Sorted by date Results 3719 - 3743 of 7954
With warmer weather, the Wrangell Police Department is expecting roadkill to increase. With that, they are hoping to update their charity list for recovering and sharing the deer meat. Chief Tom Radke said the department's list currently has less than 10 names, and anybody interested in being added to the list just has to give them a call. When there is a report of roadkill with salvageable meat, he said the department will start calling names on the list to see if anybody wants it. The list helps keep the roads clean, while making sure good...
The Alaska House of Representatives has passed a bill intended to prevent teacher layoffs the next two years with early appropriation of state funding to local school operating budgets. Though helpful in its intent to provide funding certainty to school districts, it does not solve the budget problems of districts, such as Wrangell, that have seen steep enrollment drops during the pandemic. State funding for local schools is based on their annual student count. In previous years, late budget action by the Legislature has forced some school...
Alaska Airlines has banned an anti-mask state senator for refusing to follow federal law and airline policy requiring face masks. "We have notified Senator Lora Reinbold that she is not permitted to fly with us for her continued refusal to comply with employee instruction regarding the current mask policy," spokesman Tim Thompson said in a prepared statement Saturday, adding that the suspension was effective immediately. Reinbold, an Eagle River Republican in her ninth year as a state...
JUNEAU (AP) - Celebration, a four-day dance-and-cultural event billed as the largest gathering of Alaska Natives in Southeast Alaska, will return next year as an in-person event after widespread immunizations in the nation’s largest state, organizers said April 22. Sealaska Heritage Institute said the event celebrating Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures will be held in Juneau from June 8-11, 2022. The institute’s board of directors decided to return to an in-person event after the release of coronavirus vaccines, widespread imm...
HYDER - Gov. Mike Dunleavy has offered COVID-19 vaccines to residents of the small British Columbia town of Stewart, with hopes it could lead the Canadian government to ease border restrictions between Stewart and the tiny Alaska town of Hyder a couple miles away. "We couldn't ask for better neighbors than the Canadians. But ... their (virus) mitigating approaches have affected us greatly by slowing down traffic, limiting traffic," Dunleavy told The Associated Press as he ended a long day of...
JUNEAU (AP) - Two planes collided while on sightseeing flights near Ketchikan in 2019 because the pilots’ views were obscured and aircraft-tracking systems failed to warn them about the other aircraft, federal investigators concluded April 20. Six people died and 10 people survived the May 13, 2019, midair collision. The National Transportation Safety Board in its probable-cause finding determined that the limitations of the “see and avoid” concept prevented the pilots from seeing each other before the collision. The board also cited a lack...
City officials reported a new COVID-19 case Monday afternoon, bringing to 18 the number of positive cases since April 8. Of those, 16 are reported as having recovered, the city's 4:30 p.m. announcement said. "No additional information is known at this time," the city said of the latest case. Most of the previous 17 cases this month were reported as community spread. "Wrangell currently has a face-covering requirement in place through April 30 for certain indoor public and communal spaces," the city's statement said. "Please mask up to help stop...
The school district assumes more students will return to classrooms in the fall — though the count would still be down 25% from its pre-pandemic level — with the enrollment drop and tight budget leading to the loss of one teacher and a couple of early morning classes at the high school. The school board on Monday unanimously adopted the budget, the fifth draft of the spending plan for the 2021-2022 school year. The budget uses federal pandemic relief funding to help avoid deeper spending cut...
"The idea is to reclaim, repurpose and recycle," Andrew Hoyt said. "That's where R&R Glassworks got its name, 'reclaimed' and 'repurpose.'" Wrangell residents may be familiar with R&R Glassworks, a relatively new business that has made itself known at community markets and online. Hoyt's art features antique glass bottles filled with water and shards of colored beach glass or clear automotive glass. They show vibrant colors and reflections when put against a light or on a windowsill. "We...
The community is under a face mask order for all indoor public spaces until 11:59 p.m. April 30, though the borough assembly removed any penalties from the ordinance. The April 8-16 outbreak of 16 COVID-19 cases in Wrangell prompted an emergency assembly meeting Saturday to consider the public health ordinance bringing back mandatory face masks for a couple of weeks. Assembly members, however, voted near unanimously to eliminate any penalties for failure to wear a face mask. Mayor Steve...
A quarter-century ago, Congress appropriated $110 million explicitly to help Southeast communities get through the loss of the timber industry, the region's big economic driver. This year, federal money is coming to the aid of the new dominant industry, tourism. However, Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman said, there is a key difference between the loss of the timber industry and today's struggles in the tourist industry: Tourism will come back one day. But it will take time. Federal pandemic relief funds...
The annual Stikine River Birding Festival starts Friday and includes movies, a morning walk to identify birds, video presentations, virtual storytelling from the library, a session on how to build a bird feeder, a community cleanup and a nature trail scavenger hunt. Activities run through May 8. Organizers are spreading out the events this year, rather than squeezing everything into four days as was the schedule in 2019. The pandemic forced cancellation of last year's activities. "We have been m...
The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau has decided it's almost time to get business input on its draft proposal for how the tourism industry should operate in the community, called "tourism best management practices." Putting together the guidelines has been an ongoing project for the bureau. Wrangell Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore said it is time to reach out to businesses for their comments. The visitor bureau met last Thursday. Under the latest draft, tour operators leading...
Wrangell is getting a machine to cut, mash and bundle up its trash into compact bales for the ride out of town. The borough assembly on April 13 approved spending more than $600,000 to buy and install a solid waste baler so that the garbage will no longer head south as loose trash, which presents a fire risk. Public Works Director Tom Wetor told the assembly that Republic Services, which collects trash for Wrangell, reported in 2018 that the city had until 2023 to begin shipping its trash in...
The Wrangell Community Cleanup, a longtime tradition, is set for Saturday. Volunteers are invited to meet at the covered basketball court by Evergreen Elementary at 8:30 a.m. to help clean up Wrangell. The cleanup occurs every spring, except last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the public spending half the day picking up as much trash around the city as possible. The Wrangell Cooperative Association has been assisting with the cleanup organization for about four years, said Kim Wickman,...
The Nolan Center, Wrangell's movie theater, museum and community center, is understaffed. Leaving the facility manager position vacant this fiscal year has been too much of a strain on the remaining staff, the administration told borough assembly members, who unanimously approved a full-time coordinator position at the center. The change, however, still will be a money-saver for the city, as the coordinator will be at a lower pay scale than the facility manager position. The Nolan Center general...
JUNEAU (AP) - Juneau residents have filed paperwork for citizens initiatives that would impose limits on cruise ships in Alaska’s capital city. The proposed measures submitted April 12 would ban large cruise ships at certain times and over a specific size from Juneau. Filing paperwork is the first step in getting on the ballot. The city clerk has until May 3 to certify or deny the paperwork. If supporters are allowed to go forward, they would need to collect signatures from nearly 3,000 registered Juneau voters for each of the three measures t...
Free COVID-19 vaccinations will be made available at four airports in the state starting June 1, Gov. Mike Dunleavy said April 16 as he unveiled plans aimed at bolstering the state’s pandemic-battered tourist industry. Dunleavy also outlined plans for a national marketing campaign aimed at luring tourists using federal aid money and said the airport vaccination offering is “probably another good reason to come to the state of Alaska in the summer.” The state plans to offer vaccines at airports in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan, the...
Alaska’s economy isn’t getting worse, but it could also be a long way from substantial improvement. University of Alaska Anchorage Institute for Social and Economic Research economist Mouchine Guettabi said many of the indicators showing improvements in recent months are more tied to the normal seasonality of the state’s economy and less about a recovery from the forces of the pandemic. “Our losses ballooned over the summer and then shrunk back down in fall and the winter. That doesn’t mean things are getting better; it just means that we’r...
JUNEAU (AP) - Alaska state Sen. Lora Reinbold was removed as Senate Judiciary Committee chair on April 19, the 91st day of a legislative session in which she has often clashed with fellow Republicans, including other Senate majority members and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and frequently ignored and protested legislative rules to wear a face mask and undergo regular testing for COVID-19. The committee change was approved by the Senate 17-1, with Reinbold the lone no. The Eagle River Republican, in her ninth year in the Legislature, was replaced as...
John Waghiyi remembers rushing his cousin to the clinic in the Bering Sea city of Savoonga in December, worried he was having a possible heart attack while out butchering a bowhead whale. Waghiyi arrived to see elders waiting in the lobby for a COVID-19 vaccine. Waghiyi, 66, said he joined them and got a shot before returning to the coast to help finish the whale harvest. Elders, he said, have set the tone in the Alaska Native community of 735 on the coast of isolated St. Lawrence Island....
Alaska discriminated against some same-sex spouses for years in wrongfully denying them benefits by claiming their unions were not recognized even after courts struck down same-sex marriage bans, court documents obtained by The Associated Press show. The agency that determines eligibility for the annual Alaska Permanent Fund dividend denied payments for same-sex spouses or dependents of military members stationed in other states for five years after a federal court invalidated Alaska’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2014 and the U.S. Supreme Court...
BETHEL (AP) - A coastal village about 70 miles southwest of Bethel has mandated that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed into the community’s stores and businesses. Kongiganak, with a population of less than 500, had 50% of its eligible residents vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one dose as of April 9, KYUK-AM reported April 14, citing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. Sheila Phillip, the Kongiganak Traditional Council secretary, said that people who are fully vaccinated can go inside the village’s two stores if they wear mas...
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Some Alaska agencies that work with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are expecting large federal funding cuts to take effect when the fiscal year starts on July 1 — so they are asking the Legislature for help. Suzi Pearson, director of Anchorage-based Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis, said she was surprised by the extent of the cuts announced by the State Council on Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault. “When we were told 30 to 33%, I think we all kind of stopped breathing,” Pearson said. The reductions are the result o...
SEATTLE (AP) - The Biden administration has reversed a decision by its predecessor to sell the federal archives building in Seattle, following months of opposition in Alaska, Washington and Oregon - and a lawsuit. The federal Office of Management and Budget has withdrawn its approval for the sale, which would have forced the transfer of millions of Pacific Northwest records to facilities in Kansas City, Missouri, and Riverside, California. A federal judge already had blocked the sale in response to a lawsuit by the states of Washington and...
