Sorted by date Results 3051 - 3075 of 5553
The United States Coast Guard change of command ceremony was Thursday at Sandy Beach Park where 26-year-old Lt. Rachel Kent took over the Petersburg-based USCG Cutter ANACAPA. On a damp Thursday morning, Kent, who previously was aboard the USCGC MIDGETT in Seattle, relieved Lt. Cmdr. Pete Vermeer, who was at the helm for two years. Vermeer's accolades include two Coast Guard Commendation medals, the Coast Guard Achievement medal, the Commandant's Letter of Commendation and numerous service,...
Students and faculty from the Petersburg Borough District were surveyed on the quality of school life, and the results were presented during a School Board meeting Tuesday evening. Jenni Lefing, who is the school climate coordinator with the Association of Alaska School Boards, presented results from the 2017 climate and connectedness survey. The survey is intended to measure character in schools, peer and respect climate, and whether students think adults care for them, among other qualities, Lefing said. “These are all things we know are i...
WRANGELL – An updated schedule for next month's Independence Day festivities was put out this week by Wrangell's Chamber of Commerce. The big change in this year's lineup will be the return of boat racing, after a dry spell of nearly three decades. Heading up the organization of that effort were Penny Allen and Clay Hammer, who with Jay Einert and John Waddington figured out what needed to be done to get the event back into the water. Routes have been plotted out, rules drawn up and insurance s...
Petersburg High School students used trigonometry to pinpoint the terminus location of the LeConte Glacier last month during the 34th annual survey. The survey found that the glacier moved about 200 feet back from its average position for the last 10 years, which is not a significant change, said Victor Troutman, who oversees the survey. Seven students trained weekly over their lunch break for a year before they could participate in the survey, which is a data-gathering expedition that started...
The Chilkat Valley News has a new owner, as Tom Morphet passed the torch to reporter Kyle Clayton last week. Morphet has owned the CVN for five years. Before buying the paper, he worked at it 22 years as a reporter, editor and manager. Morphet’s ownership of the newspaper became contentious in August when he began campaigning for a seat on the Haines Borough Assembly. Morphet hired interim editors and started advertising and publicizing the newspaper’s sale. “Obviously, being elected to office made me a motivated seller,” Morphet said. “In ter...
Finance Director Jody Tow is confident education and general taxes in Petersburg will not go above the mill rate cap of 10 in the coming years. In the last decade, the mill rate has fluctuated between 8.5 and 9, but has never reached 10 like it did in 2007, according to Borough documents. In the 2018 fiscal year budget, the education and general tax rate increased slightly to 9 due to the Borough being conservative, Tow said. "We want to stretch out the balance of the secure rural school funds f...
Alexis Francisco, Hana Newman, Helen Martin, Tanya Spears, Madisyn Parker and Julia Evens passed the State of Alaska Certified Nursing Assistant certification examination on June 2, according to program coordinator Angela Menish. Testing included both written and practical skills. All six have completed CNA classes that have been provided since September and include a minimum of 60 classroom hours and 80 supervised skills and clinical experience hours. The students learned basic skills to...
JUNEAU, Alaska – The Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) announced Wednesday that due to ongoing repairs the M/V Columbia will require additional time at Vigor Shipyard in Portland, Oregon. This delay will impact some passengers. Affected passengers are being notified by AMHS staff now. The M/V Malaspina is currently running in the Columbia’s place, and will continue until the Columbia is back in service on July 26. The Malaspina is a smaller vessel, therefore some passengers will not get the cabins they reserved and some vehicle res...
WRANGELL – The city’s annual switch-over to diesel power is scheduled to begin next week, lasting just under two weeks. Electrical superintendent Clay Hammer explained the temporary transition is to allow Southeast Alaska Power Agency – a utility providing hydroelectric power to the communities of Wrangell, Ketchikan and Petersburg – to undertake maintenance projects on its infrastructure. While those lines are down, it falls on municipalities to generate their own power during the interim, with Wrangell and Petersburg firing up its diesel...
Over a year ago, Topi Karikorpi made a list of four countries he would perhaps like to spend a year in. Foreign exchange program officials decided the rest for him --- Country: United States; State: Alaska; City: Petersburg. Karikorpi came to Petersburg in August 2016 as part of the Rotary Club's foreign exchange program. He is from a town in south Finland populated with 1,100 people, so he was relieved to find out Petersburg was going to be his temporary home. "I hoped to go to a small place,"...
The Petersburg Assembly unanimously approved its budget last week for the upcoming year that starts July 1 and runs through June 2018. Over three meetings and three readings of the proposed budget, the Assembly grappled with a change worth about $160,000. A vote to delete a fourth lineman position from the Power & Light budget ultimately passed unanimously on the third reading. "[The Assembly] went back and forth on this," said Petersburg Borough Manager Stephen Giesbrecht. "I can't speak for...
The Petersburg Borough is a signature away from increasing its state land grant from 1,400 acres to more than 14,600, as legislation was passed on the last day of session in May, said Liz Cabrera, who is the Petersburg community development director. "This is a really big deal for Petersburg," Cabrera said. "If the bill didn't get passed on that day, we would have to wait until next January to take it up again. It was kind of on the 11th hour." The bill passed through the House and Senate...
As your Borough Manager, my job is a combination of providing advice along with implementing the policies of your elected officials. This necessitates me taking criticism, including from those very people your elected officials (the Assembly) are trying to help. I am not whining, just stating a fact. Today I find myself involved in a debate that clearly I started when I made a proposal to save money in some of the community's utility departments (water, sewer, electric). The savings, about $110,...
The two marijuana growers in Petersburg are apparently not in competition, as one wants to grow for her own retail shop and the other plans to export his product to Ketchikan. Susan Burrell has been licensed to sell weed in Petersburg for months. But now she is in the process of becoming licensed to harvest it as well, despite a grower already being on the island. The move is to dodge high Alaska weed costs, Burrell said. Further, she couldn't make a sufficient deal with the current weed grower...
The Petersburg municipal building project is slated to be done mid June and is currently $700,000 under its $10 million projected cost, said Petersburg Borough Manager Stephen Giesbrecht. The project, which has cost $9.3 million so far, is a week behind its scheduled finish of June 1, but Giesbrecht said that was expected and agreed upon. "In a sense, it's done," Giesbrecht said. "We're probably only talking $30,000 to $40,000 more. It's really tiny, but I don't want to misrepresent." The city...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Research by a Juneau scientist has helped uncover a new species of flying squirrel. Allison Bidlack and her six-person team released their findings about what they dubbed the Humboldt’s flying squirrel in the May 30 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy, according to a news release from the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center. The group determined the existence of the third species using satellite data and DNA samples that Bidlack took 20 years ago while working on her master’s degree at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Bidla...
The Petersburg Community Foundation gave $14,000 in grants to nine local nonprofit organizations during the 2017 Mayfest weekend, said Holli Flint, who is the program manager. Specific dollar amounts given to each organization is not disclosed, as the community foundation does not want to take away from the funding sources that contributed, Flint said. "A lot of projects are not entirely made possible through the Petersburg Community Foundation," Flint said. "Each project is really interesting....
Hundreds of people gathered at the Petersburg Elks Lodge Friday evening to honor Rob Schwartz, who is retiring after 26 years of being a teacher and wrestling coach. "Coaching and teaching is often a thankless activity," said Eldon Walker, who spoke about Schwartz to the crowd. "The fact that you juggled as much as you did for as long as you have is a testament to the kind of person that you are. While you are an amazing coach and a teacher, you are a mentor and a friend as well." Schwartz's dau...
The Chilkat Valley News has a new owner this week, as Tom Morphet passed the torch to reporter Kyle Clayton. Morphet has owned the CVN for five years. Before buying the paper, he worked at it 22 years as a reporter, editor and manager. Morphet's ownership of the newspaper became contentious in August when he began campaigning for a seat on the Haines Borough Assembly. Morphet hired interim editors and started advertising and publicizing the newspaper's sale. "Obviously, being elected to office m... Full story
WRANGELL- After several days of serial car thefts around Wrangell a suspect is in custody at the police department. After Wrangell Police Department discovered three missing vehicles on Tuesday, more vehicles were taken Wednesday. “We had three or four more stolen last night,” Chief Doug McCloskey reported. Details on the chain of events are still forthcoming, but officers pursued their suspect through town. The individual at several points changed vehicles, damaging at least one in the process. Currently down by three of its seven off... Full story
The Petersburg High School Class of 2017 ended their K through 12 tenures at a commencement ceremony Tuesday evening. Petersburg gave diplomas to 29 students. Of those, 24 will attend, or plan to attend, a university, community college or trade school. Four others intend to seek a career in photography, aquaculture, engineering, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration and travel. One more, Alan McCay, plans to enlist in the United States Coast Guard. Forty-five scholarships...
A seemingly routine 2017 salmon derby shifted to shock and thrill Monday after Karrie Byrer caught a 34.3 pound king salmon just minutes before the derby closed. Byrer and her fiancé, Chris Malcom, idled their boat into the dock at about 4:50 p.m., 10 minutes before deadline. Malcolm hopped off and rushed a burly king salmon to the weigh station, grinning fervently, with Byrer close behind. "I knew it was decent size," Malcom said. "Once I netted it and put it on the boat, I said, 'holy...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Officials on Friday posthumously honored more than a dozen members of a largely Alaska Native citizen militia who protected the U.S. territory from the threat of Japanese invasion during World War II, bringing closure to their families for a service that went unrecognized for decades. Gov. Bill Walker and state veterans affairs officials presented Army discharge papers to the relatives of 16 deceased members of the Alaska Territorial Guard during a ceremony ahead of Memorial Day weekend. The event was an emotional t...
Following a recommendation from the Petersburg Medical Center's Long Term Planning Committee the hospital board voted Thursday night to proceed with building a new hospital in lieu of making extensive renovations to the existing facility. In May 2016 architects from the firm Jensen Yorba Lott presented the PMC board with five options: do nothing; make systematic replacements; make phased renovations; build an addition and renovate in phases and construct a new facility. PMC CEO Liz Woodyard...
Following an executive session on Tuesday, Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht reported via email that he and Borough Clerk Debbie Thompson would work on the preparation of job descriptions for both the Electrical Superintendent and the proposed Utility Director position. Giesbrecht wrote, “The Assembly continues to be interested in any opportunity to save the community money, so they are mulling their options over…. We are all really concerned about future budget challengers, and the reorganization would have helped, but I am sure we will fin...
