Workshop held to discuss healthcare and economic development in the community

The Wrangell Cooperative Association, along with Corvus Design and SALT, a consulting team, held a workshop at the Nolan Center last Thursday, June 13. The workshop was part of the Administration for Native Americans grant project, which has been led in Wrangell by Ruby McMurren and Talea Massin of the WCA. The project was designed to look at ways to

prevent the out-migration of the native community in Wrangell.

Through several meetings with community and tribal leaders, McMurren and Massin determined that there were three areas of improvement needed in the community: Economic development, healthcare, and housing. Last week's workshop was meant to bring the community together to see what priorities everyone shared, to create a survey that would go out to the people of Wrangell. Economic development and healthcare were the main topics of discussion at the workshop, though housing was also discussed.

Meilani Schijvens, with SALT, opened the meeting by presenting some data on Wrangell's economic outlook. As of 2018, Wrangell had a population of 2,426 people. This is a step up from 2017's population estimate of 2,389, but is still below 1998's population of 2,560. Of this population, about 22 percent are Alaska Native. As far as work goes, there are an estimated 1,160 jobs in the community, generating $47 million in wages. Of these earnings, about a third are from government employment. The maritime industry came in a close second, taking up 27 percent of a pie chart Schijvens presented. Health and social services made up 13 percent, while tourism and construction tied at 5 percent each. The remaining 19 percent of jobs were finance, transportation, utility and trade work, among other things.

There are about 110 healthcare jobs in Wrangell, she said. This is about 10 percent of all jobs in Wrangell, generating about $6 million in wages. There are about 18 medical transcriptionists, 17 personal care aides, 15 nursing assistants, 13 registered nurses, 12 self-employed people in the local healthcare industry, six medical assistants, five mental health and substance abuse workers, and 23 healthcare support and other workers.

Despite making up a relatively small portion of jobs on the island, the visitor industry has been rather robust in Wrangell. According to Schijvens, visitors to Wrangell spent $4.6 million last year. Cruise ship passengers have steadily increased since 2014, with an estimated 22,000 tourists expected to visit Wrangell in 2020. Visitors from private yachts have increased in Wrangell, as well, as have people who come in via airplane. The only downturn in the tourism outlook, she said, was in ferry passengers. Visitors on the ferry system fell from 4,841 in 2017 to 3,749 in 2018.

"So what this really means is we have a lot more cruise ship passengers coming, and more yachters coming, and there's really a lot more opportunities to find those excursions, those kind of shorter excursions that are really marketed especially to those cruise ship passengers," she said.

Schijvens also had information on the housing market in Wrangell. According to her, the average home size in Wrangell is 1,875 square feet, the largest size in all of Southeast Alaska. Wrangell is also the least overcrowded city in the region. However, Wrangell also generally has older homes than other communities. About 12 percent of Wrangell homes were built before the 1940s. Energy usage and costs in Wrangell are also the highest in the Southeast Alaska region, costing $6,590 a year. This is over twice the cost of energy usage in Anchorage, she said.

"So in summary they're big, they're old, the quality is comparatively lower, the homes are energy inefficient, the rental prices are really low," Schijvens said. "They're the lowest in the region, but rental vacancies are also low."

After Schijven's presentation, Chris Mertl of Corvus Design broke the workshop up into small groups to get more community input. Healthcare and economic development were the primary topics of discussion, with a more in-depth look at housing planned for Monday, June 17. Some of the common themes amongst the economic development small groups was that the public wanted to see Wrangell with a thriving economy, but also maintain its small town feel. Increased options for tourism was a well-supported idea, and so was the idea of ensuring children could have a future in Wrangell. Wrangell locals needed to benefit as the economy grew, in short.

"Our short term goal was to increase tourism options," said Chris Hatton, who was part of one of the economic development small groups. "Our longer term was sustainability, and we sort of tangented into that, as well, as having jobs for kids when they grow up. So they can go get an education that they need and come back."

On the healthcare side of the small groups, better care for elders, increased mental health services and substance abuse programs, and more specialty services were all discussed. A shared priority between the two groups was giving Wrangell "cradle to grave" status. People wanted to see babies being born in Wrangell, growing up in Wrangell, and eventually being buried in Wrangell.

"Travel is a pain in the butt, it's expensive, and we can have those [specialty services] in the future that would be great because we are very isolated," said Aaron Angerman, part of a healthcare small group. "But we're here because we want to be in a small community, because we love the quality of life that Wrangell presents."

McMurren, with the WCA, said that the survey being put together from this workshop will be sent out within the next few weeks. To learn more about the ANA project, contact McMurren at ana.director@wrgtribe.org.