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Earlier this month, the 117th Congress formally adjourned, marking the close of a remarkably productive legislative stretch for Alaska. The past Congress was one of the best for our state in recent memory, and the bipartisan bills we passed will produce lasting benefits for Wrangell and across Southeast. Most significant is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which I played a lead role on. In just over a year, roughly $3 billion from it has been announced for Alaska. Those dollars are helping us build, expand and modernize everything...
A group of developers has offered the borough $350,000 for the former hospital property, which is $120,000 less than the new asking price and $480,000 less than the old asking price of last year. But what’s really new is that anyone is offering anything for the 1.94-acre property and the more than 30,000-square-foot building, much of which was built 45 years ago. The borough has been looking for buyers for almost a year, and this is the first real offer. The lack of serious interest is an indication that the original price was too high, that a...
The staff, faculty and students at Wrangell’s three public schools work hard and believe in the importance of education. Parents help out with volunteer work, and the overall community pitches in, too. The borough this year is contributing the maximum amount of funding to the school district operating budget allowed under state law. During budget deliberations last May, the assembly boosted the local contribution by more than $300,000 to reach the max for the 2022-2023 school year. And while that local support is enough for this year and p...
A pair of Holland America cruise ships — each with capacity for more than 2,700 passengers and crew — are scheduled to call on Wrangell in 2024. Each will make one visit. Each visit will more than double the community’s population for the day. And each visit will provide the town with a great opportunity to market itself — though also requiring a lot of work to get ready. It’s the first time the major cruise line has included Wrangell in its pre-season advertising. “We decided to add several ports that we have not typically visited to add vari...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has made a political career out of promising more than the state can afford while never supporting taxes to pay the bills, has a new, almost magical plan to help cover his budget deficits. It’s all about collecting so much money for essentially doing nothing that the state could continue avoiding taxes, continue paying the fattest Permanent Fund dividends in history, and continue avoiding an honest long-term fiscal plan to pay for public services. It sounds like a politically induced mirage. The plan? Promise never to l...
An old Staples printer paper box sat in front of me, spewing forth its contents. Instead of reams of 8.5-by-11 copy paper, old lifestyle sections, visitor guides, comics, real estate sections and business pages laid inside and scattered around the box. It was a small fraction of my work in journalism, dating back to the late 1990s, and showing the progression of my work. Hundreds of stories stared back at me, unrecognizable. Most of these I didn’t even remember writing. Others took me right back to the interviews. The ones I thought best illust...
It’s past time for Southeast and coastal Alaska communities to be heard regarding the collapse of our ferry system. It’s time to more forcefully make our needs known by energizing the Southeast Conference, the Southeast Conference of Mayors and other organizations. Southeast and coastal Alaska are entitled to have a highway functioning just like our roaded neighbors to the north. The newly passed federal infrastructure bill provides the federal funding to make this happen, if we don’t let it slip away The Alaska Marine Highway System was create...
There is more to state government in Alaska than just the amount of the annual Permanent Fund dividend. Though voters certainly might think otherwise, judging from the campaigns of many candidates in recent years. But the campaigns are over — at least officially — and it’s time for Alaska’s 60 legislators to start work in Juneau. The session opens Tuesday. No doubt one of the final negotiated compromises before adjournment will be to set the amount of this year’s PFD. It’s become an annual tradition, almost a ritual for lawmakers to politically...
For the 10th year in a row, more Alaskans moved out last year than new residents moved in. That’s a draining fact, with no real plan to plug the leak. To confirm the Alaska Department of Labor’s statistics about population and persistent out-migration, drive no farther than U-Haul. America’s do-it-yourself movers reported this month on its annual numbers for traffic into states and one-way rentals leaving each state. The traffic count for Alaska is not good. The state fell 25 spots in the nationwide ranking of growth states, from 16th place...
Governments levy taxes to pay for community services, such as schools, police and road repairs. And to help pay the public treasury costs of what can be unhealthy personal choices, such as excessive alcohol consumption and smoking. The state and federal governments pick up a large share of the expense of treating smoking-related illnesses, alcohol abuse and responding to alcohol-related crimes, and targeted taxes can help cover those bills. In addition, research has shown that adding taxes to cigarettes discourages consumption. Cigarette...
No doubt liars have served in public office ever since the first candidate printed a handbill and later evolved to taping a radio or TV commercial or clicking on social media. It’s as American as apple pie, and as dishonest as the pie stuffed with applesauce instead of apples. And if the candidates themselves were too honest to tell a fib, their campaign managers or biographers would step in and put out a lie to make the candidate look better. Even the story about how George Washington, our nation’s first president, had fessed up to cut...
I like to think I'm my own worst critic. Every word choice and every photo I run in print are reviewed, critiqued and deemed passable. For example, I rewrote this paragraph three times. When it comes to photography, I enjoy it so much that it's hard to boil down my choices for print. Sometimes, I'll take thousands of photos a month for news stories. Readers will maybe see 20 of those. My only hope is that what is printed has a positive affect for the most part. It doesn't always happen that...
Newly reelected Gov. Mike Dunleavy last week unveiled his proposed state spending plan for the next budget year. By far, the largest single expense in the entire state budget is the Permanent Fund dividend. The governor’s budget proposes no increase in state funding for public schools and a reduction in funding for the university system. No significant increases for road repairs, snow removal, mental health services, or more staff to help the backlog of food stamp applications which has created hours-long hold times for callers needing help. L...
It’s been almost 40 years since I read “The Good War,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning history as told by more than 120 participants in World War II. They remembered the fighting, the injuries and deaths, the personal sacrifices at home and even the moments of hope and kindness. They told the author, Chicago journalist Studs Terkel, of their lives and what the war did to them and what it meant to them. Though I was born after the war (1951), I’ve often thought about how strongly America came together to fight its enemies. Many volunteered for military...
No doubt Wrangell businesses do not stock everything on your holiday shopping list, but they probably have something on hand for most everyone on your list. It’s just a matter of being adaptive, like when the barge is late and you have to change the recipe for tonight’s dinner. Or when the plane is canceled due to weather and you have to host your visitors for another day, even though you were really ready to have the home to yourself. Or when you were late to the Girl Scouts cookie sale and your favorites, the Thin Mints, are sold out and you...
I was never a good student. I was easily distracted, especially in elementary and high school, and figured sentence construction, adverbs, adjectives and spelling were for the students who sat in the front of the class, not those of us who sat in the back to hide out. I was especially bad at spelling. So bad, in fact, that I once misspelled my own name on the nametag for parents day at school - my last name. I knew how to spell Larry. But, like with many things in life, I grew up. I now eat...
I am the parent of an upcoming graduating senior at Wrangell High School. This May, I will have had two kids successfully complete their primary and secondary education through the Wrangell public schools. As I write this letter, I aim not to be too negative. However, I am deeply disappointed and disheartened by the school district’s continued COVID testing policy for student athletes who travel for competition. As reported by KSTK on Dec. 2, the policy supported by Schools Superintendent Bill Burr is stricter than the policy of the Alaska S...
The borough has scheduled a public forum for 5:30 p.m. Dec. 14 at the Nolan Center to discuss a $2.5 million question: What would the community like to see done with the 6-Mile sawmill property which the borough purchased this summer? Sell the 39 acres, lease it in whole or in part, put public money into the development or let private dollars carry the cost of whatever may happen at the site are among the options. Tourism, industry, fisheries, storage — maybe some future use no one has ever really considered. Whatever may happen, next w...
The world will continue to need liquid fuels refined from crude oil for decades. But it likely will need less in the decades ahead as it transitions to renewable energy sources in hopes of stemming the damages caused by a warming planet. Which means oil companies generally are looking for the least risky projects, the environmentally smartest ones, the ones with the quickest payback to recover their investment. No producer wants to sink billions into a new development, only to find that delays, cost overruns and political or permitting...
Wrangell wants more visitors and the money they bring to town. But to compete against all the other Southeast ports that also want more tourism dollars to flow into their economy, Wrangell needs to provide accommodations and activities to help make visitors’ time in town enjoyable. That includes more public restrooms. Other than the two stalls in the small borough-owned restroom stop behind the Elks Lodge, and the facilities at the Nolan Center, there are no public restrooms in the downtown area. It’s not fair to expect businesses to pro...
The borough assembly said it was willing to discuss the issue when the Petersburg assembly suggested it’s time for the two communities to consider helping pay for restoring the Inter-Island Ferry Authority for runs between the towns. But there is a better option. It’s smaller than the 190-passenger ferries, it’s more affordable, and it’s local. Wrangell charter boat operators who already provide on-call runs to move people and goods between the two neighboring communities have said they could provide the service at a much lower cost than th...
More people moved out of Alaska than moved in every year between 2015 and 2021. If not for a healthy birth rate, the state population would have shrunk even more than it did. Wrangell has steadily lost population over the past 20 years, with the decline projected to continue. These are not good statistics. Even worse, these are self-fulfilling projections of future economic troubles. Fewer residents means fewer available workers, which means labor shortages for the goods and services people need. Business across the state already suffer from a...
When you’re trying to sell an unlivable house that needs an awful lot of expensive work — a fixer-upper, as it’s politely called — you keep dropping the price until someone comes along who wants the property and can afford to completely rebuild or maybe tear down and build a new home on the lot. No matter what you think that worn-down house with all its problems and unusable floor plan is worth in memories, it’s only really worth what someone else can make of it. The unused former Wrangell hospital is that fixer-upper, which is costing t...
Former governor, former vice presidential candidate and perpetual self-promoter Sarah Palin now believes the old ways are the best ways when it comes to elections. She was the first Alaskan to sign a petition last week to put a repeal of ranked-choice voting on the ballot. After losing her bid to serve in the U.S. House, Palin is attacking the election process rather than just admitting she isn’t that good of a candidate. It’s like a hockey player who can’t skate, blaming the ice for being too slippery. “Ranked choice voting is the weirdes...
Back in March, I wrote a column about being a converted sports junkie. It detailed my appreciation for high school sports, and I believe it’s what spurred me to get more involved in the community since people still remark on it nearly nine months later. On Nov. 15, the last session was held for the I Toowú Klatseen group. Before the final meeting, a make-up run took place for the kids who had missed the previous week’s 5-kilometer fun run. It was the culmination of around 10 weeks of meetings and practices — and I nearly missed all of it. So...
