Sorted by date Results 501 - 525 of 6036
Throughout her high school years, senior Mia Wiederspohn has been very invested in "everything Tlingit," learning Indigenous studies and its history in Wrangell. She worked with mentor and teacher Xwaanlein Virginia Oliver to learn the language, then assisted Oliver to create the radio show "The Application of Learning Tlingit Language," 41 three- to five-minute episodes teaching words and phrases. She also created and hosted her own five-episode radio program called "Mia's Gift," sharing her...
Wrangell’s public library has two birthdays: It celebrated its 100th birthday with an open house in 2021, and this year the current building will turn 50 years old. Originally opened in October 1921 by the Wrangell Civic Improvement Club in their club room, then moving a decade later to share space in the old City Hall, the city sold $157,000 in bonds to help construct a building specifically designed as a library in 1974. The construction had its beginnings in 1959 when a building fund was created — the occasion was marked by showing of the...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is offering people the chance to win Alaska Airlines miles for responding to a community health needs assessment survey. The survey is aimed at gathering information about the overall well-being of communities and individuals across Southeast. “Share your thoughts with us on daily living, nutrition, exercise habits and health care access,” the regional health care provider said in its Facebook postings. “The Community Wellness Health Needs Assessment was developed to evaluate the health statu...
Zoey Grace Clark has the honor of being the first baby born this year to a Wrangell couple. She was born Jan. 7 at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, weighing in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 21.5 inches for the happy parents, Jason and Michelle Clark. The dad works as a station agent at Alaska Airlines. Mom is a kindergarten teacher and has been with the school district about 10 years. The family returned to Wrangell on Jan. 12, Jason Clark said. "We just beat the weather,"...
A Washington state-based environmental group says it’s filing a petition asking the Biden administration to list southern Alaska king salmon as an endangered species — following through on notice of intent it filed last year. The Wild Fish Conservancy’s 68-page petition says the king salmon, also known as chinook, are threatened by climate change and competition from hatchery-raised fish, and that state and federal management plans are failing to stem their decline. The petition targets all populations that use the Gulf of Alaska, inclu...
State lawmakers went back to work this week in Juneau, with two familiar topics likely to dominate the budget-writing work. “The real question is what are we going to do for the Permanent Fund dividend … and what are we going to do for education,” Rep. Dan Ortiz told the Wrangell borough assembly Jan. 9. “That’s what the argument is going to be about.” Ortiz, a retired schoolteacher in Ketchikan, also represents Wrangell and Metlakatla. He’s been in the state House since January 2015 and serves on the Finance Committee, which is in charge of...
The borough will spend about $80,000 for an engineering report, cost estimates and conceptual drawings in hopes of winning a $25 million federal grant to rebuild the Inner Harbor, Reliance and Standard Oil floats. The grant application is due by Feb. 28, pushing the borough and its contractor, PND Engineers, with offices in Juneau and Anchorage, into an accelerated schedule to meet the deadline. If the federal grant comes through, the work will include new floats, ramps, pilings, electrical service and dredging, explained Interim Borough...
Since Artha DeRuyter arrived in town three years ago with her husband, clinical psychologist and current school board member John DeRuyter, she has provided flowers and floral arrangements for residents from their floating home in the harbor, in addition to selling her wares at other venues like the monthly community market at the Nolan Center, prompting her to name her blooming business OnTheWater Floral. Originally hailing from Fairbanks, DeRuyter has been involved with flowers, whether as a...
A year and a half ago, Colette Czarnecki, the new news director at public radio KSTK, had been a trainee in NPR's Next Gen Radio, a five-day, audio-focused journalism project which finds, coaches and trains journalists for public media. Her mentor on the project advised her to try looking for jobs in Alaska. As Czarnecki checked out public radio jobs in places like Petersburg, Ketchikan and finally Wrangell, she said, "The people that interviewed me, they kept on contacting me and constantly tol...
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...