Sorted by date Results 967 - 991 of 1731
The Petersburg Borough Assembly voted 4-1 on Aug. 1 to establish a new task force to address the community’s housing crisis. Assemblymember Jeff Meucci said the task force would work with the assembly’s backing to look at housing needs in the community. “Like child care, I think this is one of the most important issues facing Petersburg,” Meucci said. “Every person that we’ve hired within the borough over the past several months — police officers, up at the fire department, Mountain View Manor (senior citizen housing) — they were all lookin...
For many Southeast residents, fishing is a way to fill the freezer or earn a living. But for Sitka’s 9-year-old Miles Lawrie, fishing is a chance to spend time with his grandparents on the water. It was a bonus for Miles when, while fishing with his grandparents on July 8, he caught his first ever king salmon — a 45-pounder. “The pole went like 10 feet out, just dragging, it kept going hard way out,” Miles said. It’s unlikely he would have caught the big king if sea conditions out in Sitka Sound hadn’t made grandparents Pete and Shelley Pal...
After years of work and planning, site preparation is underway for the cabins to house Sitka’s homeless people. The plan is to build a dozen small cabins at the end of Jarvis Street, about a mile east of the downtown waterfront. The Sitka Homeless Coalition’s fundraising has exceeded expectations, SEARHC health educator Doug Osborne said at the Rotary Club meeting Aug. 2. The project also got a boost Aug. 2 with Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s announcement that she has added $1 million for the project to the federal appropriations bill now under consi...
The Sealaska Corp. board of directors last Friday endorsed Bill Walker for governor and Sen. Lisa Murkowski in her reelection bid for U.S. Senate. The board also announced its opposition to the measure on the Nov. 8 statewide election ballot that would call a constitutional convention to consider revisions to Alaska’s founding laws. “Reassessing Alaska’s constitution could fundamentally endanger not just the rights of all Alaskans, but specifically Native sovereignty,” Jaeleen Kookesh, Sealaska vice president of policy and legal affairs...
Up to 82,000 rural Alaskans will see lower electric bills because of legislation signed into law last month. Senate Bill 243, passed by the Legislature this spring, raises the maximum subsidy under the state’s Power Cost Equalization program, which reduces the cost of electricity in rural Alaska. Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed the measure into law on July 14. The bill, authored by Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, increases the maximum available subsidy from 500 kilowatt-hours per month to 750 kilowatt-hours per month. The average Alaska home consumes 5...
The Alaska Department of Law issued an opinion July 25 saying public money can be spent for homeschool students to attend one or two classes in a private school, but cannot be used for most of a student’s private school tuition. The 19-page opinion said it’s sometimes legal to use public funds for private school classes through the state program that pays for students to attend a correspondence school or homeschool. “But the more it looks like you’re just trying to send your kid to private school and get subsidized by the state, I think t...
Alaska cable company GCI has no immediate plans to drop the right-wing TV channel One America News, a spokesperson said July 27. Verizon, the last remaining major carrier to carry the channel, stopped airing the channel last Saturday. That action follows a similar move in April by DirectTV. Their decisions leave the channel, once a reliable advocate for the administration of President Donald Trump, without a nationwide audience and without the revenue paid by those carriers. Scott Robson, a senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intellige...
A bill signed into Alaska law last Thursday will make it possible for the state to prosecute sexual assault on the basis of a victim saying “no,” instead of requiring physical force or threats for such assaults to be considered crimes. The bill — which will also reduce the maximum amount of time allowed for rape kit processing and reclassify revenge porn cases as domestic violence crimes to offer better protection for victims — was one of three pieces of public safety legislation that Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed into law. The comprehensive sex-cr...
A proposal to build a boat haul-out facility in Sitka with the money the city received from selling its community hospital property will be on the Oct. 4 city election ballot. On a 6-0 vote July 26, the assembly gave final approval to an ordinance on the ballot question. If passed by the voters, up to $8.18 million from the 2021 sale of the hospital building and property to SEARHC would go toward construction of a haul-out and boatyard at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. Sitka has not had a boat haul-out — an important piece of i...
The state ferry Tustumena was tied up in Homer for several days last week, lacking enough crew to operate. Due to crew shortages, the Tustumena’s sailings were canceled as of July 26, and were scheduled to resume seven days later on Tuesday, according to an announcement from the Alaska Marine Highway System. “A critical crew shortage required the vessel to stay in port for safety reasons,” the state reported July 28. “We ran out of stewards,” Alaska Department of Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson said during a presentation to the Junea...
After two years of construction, the new $3.1 million Metlakatla Veterans Cemetery officially opened on July 25. A pair of seven-foot-tall totem poles carved by David Boxely were dedicated to the cemetery at the event. Both totem poles represent traditional Tsimshian warriors. The Fourth Generation Dancers, a Metlakatla dancing group, performed a warrior’s song during the totem pole unveiling ceremony. “It’s so important to recognize our Native American, Native Alaskans who have served our nation and the families that have sacrificed,” U.S. Un...
The top employees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. are some of the highest-paid public workers in Alaska, but with wages rising across the country and employers competing for skilled labor, even the $80 billion Permanent Fund is struggling to keep employees from leaving. Nine of the corporation’s 66 employees have quit this year, including the manager of the corporation’s highest-earning investments and the entire three-person team in charge of finalizing trades. Seven other positions are new, and filling them is expected to be difficult. The...
In November of last year, Tlingit & Haida Community and Behavioral Services opened a healing center in Juneau to provide care to tribal citizens and other Alaska Natives. At the time, care was provided through Zoom Health or over the phone. The center was able to open its doors this year for in-person appointments but still relies on telehealth to reach a greater number of patients who might not have access to such services otherwise. Healing center staff provides a mix of wholistic healing and western treatment for crisis and access help,...
Bobby Bolen is trying to fill around 50 teaching positions at the North Slope Borough School District. “This is our focus 24 hours a day right now — to get classrooms staffed for students,” Bolen said. Bolen is the brand-new human resources director at the district, which has about 2,000 students in 12 schools, some of which start as soon as Aug. 8. He’s exploring options like long-term substitutes and the prospect of international teachers to round out the district’s usual teaching staff of about 170. “Our worst-case scenario would be distance...
Joseph Tagaban is excited to suit up for the Petersburg High School basketball team this winter as a sophomore. A year ago, that was anything but a certainty. In December 2020, Tagaban was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a potentially aggressive form of cancer. The 15-year-old spent the better part of a year in Seattle receiving treatments, and his cancer is in remission. Now, after a recent meeting with an NBA superstar, Tagaban is ready to take on opponents on the court. Tagaban met wit...
Three Haines commercial fishermen caught a 425-pound halibut measuring 91 inches in length. “It was just an epic fish,” said fisherman Cole Thomas, who hooked the fish with his father and captain Bill Thomas and friend Jeff Wackerman. “This one is a lot more special than most.” The three caught the halibut earlier this month in Icy Strait, near Point Adolphus, with a commercial longline using cod and humpy salmon heads as bait. “I could see the line was going straight down. That means something big’s coming. I was telling my friend (Jeff): It...
The state has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior in an attempt to hold the federal government responsible for the identification of thousands of polluted sites on land given to Alaska Native corporations. A complete inventory is a first step in the state’s ongoing efforts to hold the federal government responsible for cleaning the sites. The state argues that pollution left by the U.S. military and other federal agencies has prevented the development of land transferred from the federal government under the Alaska Native Claims S...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy will sign a bill giving state recognition to Alaska’s 229 federally recognized Native tribes, the Alaska Federation of Natives said last week. In a ceremony scheduled for this Thursday, the governor will also sign bills creating child welfare and education agreements between the state and tribal governments, AFN said. State recognition is not expected to affect tribes’ legal relations with the state, but supporters have said it is an important symbolic statement by the state, which has historically fought efforts by tri...
For Alaska salmon fishing, the summer of 2022 is the best of times and the worst of times. In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of July 18, the run had totaled over 73.7 million salmon, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish. But along the Yukon River, a prized salmon run is heading toward a worst-ever seaso...
Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy has raised more money than any other candidate in this year’s Alaska governor’s race over the past five months and is heading toward the Aug. 16 primary election with more cash in his campaign war chest than his challengers. Dunleavy, a Republican, reported raising $925,380 between Feb. 2 and July 15, according to new filings with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, and reported having $768,263 in cash on hand as of July 15, after expenses and debts. Former Gov. Bill Walker, challenging Dunleavy as an independent,...
MASKWACIS, Alberta (AP) — Pope Francis issued a historic apology Monday for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations in ways still being felt today. “I am sorry,” Francis said, to applause from school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta, the first event of Francis’ w...
Incumbent Lisa Murkowski has a dominant fundraising advantage over challenger Kelly Tshibaka in the U.S. Senate race. In the race for U.S. House, Nick Begich enjoys a big cash-on-hand advantage despite raising the least of the three main contenders in the race, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission reports. A total of about $4 million was raised on Murkowski’s behalf by her campaign ($1.6 million) and the political action committee Alaskans for LISA ($2.4 million) during the three-month quarter ending June 30. The 20-year R...
Early voting will open Aug. 1 for the Aug. 16 special election to fill the unexpired term of the late U.S. Rep. Don Young and the primary election, also Aug. 16, for governor, Legislature, U.S. Senate, and to select the top candidates for a full two-year term in the U.S. House. Voters may cast their ballots between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekdays through Aug. 15 at City Hall assembly chambers, said Sarah Merritt, state elections worker in Wrangell. “You never have to give a reason” to vote early, Merritt said. Voters can choose to vote early if the...
This year, deposits of about $3,200 each will begin appearing in Alaskans’ bank accounts on Sept. 20, but so far the promise of a record-high combined Permanent Fund dividend and energy relief payment hasn’t translated to more charitable giving. Since the Alaska Legislature approved the large payout in May, Alaskans had donated an additional $14,000 as of last week through Pick.Click.Give., the online charitable giving program linked to the PFD. “This is typical for this time frame, every year,” Pick.Click.Give. senior program officer Jessie...
Alaskans who find themselves in a mental health crisis can now call or text 988 to access a trained crisis counselor. Support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to individuals of all ages. The three-digit number for suicide prevention and mental health crisis support became operational in Alaska and across the nation on July 16. Leah Van Kirk, statewide suicide prevention coordinator with the Alaska Division of Behavioral Health, said 988 “provides an easy to remember three-digit number for someone to use when they’re in crisis or...