Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 8072
Kevin Gadsey, 49, allegedly engaged in inappropriate behavior around elementary-aged children in the swimming pool locker room, prompting at least two parents to complain to the Parks and Recreation Department and bring their concerns to the Sentinel. After Parks and Rec launched an investigation into the allegations, the borough served Gadsey with a no-trespassing order on Jan. 9, banning him from the facility during "kid-specific activities." "After careful consideration" the letter read, "we...
What motivates a man to wake up and start his day with the same habit for 40 years? Bill Messmer doesn't know. Messmer started collecting rainfall data from his house in town in 1984. Four decades later, he is calling it quits. The reason? Well - there isn't really one. He just shrugged and said, "It's been 40 years." Messmer's first month of collecting data was January 1984. If you're curious, precipitation - rain and melted snow - totaled 16.04 inches that month. Every morning he woke up,...
President Donald Trump has issued several executive orders in recent weeks to expand logging in the nation’s forests, but stakeholders say the recent mass firings of U.S. Forest Service employees could hinder the administration’s plans in Alaska. Trump’s actions are the latest chapter in a decades-long tug-of-war between conservation and development in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest — by far the largest of the nation’s forests. On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order to boost development...
A proposed 20-year plan seeking to restore the ailing Alaska Marine Highway System to a more reliable and sustainable operation calls for a major increase in funding for operations and building several new ships. The six new ferries and shoreside improvements could cost $3 billion. The draft plan also envisions an ambitious increase in service to smaller communities, including Wrangell, while shrinking the total fleet from nine ships to eight. The draft plan published Feb. 28 seeks about $3 billion in vessel and infrastructure spending, plus...
After Spicy Lady, a Petersburg-based crabbing vessel, caught fire on March 6, the Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department arrived on the scene to cool things down. The fire department received a distress call at 2:32 p.m. informing them of the boat fire. At the time of the call, the 58-foot steel hulled Spicy Lady was near Point Gardner at the southern tip of Admiralty Island. After a 100-mile floatplane trip, Wrangell firefighters met up with the Spicy Lady a few miles from Point Gardner, in Warm...
The House Finance Committee is scheduled to take public testimony on the state operating budget over three days this week, with several Southeast communities, including Wrangell, on the calendar for Friday afternoon, March 14. The time slot for Southeast residents to testify is set for 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Friday. Individuals will be limited to two minutes each to give the committee their opinions on the state spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Anyone in Wrangell who wants to testify is asked to come to the Legislative...
British Columbia Premier David Eby said on March 6 that he intends to introduce legislation that would place tolls on commercial trucks traveling from the Lower 48 states to Alaska through his province. Speaking at the Legislative Assembly building in Victoria, Eby said the move is one of several that he is taking in response to President Donald Trump’s erratic Canadian tariff plans. “I’m here to share that we will be introducing a new law in the coming days to respond to this historic challenge: unprecedented legislation. It will inclu... Full story
Don't try and put Johnny Allen in a box, even if it's one he welded himself. Allen, a senior at Wrangell High School, is upfront about his values. He gets up early, works hard, doesn't complain and quietly goes about his business. He finds joy, not just reward, in work that other people might only see as tedious, something that shines through in his choice for a senior project. For that, Allen has taken it upon himself to freshen up the whale mural outside the Stikine Inn. The painted mural is...
The Southeast Conference hopes to know by the end of the month whether $38.6 million in federal funds to help install electric heat pumps in coastal Alaska communities will come through on schedule or whether the Trump administration will pull the plug or turn down the power on the project. “We’re moving forward cautiously, carefully,” said Robert Venables, Southeast Conference executive director. The new administration has ordered widespread halts to federal contracts, loans and grants, as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Effic...
The most recent draft of the school district’s 2025-2026 budget shows a deficit of $271,000. With City Hall hamstrung by cuts to federal funding, the school board could need to make sweeping cuts to balance the books. The district is not legally permitted to operate in a deficit and its operating reserve is nearing empty The draft budget assumes that the borough will fund the schools at the maximum amount allowed by state law, around $1.8 million. However, both City Hall and the school district anticipate that number will likely be closer to $...
A Juneau-based business that shares ownership with the company which has been leasing land at the former 6-Mile mill property for a scrap metal recycling operation has told the borough it wants to buy more than nine acres at the site to build a permanent operation. “If an agreement is made on a purchase, our first improvement to the property will likely be establishing utilities such as water, sewer and electricity,” Tideline Construction wrote in its Jan. 24 request to the borough. The company offered $250,000 for two parcels at the sou...
No one could remember it ever happening before, but the Wrangell Cooperative Association was ready when it did happen last month. The annual tribal council election on Feb. 27 ended in a tie for the fourth seat. WCA election rules designated a coin toss to decide the winner, said Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese. Einar Haaseth, the tribal council election chairman, researched online the proper way to toss a coin, Reese said. He studied how NFL referees do it at the start of every game. Tribal Council President Ed Rilatos brought in...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association will hold an electronic waste collection event Friday and Saturday, March 7-8, paired with an unofficial grand opening of its new transportation center on Zimovia Highway. The center will be open for the first time to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday as the drop-off site for e-waste. The 5,000-square-foot maintenance and warehouse building is next door to WCA offices on the upland side of the highway, just south of TK’s Mini Mart. Kim Wickman, the WCA Tl’átḵ | Earth...
Jacob Vibbert, of Cheney, Washington, has been charged with illegally killing a mountain lion on the south end of Wrangell Island. According to the state’s report, Vibbert shot the mountain lion on June 3, 2024. There is no mountain lion hunting season in Alaska. The offense, a misdemeanor, can be punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $25,000. Vibbert was charged in January; his arraignment was scheduled for March 4 at the Wrangell courthouse. The kill was reported by Charles Davis, who was hunting and sport fishing with V...
Amid the widespread uncertainty and mass budget cuts under the new administration of President Donald Trump, Wrangell’s municipal leadership is not particularly concerned about the completion of any of the borough’s ongoing projects. Currently, City Hall awaits two reimbursements from the federal government: one at around $18 million for the water treatment plant and another at $1 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster recovery costs after the November 2023 landslide. Borough Manager Mason Villarma said City Hall has...
After a monthlong closure to in-person dining and a temporary suspension of van rides, the Senior Center is back open for both. The center reopened with prepared lunches last week, and will reopen for in-person dining Wednesday, March 5. Van rides are expected to resume this week, too. The center had been closed due to temporary staffing issues; John Waddington was hired last week as the new driver. As of March 5, the center will be open Tuesdays through Fridays for in-person dining and van rides for senior citizens to medical appointments,...
A team from Oregon State University’s Sustainable Tourism Lab wants to hear from you. The borough linked up with the academic team to better understand the community’s opinions about tourism. The survey is available at http://beav.es/wrangell and the deadline to complete the short questionnaire is March 20. On Feb. 21, a member of the team joined City Hall’s monthly economic development coffee chat at the Stikine Inn, and community members offered up ideas to better understand Wrangell’s tourism economy. For example, one community member...
The borough’s public works team will no longer provide regular repairs and maintenance to the 30 sewage grinder pumps located on private property that serve only one house each. In cases of emergency, however, the borough will still be able to provide repairs or even replace a broken pump. The ordinance will go into effect on June 30. The reason for the ordinance change, which the assembly unanimously approved after a lengthy public hearing on Feb. 25, is both legality and liability. Borough Attorney Robe Luce explained that the borough’s cur...
Keaton Gadd knows who he is. He knows what he likes, he knows what he doesn't. He knows what motivates him and he knows what scares him (planes). Gadd is direct. He speaks in short, swift sentences - not due to a limited vocabulary, but because of an involuntary compulsion for his speech to match his thinking: undeviating and without waste. "I like being pretty straightforward, just doing what it takes," he said. "No extra steps." For his senior project, Gadd is doing something that matches...
Alaskans were among the hundreds of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees who began receiving firing notices last week, a blow to an agency that provides everything from weather forecasts to fisheries management to cutting-edge climate science in Alaska. The cuts - part of a broader effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to drastically slash the federal workforce - came after other agencies, including the National Park Service, had abruptly fired probationary...
It will not be easy, but the Alaska commercial seafood industry needs to figure out how to turn a 25-cent-per-pound pink salmon into a fish worth 45 cents a pound. That math lesson came from Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. “What everyone is talking about is how do we make more value out of our fish,” Woodrow said during a panel discussion at the midwinter meeting of the Southeast Conference. The marketing agency has succeeded in establishing wild Alaska seafood as a premium brand, he said, with con...
Legislative leaders on Feb. 27 wrote to Alaska’s congressional delegation, urging them to block deep cuts to federal programs that they say would “endanger the economic prosperity and social well-being of Alaskans.” “It is our duty to inform you that the legislature cannot fix the financial havoc that is being wreaked on Alaskans by the federal government,” said Kodiak Republican Senate President Gary Stevens and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, in a strongly worded two-page letter. Stevens and Edgmon warned about the...
All seven members of the powerful state Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 24 proposed rewriting the payment formula in state law for the annual Permanent Fund dividend, renewing the Senate’s effort to replace an obsolete, 43-year-old law that hasn’t been followed since 2015. If signed into law, Senate Bill 109 would split the annual earnings transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury: 75% of that transfer would be reserved for state services, and 25% would be used for dividends. This year, the PFD would be about $1,420 per... Full story
Measures to raise new state revenue were introduced in the Alaska Senate on Feb. 26, including one that would substantially increase taxes on oil companies. Legislators are facing a widening deficit this year and a worsening fiscal outlook due to declining oil revenue. The Republican-led Congress is also expected to make deep cuts to programs such as Medicaid, adding to Alaska legislators’ concerns that costs will be shifted to the state. The nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division has projected that the state faces a $536 million deficit o...
As many as 100,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if budget cuts supported by President Donald Trump and Republicans who control the U.S. House are enacted, according to Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital CEO Joe Wanner and other state health officials. The Trump administration and House Republicans are backing a spending plan that cuts Medicaid by up to $880 billion during the next decade. Wanner, during a meeting of Bartlett’s board of directors on Feb. 19, said the cut would affect 72,000 Alaskans who have been added since Med...