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Local trollers and regional fisheries advocates expressed relief today following Friday’s 9th Circuit Court decision to overturn a U.S. District Court ruling that threatened to shut down Southeast Chinook troll fisheries. “Great news,” Alaska Trollers Association president Matt Donohoe said in a brief text while out fishing. “I’m really grateful that the 9th Circuit understood that WFC’s serial litigation was absurd and ruled in Alaska’s favor.” Jeff Farvour, a Sitka based commercial fisherman and board member of the Sitka-based Ala...
Rep. Rebecca Himschoot hopes the bill she successfully ushered through the 33rd Legislature will provide school districts with effective tools to recruit and retain experienced teachers. “Districts are struggling to staff schools,” said Himschoot, whose House District 2 includes Sitka, Petersburg and dozens of small Southeast communities. “We’re trying to add more tools for districts to fill positions with the best teachers they can get,” she said. House Bill 230, sponsored by Himschoot, is an education reform package that includes elements...
The Sitka Community Land Trust announced today it has secured $2.17 million in federal funding to build a four-unit apartment building on the property it owns on Halibut Point Road. Trust Executive Director Randy Hughey said he was not expecting the email from Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office telling him SCLT’s project had been included for funding in the consolidated appropriations act that has been passed by Congress. “It took a few hours to sink in,” Hughey said. The funding may take a while to come in, he added, but it will be enough to cove...
The summer commercial troll season for coho and chum salmon will open by regulation on July 1, but no Chinook retention will be allowed, the Department of Fish and Game announced Tuesday. The decision to prohibit retention of troll-caught king salmon is related to an ongoing lawsuit by the nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy against the National Marine Fisheries Service. But Alaska trollers are holding out hope that the king salmon troll season will open as usual if a stay of a U.S. District Court order is granted by the Ninth Circuit Court of...
A helicopter from U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Sitka rescued a 28-year-old paraglider from a high peak near Haines late Sunday after the man injured his ankle in a “hard landing.” The air station received a call at 10:10 p.m. Sunday and launched a helicopter about a half hour later. The paraglider had used his cell phone to call emergency responders in Haines, saying he had hurt his ankle in the hard landing, and was “cold, wet and dehydrated” in a large snowy area on Mt. Ripinski, the Coast Guard said. The man told the Haines EMS team that he...
With the announcement earlier this week that the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery would go on two-hour notice at 8 a.m. Thursday, Fish and Game held a virtual meeting Tuesday for permit holders, processors, subsistence harvesters and others involved in the annual herring harvest. Effective Thursday morning, Fish and Game can open a location for purse seining on as little as two hours of advance notice. More than four dozen individuals attended Tuesday’s virtual meeting. Fish and Game area management biologist Aaron Dupuis led the Zoom v...
Bills under consideration in the Legislature to cap state spending are not addressing the main challenges Alaska is facing, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee. “We don’t have a spending-side problem; we have a revenue-side problem,” said Stedman, who represents Petersburg, Sitka and the rest of Southeast except for Juneau, Haines, Skagway and Gustavus. He is in his 20th year in the Legislature. The senator pointed out that the latest spending-cap proposal advanced by an Anchorage Republican would exclu...
SITKA – After hearing comments Tuesday night on the “existential threat” facing the Southeast troll fishing industry, the Sitka Assembly gave unanimous approval to a resolution and a financial contribution to help the Alaska Trollers Association fight a lawsuit by a conservation group against a federal fisheries agency. “I hope we have a unanimous decision because if the resolution is going to have any effect, we have to have real solidarity,” Assembly member Thor Christianson said prior to the vote. ATA Request and Resolution The resolutio...
SITKA — Sitka’s senior citizen sales tax exemption ends at midnight Saturday, June 30, replaced by a needs-based rebate. In a cost-savings move, the Assembly at its April 24 meeting narrowly approved eliminating the long-standing exemption from sales tax for residents age 65 and up, deciding instead to offer a needs-based rebate to qualifying Sitka seniors at the end of each fiscal year. The rebate amount is $350 per senior per year, or $450 per household with two or more qualifying seniors. The figure is a broad estimate of the sales tax sen...
