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The Petersburg Borough Assembly passed a rezoning ordinance in its second reading Monday night. The ordinance is designed to rezone 919 Sandy Beach Road from public use to single-family residential in preparation to auction off the property early next year. The change in zoning will hopefully make the property more attractive for purchase. Funds from the auction process would go toward the municipal building renovation project. Assembly member Cindi Lagoudakis opposed the zoning change. “I looked again at this parcel. At the time that this w...
The Petersburg School District held an assembly for older students Monday morning and showed a documentary designed to educate kids about the dangers of opiate and heroin use. The video called “Chasing the Dragon” was shown to students in seventh through twelfth grades, and a positive discussion was held afterward. “It went great,” School Superintendent Erica Kludt-Painter says. “We felt like we were able to prepare for it, which is what we were concerned about when they came through in September.” The documentary was shown to the public in Sep...
A public corporation is being proposed to manage Alaska Marine Highway ferry operations, according to a ferry governance study released by the Southeast Conference. Such a proposal would create a more businesslike approach to running the system and the inclusion of private sector expertise, leadership and accountability. Seattle-based Elliott Bay Design Group, produced the draft report with Juneau-based research firm McDowell Group. It was presented at a meeting of the Marine Transportation Advisory Committee. The project team recommended the f...
November 25, 1916 – The Daughters of Norway are making extensive preparations for a bazaar, to be held in Sons of Norway hall next Friday and Saturday, Dec. 1 and 2 to commence at 4:30 o’clock each evening. They will have on sale hand-embroidery and numerous fancy-work articles; also homemade candles. A fish pond is also to be provided. Lunches will be served, to include coffee, waffles, lefse, cake, sandwiches and numerous delicacies. The affair will close with a dance Saturday evening. November 26, 1941 – Eight Boy Scouts left last Frida...
For more than 50 years, AMHS has served a critical infrastructure need for Alaska residents, communities, industries, and public services. • In 2014, AMHS carried 319,000 passengers, 108,000 vehicles, and nearly 4,000 container vans. • The ferry system plays an integral role in Alaska’s visitor industry, carrying more than 100,000 non-resident passengers annually. Anchorage continues to be the top Alaska destination for visitors traveling on the ferry. • AMHS accounted for 1,700 Alaska jobs and $104 million in Alaska wages and benefits in 2014...
KETCHIKAN – Proposed timber sales on Deer Mountain and in Petersburg are on hold as officials consider public comments against the issue. The Alaska Mental Health Trust board will take up the topic in January, reported the Ketchikan Daily News. Every comment on the plan was negative as zof Wednesday. Officials say the delay will give the trust time to consider the public’s input. The board decided in August to move forward with the sales if a federal land exchange bill failed in Congress by Jan. 15. “What we had intended to do was initiate our...
KETCHIKAN – The U.S. Navy is planning to more than double the number of training events conducted in the West Behm Canal north of Ketchikan. In an agreement signed Oct. 31, the Navy announced it will increase the number of testing events involving vessels at the Southeast Alaska Acoustic Measurement Facility will increase from about 28 in a year to 60, The Ketchikan Daily News reported. The Navy will also conduct new activities in Behm Canal, including cold-water training, “countermeasures’’ testing and electromagnetic measurement. The Navy es...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) and Southeast King and Tanner Task Force (KTTF) will meet between 1:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. on Friday, December 2, 2016. The meeting will be hosted at the ADF&G Southeast Regional office in Douglas and connected via web conferencing at the following locations: Douglas – ADF&G Southeast Regional office, 802 3rd Street Petersburg – Tides Inn Conference Room, 307 1st Street Sitka – ADF&G Sitka Area office, 304 Lake Street, Room 103 Wrangell – ADF&G Wrangell Area office, 215 Front Street Agenda items f...
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...
WRANGELL – Several Wrangell boat owners learned they had been burgled early Saturday morning. Wrangell Police Department received a call concerning Heritage Harbor, where it appeared three boats moored there had been entered, one forcibly. Owners were contacted, and they confirmed a number of items were missing, including dive gear and a firearm. “Sure enough, someone had liberated my possessions,” commented Steve Prysunka, owner of the boat Mollyann. “They stole such an interesting variety of things.” In addition to his dive gear, he found...
November 16 Cherise L. Lister, 40, was cited for speed on Mitkof Highway. November 17 There was a parking issue at the airport. There was a parking issue at Dolphin and N. Nordic Dr. November 18 There was a report involving violation of court order. There was a report involving theft from S. 2nd St. There was a report involving theft from Towne Trailer Park. November 19 A traffic hazard was reported at Haugen and N. Nordic. Dr. A traffic offense occurred on S. 3rd St. Kristen E. Hemlock, 34, was cited for liability insurance requirement and...
JUNEAU – A state court judge ruled Thursday that Gov. Bill Walker had the authority to reduce this year’s Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, siding with the state in the politically charged case. Superior Court Judge William Morse’s decision followed arguments presented by both sides in Anchorage on Thursday morning. Morse said he expected the issue ultimately to be decided by the Alaska Supreme Court. State Sen. Bill Wielechowski, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said he planned to appeal. The lawsuit, brought by the Anchorage Democrat and tw...
The Southeast Alaska pink salmon harvest in 2017 is predicted to be in the strong range, with a point estimate of 43 million fish (80% confidence interval: 27–59 million fish). An actual harvest of 43 million pink salmon would be just above the recent 10-year average harvest of 39 million pink salmon. The 2017 forecast was produced in two steps: 1) a forecast of the trend in the harvest, and 2) the forecast trend adjusted using 2016 juvenile pink salmon abundance data provided by the NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Auke Bay L...
WRANGELL – A number of Petersburg and Wrangell residents have been receiving letters from the state, informing them their float houses anchored along the Stikine River need to be permitted or else move. Since the late 1970s, the placement of float houses and temporary cabins along the river have made it convenient for locals making use of the river basin, be it for subsistence fishing, hunting, trapping, work or recreational purposes. While a number are there on a seasonal basis, this year some 18 have been identified as being situated y...
Alaska’s university system is ramping up programs to train the next generations of fishery and ocean specialists - and plenty of jobs await. Since 1987, the College of Fisheries and Ocean Science (CFOS) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has offered undergraduate and graduate degrees in Fisheries Science, complete with paid internships to help prepare them for positions in the state’s largest industry. “It’s a degree path preparing students for what I call fish squeezers – they’re going to go to work for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, o...
ANCHORAGE – Nancy McGuire, the longtime publisher of Alaska’s oldest newspaper, said goodbye to her subscribers in an editorial published the day she died after battling cancer for years. She was 72. McGuire was publisher of the weekly Nome Nugget for 34 years in the western Alaska town of Nome. Her friend and former Nome mayor, John Handeland, said McGuire died early Thursday morning at a local long-term care facility. The Nugget was established in 1897, thriving in the rough-and-tumble Gold Rush town. In an editorial published in the new...
ANCHORAGE – Two moose were recently discovered frozen in battle and encased in ice near a remote village on Alaska’s unforgiving western coast. Brad Webster, a middle school social studies and science teacher in Unalakleet, captured images of the massive animals poking through the ice as they lay on their sides with antlers apparently locked together. He had taken a friend who recently moved to the village for a walk on Nov. 2 near a frozen slough at Covenant Bible Camp, where Webster volunteers as a camp steward. “That’s when we saw it,” he...
Motivational speaker Michael Patterson traveled to town last week to take part in the Great American Smokeout, sponsored by the Petersburg Indian Association. Patterson spoke to middle school students at the Wright Auditorium on Thursday, and then he took part in an event later in the day at PIA. Patterson started living on the streets at a young age, before he was 10, and he's open about the fact he could die from COPD any day because he smoked cigarettes for decades. A lot of Patterson's...
WRANGELL – Latest samples of butter clams from Shoemaker Bay beaches show levels of saxitoxin have halved since this summer, when specimens were found to be a health hazard. The clams are still considered a health risk, albeit at a lower level. Wrangell Cooperative Association’s Indian Environmental General Assistance Program (IGAP) staff have been collecting samples of mussels and other bivalves from the beach on a weekly basis, which then get tested at a Sitka lab for several different toxins. In August the program reported elevated level...
