Sorted by date Results 3351 - 3375 of 5574
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...
Last week’s page one photo was provided by Jean Curry. The photo credit was not correctly stated....
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...
JUNEAU (AP) – Canadian officials say they will take action to prevent polluted water from a decades-old mine from entering the Taku River, a key source of salmon caught in southeast Alaska. British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett told CoastAlaska News experts will explore different options, including plugging leaking tunnels from the defunct Tulsequah Chief Mine. The acidic water has been carrying pollutants into the Tulsequah River, which is a tributary of the Taku near Juneau. The mine hasn’t operated since 195...
KETCHIKAN (AP) – State analysts predict Alaska will lose thousands of jobs this year as it continues to deal with the effects of low oil prices. The Alaska Department of Labor estimates the state will lose about 7,500 jobs in 2017, a little more than 2 percent of its total workforce, The Ketchikan Daily News reported. Economist Caroline Shultz said in the state’s annual job forecast report that there will be widespread reductions in service industries that rely on consumer spending. Alaskans will hold on to more of their dollars this year bec...
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
Paving proposal unanimously The Petersburg Borough Assembly passed a resolution Tuesday to approve a program known as a local improvement district or LID. The program is taking a private approach to funding paving improvements in a select number of neighborhoods around town. Public Works director Karl Hagerman gave details about the program at the assembly’s last meeting and assembly members asked for a resolution prior to granting any approval. The time also allowed assembly members to learn more about LID and why Hagerman was so passionate a...
January Public Works rolled out the borough's highly anticipated blue cart recycling program. The borough received $820,117.61 from the annual raw fish tax. Dave Zimmerman was hired as the new Tongass National Forest Petersburg District Ranger. The assembly continued discussing the reallocation of the Kake access road funding. Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins took part in a budget crisis presentation at Sons of Norway Hall. The visit was the first of many by representatives throughout the...
Borough finance director Jody Tow recently had a small scare concerning the annual fish tax the borough receives from the state. The original figure the state gave Tow was $336,847, which would have been the lowest in 15 years, but after reaching out for confirmation she was told the figure was only half of what Petersburg would receive. Tow said the borough will receive almost $337,000 as an initial payment, then get an additional $327,000 due to a timing issue with the state’s fiscal year cut off. If it wasn’t a scare for Tow, it was def...
The borough assembly held its first meeting of 2017 on Tuesday, and had a somewhat full slate on the agenda including a noncompliance hearing of an order to vacate and repair or demolish a dangerous building at 510 Lumber St. Borough building official Joe Bertagnoli and Power and Light electrician Gary Morgan gave oral and written evidence documenting the dangers at the location. Both borough employees said multiple attempts have been made to bypass the borough’s efforts to keep people out of the property by diverting power. The location is u...
JUNEAU (AP) – Attorneys want a federal judge to halt temporarily proceedings in a long-running legal dispute between the group behind the proposed Pebble Mine project and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The motion, made by attorneys for the EPA and Pebble Limited Partnership on Friday, asks that proceedings in the case be halted until March 20, at which time the parties would jointly propose how they wish to move forward. The motion states the two sides have been talking since August about ways to resolve the case. Pebble has a...
WRANGELL – A lifelong Wrangell resident, Lawrence Bahovec, celebrated his 100th birthday this week. Asked how he felt about reaching the milestone, he joked: "It makes me feel old." He was born in Chicago on January 4, 1917. Alaska and Hawaii both were still territories at the time, the United States had not yet joined into the fighting alongside the Allied Powers during the Great War, and Wrangell was still very much a frontier town on the nation's periphery. At a very young age, Bahovec was...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – A union representing nearly 8,000 state employees has filed a complaint against Gov. Bill Walker and his administration for an alleged violation of contract. The Alaska State Employees Association filed the class-action grievance Tuesday in response to Walker’s recently announced budget plan for next fiscal year. The union takes issue with a part of the plan that calls for downsizing Department of Transportation staff and privatizing the majority of the agency’s design team. The grievance says plans to privatize union membe...
WRANGELL – Wrangell's second-largest travel lodging has been sold, and will be repurposed as a senior housing and assisted living center this spring. The owners of the Sourdough Lodge sold the property to a group of buyers, who are currently renovating its rooms and preparing it for the new use. Once completed, by April 1 the lodge will be rechristened Harbor House Assisted Living Center and Senior Housing. One of the buyers, Shannon Bosdell, explained the facility will fill a need in the com...
Last week’s story on the Salvation Army Christmas collections stated the collections were $17,000 under the amount budgeted for the event. $17,000 was the target goal for the Christmas Season collections....
PETERSBURG (AP) – The U.S. Forest Service is moving forward with a project to restore a stream south of Petersburg. Ohmer Creek has been damaged by decades-old logging and road-building where it crosses under Mitkof Highway about 21 miles south of Petersburg. During construction of the roadway in 1959 and 1960, trees were cut from about 20 acres around the stream, leaving a swath of the creek where heavy rains can erode the banks, KFSK-FM reported. Forest Service hydrologist Heath Whitacre said the project is planning to add wood, create new s...
The borough assembly will see a resolution at its next meeting to approve a program known as local improvement district or LID. Approval of the resolution would be the first step of many in taking a private approach to paying for paving a select number of neighborhood streets in town. Public works director Karl Hagerman says LID is already on borough books, but it’s rarely utilized and he thinks it could do well to improve the borough before SECON pulls their asphalt plant out next year. If the resolution fails to pass the assembly next week no...
Earlier this month, PPD responded to a request from the harbormaster to conduct a welfare check of a harbor resident. On Dec. 16, Edward Bottani was found deceased aboard the M/V Glider moored in North Harbor. Bottani had not been seen for two or three days and harbor staff contacted PPD out of concern. The Medical Examiner’s office was contacted and is continuing the investigation, as no immediate cause of death was apparent, according to PPD Chief Kelly Swihart. The death is not believed to be suspicious, and Bottani’s next of kin have bee...
The municipal building might have been a quiet construction site over Christmas, but prior to the break public works director Karl Hagerman says up to 25 men had been working in and around the building to complete Phase 1. Additional men will be brought in to make the mid-January deadline, if necessary, he says. That means the Petersburg Police Department's move from the south side of the building should go as planned. Hagerman says the PPD move will take place Jan. 15 through Feb. 15. "There...
JUNEAU (AP) – The incoming speaker of the Alaska House, known as a level-headed moderate willing to work across party lines, faces major tests in leading a new majority coalition and trying to secure agreement on a plan to address the state's multibillion-dollar deficit. Rep. Bryce Edgmon acknowledges moments of trepidation about his new role. “But I'm also somebody who rises to the challenge,” the Democrat said. Edgmon's ascendance to House speaker comes 10 years into a political career that started with Edgmon winning a primary contest with...
Anchorage, Alaska – U.S. Attorney Karen L. Loeffler announced Wed., Dec. 21 that, on Tuesday, a Petersburg man was sentenced to federal prison for the transportation of child pornography. Marvin Mitchell Jackson, 28, a resident of Petersburg, Alaska was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess to five years in prison for a single count of transportation of child pornography. Upon the completion of his prison term, Jackson must complete a 30-year term of supervised release. A...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – A man suspected of fatally shooting an Anchorage couple during a Christmas Eve robbery was arrested Tuesday after he surrendered at a west side motel, police said. The arrest of Lamarkus Mann, 22, came after a police SWAT team and other officers surrounded a room at the Lakeshore Motel. Mann was being sought on a murder warrant in the deaths Saturday of Danielle Brooks, 32, and Christopher Brooks, 38, in a shooting witnessed by a 6-year-old child in their home. Police believe Mann and Jaylyn Franklin, 20, went to the c...
WRANGELL – Alaska's two senators jointly welcomed a new addition to their Southeast team. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan issued statements December 22 congratulating Chere Klein to serve at the South Southeast delegation representative office in her home town of Ketchikan. "The district office is kind of the eyes and ears of the senators when they're back in D.C.," Klein explained of the post. "Our main business is doing casework, and that's helping constituents around the district w...
WRANGELL – The governments of Alaska and neighboring province British Columbia initiated their first bilateral working group on transboundary mining and water quality concerns earlier this month. In a statement from his office released last week, Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott expressed his appreciation for the meeting, which was one of the measures outlined in a statement of cooperation the two governments signed in October. The agreement was a next step in the process of addressing concerns among Southeast Alaskan communities about the e...
Next year’s pink salmon harvest forecast for Southeast Alaska is anticipating a run statistically on the stronger side, though the numbers may not be particularly optimistic for fishermen still reeling from a disappointing 2016 run. The 2017 report predicts the coming run will fall within in the “strong” range, with a point estimate of 43 million fish and an 80-percent confidence interval. To produce the forecast, researchers adjusted past harvest trends using peak June-July juvenile pink salmon abundance data from 2016. Using expon...
