Sorted by date Results 4203 - 4227 of 7954
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation Advisory Board met Monday, June 29. During the meeting, the board reviewed the department's new budget for FY 2021, and also took a look at some tentative plans for summer programming. The borough assembly adopted the FY 2021 budget for Wrangell in their assembly meeting on Tuesday, June 23. The entire budget is aiming to break even, according to Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen, with expenses and revenues set at approximately $16 million. The Parks and Rec...
The Wrangell Public School District will be hosting an online town hall meeting to discuss the reopening plan for fall 2020, tonight at 6 p.m.. Superintendent Debbe Lancaster said that a meeting was tentatively set for July 16 during a policy committee meeting on July 9. The date was confirmed in an email from Kim Powell, with the school district, on July 13. The school district hosted a series of meetings between school staff, administration, and community members on the SMART Start reopening....
The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes is once again distributing back-to-school backpacks across multiple Southeast Alaskan communities this year. Applications for the backpacks are due this Friday, July 17. The backpack distribution is a common occurrence in Wrangell, and in other Southeast communities. However, students can also expect to find new laptops in their bags this year, instead of school supplies. Julie Chapman, program coordinator with the Central Council, said...
The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau met last Thursday, to workshop their goals for a rebranding project. As part of a large to-do list recently approved by the borough assembly, the CVB is seeking to use CARES Act funding to improve Wrangell's brand and draw in more tourists. As this was just a workshop, no official action was taken. However, the bureau generally agreed that Wrangell's brand should be focused on Wrangell as a community. "I think our brand should be community-focused,"...
It was a short meeting for the Wrangell Port Commission last Tuesday evening, July 7. There was only one item of new business on their agenda, a request by Josh Blatchley to subdivide and purchase a portion of tidelands. The land in question comes from parcel #02-024-600, according to the agenda packet. Blatchley owns property just upland of the tidelands he is interested in, the packet reads, and the property owners on either side of him own the tidelands in front of their property. This...
Two items were approved by the Wrangell Planning and Zoning Commission last Thursday. The first item was a request to purchase city-owned tidelands, by Josh Blatchley. According to the request, the tidelands are adjacent to Blatchley's property. The request also notes that tidelands adjacent to the area of interest have already been sold or leased. This request met approval by the Port Commission in their July 7 meeting, as well. This request was accepted by the commission. The commission also...
The guideline harvest levels (GHLs) for the second fishing period (July 1–August 30) are 308,000 lb in District 6 and 250,000 lb in District 8, in accordance with the preseason GHL news release. Estimated harvest for the first fishing period (May 1–June 30) in District 6 was 282,000 lb. This harvest was 18,000 lb below the 300,000 lb GHL, thus 18,000 lb will be rolled over in addition to the 290,000 lb GHL announced preseason. Totals for coonstripe shrimp bycatch harvest to date in District 6 are confidential. Estimated harvest for the fir...
The City and Borough of Wrangell (City) will begin rolling out a series of programs of economic relief for businesses, non-profits and residents in Wrangell who have been impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. The City has designated up to $915,000 of the CARES Act funds received from the State to these assistance programs which are intended to provide economic relief in the areas of most need. Each program will require a separate application be completed by each business, non-profit or resident....
Representative Don Young made a stop in Wrangell Monday, July 7, to meet with constituents and discuss issues that matter to voters while on a tour of Southeast Alaska. There are several issues Wrangell is facing that are common across multiple Southeast communities, he said. He also discussed problems facing Alaska, in general, and common issues across the entire United States. The ferry system is a common issue for many Southeast residents, Young said. His role, in Congress, relates to the...
The cities of Wrangell, Petersburg, and Ketchikan all suffered a power outage in the early morning of July 4. Rod Rhoades, light and power director for Wrangell, said that the outage hit Wrangell at 3:05 a.m., but started in Ketchikan. All three communities are connected via the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, meaning they receive and share power from the same sources. While power has been restored, officials are still looking into the cause of the outage. All three cities lost power around 3...
The M/V Matanuska arrived in Wrangell Sunday evening during its first voyage of the season out of Bellingham, but that same day a passenger onboard the M/V Kennicott, which left Bellingham on June 27, tested positive for COVID-19. The protocols that the Alaska Marine Highway System has in place to prevent the spread of the virus seem to have limited the infection to the one individual who only had one other close contact, according to a press release issued by the Alaska Department of...
The Nolan Center's newest museum exhibit, "Alaska's Suffrage Star," opened for public viewing on July 1 last week. The exhibit covers the history of the women's suffrage movement in Alaska, how activists worked to be part of a nationwide movement to give women the right to vote. The exhibit shares the stories of several Alaskan activists, some of them Wrangell locals. One Wrangellite featured in the exhibit is Tillie Paul Tamaree. Tamaree was a Tlingit woman of the Teeyhittaan Raven clan,...
The City and Borough of Wrangell announced on Tuesday morning, July 7, that all eight COVID-19 cases reported in Wrangell are now considered recovered. Two cases were from local Wrangell residents, while the remainder were confirmed in people from out of town through routine testing programs, or airport testing. "We were notified this morning, Tuesday, July 7, 2020 from State Public Health that Wrangell has no active COVID-19 cases (including non-residents)," reads a Facebook post from the City...
June Leffler has been a common sight at many meetings and events around Wrangell for almost three years. As a reporter for radio station KSTK, she played a role in keeping the public informed of everything going on around town. Her time in Wrangell has come to an end, however, as she left for the Lower 48 last Monday. "I just kind of gave myself until this summer, regardless of any jobs that came up, so I'm going," Leffler said. Leffler came to Wrangell to continue pursuing her career in public...
City officials organized a Zoom conference on June 30, to walk business owners and other listeners through the process of applying for the Alaska CARES Grant. This grant was created through a partnership of the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development. the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, and Credit Union 1. It aims to provide relief funding for small businesses that have suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic. The application process opened on June 1,...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) will introduce weekly community COVID-19 testing for asymptomatic patients across the region in July. Asymptomatic testing will be available to Tribal beneficiaries in Juneau, and to all community members in other SEARHC communities. The initial testing will start on July 11 and 12 in Juneau, Wrangell and Sitka, and in other communities later in the month. Expanded community testing is being made possible by a grant from Indian Health...
The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau met last Wednesday, July 1, to discuss their recently approved marketing plan and what their top priorities should be. The CVB has spent several meetings, recently, to put together a marketing plan for Wrangell, which could be funded through the CARES Act. This plan, requesting a total of $146,516, was approved by the borough assembly in their June 23 meeting. With their plans approved, the CVB needed to decide what to work on first, as there was a...
With recent national attention on the topics of racial bias and police brutality, the community of Wrangell met via web conference last Monday evening for a town hall meeting to discuss policing practices in their hometown. The meeting provided an opportunity for residents to ask questions of Chief Tom Radke and to share their opinions on the Wrangell Police Department. Those who spoke in the meeting, by and large, expressed support for the police and their current practices. "We had a handful...
While Wrangell is well known for its Fourth of July celebration, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered the community's plans for Independence Day. While many popular and traditional events will not take place this year, such as the boat races or royalty contest, the public can still look forward to a fireworks show and parade. "Chamber leadership has weighed input from business membership and members of the community along with State and Local public officials," a community notice...
The latest cruise ship schedule, provided by Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore on June 23, shows that Wrangell can expect a total of less than 2,000 cruise ship visitors this season. This is a major decrease from estimates of 24,000 visitors this year, as well as roughly 20,000 visitors last season. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically hurt the cruise industry across Southeast Alaska, including local businesses that rely on tourists to operate. "The only ships still on the schedule...
In early June, the Wrangell Sentinel received several emails regarding one of the city's police officers, Paul Jay Huerta. One of these emails linked to a news article and video, alleging that Huerta left his previous job in California for harassing a suspect. Recently, city officials informed the paper that Huerta was no longer employed by the Wrangell Police Department. However, the city has not provided information as to why he resigned. A July 9, 2018 article by the Desert Sun shares a...
We at the Pilot and Sentinel admit to including the occasional pink-tutu sighting or pooch-on-the-loose as some comic relief in the police report. But the real intent of the weekly police and court reports is not to fill empty space. Nor is it so that the Petersburg Pilot gets mentioned in Dave Barry's national humor column, as it was several weeks ago. Instead, the police and court reports are intended to briefly summarize legal matters and illegal activity in town. We have an established list...
The Wrangell School District held another SMART Start meeting last Wednesday, June 24, to continue discussing ways the district can safely reopen and operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department of Education has come out with recommendations to determine what constitutes different risk levels for operation in Wrangell, according to the meeting's notes, so the group of school board members, district faculty and staff, and parents mostly concentrated their discussion around the possible...
Matt Gore has been with the Wrangell School District since 2011, and has been the technology director since 2015. In his time as technology director, Gore said he has worked to give the school district faster and more reliable internet access, to put better technology in students' hands, and help the district use all the tools they had available. It is time for him to move on, however. Gore has left his Wrangell position to take a new job with the Southeast Island School District, on Prince of...
As Wrangell residents may remember, the borough assembly held a vote early in June to appoint Ryan Howe to fill an empty assembly seat. There was some question about this vote and whether or not it violated the Open Meetings Act, as assembly members chose their candidate via text message. Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen said in a June 18 article for the Wrangell Sentinel that the assembly does not believe anything incorrect occurred, and that she ran the idea by the city's attorneys before...
