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A group of Republican-led states, including Alaska, is suing the Biden administration to block a new student loan repayment plan that provides a faster path to cancellation and lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers. In a federal lawsuit filed March 28, 11 states led by Kansas argue that President Joe Biden overstepped his authority in creating the SAVE Plan, which was made available to borrowers last year and has already canceled loans for more than 150,000. It argues that the new plan is no different from Biden’s first attempt at s...
The fishing fleet in the Southwest Alaska town of King Cove would have been harvesting Pacific cod this winter. But they didn't: Skippers had nowhere to sell their catch. The enormous plant that usually buys and processes their fish never opened for the winter season. The company that runs the plant, Peter Pan Seafoods, is facing six-figure legal claims from fishermen who say they haven't been paid for catches they delivered months ago. King Cove's city administrator says the company is behind... Full story
A troubled, state-backed seafood processing company, Peter Pan Seafoods, has announced that it’s pursuing a deal to sell its plants to another business. But the news still leaves a key asset, the massive plant in the Alaska Peninsula village of King Cove, in limbo for the summer salmon season. Peter Pan also announced April 4 that it would lease two of its plants, in the Bristol Bay hub town of Dillingham and the remote Alaska Peninsula outpost of Port Moller, to Silver Bay Seafoods to operate for the summer. The fate of all of Peter Pan’s pla... Full story
The state ferry Tustumena is preparing for its 60th birthday party this summer. Over the years, the vessel has become a familiar and important part of life in communities between Homer and Dutch Harbor. But after years in rough waters, the cost of keeping the Tustumena running is ballooning. "This ship is a floating museum piece," said John Mayer, who has captained the ship for years. The Tustumena exemplifies the storms that the Alaska Marine Highway System has weathered. In March, Seward...
In the language of the Gwich’in people of northeastern Alaska, the word for month known in English as July is Łuk choo zhrii, meaning “the month of king salmon,” said Rochelle Adams, an Indigenous advocate who grew up in Beaver and Fort Yukon. With Yukon River king salmon runs diminished to the point where harvests of the species were not even allowed, that name now poses a dilemma, Adams said. “If we can’t fish in the month of king salmon, what are we living in?” Adams said at a conference in mid-March. “How we navigate the world is in ou... Full story
This year’s U.S. Capitol Christmas tree will come from the Tongass National Forest, only the second time an Alaska tree will light up the official spot. Known as “The People's Tree” (reflecting the nickname for the U.S. House of Representatives, “The People's House”), it will stand on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. The only previous Alaska tree, a spruce, came from the Chugach National Forest in 2015. The tree has been selected each year since 1970 from a different national forest. Brandon Raile, the project’s Forest Service spokesman i...
It’s officially spring and almost gardening season in Wrangell, but Sentry Hardware and Marine won’t be able to provide the plants they usually do this year, nor will IGA. The stores’ supplier, Skagit Gardens, of Washington state, announced in February it was going out of business by the first week of April after 57 years in operation. There will be no plant starts, vegetables or hanging baskets at Sentry this year. However, there will be trees and shrubs. Typically, Sentry starts getting plants in the last week in April, and the Febru...
A blue plastic baseball, part of a wooden clarinet, a glass Horlicks malted milk bottle, a 1938 Mercury dime and a net sinker made of slate, potentially from prehistoric times. All these items were discovered on the property of the former Wrangell Institute during archaeological monitoring completed last fall. The borough is developing the property of the former Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school into the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.'aan) subdivision and plans to offer 20 residential lo...
An experienced Fairbanks educator who has dreamed of moving to Southeast for years will finally achieve his goal when he starts work in August as the new secondary school principal in Wrangell. Greg Clark will be the new principal for the high school and middle school. He was among 16 applicants and chosen from three finalists. The school board approved the contract and Schools Superintendent Bill Burr hired Clark on March 18. He will replace Jackie Hanson, who is leaving at the end of the...
Federal financial aid made available by a presidential disaster declaration requested by the Wrangell Cooperative Association is now available for people who suffered economic damages from the Nov 20 landslide. The assistance includes grants for home or vehicle repairs, temporary rental assistance, replacing essential personal property and loss of subsistence foods, as well as medical, dental and funeral expenses. The assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency is not available for damages covered by insurance, state disaster...
The Fourth of July is three months away, and the start of ticket sales for the annual fundraising raffle is still eight weeks away, but the chamber of commerce figures it’s not too early to start asking who wants to volunteer for this year’s royalty competition. The royalty contestants sell tens of thousands of $1 raffle tickets that pay for the community’s Fourth of July fireworks, festivities and events. They get to keep a portion of their sales for all their hard work, using the money for college or anything else. Ticket sales start May 3...
The time is coming once again for residents to help clean up the town, with Wrangell’s annual community cleanup scheduled for Saturday, April 20. The spring cleanup includes volunteers picking up as much trash around town as possible. The event will start at the Evergreen Elementary gym at 8 a.m. and continue until noon, when there will be a free lunch. Free trash bags and disposable gloves will be provided and there will be drawings and cash prizes for volunteers. After the bags and gloves are handed out, volunteers can head out and clean u...
Get out your crockpots, The Salvation Army is hosting a chili cook-off April 13 at the Nolan Center from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Anyone is welcome to register to compete with their favorite chili recipe. Chilis will be tasted by three judges and members of the community. The judge’s favorite and the community favorite will each win a cash prize, said Capt. Chase Green of The Salvation Army, though the amount hasn’t been determined yet. If you’re not competing, be sure to arrive to the event hungry. Community members will vote for their top three...
Work has begun to install 830 corrosion-preventing anodes on the pilings in Heritage Harbor and the Marine Service Center. The anodes are pieces of oxidizing metal that protect the steel pilings and piers from underwater corrosion. During a routine check of the pilings last year the borough discovered that anodes had never been installed during construction of Heritage Harbor in 2009. The Marine Service Center boat haul-out pier and T-dock also were not fitted with anodes when they were designed and constructed. The total project is estimated...
Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has made headlines again with comments on her unwillingness to vote for former president Donald Trump, which puts her in an ever-shrinking group of GOP members opposing the party’s presumptive nominee for president. “I wish that as Republicans, we had a nominee that I could get behind,” Murkowski told a CNN journalist in a brief hallway interview posted online on March 24. “I certainly can’t get behind Trump,” Murkowski added. Her comments triggered stories on a number of national news sites. On March...
Vandalism directed at a church or other property used by a religious organization would become a felony in Alaska if legislation passed by the state House of Representatives becomes law. The House voted 35-5 on March 20 to approve House Bill 238, from Anchorage Rep. Andy Josephson, sending the bill to the Senate for further debate. “I think it’s rational to say that when you commit harm to a house of worship, it should be more serious” than a misdemeanor, Josephson said. He said the defacement of a church draws “community-wide reaction and res... Full story
A video filmed of the award-winning play “Blue Ticket,” a historical fiction of dark pieces of Juneau history in the 1960s, will show at the Nolan Center at 6:30 p.m. April 15. The author of the play, Maureen “Mo” Longworth, will be present for a discussion following the film. The play is based on true stories about gay Alaska men who were secretly removed from Juneau by police in the 1960s. When Longworth moved to Juneau with her partner Lynn in 1992 to work at SEARHC, she discovered that LGBTQ topics were not talked about openly. She learned...
Alaska telecommunications company GCI no longer plans to end its longtime email service. The company had said last summer it would end the service and cancel gci.net and alaskan.com accounts sometime in mid-2024. It also launched a new fee for the old accounts, at $4.99 monthly. The company said it hosted about 40,000 email accounts last summer. The announcement upset many customers who had used GCI for their email for decades. But last month, the company said in an online statement that it is “no longer pursuing any options that would a...
Presidential approval of a disaster declaration for the Wrangell Cooperative Association will make more than half-a-million dollars available for the tribe to remove hazardous material from the beach covered in debris by the 11-Mile landslide on Nov. 20. WCA is the first tribe in Alaska to receive a federal disaster declaration, and the fourth in the nation to provide individual assistance under the program, said Esther Aaltséen Reese, WCA tribal administrator. President Joe Biden signed the declaration on March 15. The funding will cover the...
Mason Villarma, the interim borough manager since November, is no longer interim: The assembly has agreed to offer him the job. In an executive session March 19, the assembly interviewed three applicants - two from out of state - and ultimately decided to proceed with contract negotiations with Villarma. Mayor Patty Gilbert and Vice Mayor David Powell will negotiate a contract, which will likely come before the assembly for approval at the April 9 meeting. Villarma went to work as finance...
The Alaska Marine Highway System’s ongoing crew shortage has eased up for entry-level steward positions but remains a significant problem in the wheelhouse and for engineers, likely keeping the Kennicott out of service again this summer. As of March 8, the state ferry system was short almost 50 crew of what it would need to put its full operational fleet to sea this summer, which means keeping the Kennicott tied to the dock, Craig Tornga, the system’s marine director, reported to a state Senate budget subcommittee on March 19. That is abo...
The 6-month-old Wrangell Athletic Club has raised more than $10,000 toward its mission of paying for student travel to state competition, with plans to raise a lot more. Meanwhile, the school district has advanced more than $40,000 for student travel to state competition in the 2023-2024 school year. The school board last year appropriated $46,000 to cover a deficit in the travel account for the 2022-2023 school year, with the cautionary advice that it did not plan to repeat the spending this year — and would look to the new fundraising g...
After last year’s comprehensive review of every piece of property in Wrangell pushed up the borough’s total taxable assessed valuation by more than 50%, this year’s assessment notices are tame. Property tax assessments were sent out March 20, and initial numbers are down slightly from last year, though the numbers are not final until approved by the borough assembly. This year the total assessed value of taxable property comes to $229 million, with non-taxable property at $158 million, which includes state, federal, borough, SEARHC and churc...
The state ferry system carried 181,000 passengers in 2023, still short of the pre-COVID numbers in 2019 and down substantially from almost 340,000 in 2012 and more than 420,000 in 1992. Overall vehicle traffic also is down, from more than 115,000 in 2012 to 63,000 last year. Much of the decline corresponds to a reduction in the number of vessels in operation, according to statistics presented to a state Senate budget subcommittee on March 19. The fleet provided almost 400 “operating weeks” in 2012, with each week a ship is at sea counting as an...
Problems with dog waste in town, in parks and ballfields are ongoing. While there has been some improvement in recent years, people not picking up after their dogs continues to be a recurring issue, especially with the coming of spring. “With everything thawing, it’s one of the more gross times of the year,” said recreation director Devyn Johnson of Parks and Recreation. “And it’s a bit of a roller coaster. Sometimes people do better than other times.” Parks and Recreation Director Lucy Robinson and her staff have been working hard to clear pa...