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Whichever side wins the national election Nov. 5 needs to think about why they did not get a larger share of the vote. Not that they ever really expected to win over the hearts, minds and ballots of 60% of voters. The honest reality is that most candidates would accept 51% as a clear victory in this divisive world. OK, maybe they’re prefer 52%. But they’ll happily declare a mandate on the thinnest of margins. Gloating is ugly. It makes sore losers out of disappointed losers. Even worse, many of those sore losers are increasingly embracing anger...
The Public Safety Building needs work. Water and rot damage have taken their toll on the almost 40-year-old wood-frame building. Yes, the borough could have and should have spent more on maintenance and repairs in years past but that doesn’t change the fact that the work is past due and the community needs to pay the bill. Voters are asked on the Oct. 1 municipal election ballot to approve a $3 million bond issue to help pay for new roofing and siding and other critical repairs. The Sentinel supports a “yes” vote. The borough would borro...
To say I am resistant to change is an understatement. I acknowledge that it happens in life — after all, I am about to turn 73 — but that doesn’t mean I embrace or enjoy it. Rather, I quietly accept change, though not happily, just like I accept that rainy fall comes after summer, and that my 20-year-old spices don’t seem to smell like anything anymore and it is time to buy new jars. My resistance to change in life was obvious when I was getting coffee with a friend recently and pulled actual change out of my pocket, just as I’ve done sinc...
The school board made the right decision last week to pull the plug on accepting a federal grant to purchase an electric school bus. Just because the EPA grant would have covered 90% of the purchase price doesn’t mean it was a good fit for Wrangell at this time. In this case, board members discussed it at a public meeting and voted down the idea. But it was a close vote, with two of the five board members wanting to go ahead with the purchase. It was a close vote because there are good reasons to run an electric bus rather than continue b...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy made the pledge and he’s stickin’ to it. Too bad he is putting national anti-tax politics above tax fairness in Alaska. Specifically, he vetoed legislation this month that would have taxed car rentals through online platforms the same as car rentals from brick-and-mortar agencies with local offices. And he vetoed legislation two years ago that would have taxed vape and e-cigarette products the same as traditional tobacco products. The car rental fairness legislation passed with 51 out of 60 state senators and rep...
In early August an ad hoc meeting was held in Ketchikan by a group consisting of knowledgeable residents who had followed the Alaska Marine Highway Service since its inception in the early 1960s. The purpose of was to discuss how to revise the system. We addressed AMHS maintenance. We discussed using money made available to AMHS through the federal infrastructure legislation to restructure the system. Finally, we discussed the need to reestablish the run to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Operationally, we currently have only one vessel, the...
The borough’s Economic Development Department has a caffeinated idea to energize the community’s push for economic stability and, in time, some growth would be good, too. The plan is for a series of “economic coffee chats” the third Friday of every month through March, starting Oct. 18. The location will vary each month. The department is calling the informal sessions “Our Town, Our Future.” It’s a good time to talk about a better future. Wrangell needs some new ideas to reverse years of population loss. Even worse, the state’s latest forecast...
We deliver you the Sentinel as one piece, whether in print or online. If you’re reading this in print, just pretend that the sheets of paper folded together are one piece. Regardless of how you read the paper, it has five elements: Paid advertising, news, the Sentinel’s editorial, my personal opinion column and opinions from our readers. Each has different rules and standards. Each is essential for newspapers that want to serve their community. Paid ads are pretty simple: The advertiser, be it a business or an individual or a government agency,...
On July 26, KSM Mining ULC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seabridge Gold, received its “substantially started” determination from the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office for its Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) project. KSM is a huge proposed open-pit and underground gold-copper-silver mine targeting coastal mountains of northwestern B.C., within the headwaters of both the Nass River, which lies entirely within B.C., and the transboundary Unuk River, which flows into Southeast Alaska near Ketchikan. Why does this matter? Acc...
In less than four weeks, Wrangell voters will cast their ballots in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Voting is easy — cast an early ballot at City Hall any weekday starting Sept. 16, or vote at the Nolan Center on election day. The harder part is deciding how to vote. The decisions include contested races for mayor, the school board and port commission, and two ballot propositions: One question asks voters whether the borough should borrow $3 million to start repairs to the 40-year-old Public Safety Building, and the other asks if voters want t...
Remember those perplexing math problems in school? Not the easy ones that required only simple subtraction, addition, multiplication or division. I’m talking about those word problems that told what seemed like a purposefully confusing story about trains moving in opposite directions at different speeds and you had to calculate how far apart they would be in an hour. I figured the purpose was to teach us problem solving. Though in my early school years, the biggest math problem I wanted to solve was how to buy 25 cents worth of candy when I h...
The U.S. Postal Service expects to lose $7 billion this year. That makes the USPS dependent on Congress, which is never a healthy dependency. Email and digital technology are forcing first class mail into the dead letter bin of history, slicing deeply into a key revenue source for the Postal Service. It’s more painful than the worst paper cut. So it’s no surprise that the federal agency continues to raise rates, though even at last month’s increase to 73 cents, a stamp is still pretty affordable — it’s lower than most developed countries...
Candidates have long waged election campaigns on catchy slogans, snappy jingles, popular promises and misleading but memorable mottos. It’s getting worse. The music is better but the lyrics are lacking. Vagueness is in vogue. The less specific candidates are with their actual plans to fulfill campaign promises, the less the opposition and analysts can pick apart the flaws. Running for president or Congress? Promise more funding for child care, lower taxes, lower prices at the grocery store, stronger defense, defeating China for jobs and i...
Wrangell’s Public Safety Building is two-thirds of its way to becoming a senior citizen. It’s not yet at the knee replacement or artificial hip stage, but it certainly needs a new roof along with replacement of siding and multiple structural pieces damaged and weakened by years of water and rot. The 40-year-old building needs work. Voters may get a chance in the Oct. 1 municipal election to schedule the building for repairs. The assembly has talked for years about whether to repair or replace the building, always scared off by price tags of...
Some of the best times in life are when a bad thing turns into a good thing. When frustration and disappointment transform into happiness. It’s not magic, though it seems magical. It’s when someone you don’t even know steps up and does something nice. I recently flew to Washington, D.C., and being frugal, which sounds so much better than cheap, took a 53-minute train ride from the suburban airport to the stop closest to my downtown hotel, rather than the more convenient but 20 times more expensive taxi. The Metro train station was almost a mil...
The state has long allowed early voting, making it easy on Alaskans to never miss marking a ballot in an election year. And now the borough is doing the same thing. Good for borough officials and the assembly to approve the change in voting procedures, good for residents and a good move for representative government, which is more representative of the public when more people vote. Rather than require voters to make time only on election day or go through a cumbersome absentee voting process to cast their ballot in advance, the assembly has...
To modernize an old expression, Alaskans are fiddling while the Permanent Fund burns. Not literally, of course. The Permanent Fund’s stocks and bonds, real estate deeds, lease agreements and investment contracts are all safely stored. But the fiddling part, that’s true. And because it’s a state election year, we can expect a lot of candidates to turn up the volume on their fiddles. No matter how off-key the music, no one ever loses an election by playing happy tunes about big Permanent Fund dividends. No one wins an election talking about...
I became a senator one month after President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, and over the next three decades I was involved in the law’s implementation, both as a senator and later as Alaska’s governor. As I write this now, nearly 45 years after ANILCA became law, I am discouraged that we are still fighting battles that should have been resolved as soon as the ink dried on this law. A case in point is the Ambler Road, which is unambiguously authorized by the law: “Congress finds that...
Technically, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto blocked five bills from becoming law that the state House passed after the constitutional adjournment deadline. But don’t blame him for killing the new laws. The House is the guilty party. The 40-member House, managed the past two years by a splintered and often disorganized 23-member Republican-led majority, couldn’t manage to get its work done before the clock struck midnight. The governor did not hold them up; no power outage set them back; there was no IT meltdown or online hack; nothing slowed them...
Former President Donald Trump has a narrow lead in most polls in a tight race for the White House, but he is far and away the leader in handing out personal insults. This guy tosses out crude nicknames, offensive language and outlandish statements like shark hunters toss out stinky chunks of fish meat to attract their catch. It’s called “chumming,” but there is nothing chummy about U.S. presidential politics. And the “catch” is voters. Trump has a massive mental thesaurus of insulting names for his political opponents, a strategy he has relie...
It would be wonderful to see a picture of Dan Trail and his dogs who helped rescue the baby seal pup. How many dogs? What breed? I am one of the many dog lovers in Wrangell and it was cool to read about how Dan’s dogs were a catalyst for a seal pup rescue. This is such a perfect place to get outside and walk dogs. And look what could happen — lives are saved. Sometimes lost, too. We have stories. After spending 20 winters of not walking outside in Wasilla, my husband Greg and I are loving being senior citizens who live somewhere in Alaska, lik...
The borough assembly has started a lengthy process that will include a lot of public input, as it should, to possibly amend the municipal charter so that a future assembly, if it chooses, could change municipal code to pay mayors and assembly members for their work. Allowing the option of paying members a few hundred dollars a month is a good idea — not because so many other cities and boroughs in Alaska have been doing it for years, but because it takes a lot of time to be a good assembly member, more than should be expected of volunteers. S...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has long prided himself on being a fiscal conservative. He has consistently adhered to that mantra, with the exception of his long-standing advocacy for a state checkbook-draining supersize Permanent Fund dividend. As a fiscal conservative, the governor has always talked of keeping a short leash on spending, a tight rein on appropriations, a firm grip on the budget. Too bad that stinginess extends to explaining his budget vetoes. Critics of Dunleavy’s vetoes of legislative appropriations for the state fiscal year that s...
It was a scary week in America. A troubling and unsettling eight days. It started with an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13. Then, eight days later, President Joe Biden gave in to pressure and announced he would not seek reelection. In between, Americans heard, read and scrolled through multitudes of rumors, facts, opinions, political commentary, conspiracy theories and a lot of irresponsible garbage from all sides. Surviving all the turmoil, maybe government leaders will come out smarter and more caring. Maybe...
Unbelievable, which is the opposite of what real news should be. But believe it that Elon Musk is pushing errors and false news into the heads of people around the world. Whether for his personal profit, personal ego or personal fun, it’s irresponsible and dangerous. Musk, a serial entrepreneur who is as flaky as cold cereal, believes Grok, his artificial intelligence service pedaled through X, formerly known as Twitter, should be a news source. “What we’re doing on the X platform is, we are aggregating. We’re using AI to sum up the aggrega...