Sorted by date Results 3405 - 3429 of 7954
The U.S. Census Bureau says Wrangell lost 242 residents between 2010 and 2020 — about 10% of the community’s population. The borough doesn’t believe it. “We’re very concerned that the numbers are inaccurate,” Carol Rushmore, Wrangell’s economic development director, said last Friday, a day after the bureau released the numbers that show 2,127 Wrangell residents as of the July 2020 count versus 2,369 in 2010. “We’re trying to understand if there is any recourse, trying to understand if we can appeal,” Rushmore said. The borough will reach...
As legislators meet in special session this week, Gov. Mike Dunleavy continues to push his plan for much larger Permanent Fund dividends, saying “cash is the ultimate program” to help Alaskans. “Cash in the form of the Permanent Fund dividend … is really the answer to helping Alaskans and our private economy,” the governor said in a prepared statement Monday, the day lawmakers went back to work in Juneau. While promoting his plan to pay dividends almost double the average of the past 10 years without any new revenues to cover the state spe...
Statewide COVID-19 case counts continued climbing early this week, with Southeast communities some of the hardest hit — including Wrangell, with 11 new cases reported Monday and Tuesday. Because of the high case counts, state public health officials are unable to keep up with the contract tracing workload, and anyone who has been or may have been in close contact with an infected person should quarantine and get tested for COVID as soon as possible, Wrangell borough officials said Tuesday evening. “Whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, ple...
Petersburg schools will open Aug. 31 with face masks required for at least the first two weeks of the semester, reviewing the policy at the next school board meeting on Sept. 14. Based on the high count of active COVID-19 cases in Ketchikan, schools there would open Aug. 26 with face masks required of all students, staff and visitors under a draft back-to-school plan subject to school board approval. Ketchikan’s mask requirement would shift to optional when the active case count in the community drops to five or fewer. The count was 98 a...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has been advertising statewide since June in a concerted effort to recruit new crewmembers for the vessels, though help did not arrive in time when the LeConte had to cancel its northbound sailing out of Juneau on Aug. 11 due to a crew shortage. The cancelation “stems from a system-wide crew shortage,” Sam Dapcevich, public information officer for the ferry system, told the Chilkat Valley News in Haines. The one-day cancellation disrupted travel plans for 84 people who were traveling to Haines or Skagway, accord...
After a two-week delay due to an incomplete property appraisal, the borough assembly has approved the lease for a new cell tower. The first tenant of the new tower near the city landfill will be Verizon Wireless, though additional carriers could be added later. The lease was delayed from the assembly’s July 27 meeting to wait for the appraisal. Lease fees on borough land are based on property value. The lease will be $645 a month. The payments to the borough will increase if more cell providers are added to the tower. The assembly approved t...
The borough has awarded contracts for a new 75-foot-long net repair float at Shoemaker Bay, which will be 99% covered by federal and state funds. The float used by fishermen at the harbor has been in terrible shape for some time, Mayor Steve Prysunka said at the Aug. 11 assembly meeting, where members approved the two contracts. The estimated cost for the float project, and additional electrical work, is roughly $128,000. With a $46,000 federal grant after the 2016 pink salmon disaster declaration, and almost $81,000 from a state grant, Wrangel...
Wrangell High School graduate Jade Balansag is getting her opportunity to start classes Aug. 30 at George Washington University in the nation's capital. And she is doing it with yet another honor, named last week as one of seven Local Heroes in Alaska. Her advice to other Wrangell students is to look for their opportunities in life. "Don't be afraid to try something new, don't be afraid to fail," the 18-year-old said. "I've basically had the same philosophy awhile now, not to be afraid and to...
Acknowledging that it’s not easy to run the borough as more projects are added to the borough manager’s work list, the assembly has decided it may be time to add a deputy manager at city hall. The assembly at a workshop Aug. 11 directed Manager Lisa Von Bargen to start toward creating the new position, though final approval will be up to the assembly. “This has been in discussion for well over, I believe, three years,” Mayor Steve Prysunka said. “I’m just going to generally state that this position, at least my understanding, is not necessa...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has decided not to appeal after a judge ruled against his interpretation of state law that would have stopped assistance payments toward utility bills in almost 200 small communities across Alaska. A state court judge on Aug. 11 sided with a coalition including the Alaska Federation of Natives and electric cooperatives that had sued Dunleavy to force release of the money. The governor announced the next day he would not appeal the court decision. This year’s estimated $32 million in payments will help reduce electricity b...
The community group BRAVE (Building Respect and Valuing Everyone) is making plans for its fourth annual Family Resilience Fair, scheduled for noon to 2 p.m. Sept. 11 at the Nolan Center. The intent of the event “is to make people aware of the resources available” for dealing with stress, food insecurity, maintaining healthy relationships and more. “Learn how your community can help your family,” according to BRAVE. The event will include tables staffed by nonprofits, government agencies and service providers, said organizer Kay Larson. Admissio...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Improved weather conditions Aug. 11 allowed crews to access the site where a sightseeing plane crashed last week near Ketchikan, killing six people. Clint Johnson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska division, said the wreckage would be brought to Ketchikan. A pilot and five passengers died in the crash on Aug. 5. The passengers were off a cruise ship and had taken the flight to nearby Misty Fjords National Monument. The plane crashed on the side of a mountain in a heavily forested, steep area at 1,800- t...
JUNEAU (AP) - Former governor Bill Walker announced plans Tuesday to run for the job again in 2022 and said his former labor commissioner, Heidi Drygas, would be his running mate. Walker dropped his 2018 reelection bid just weeks before the November election after the resignation of his lieutenant governor, Byron Mallott, disrupted the campaign. Republican Mike Dunleavy won the 2018 race against Democrat Mark Begich, who was trying to return to elected office after losing his reelection bid for the U.S. Senate in 2014. Dunleavy recently filed...
TORONTO (AP) — The Canadian government will soon require all air travelers and passengers on interprovincial trains to be vaccinated against COVID-19. That includes all commercial air travelers, passengers on trains between provinces and cruise ship passengers, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said Aug. 13. “As soon as possible in the fall and no later than the end of October, the government of Canada will require employees in the federally regulated air, rail and marine transportation sectors to be vaccinated. This includes all commercial air...
LUDINGTON, Mich. (AP) - Louis Martinez will never have to embellish the proverbial fish story after confirmation that he set a new state record for the largest chinook salmon ever caught in Michigan. The teenager from Ortonville, Michigan, reeled in the 47.86-pound salmon on Aug. 7, while fishing on a charter boat in Lake Michigan with his mom, sister and stepdad. The previous record - a Chinook salmon of just over 46 pounds - had stood for 43 years. The 19-year-old Martinez, on his first...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - An Alaska prison that was closed for about five years reopened Aug. 16 after a nearly $17 million renovation, corrections officials said. The reopening of the Palmer Correctional Facility in Sutton will add about 300 beds to the state’s current prison capacity of about 5,200. The prison closed in 2016 because of a declining inmate population and as the state wanted to cut costs. The state estimates it will cost about $15 million a year to operate the prison. The number of people incarcerated in Alaska increased over the past t...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska law enforcement agencies failed to collect DNA samples from more than 21,000 people arrested for or convicted of certain crimes over the past 25 years, in part because of confusion caused by changes to state law, officials said. The state Department of Public Safety identified 21,577 individuals who were required to have a DNA sample on file but did not. Of those, 1,555 are dead, the report states. Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Aug. 10 announced plans for the state to pursue samples in the remaining cases. It’s not clear, t...
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - About 96,000 farmed salmon are believed to have died when a leak in a tank sent 4,000 gallons of chlorine into a fjord in Arctic Norway. Roger Pedersen, a spokesman for the salmon farming company Grieg Seafood, said the leak happened at one of its fish slaughterhouses in the town of Alta and the fish were in a waiting cage nearby at the time. “We are connecting this to a chlorine leak,” Pedersen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, adding the company was now handling the dead fish “in a responsible way and was inves...
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The second sighting of a so-called murder hornet this year was reported by a person in Whatcom County this week, the Washington state Department of Agriculture said Aug. 12. Entomologists confirmed the sighting. The resident’s report included a photograph of the hornet attacking a paper wasp nest in a rural area east of the town of Blaine, about two miles from where state workers eradicated the first Asian giant hornet nest in the United States last October. The world’s largest hornet can sometimes be lethal to hum...
The governor’s Revenue commissioner has presented legislators with several revenue-raising options so that the state could afford a significantly larger Permanent Fund dividend and still balance its budget. A statewide sales tax is among the options the administration presented to the Legislature’s fiscal policy working group last Thursday. Deciding the amount of the annual dividend should come first, Senate President Peter Micciche told a meeting of Alaska mayors last week. “We have to determine what dividend we can afford,” and then decide...
Wrangell’s school bus operator is reminding parents and children that riders must wear a face mask, same as last year. But what will be new this school year is a software tool that will tell parents in real time the location of their children’s bus. Zach Taylor, of Taylor Transportation, said face masks are a federal mandate, and not something they can bend on. He asks that kids use their own masks when riding the bus, but the drivers will provide disposable masks in case anyone forgets. “That is a federal mandate, just like the airpl...
As the Delta variant spreads and as COVID-19 case counts climb throughout Alaska, more health care providers in the state are requiring that their workers get vaccinated. Full vaccination also will be required of students living in on-campus housing at the University of Alaska Southeast and at the university campus in Anchorage. The PeaceHealth hospital system, which operates the Ketchikan Medical Center, announced Aug. 3 that all caregivers will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 starting Aug. 31, unless they provide proof of a medi...
The 2,700-page, trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that passed the U.S. Senate on Tuesday could provide tens of millions of dollars, maybe more, to help the ailing Alaska Marine Highway System. How to use the money - assuming Congress approves the final package later this year, which is far from certain - would be decided by the governor and Alaska legislators next year. "We can't allow it to be a total replacement of the state's responsibilities," Robert Venables, executive director of the Sou...
After leading the nation in vaccination rates earlier this year, Alaska has slipped to the bottom third among the 50 states. Alaska’s rate has not moved up much in the past couple of weeks, despite an increasing number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations statewide since mid-July — numbers that have not been this high since last winter in some communities. The higher case count — averaging almost 300 a day in the past couple of weeks and approaching 400 on a few days — comes as students are returning to school, with administrators eager f...
The Sentinel incorrectly reported Aug. 5 that two of the borough assembly seats on the Oct. 5 municipal election ballot are two-year terms. They are three-year terms. A third seat on the ballot is for a one-year term....
