Sorted by date Results 676 - 700 of 6202
Typically, at this time of year, The Salvation Army food pantry, the only regular food pantry in Wrangell, is running low on items coming out of the holiday crush. Last year, the food pantry gave out 130 baskets for Thanksgiving and 200 for Christmas. Often, that leaves the pantry with fewer offerings for people in need immediately after the holidays. This year is different. Capt. Chase Tomberlin-Green explained The Salvation Army received loads of donations following November’s landslide — and they are still well stocked. Donations came fro...
A Pacific Northwest seafood business owner, whose family has been active in commercial fishing in Alaska since 1981, plans to buy and expand the operations of Fathom Seafoods in Wrangell. Peninsula Seafoods has applied to the borough for transfer of the lease on a small dockside parcel at the Marine Service Center. The port commission has recommended approval of the transfer, sending the issue to the borough assembly. As soon as the assembly signs off on the transfer, which could come at its Jan. 23 meeting, Jeff Grannum, general manager of Pen...
Cruise ship operators that lighter their passengers to shore will pay higher port fees starting this summer in Wrangell. The borough assembly unanimously approved the new rate structure Jan. 9, following a port commission recommendation. The rates had been set at 40% of the cost of tying up to the dock, with the new fee structure raising that to 60%. The increase in lightering fees is intended to encourage more ships to tie up at the dock rather than anchor offshore, Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma told the assembly. Wrangell should be...
The borough assembly on Jan. 9 unanimously adopted an ordinance to institute a $300 fine for illegally cutting down trees on borough land. No one from the public spoke on the ordinance at the public hearing held before the assembly vote. In addition to the ordinance setting the amount of the fine, the assembly also unanimously approved an ordinance adding trespass to the borough code, which prohibits “cutting down, injury or removal of trees or timber from borough property without written permission.” Borough officials drafted the ord...
When Lillian "Jing" O'Brien graduated from Wrangell High School in 2020, COVID-19 had taken over the nation and she had enrolled in Loyola University in Chicago with tentative plans to study pre-law and perhaps later corporate law. "I was fully planning to go, but then last minute around July, they sent out a message saying, unfortunately, due to the COVID restrictions, they were going to close down campus and move classes online." That unexpected complication pushed O'Brien to explore...
Almost 110,000 Alaskans applied for the fall 2024 Permanent Fund dividend in the first eight days after the application period opened on Jan. 1. Applications close in 11 weeks, on March 31. Last year’s dividend was $1,312. This year’s amount will be determined as part of annual state budget deliberations, which will begin next week when legislators reconvene in Juneau. The annual dividend is paid from the state general fund, which gets most of its money from investment earnings generated by the $78 billion Alaska Permanent Fund and from oil...
Middle Ridge Road, heavily damaged and blocked in several places by a 3,400-foot-long landslide Nov. 20, will be out of service until the U.S. Forest Service can come up with a repair plan and funding for the project. "It is closed for the foreseeable future. ... We're talking a major project," said Austin O'Brien, interim district ranger for the Forest Service in Wrangell. Several stretches of the road are covered in mud, trees and debris, cutting off access to the Forest Service's Middle Ridge...
The port commission has recommended to the borough assembly approval of an ordinance that would require owners who moor their vessels at a reserved spot in Wrangell harbors to either provide proof of marine insurance or pay a monthly surcharge on their moorage fee. Officials have been considering since 2022 adding the new requirement to municipal code to help shield the borough from the cost of raising and disposing of boats that sink in the harbors. “The cost of recovering sunken vessels has significantly increased, and the community can no l...
The Alaska Department of Transportation is seeking bids for rockfall-prevention work just past 6-Mile Zimovia Highway in an area known as The Bluffs and prone to rocks breaking off from the hillside and landing in the right of way. The work is scheduled for this summer. Bids were due Jan. 9. The work will include drilling and installing into the rock face more than 300 linear feet of bolts, each at least 25 feet long and grouted in place. The job also will include clearing work at the top of the slope. An engineer’s estimate puts the e...
The borough and the Alaska Department of Transportation have found an answer to preserve the Wrangell Golf Club’s low-cost use of 33 acres of state land on Ishiyama Drive for the nine-hole Muskeg Meadows course. When the state last year determined it needed to start charging a market-rate land rent to the nonprofit, the borough figured out it could lease the land from the state at no cost – and then sublease it to nonprofit for $1 a month. The borough assembly signed off on the deal Dec. 12. The golf club has operated Muskeg Meadows for more th...
The intent is to promote Wrangell’s unique attractions, its wildlife, culture and history, aiming to attract more independent travelers to town. “Our goal is to establish a steady stream of visitors,” Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director, said of the town’s new Travel Wrangell marketing plan. “It’s bringing in that independent traveler,” she explained in an interview last month. The objective is to have visitors “spend more money and more time” in town. The marketing plan has been under development since last May, a month a...
Installation of security cameras at eight port and harbor sites has started. “Chatham just showed up today,” Harbormaster Steve Miller said on Jan. 2, referring to Juneau-based Chatham Electric, which has a $495,000 borough contract for the work. “We did all the site inspections for the camera locations. … We’ll be working on it, and we should be done by the end of March,” Miller said. Originally intended to be installed in late summer through fall of 2023, Miller said he was unsure of the reason for the postponement, although he believes it...
This fall’s energy relief payment, which would go out along with the annual Permanent Fund dividend, is looking smaller than expected several months ago. The “bonus” on the 2024 dividend would come from state revenues in excess of what is needed to cover the spending plan approved by lawmakers and the governor last spring. The Legislature included a provision in the state budget that said half of any surplus would go into savings and half into an energy relief payment to Alaskans. The latest projection for the fall payment is about $175, Alexe...
After this year's Fourth of July celebration, resident and military veteran Liz Roundtree was troubled by the state of U.S. flags that had been turned in for disposal at the American Legion where she's a member. "After the Fourth of July, finding flags - even just turned in to us that need to be disposed – they're not folded in any way. They're just like, crumpled up and thrown into a bag of some sort," she said. Roundtree was also concerned about the state of how some flags were kept in s...
It’s been eight years since the state last increased its per-student funding formula for public schools — a 0.5% nudge that year — and years of stagnant funding have caught up with districts statewide, including Wrangell. “We have to count on funding this year,” Schools Superintendent Bill Burr said. An increase in the state formula “is essential to us.” The state’s K-12 foundation funding covers almost 60% of the Wrangell district’s $5.3 million operating budget for the 2023-2024 school year, with borough funds filling about 30% and mostly fe...
Alaska's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, told community leaders she will push for federal funding to bolster monitoring efforts of hillsides out the road. "What we need to have is greater monitoring and greater data that will help inform. That is something that I'm committed to working on," she said at a meeting with borough officials on Dec. 20 in Wrangell. "How do you give people that certainty that your home sitting on the beach where you thought you were always safe, and now you're looking...
After sitting vacant for almost three years — spending about half that time on the market — the borough is finally seeing interest from private parties in buying the former hospital property on Bennett Street. Three parties have expressed interest, said Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma, adding he anticipated at least one offer by the start of the new year. Hopefully, the borough could sell off the 1.94-acre parcel by February, he said. “The value is getting rid of the property,” Villarma said in an interview before Christmas. The borough...
Over the past decade, landslides have cost Southeast Alaska communities in both death and destruction - 11 deaths and tens of millions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage. Now communities around Southeast are reckoning with a future in which more destructive landslides are likely, as climate change fuels the extreme rainfall events and storms that scientists say may lead to increasingly powerful events in the future. The most recent major landslide, on Nov. 20 at 11-Mile Zimovia...
Wrangell is No. 16 on the statewide priority list and unlikely to receive any school repair money this year from the state’s Major Maintenance Grant Fund. The list, prepared each year by the Alaska Department of Education after reviewing engineering and condition reports on school buildings, determines which districts receive state funding for their priority repair and rebuilding projects. The Wrangell School District had requested $6.5 million in state money that it would use with $3.5 million approved by voters in 2022 to make $10 million o...
Though the state Department of Transportation had hoped and planned to pave the rebuilt section of Zimovia Highway in the landslide area by early this month, the weather did not cooperate and the concrete work has been postponed to at least March. “It isn’t working out in our favor,” Chris Goins, the department's regional director for Southeast, said of the gusty winds that blew through town before and after Christmas, forcing the rescheduling. Until it warms up and winter storms are past, drivers will see a crushed-rock surface for sever...
The Economic Development Board has recommended to the borough assembly that it put up half of the 20 lots at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision in an online auction to the highest bidders, with the other half going on sale by lottery. There would be no limit on how many lots an individual could purchase in the auction, but the board decided to recommend limiting the lottery to one lot per individual. The five-member advisory board voted unanimously Dec. 20 to forward its recommendations to the assembly, which has final say o...
When 9-year-old Syler Webster isn't busy with his fourth grade class, extracurricular activities or chores at home, he and his mom are keeping track of his growing Pokémon collection. For Syler's mother, Nicole Webster, it's the continuation of a pastime she enjoyed herself when she was her son's age. "I'm excited because I grew up playing and collecting Pokémon cards," she said, "but I never wanted to force it on him, so I was waiting until it was like an organic thing, so now it's fun that we...
People have been driving out the Spur Road and illegally cutting down trees on borough land and hauling away the logs, likely for firewood, Wrangell Police Chief Tom Radke said. In a move to combat the theft and damage to public property, the borough assembly will hold a public hearing at its meeting Tuesday, Jan. 9, on a proposed ordinance that would institute a $300 fine for illegally cutting down trees on borough land. The ordinance would add a new section to municipal code, defining trespass to include “the cutting down, injury or r...
The school district is advancing funds to cover student travel to state competition this school year, with the account at an estimated $52,000 deficit. The district is looking to the community and the newly created Wrangell Athletic Club to repay the costs before the budget year closes out on June 30. “That is our hope,” Schools Superintendent Bill Burr said in late December. Student travel to state competition cost about $46,000 in the 2022-2023 school year, which the school board voted in November to cover on a one-time basis out of reserves...
The school board has offered a three-year contract extension to Schools Superintendent Bill Burr, effective July 1, 2024, pending further negotiations. “We just wanted him to know that we want him to stay,” said David Wilson, school board president, confirming that he and the rest of the board are very satisfied with Burr’s performance on the job. “He’s doing an amazing job, that’s why we offered it to him,” said school board member Liz Roundtree. The board voted at its Dec. 18 meeting to extend Burr’s contract. Burr said in an email on Dec. 2...