Sorted by date Results 176 - 200 of 301
The Petersburg Borough Assembly meeting as the Board of Equalization (BOA), on Monday, upheld the Assessor's property valuations on each property brought before them on appeal. Six appellants sought to have property values lowered on 10 parcels. According to Borough Clerk Debra Thompson 34 property owners brought appeals on 79 parcels. Of that number, the Assessor met with owners and resolved 69 of the appeals before the BOA met. Melinda Hofstad withdrew her appeal during the BOA meeting. Appeal...
For the second time since a new roof was installed on the borough downtown building, a leak has appeared in the ceiling of the Assembly Chambers. After the first leak appeared, the roofing subcontractor located and made repairs at the site of the leak. At last Friday's work session, another leak had stained the ceiling tiles in the chambers. According to Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht this is the second time the leak has appeared. The first leak happened in the early stages of construction...
The Petersburg Medical Center Board approved a budget of up to $250,000 plus design costs of $42,000 to renovate the basement kitchen at the hospital at a special meeting last night. The kitchen is located in the basement of the Long Term Care facility adjacent to the hospital. That building is located in the oldest section of the facility that was built in 1969. CFO Doran Hammett told the board that design and renovation expenses should be taken from the hospital's long-term investment...
Despite a high participation rate in the Petersburg Borough’s recycling program there is still too much recyclable material going to the baler facility, according to Public Works Superintendent Karl Hagerman. 95% of Petersburg’s 1,200 sanitation customers participate in the recycling program, but Hagerman says the waste diversion rate hovers around 16%. Hagerman wants to move that number to 30-50%. Recycling can make a significant difference in the cost of removing trash from Mitkof Island. The sanitation department pays $113/ton to ship garbag...
The thought of hiring an out of town contractor to complete capital project work for the local utility is not fiscally sound and does less to benefit Petersburg’s beleaguered economy. Since the Power and Light Department has been operating without a third journeyman lineman for two years, it has been impossible for them to safely complete many construction projects they would normally take on. If PMP&L’s improvements were of a short-term nature, hiring a private firm to complete the work would be advantageous. However, the utility has pro...
Petersburg Power and Light is seeking to fill a vacant journeyman lineman position to enable the local crews to complete improvements and upgrades to the utility infrastructure. At a Friday morning work session Superintendent Joe Nelson told the Assembly his workers can complete the work at lower cost to the utility than hiring contract workers from Juneau. Nelson said Chatham Electric in Juneau could do the work at more than double the cost of local crews. A Chatham foreman would cost $175/hr and overtime would cost $242/hr. PMP&L’s foreman w...
The Port and Harbor Advisory Board recommended against changing the zoning on waterfront parcels along Nordic Drive at its Friday meeting. The zoning change request is now before the Planning and Zoning Commission. The owners of five lots at 806, 804, 710, 712 and 708 Nordic Drive are making the request and told the commission in a letter dated Jan. 27 that Commercial 1 Zoning would be more appropriate to potential development of the lots. Water access to these lots is restricted due to...
While not a line item on the harbor advisory board agenda, sea lion activity in the harbors was a board discussion item at the March 10 meeting. "There are not a lot of issues in the winter until the bait herring shows up," Harbormaster Glo Wollen told the board. Harbor policy continues not to allow fish scraps to be dumped into the harbors, she added. Wollen referenced a story out of Sand Point at the Peter Pan Seafoods dock where a Petersburg person aboard the F/V Cape St. Elias was attacked b...
The Petersburg Borough is responding to accusations that it made an illegal search of Karen Ellingstad's Wrangell Avenue home on Jan. 9 and 13, 2014 to seek and retrieve asbestos samples prior to the scheduled demolition that had been upheld by the Superior Court. Furthermore, Ellingstad states that entry to her home by Public Works Director Karl Hagerman violated her right to privacy and required a search warrant based on the Fourth Amendment and Art. 1, Sec. 14 of the Alaska Constitution....
The final chapter of Petersburg Medical Center's strategic plan is likely the most daunting. The first goal of the plan states: "Fix or replace the facility to create a safe environment for patients, staff and community." Decisions need to be made to remodel the current facility at an estimated cost of $16 million or to replace the facility for an estimated $33 million. Both options require outside funding sources. In May 2016 Joann Lott of Jensen Yorba Lott Architects told the PMC board:...
Glenn Cooke, CEO of Cooke Inc. was the keynote speaker at the Chamber of Commerce annual meeting and banquet on Saturday night at the Sons of Norway Hall. His company purchased Icicle Seafoods in June of last year. Cooke lives in Saint John, New Brunswick with his wife Pamela and two young children Allison and William. "Every time I come to Petersburg I discover we have many more things in common than we have differences. We all speak the language of seafood. We all depend on the sea for our liv...
Oversight and communication by the Chief Financial Officer are a key component of PMC's strategic plan to achieve a break-even operation. The CFO is charged to balance quarterly spending with revenue and reimbursement in each department and control unnecessary waste at PMC. Doran Hammet, CFO, regularly communicates PMC's financial position to employees, physicians, management and the board. He does this at monthly meetings of the hospital board. He assures that pricing is competitive and he...
State Senator Bert Stedman predicts the legislature will be in session for a full 120 days with an additional 30 day session if they are to complete their work this session. “There’s a lot of talk of the 90 day session but the constitution calls for 121 days. “We’ve only finished in 90 days one time,” Stedman noted. Stedman was in Petersburg this past weekend to attend the Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet along with his wife Lureen. Stedman said there is a “near zero chance of a 90 day session with any quality work being accomplishe...
Petersburg Rotarian Rick Braun traveled to India recently to administer polio vaccines and help build two dams to create a water retention reservoir. The reservoir will provide both crop irrigation water and raise the underground water table, enabling area wells to store more water for village residents. Braun has been a member of the Petersburg Rotary Club since 1987. The club has carried out fundraising projects for the organization's Polio Plus project for decades. Braun said polio has been...
The Alaska Marijuana Control Board approved the license for Petersburg's first marijuana cultivation operator, Southeast Moog Droog, on Tuesday. Operated by Gary Morgan, the growing facility will be in a 500 square-foot Quonset hut style building near his home in the Papke's Landing subdivision. Morgan participated at the Juneau hearing via teleconference. His license was approved easily with little fanfare. Morgan said the building has passed the state's inspection and is very secure. The...
The Petersburg Medical Center has to remedy a housing crunch this year, as they will be evicted from three of the six apartments they rent from Petersburg Mental Health's seven unit apartment building on Fram Street. Evictions would happen now through June. The PMC provides housing for locums and short-term employees and pays up to $1,100 per month for each of the 6 units they currently occupy. CEO Liz Woodyard told the hospital board last Thursday that the hospital likes to have housing within...
The Borough Power and Light Dept. has a fund balance of $7.5 million dollars. That's a lot of money by any standard, but remember, $3 million of that is required to remain in reserve, as mandated by the Borough's fiscal policy. It equals 6-month's operating cost for the utility. In 1985 when Petersburg and Wrangell went onto hydropower supplied by the Tyee Lake facility, rates were lowered, but set high enough to enable the utility to build reserves to move their downtown plant out the road....
Over 30 people turned out for a meeting to discuss long-term goals for developing the Scow Bay turnout last Thursday at the Halingstad-Peratrovich building. Members of the PEDC committee and the Harbor Advisory Board were in attendance and the meeting was led by Dick Somerville representing PND Engineers, Inc. in Juneau. Somerville displayed three drawings showing possible development options for the property. One proposed upgrading the existing ramp into a 40-ft. x 420-ft. concrete plank struct...
We were warned that power to a 200 amp electrical service panel would eventually fail, so we planned to upgrade when we resurface the parking lot next to The Pilot next summer. On Monday, Murphy’s Law #3 seemed applicable. “If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will go wrong is the one that will cause the most damage.” On possibly the coldest night of the year, power to the newspaper pressroom failed. That power failure put two of the four heat pumps providing heat to our buildings, out of service. The tempe...
A mechanical delay and lost luggage put former Petersburg mayor Dave Carlson and wife Celia at the Fort Lauderdale airport just minutes before shooting broke out in Terminal 2 baggage claim area on Friday. The Carlsons left their Bend, Oregon home for a 10-day cruise aboard the Harmony of the Seas, 6,000 passenger cruise ship destined for the Caribbean. A mechanical put them in Ft. Lauderdale 6 hours late, without their luggage. They were told Friday morning that American Airlines had...
A mechanical delay and lost luggage put former Petersburg mayor Dave Carlson and wife Celia at the Fort Lauderdale airport just minutes before shooting broke out in Terminal 2 baggage claim area on Friday. The Carlsons left their Bend, Oregon home for a 10-day cruise aboard the Harmony of the Seas, 6,000 passenger cruise ship destined for the Caribbean. A mechanical put them in Ft. Lauderdale 6 hours late, without their luggage. They were told Friday morning that American Airlines had... Full story
This week several people asked why we would print a story based in part on an anonymous source? The fact is that often news stories are developed from unidentified sources. In the past three months we have received two anonymous tips that resulted in four stories. Sometimes information is provided over the telephone, as was the case last Friday. That caller provided their name, but asked that it not be made public. We’re working on that story during the upcoming weeks. We printed stories this week and last after talking to recipients of the let...
Patrick McGrath, the owner of property at 895 Mitkof Highway displayed the ongoing construction work at his home and challenged a reporter to find raw sewage on his property. The homeowner was accused by letter, of having septic waste on his land by a disgruntled individual. Copies of the letter were sent to neighboring property owners, the newspaper, Borough administrators and the Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation. Candice Bressler, Public Information Officer with the ADEC told the...
The Borough Assembly acted appropriately to advance the sale of property at 919 Sandy Beach Road by continuing the rezone process and eventually putting the land up for auction. Assembly member Eric Castro noted correctly that the action would not impact the character of Sandy Beach nor harm the petroglyphs and fish traps on the nearby tide flats. Visitors seeking out the petroglyphs access the site from Sandy Beach Park, not by crossing over the borough owned lot. The borough’s administrators will use revenue from the sale of three parcels o...
The State of Alaska provided Petersburg pedestrians with one of the most important safety measures that money could buy. They completed the Haugen Drive walking path to Sandy Beach Park. It’s a smooth, dry solid walking surface that’s easy to navigate with strollers, bikes, dogs or kids. However, it can only keep walkers safe if they use it. We continue to see people walking along the sometimes very narrow Haugen Drive right-of-way, at night, wearing no reflective clothing and with no light. Certainly there’s no prohibition to walking next...
