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Grace Wolf unveiled paintings full of colorful starfish, sea urchins, jellyfish and more at Miele Gallery & Framing last Friday evening. "I always thought I couldn't be a real artist," Wolf said. "And, well, now I am." Her depictions of sea creatures and kayaks include the same seven colors in every painting, she said. It often takes Wolf 18 hours of painting before she can ensure it is finished and bright enough. "I paint in rainbows, I know," she said. "But everything in here goes...
Cindi Lagoudakis, the interim mayor of Petersburg, has decided to run for the permanent seat in October, retracing strong indications that she wouldn't. "A number of people had asked me to reconsider," Lagoudakis said. "And after giving it some hard thought, in the end I decided to run." Debbie Thompson, the Borough clerk, confirmed last week that Lagoudakis filed for candidacy. Before becoming interim mayor, Lagoudakis spent time on the Assembly, where her experience was rewarding, she said....
A Petersburg man was released from custody on $50,000 bond last week while facing 6 charges of murder, manslaughter and assault. William Christopher Allen is on house arrest and awaiting a murder trial that is scheduled for November 13, but will likely be pushed to next year. He paid $25,000 in cash bond last week and will have to pay another $25,000 if he violates the conditions of release. Allen is charged with two second-degree murder counts, two manslaughter counts, one count of assault and one count of unsworn falsification in the second d...
Karl Hagerman, the Petersburg Power & Light interim supervisor, recently outlined about a dozen city projects in a 30-minute update to the Assembly. "The Utility has a very large reserve," Hagerman said. "So the Assembly wanted to know what projects could be accomplished with those savings." This also comes after the Assembly requested an overview of those projects before moving forward with finding the permanent replacement to head the department. Now that Hagerman gave that report, he said it...
The Borough Assembly in its meeting last week approved a bid award to upgrade radios, renewed a lease with a fuel company and adopted two city ordinances. The Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department will be upgraded with new radio operations for ambulances, fire trucks and other vehicles, according to a letter of recommendation from Sgt. Randal Holmgrain. ProComm Alaska, a Motorola certified company, will be installing the radios for nearly $45,000. The Assembly approved a new five-year lease with Petro 49, the fuel company land near South Nordic...
The deadline to submit applications for candidacy in the October election is next week, and there has been an unusually low amount of submissions so far, said Debra Thompson, the Borough clerk. “It’s going to get better,” Thompson said. “I promise it will.” There are 23 elected positions this year and only eight people have filed for candidacy, Thompson said, with the deadline approaching on Tuesday, August 22. “Yeah, that’s no good,” Thompson said. “I sure hope something changes. We have way too many open seats.” The mayoral seat will b...
The country is preparing for an astronomical moment that hasn’t happened in 99 years, and southeast Alaska will witness about 60 percent of it. For the first time since 1918, a total solar eclipse will cut through the United States on Mon., August 21. A 70-mile wide totality line will move through the country, starting at Oregon and ending in South Carolina. People within that line will see the moon pass between the sun and earth completely, causing a brief period of daytime darkness, said Rick Braun, a land surveyor and Petersburg resident w...
WRANGELL – Fifty women from Petersburg and Wrangell played in a golf outing on Saturday to raise money for cancer patients in southeast Alaska at the 2017 Rally for Cancer Care. The outing, sponsored by the Wrangell Medical Center Foundation, generated more than $3,200 to help pay for travel costs that cancer patients have. The Muskeg Meadows Golf Course hosted 34 players from Petersburg and 16 from Wrangell. Others came just to donate, participate in the silent auction and eat breakfast and l...
An appointed member of the Petersburg School Board has decided against running for an open position in the October election and instead hopes to be a candidate for one of the open seats on the Borough Assembly. Brandi Thynes Marohl was appointed to the School Board last year. She was expected to run for one of the two open seats in the October election. That is until she announced publicly during a School Board meeting Tuesday that she submitted candidacy paperwork for a seat on the Assembly ins...
The Petersburg Medical Center set a goal to generate $10,000 from the 2017 Paddle Battle fundraiser, but nearly a month has passed and the number is about half that, despite there being more participants. The Medical Center had raised $5,535 from the kayaking expedition since last week, said Sarah Holmgrain, the foundation secretary treasurer for the hospital. The event hosted 43 people, which is about 10 more than the previous three-year average. "The last three years we did meet the $10,000...
The Petersburg Public Health Center has been outfitted with kits to help soften the blow of prescription drug and heroin overdoses long enough to get a person into treatment, said nurse Erin Michael. The health center is offering free overdose kits to anyone in Petersburg. In the kit is a nasal spray with naloxone, brand-name Narcan, which reverses respiratory depression that occurs while someone is overdosing on opioids. “This is a good thing for Petersburg,” Michael said. “Ultimately, it can save lives and buy someone time before they can g...
Turnover rate is a figure often monitored by employers in different ways, interpreted differently by one manager to the next and calculated using unique formulas. But there will always be a singular constant – money. The cost to replace an employee can be in the thousands. And turnover rate is often unforgiving, as it usually accounts for any person separating from his or her job. Borough governments in southeast Alaska often approach turnover differently, if they approach it at all. The H...
The Pilot calculated annual turnover rate for each Petersburg Borough department by using employee documents from 2013 to 2016. Here’s how it was done. The turnover rates presented reflect full-time staff only, and Mindy Swihart, the Borough Deputy Clerk, confirmed the data. After the data was calculated, every department head, along with the Borough manager and human resources officials, were asked to comment and confirm the turnover rates. To compute annual turnover rate, the number of full-time employees who left a department for any r...
National Geographic has a new cruise ship and it stopped in Petersburg on Monday, where the Chamber of Commerce gifted the captain with an inaugural plaque to commemorate the ship's first visit to the city. "On behalf of the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce," David Byrne said to Captain Andrew Cook. "We would just like to welcome you and your crew and your guests to the city of Petersburg." Marc Cappelletti, the director of expedition development on the ship, ushered representatives from the...
Heather Thomas, a mother of two and co-owner of Rocket Raptor Films, is directing a feature-length movie set to be filmed in Petersburg. Thomas wrote the script to "The Last 40 Miles," a survival drama set in a post-apocalyptic world where one man went for a hunt and returned to a calamity-stricken world. "Most of my movies start with a question or an interesting scenario," Thomas said. "To my knowledge, I don't know of any post-apocalyptic themed survival dramas in Alaska." Confused and wary...
Debbie Thompson, the Petersburg Borough clerk, denied petition applications on Monday that aimed to recall four Assembly members, causing the group leading the effort to huddle and rethink options moving forward. Sara Heideman, who is an attorney and the Borough legal counsel, reviewed recall applications for Eric Castro, Nancy Strand, Jeigh Stanton Gregor and Kurt Wohlhueter. She recommended the applications be ruled insufficient in a letter to Thompson which led Thompson to notify Gary Morgan, the leader of the application, of the rejection....
Election season is descending upon Petersburg and there are 23 open positions between city boards and the Borough Assembly that will appear on the October 3 ballot. The first day to file for candidacy in the October 3 election was Tuesday and all forms must be submitted to the Borough Clerk before August 22 at 5:00 p.m. According to Borough Clerk Debra Thompson, any person who wants to have his or her name placed on the ballot as a candidate must meet the qualifications for office outlined below: The Assembly will have three open positions to...
One of the strongest men in Alaska recently took over as postmaster at the Petersburg Post office. Mark Eppihimer started work on Monday and has lived in Petersburg for about a week. He moved from the outskirts of Anchorage with his wife and two daughters, Hilda and Heidi. "This is my first day on the job, and they are just kicking butt," Eppihimer said on Monday. "We have got an excellent crew here," Eppihimer is also a power lifter who was named Alaska strongest man in 2012 and 2014, along...
The Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions issued a press release on Tuesday addressing the murder and manslaughter charges against 24-year-old William Christopher Allen, the driver of a vehicle that landed upside down after running off a Petersburg road on July 4, 2016, killing two and injuring one. The state alleges that Allen was driving a Borough-owned van moments before the crash, despite warnings from doctors not to drive because of a seizure disorder that was “well-known” and “well-documented,” according to Assistant Attorney General...
A former radio site that used to help detect suspected Russian missile attacks in the Cold War is now being excavated to remove contaminated soil, which comes after several other locations in the site were already cleaned and treated, said Stephen Krause, the project manager. In 2014 and 2015, cleanup efforts were made at six different locations at the same site near Duncan Canal, except for one, which is called "DA001," that started mid-July and might continue into September, Krause said. The...
The ballot in October has five initiatives for Petersburg residents to vote on so far, including an amendment to the Charter, a tax break for business owners, off-road vehicles on public roads, a ban of fluoride and the development of the Scow Bay fishing yard. The change to the Petersburg Charter would allow the City of Kupreanof its own dock within the Petersburg Borough. All the docks on the island are owned by the state of Alaska, currently. But Kupreanof has passed ordinances that would allow it to maintain a dock. Now the Charter must be...
One of the newest United States Coast Guard fast response cutters, the John McCormick, made a stop in Petersburg on Tuesday as part of its southeast Alaska tour of the communities it serves. "We definitely didn't want to miss you guys," Capt. Michael Moyseowicz said about Petersburg. "Being the new ship, we wanted to stop in all the communities that we serve." The cutter is 154 feet in length, it holds 16,000 gallons of fuel and can remain at 12 knots speed for 13 consecutive days. There are...
Qualified voters in Petersburg will be asked to weigh-in on development of the Scow Bay fishing yard, and decide whether to authorize the Borough to put $500,000 down on the project, a fraction of the total cost but a concise statement that would turn the discussed expansion into a reality. Four members voted in favor and one against a decision to pass the spending question to voters, which asks if the city should use $500,000 of the Economic Fund --- a job-creation and economic development account --- to help build a small vessel haul out and...
The most sought-after low-income housing program in the nation is closing its office in Petersburg and will hence be managed from Juneau, said Cathy Stone, the director of public housing with the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. The director of the Petersburg Housing Choice Voucher Program, Bev Lopez, is retiring after 27 years. Instead of replacing her, housing officials selected a plan to manage the program from Juneau. “We can spend our money on staff, or we can spend our money on housing people,” said Amy Hiley, the manager of pol...
The Borough Assembly voted on Monday to approve a nearly $540,000 bid to remodel the Petersburg Power & Light building, which comes after members appeared ambivalent about the deal in past meetings, said Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht. The lowest bid to remodel the Power & Light facility was from Rainforest Contracting, Inc. for $538,600. The Borough passed the due date to accept or deny the bid after the Assembly postponed the decision in June, and the following meeting was canceled, leaving Giesbrecht worried the firm would back out. But...
