipts are continuing on another record pace. Multiple factors are leading to the increase in sales tax collections, officials said. The borough collected $3.26 million from its 7% sales tax on goods and services last year, about $300,000 more than in the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2019 and $600,000 above the 2017 number. Sales tax revenues have exceeded budget estimates each of...
The deadline to apply for this year’s Alaska Permanent Fund dividend is Thursday. Applications must be submitted online by 11:59 p.m. Thursday, or mailed and postmarked that day. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 570,000 Alaskans had applied for the annual payment from earnings of the state’s 45-year-old oil-wealth savings account — which means a lot more applications are expected in the final week. About 670,000 people have submitted applications in recent years, with about 640,000 determined eligible and approved for payment. Last year...
Alaska Airlines will use a larger aircraft on southbound Flight 64 for a couple of months this summer, adding about three dozen more seats to the capacity of the daily flight that goes from Anchorage to Juneau, Petersburg, Wrangell, Ketchikan and Seattle. While the additional seat availability will help Wrangell travelers book a ticket on the day they want to fly, the need to bring in the larger aircraft was triggered by all the flyers from Prince of Wales Island communities who board in Ketchikan, said Scott Habberstad, the airline’s A...
JUNEAU (AP) — State election officials on March 22 announced plans for a June 11 special primary and an Aug. 16 special election to fill the U.S. House seat left vacant with the death of Alaska Rep. Don Young. The winner would serve the remainder of Young’s term, which ends in January. Another election would be held in November to fill the next full two-year term in Congress, which will start in January. Officials are planning for the special primary to be conducted by mail given the short timeline to hold the election, said Lt. Gov. Kevin Mey...
It only takes a fraction of a second for a school, health care center, municipality or others to be the victim of a cyberattack. It could take months or even years to recover, if at all. Brittani Robbins, executive director of the chamber of commerce, and Matt Gore, an educational technology leader and former IT director for the borough and Wrangell School District, are working together to educate Alaska communities about the threats to cybersecurity and how to mitigate them. They are also advocating for strategic partnerships to develop disast...
JUNEAU (AP) — Independent Al Gross announced plans Monday to run for Alaska’s U.S. House seat following the death earlier this month of Rep. Don Young. Gross’ campaign, in a statement, said he will file as a candidate to fill the remaining term that ends in January, and for the full two-year term that begins in January. Gross in 2020 ran a $20 million campaign for U.S. Senate, losing to incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. Gross, who has worked as an orthopedic surgeon and fisherman, ran unsuccessfully for the hospital board in Peter...
As the green of spring begins to replace the gray of winter, the Wrangell Community Garden crew wants to prepare its plots for planting. Volunteers are needed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on April 16 at the community garden site at 1.5 Mile to move soil, set up garden beds and fill them with soil. “In theory, we will be setting up the new beds and filling them, possibly Wrangell lasagna-style, depending on how much soil we have available,” said Kim Wickman, community garden board member. Lasagna-style filling starts with a layer of soil or gra...
The Wrangell nonprofit BRAVE (Building Respect and Valuing Everyone) will be busy in April, taking part in the statewide effort to promote National Child Abuse Prevention Month. A couple of high school students are recording public service announcements that will be read on KSTK throughout the month, and the community group will provide information packets for families of Evergreen Elementary School students, said Kay Larson, of BRAVE. “Each year, thousands of cases of child abuse and neglect are substantiated in Alaska. Our Alaska c...
Sundae + Mr. Goessl, a husband-and-wife duo from Wisconsin that plays vintage pop, cowboy jazz and Americana will perform in Wrangell next week, sponsored by Bearfest. The concert is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, at the Nolan Center. Tickets are $10. The duo “has a style all their own and incorporate humor, vintage style, interesting instrumentation, nostalgia and serious musicianship in their act,” according to write-ups from reviewers and others. “Some label their style as vintage pop and others deem it cowboy jazz.” Their s...
Tyler Eagle, who started as museum coordinator at the Nolan Center and Wrangell Museum last August, is taking part in a state-run training program on what to do and which collections to save first in case of a disaster or emergency. Museum heads and coordinators of cultural collections across the state are taking part in the weekly online training program, put on by the state Libraries, Archives and Museums Division under the Department of Education, which runs until June. Disasters in the past...
The owner of River's Mouth Trading Co. on Case Avenue is opening a thrift store at 106 Lynch St., in the spot vacated by Island Salon, next to Groundswell. Called River's Mouth Resale, owner Kelly Ellis said she'd been tossing the idea around for a while. A recent Facebook post about the need for another thrift store in town "inspired me to go ahead and go for it." Between rising freight prices and supply chain issues, "it feels like taking things out of the waste stream and offering them for...
The biggest lesson Darryl Smith has taken away from his high school senior project is the benefit of teaching others - even his teacher. Smith's project centers on creating signs for the U.S. Forest Service, but it required him to learn and employ woodworking technology that can have long-term benefits for the community. Ten road signs are being milled by Smith with road names engraved in Tlingit and English. The signs, which are 18-inches high by about four-feet long, will be transported to...
The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a new map of state Senate districts for Anchorage “constituted an unconstitutional political gerrymander violating equal protection under the Alaska Constitution” and must be redrawn before its use in this year’s statewide election. In a combined summary decision, the court said it is upholding a lower court ruling that instructed the state’s five-person redistricting board to redraw the Senate map or explain why it is impossible to do so. As part of the decision that combined several lawsuits against...
As part of its plan to accommodate a large increase in cruise ship visitors this summer, Sitka is offering grants of $1,000 or more to businesses and other entities that will open their bathrooms to the public. The community is expecting ships with capacity to carry close to half-a-million passengers this summer, more than double the pre-COVID year of 2019. The city posted the grant application on its website last Thursday. The city’s tourism office, Visit Sitka, will direct visitors to the locations of the public facilities using maps, s...
Salvage teams, the U.S. Coast Guard and state Department of Environmental Conservation reported last Thursday that fuel leaks from the grounded tug in Neva Strait 17 miles northwest of Sitka have been stopped. The state agency updated its situation report Thursday afternoon, noting that the exact quantity of diesel spilled is unknown but progress is being made in the cleanup on the water around the 83-foot tugboat Western Mariner. “Additionally, fuel has been removed from the engine room,” the department said in its report. The Department of...
Juneau-based Channel Construction will resume accepting scrap metal at no charge — including vehicles — starting Friday at the former sawmill property at 6.3-Mile Zimovia Highway. The company, which brings its barge to communities throughout Southeast to collect scrap metal for hauling to recyclers out of state, will operate its collection site in Wrangell “for the foreseeable future,” the borough announced last week. The site will be open for people to drop off scrap metal and vehicles drained of oil and gasoline and stripped of their tires f...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A former police dispatcher in the Bering Sea coastal community of Nome has settled with the city after officers failed to investigate her report of being sexually assaulted in 2017. Under terms of the agreement, Clarice “Bun” Hardy, an Alaska Native woman now living in Shaktoolik, will drop her lawsuit in exchange for $750,000 and an apology from the city, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said March 22. “The mayor and common council wish to apologize to Clarice ‘Bun’ Hardy for the fact that the Nome Police Departmen...
FAIRBANKS (AP) — In the pristine expanse of Alaska’s Interior lies a dirty secret: Some of the most polluted winter air in the United States can be found in and around Fairbanks. The Fairbanks North Star Borough, which includes Alaska’s second-largest city, routinely exceeds limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for particle pollution that can be inhaled and cause myriad health problems. Over seven weeks this winter, nearly 50 scientists from the U.S. and Europe descended on Fairbanks to study the sources of air pollu...
JUNEAU (AP) — Anchorage Democrat Elvi Gray-Jackson said last Friday that she is ending her run for U.S. Senate in Alaska and instead will seek reelection to the state Senate, where she has served since 2019. Gray-Jackson, in a statement released by her campaign, said that as first-quarter fundraising concludes “and after some deep reflection on our current system and the monumental expenses necessary to run a successful campaign, I have decided that my best efforts to change that system and to change Alaska will be done in the Senate in Jun...
Posted 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 1 The state health department website reported Friday that there have been 54 COVID-19 cases in Wrangell in the past 14 days, with 28 of those in the past seven days and nine in the past two days. The case counts include only those test results reported to the state; at-home test results are not included. Wrangell's case count, while significantly higher than the average over the two years of the pandemic, is down substantially from the post-holidays record-high surge in January and February. Statewide counts are... Full story
Posted at noon Friday, April 1 Alaska Airlines canceled dozens of flights Friday — including the northbound jet through Wrangell — as pilots picketed over an impasse in contract negotiations that have lasted nearly three years. As of 8 a.m. Alaska time, the airline said it had canceled more than 120 flights for the day, about 9% of its traffic, due to a shortage of pilots. Friday’s cancelations include 66 flights in Seattle, 20 in Portland, 10 in Los Angeles and seven in San Francisco, according to the flight tracking website fligh... Full story
