Sorted by date Results 3822 - 3846 of 8063
Trident Seafoods has notified city officials the company will not reopen its Wrangell plant this summer. Plant manager Nick Ohmer called on Tuesday with the expected news, Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen told the assembly at its evening meeting. "I had a conversation with him about what it would take to get the plant back open here in Wrangell," Von Bargen said. Ohmer responded that the seafood processor would need "to see somewhere between 40% and 50% more fish chums than were projected to retu...
The 58-year-old Matanuska has been at the dock in Ketchikan since Sunday morning, waiting for repairs, and is not expected to return to service until Saturday. It is the ship's fourth mechanical breakdown since February, stranding passengers and imposing costs and delays on travelers with few options. "The Matanuska is still in Ketchikan awaiting parts for repair of the starboard engine," the Alaska Marine Highway System reported in a website posting Tuesday afternoon. "It is anticipated the vessel will get underway northbound Saturday...
Legislators will focus the next few weeks on how to spend $1.02 billion in federal pandemic relief destined for the state treasury, with last week's opening acts of the fiscal play showing somewhat different budgetary scripts from the House majority coalition and the governor. Both proposals would direct money to construction projects, the tourism industry and repairing Alaska's damaged economy, though at differing funding levels. The House plan also would direct funds to communities worst hit by the pandemic. And while House leadership has...
About 70 people came out for Saturday's Wrangell Community Cleanup, about 10 more than usual, said organizer Valerie Massie. There was no cleanup in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the annual event was brought back this spring, sending volunteers around the city to pick up trash. Massie said participants filled 146 bags with trash in a half-day of work, enough for 10 full dumpsters and four truckloads of large items like metal and mattresses. Organizer Kim Wickman said there was not one...
Due to an editor’s error, the Sentinel misspelled Issabella Crowley’s name in the credit line for the northern lights photo on Page 12 of the April 22 newspaper....
Wrangell, Petersburg and Juneau residents are competing to see who can walk, hike or run the farthest - without ever leaving town. "Bragging rights will go to the community that walks/hikes/runs the most miles (average miles per person)," the Wrangell Parks and Recreation website says. Juneau Parks and Recreation, which started Walk Southeast last year to keep people active during the pandemic, invited Wrangell and Petersburg to join up this year, giving the event a friendly competitive alure...
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...