Sorted by date Results 3620 - 3644 of 7954
The number of senior citizens receiving a state-mandated property tax break on their homes continues to climb in Wrangell, totaling 280 homes this year and costing the borough $400,000 in lost tax revenues. Wrangell is not alone in the rising number, as several Alaska communities are seeing consistent growth in their senior citizen population. More than one in five Wrangell residents is age 65 or older, according to state statistics. About 15% of the assessed property value in Wrangell is exempt from borough taxes under the state-required...
The borough assembly has rezoned several lots adjacent to Wrangell’s solid waste transfer site, allowing installation of a cell phone tower on the city-owned land if the developer can obtain a conditional-use permit for such use of the property. A public hearing and further consideration by the Planning and Zoning Commission is required for a conditional-use permit. The assembly, in two unanimous votes May 25, approved rezoning the seven parcels to open space / public zoning, and allowing communication facilities, including cell towers, as a c...
In an effort to reduce waste and provide good soil for gardens, the Wrangell Cooperative Association is encouraging people to bring their compostable waste to the community garden, out by City Park. The WCA took over the composting project about a year ago, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic things got put on hold. “In 2018 Chris Hatton (of WCA) completed a solid waste assessment, and in those findings she discovered that 40% of our waste that is being shipped is compostable,” said Kim Wickman, with the WCA. “We had big plans, then COVID happe...
The borough again this summer will use federal funds to cover the cost of COVID-19 testing for Sea Level Seafoods employees. The borough assembly voted 4-3 at its May 25 meeting to appropriate up to $70,000 in federal funds to pay for testing this year. Testing last year cost the borough about $22,000. “Administration is requesting an amount more than triple last year’s expenditure because it is our understanding Sea Level would like to institute a far more robust testing regime than last year,” Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen briefed the assem...
For the third year in a row, the borough will provide $1.3 million in funding for Wrangell schools, the largest spending category in the municipal budget. About $700,000 of the local contribution to next year’s school district budget will come from Wrangell’s general fund revenues of sales and property taxes, with about $600,000 in federal financial assistance directed to Wrangell under a U.S. Forest Service nationwide program of payments to rural communities. The borough assembly approved the $1.3 million appropriation without opposition May...
Setting the amount of this year's Permanent Fund dividend - and deciding on how to pay the cost - continues to hold up agreement on a state spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The Legislature has been in special session since May 20. The joint House-Senate conference committee that was appointed to settle budget differences has met only a few times, briefly reviewing non-controversial items, with a meeting expected sometime Wednesday. Most legislators have left Juneau to...
Ending a long hiatus of cruise ship visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wrangell received its first cruise ship of the season last Friday. The Kruzof Explorer, operated by Sitka-based Alaskan Dream Cruises, delivered about a dozen tourists to town for a day-long visit - the first ship to call on Wrangell since 2019. "We're having a great time with Alaskan Dream Cruises," said Susan Igdaloff, of Newhall, California, one of the visitors. "We're very fortunate we were able to stop in Wrangell."...
The state has paid a cash settlement to a second former employee who alleged her firing early in the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy was political, not based on merit or job performance. A former assistant public advocate for the state will receive $75,000 as part of a settlement in a case she brought against Dunleavy, a former chief of staff and the state that alleged wrongful firing. Kelly Parker agreed to drop her lawsuit as part of the agreement, signed last month, the Anchorage Daily News reported last Thursday. The agreement says...
Wrangell’s marijuana shop can now stay open to 10 p.m., a change from 6 p.m. The borough assembly amended the closing-time law at its May 25 meeting, effective the next day. The change in municipal code passed unanimously, and there was no public testimony against the ordinance. Kelsey Martinsen, owner of Happy Cannabis, said he may move to an 8 p.m. closing in June, then later extend to 10 p.m., though staying open later will depend on finding an employee to help at the shop. The 6 p.m. closing was imposed by the assembly in 2017, soon a...
A former co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives, former board president of the Sealaska Corp. and a retired Democratic state legislator died last Friday at his home in Angoon. Albert Kookesh was 72. Kookesh was fighting prostate cancer. Alaska public radio reported that after being treated at a hospital, he made the decision to return to his home village on the coast of Admiralty Island. In remembrances posted online and shared on social media, he was praised for his work with Southeast Alaska’s regional Native corporation, his efforts t...
The Southeast Alaska Power Agency plans to begin an eight-day process July 1 of removing a damaged submarine electrical cable and replacing it with a new line between Woronkofski and Vank islands, SEAPA CEO Trey Acteson told the Petersburg borough assembly May 17. Crews will lay about 3.5 miles of new cable. The manufacturing and installation of the cable is estimated to cost about $13.4 million, Acteson said SEAPA board member Bob Lynn told the assembly at an earlier meeting that the regional power agency would likely need to raise its rates t...
TORONTO - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday it's not an isolated incident that more than 200 children were found buried at a former residential school in British Columbia. Trudeau's comments come as Indigenous leaders are calling for an examination of every former residential school site - institutions that held children taken from families across the nation. Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia said the remains of 215 children, some as...
Biden administration attorneys are defending a decision made during the Trump administration to approve a major oil project on Alaska’s North Slope. Critics say the action flies in the face of President Joe Biden’s pledges to address climate change. U.S. Justice Department attorneys, in a filing May 26, wrote that opponents of the ConocoPhillips-led Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations. The fil...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Telecommunications company GCI has resumed carrying three major TV channels after ending a months-long dispute with Alaska television network owners. An agreement was reached May 22-23 and the channel blackout was lifted for GCI customers, said Josh Edge, a GCI spokesperson. GCI cable customers lost access to ABC, FOX and The CW in January, when a prior programming agreement expired. The Alaska operators for the three channels are Coastal Television Broadcasting and Vision Alaska. The dispute was over how much GCI should pay...
JUNEAU (AP) - A bill that protects the graves of Unangax people in Southeast Alaska awaits a signature from Gov. Mike Dunleavy after both chambers of the Alaska Legislature approved the measure. The Unangax cemetery holds more than 30 graves of people who died at Funter Bay during World War II. They were relocated to two internment camps there from the Aleutian Islands by U.S. forces after the Japanese military invaded. They spent much of the war at the remote spot on the western side of Admiralty Island, about 20 miles west of Juneau, and, mor...
A tall, thin man wearing a hood and a mask was caught on a security camera plastering Nazi stickers on a Jewish museum in Anchorage on May 25. He drove a scooter to the Alaska Jewish Museum, placed one sticker on the door and jumped to place three more symbols of hate on windows before driving off, Rabbi Yosef Greenberg, the president of the museum’s board of directors, said of what their video cameras showed happening at 2 a.m. About 45 minutes later, another sticker was placed on the main entrance door to Mad Myrna’s, a gay bar in dow...
HONOLULU - "Ghost nets'' from unknown origins drift among the Pacific's currents, threatening sea creatures and littering shorelines with the entangled remains of what they kill. Lost or discarded at sea, sometimes decades ago, this fishing gear continues to wreak havoc on marine life and coral reefs in Hawaii. Now, researchers are doing detective work to trace this harmful debris back to fisheries and manufacturers _ and that takes extensive, in-depth analysis on tons of ghost nets. The...
SAN RAMON, California (AP) - The Google Earth app is adding a new video feature that draws upon nearly four decades of satellite imagery to vividly illustrate how climate change has affected glaciers, beaches, forests and other places around the world. The tool is being billed as the biggest update to Google Earth in five years. Google says it undertook the complex project in partnership with several government agencies, including NASA in the U.S. and its European counterpart, in hopes that it will help a mass audience grasp the sometimes...
Concerned with increasing cost estimates to repair and renovate the water-damaged 34-year-old public safety building, the borough assembly wants to explore a new option to see if it would be less expensive: Permanently move as many tenants as possible into the old hospital instead. “I’ve been driving this,” Mayor Steve Prysunka told the borough assembly at a workshop Tuesday evening. He said the borough needs to figure out what it would cost to remodel the hospital into space for the police and fire departments, state courts, jail, feder...
Alaska legislators are in the second week of a special session to finish work on the state budget for the fiscal year that starts in just five weeks, while also deciding the amount of this year's Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers have held few committee meetings and many have left Juneau, as private discussions involving House and Senate leaders, their colleagues and the governor's office generally dominate such negotiations. The Legislature adjourned its regular session after 121 days on May...
Zoom is a thing of the past for Wrangell borough assembly meetings. The next meeting June 8 will be in person, no more freeze frames, no more digital hassles. The assembly voted unanimously Tuesday evening to repeal the resolution directing online meetings during the pandemic. “Conducting meetings with the Zoom stuff is exhausting,” Mayor Steve Prysunka said. Borough Clerk Kim Lane recommended the assembly approve the return to in-person meetings. “Since we are trying to move forward and climb out of this pandemic,” she said, it would be approp...
Congressional action exempting large cruise ships from having to stop in Canada on their summer voyages to Alaska will provide a boost to heavily tourism-dependent Southeast communities. Although Wrangell was never on the itineraries of the largest ships, it’s possible the town may see some additional visitors with the change in U.S. law. Without the temporary exemption from a century-old U.S. maritime law, the foreign-registered ships would have been required to stop in Canada, which has not been possible since the country shut down its p...
Norwegian Cruise Line was the first operator to resume ticket sales for voyages to Alaska after Congress passed a bill that could help save the state’s annual summer pilgrimage of cruise ship visitors. Norwegian’s sailings will start the first week of August. A few hours after the House approved the measure last Thursday, following earlier passage by the Senate, Carnival Corp. joined Norwegian on the calendar. Carnival’s three largest cruise lines said they would run one ship each between Seattle and the bigger ports in Southeast Alaska start...
Following new federal guidelines, the Wrangell borough has decided that people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 are no longer required to wear face masks in borough facilities, programs and activities. Individual businesses can set their own policy. The borough issued the change in guidelines on May 18. As of last week, almost 60% of Wrangell residents age 16 and older had received at least one dose of a vaccine. “It’s the honor system,” Mayor Steve Prysunka said last Friday of the mask-free policy that applies only to vacci...
The Wrangell teachers union and school board have agreed on a new three-year contract that starts this summer and includes a 1% raise each year and higher out-of-pocket deductibles for teachers enrolled in the district’s insurance plan. The contract also includes an optional insurance plan with even higher deductibles that would reduce the share of premiums paid by the Wrangell Teachers’ Association. Employers have been increasingly switching in recent years to high-deductible plans in an effort to stem the rising cost of health insurance. The...
