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Roxie Lee, who served as a library board member 60 years ago, gave the toast to her dear old friend during the Helmi Jensen Community Room dedication event in the Petersburg Public Library on Wednesday. "A toast to Helmi and a toast to the community. A room like this which is just going to be used over and over and over again for so many different activities. Helmi would have been so pleased ... Here's to Helmi a very creative, wonderful, wonderful person." All in attendance agreed and raised a...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously voted to approve Resolution #2022-05 during Monday's meeting, signaling its opposition to two bills in the Alaska State Legislature which would make changes to commercial passenger vessel wastewater monitoring. The Ocean Ranger program was created in 2006 when Alaska voters passed Ballot Measure 2 requiring the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to station U.S. Coast Guard certified marine engineers onboard cruise ships to monitor the...
The House Finance Committee has rejected the governor's proposal to rely almost entirely on federal funds to operate the Alaska Marine Highway System next year, with the Senate Finance Committee moving in the same direction. The committees differ on the amounts but both want to see more state money in the budget for the ferries, using some federal infrastructure money to replace state dollars but not nearly as much as the governor. Total appropriations for the ferry operating budget next year...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Tuesday that the sac roe herring fishery in the Sitka Sound will continue with daily openings from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in waters off the western shore of Baranof Island to the south of Sitka until closed by a field or advisory announcement. As of Tuesday, an estimated 19,400 tons of herring have been harvested so far which is still less than half of the record 45,164 guideline harvest level. The openings on last Thursday through Saturday occurred in...
WRANGELL–When contractor Jesse West said, "we destroyed everything," it sounds pretty bad, out of context. But that's exactly what his Petersburg company Rainforest Contracting was hired to do - pull down the old Anan bear viewing deck and walkway and put up a new one for the U.S. Forest Service. "So far we've demo-ed everything that was up there," West, president of Rainforest Contracting, said March 29. "It's all stacked in piles and ready to get taken out of there." The concrete and wood an...
April 7, 1922 The gas boat Progress, in charge of ‘Spanish Joe’ was captured recently at Ketchikan with the entire crew aboardt. When taken into custody she had some 65 cases of imported wet goods on board. Sometime before midnight officers Moyer Halllson and Van-Zandt took up a position near the roadhouse on the Wards Cove road and acting under instructions from Deputy Marshal Handy kept a sharp lookout for the expected booze runners. Their vigil lasted till shortly after midnight when a boat landed and the crew began unloading the cargo on...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously voted to create a task force focused on addressing child care challenges in Petersburg and finding sustainable solutions during Monday's meeting. The creation of the Early Childhood Education Task Force came as a result of the ongoing discussions of child care needs in the community which identified issues with retention and recruitment of employees and the lack of availability of child care for families. Assembly Member Jeff Meucci opened by saying...
With the first statewide use of ranked choice voting in Alaska on the horizon, the Petersburg Borough Assembly discussed holding an information session to inform community members on how the new voting system works. The upcoming special election will use ranked choice voting, which was approved by Alaska voters in 2020, to determine who will fill the late Rep. Don Young's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives until the term expires in January 2023. During Monday's assembly meeting, Assembly...
A note of thanks To the Editor: We’d like to recognize everybody who contributed to the Welcome Back Vietnam Warriors: starting out with Home Health, Petersburg Medical Center for putting on the breakfast on the morning of the 29th. The Moose got into it by doing hamburger night for all veterans. Then after the ceremony the Elks put out finger foods for all the Vietnam Vets. Also thank you to the Petersburg School District for the use of the gym, and Jamie Cabral, Dino Brock, Jim Engell and the baseball team for helping set up the gym and t...
Maybe Alaskans were tired of hearing the all-too-familiar refrains: Good candidates don’t run for public office anymore; it’s too expensive; ill-mannered social media posts go after their families and disrupt their lives; voters are too easily swayed by misleading attack ads; and no one wants to hear the truth about solving the country’s problems. So why bother running for office. Clearly, 51 candidates to fill the seat of the late Don Young, Alaska’s congressman for the past half-century, decided to ignore all the reasons not to run. Or maybe...
March 30 — A citizen was assisted near South 3rd Street. An officer assisted EMS at Middle Boat Harbor. Found property near Harbor Way was turned in. An officer responded to a report of a vessel with a possibly intoxicated operator. The vessel was not currently in port and the information was passed to the Alaska State Troopers. March 31 — There was a report of chickens killed by a dog near Hungerford Road. A citizen was assisted near South 2nd Street. April 1 — A citizen was assisted near Valkyrie Street. An individual completed sex offen...
A woman crashed off Mitkof Highway near Scow Bay Loop Road Saturday around 8:30 a.m. after losing control of a truck according to Assistant Fire Chief David Berg. The driver and her dog were uninjured in the crash but the truck was totaled. According to Berg, the woman said she was driving toward town when she discovered that she could not stop the vehicle. She pulled into the ferry terminal parking lot and made a couple of turns, but did not stop the truck, and got back on the road headed away...
The unified command of the U.S. Coast Guard, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Western Towboat continues to lead the response efforts to the grounding of the tugboat Western Mariner which ran aground in the Neva Strait on March 21. According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the incident occurred at 2:55 a.m. on March 21 when a temporary steering failure onboard the tugboat caused the 286-foot freight barge Chichagof Provider in tow to collide with the...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries adopted a revised king salmon management plan during its March meeting in a compromise which will see sport fishery limits set prior to the start of the season based on a tier system instead of changing in-season. The hope is that the 80/20 split between the commercial troll and sport fisheries will be maintained while allowing all non-residents who travel to Alaska to catch king salmon the opportunity to do so. "In this plan the caveat there is when we're at those...
Alaska Marine Lines has announced increases to its general rates and fuel surcharges in Southeast as fuel prices continue to rise. On November 4, 2021, a release signed by Director of Pricing Margretta Grace announced that AML had filed with the Surface Transportation board to increase the general rate for shipments into, out of, and within Southeast by 4.8% effective January 30. The release cited inflation, rising costs, and the labor shortage as reasons for the increases. "Southeast Alaska is...
WRANGELL-A shortage of pilots amid a labor dispute has forced Alaska Airlines to cancel hundreds of flights since last Friday. Pickets went up Friday at airports in Seattle and elsewhere on the airline's West Coast route system. Alaska reported it canceled 9% of its service on Friday, about 120 flights, and 7% on Saturday, which affected about 12,000 travelers that day. Flight cancellations were down to 6% on Sunday and about 3% on Monday. "We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration we...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney say they will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic elevation to the Supreme Court, giving President Joe Biden’s nominee a burst of bipartisan support and all but assuring she’ll become the first Black female justice. The senators from Alaska and Utah announced their decisions Monday night ahead of a procedural vote to advance the nomination and as Democrats pressed to confirm Jackson by the end of the week. GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced last week th...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Sarah Palin on Friday shook up an already unpredictable race for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, joining a field of 50 other candidates seeking to fill the seat held for decades by the late-U.S. Rep. Don Young, who died last month. Palin filed paperwork Friday with a state Division of Elections office in Wasilla, said Tiffany Montemayor, a division spokesperson. Palin, a former Alaska governor who was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has the biggest national political profile in the packed field that includes c...
Patti was presented as a Christmas gift to her three brothers Bob, Dave and Jim. She was born in Vancouver, B.C. and came home to Petersburg in December with her parents Loyla and Earl Ohmer. Her childhood was a happy one. She traveled to many states visiting family and friends with her mother. Summers were spent at Bum's Retreat near Green Rocks. Her father Earl would join the family there on weekends bringing the mail and groceries from town. Her first business venture at age 12 involved... Full story
John Allen Gordon, born in Bakersfield, California in 1947 and affectionately known as The Boating Buddy, passed away peacefully in Spokane, Washington on March 25, 2022. To all who had the joy of knowing John, and even those who had only heard of him, John was undeniably bigger-than-life and full to the brim with what true riches are all about. He really was "All That!" John married the love of his life, Kathie, and in their forty-three years together they moved from Mexico to Alaska and many p... Full story
This tiny camera is a Universal Minute 16, first introduced in 1949. Its “guillotine shutter” had a speed of 1/50th of a second. The camera holds 16 mm film that can be advanced by the lever on the camera’s side. Its manual boasted it could be carried in your smallest pocket or purse, and was an “expensive camera offered at an inexpensive price”. The small prints measured 2 1/4 by 3 1/4 inches. A special feature – especially for such a small piece of equipment – was the synchronized flash, allowing for picture-taking under a variety of co...
The weekly write up about Alaska’s fishing industry began in 1991 in the Anchorage Daily News. Since then, subscribership has grown to nearly 20 news outlets across Alaska and nationally. The goal always has been to make readers aware of the seafood industry’s economic, social and cultural importance to all Alaskans. Just one extra penny per pound at the docks means millions of dollars more for state coffers! Commercial fishing puts more people to work than any other private industry in Alaska and provides two-thirds of the nation’s wild caugh...
