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Word arrived last week that Petersburg has finally secured funding for the Scow Bay Haul-out and Washdown Pad project. $8.8 million is coming through the Department of Transportation's Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant program, part of more than $47 million for Alaska in federal transportation grants announced by U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. The funding breakthrough came after eight consecutive applications submitted by the...
A Petersburg home was destroyed in a fire on Jan. 13. Just after noon, Petersburg's volunteer fire department, police and Alaska State Troopers responded to the residential fire - located about two miles out of town along Frederick Point Drive. Petersburg's Fire Chief Dan Bird said the house was "completely engulfed in flames" when firefighters arrived on scene. No one was home at the time of the fire; neighbors said the owners are on vacation. The fire was contained by midafternoon. "It's...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly approved a wishlist of community projects during their first meeting of the year on Jan. 6. Every year, the Alaska Legislature puts together a capital budget - money to fund big ticket projects around the state. And every year, the Petersburg Borough requests some of that money for local projects, and names its top ten priorities. Assembly member Jeigh Stanton Gregor said he isn't very optimistic the projects will receive large amounts of funding, but he likes...
Part of Petersburg's downtown was closed for nearly an hour on Jan. 9. Just after 7 p.m., George Marlow was waiting for a ride home from work at the IGA grocery store when he witnessed a black truck make a U-turn at the north end of Main Street. That's when, he said, the truck rammed into a trash can on the sidewalk. "Nearly got me right there," Marlow said. "He hit the garbage can, he seen me standing there and he just got on it ... way too fast." Heading south, the truck smashed into a parked...
A Petersburg man has pleaded not guilty for allegedly sharing child sexual abuse material. Alejandro “Alex” Melendez Aguilar, 45, was indicted last month on 10 felony charges for possession and distribution of child pornography. He was arraigned remotely from jail in Juneau through the Petersburg Courthouse on Jan. 6. Last year, law enforcement officers said they received a tip from Kik, a social networking app, reporting Aguilar’s account shared explicit sexual content of children. Alaska State Troopers investigated. When interviewing Aguil...
Petersburg's tribal members picked a new council president on Monday, January 6. Voters elected Carol Martinez president of the Petersburg Indian Association Tribal Council, ending Debra O'Gara's term in the role after just one year. Brenda Norheim also ran for council president as a write-in candidate. Three two-year terms were open on the tribal council. The two incumbents running, Brandon Ware and Jaclyn Eide, both kept their seats. Adam Ware won the third seat. Marc Martinsen and Cina...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has added Wi-Fi service for passengers aboard the state ferry Columbia - with other ships in the fleet to follow. The service, which initially will be free on the Columbia, started last month when the ship came out of a yearlong layup to take over the weekly run between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska when the Kennicott was pulled for its own yearlong layup for new generators. It's the first Alaska Marine Highway vessel "to provide free Wi-Fi access...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on Monday to transfer seven parcels of borough-owned land in the Airport Addition Subdivision to Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority (THRHA) in exchange for the development of 11 residential lots, a project that builds on a successful 1996 partnership between the organizations. "About 25 years ago, PIA allocated federal housing monies to the Tlingit and Haida Housing Authority, and in the partnership with the assembly, several...
Petersburg started the year nearly snowless, even at high elevations - and that's rare, according to long-term data records. Snowpack data is collected at hundreds of sites in Alaska every winter month for the National Resource Conservation Service's snow survey program, which monitors snow depth and water content measurements to use for environmental forecasting and water management. There are several snow survey stations in Southeast Alaska - including two on Petersburg's Mitkof Island, which...
Rock-N-Road Construction was awarded the contract for the borough’s Pump Station 4 and force main replacement project during Monday’s borough assembly meeting on Jan. 6. Rock-N-Road’s $2,090,300 bid came in well below a competing $2.9 million bid and the engineer’s initial estimate for the project of $2.56 million. Funding for this project has already been secured by the borough through a loan from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation Alaska Clean Water Fund. Petersburg voters...
January 2024 A prized Mental Health Trust lot by Blind River Rapids, a popular recreation site for sport fishing, was sold at auction to a USCG family. Toler and Jessie Alexander are eager to return to Petersburg after retiring from the Coast Guard in a few years. The borough listed its top priority capital projects, and the Petersburg Medical Center replacement was first and second on the list – for the main hospital construction and the main hospital interior build out. Petersburg Indian A...
The Alaska Seafood Industry Task Force is made up of eight state lawmakers, and was formed this spring to address a downturn in the state's commercial fishing industry. At the group's fourth meeting on December 10, Petersburg's longtime Harbormaster Glorianne Wollen told lawmakers that Alaska's harbors need more money for maintenance. Afterward, she told KFSK that a lot of the complications in funding come from a shift in harbor ownership over the years. "From the beginning of statehood, the...
A Petersburg man is facing 10 felony charges for possession and distribution of child pornography after a grand jury indicted him on Dec. 26 for allegedly sharing sexually explicit content of children. Charging documents say law enforcement received a tip from Kik, a social networking app, reporting that an account belonging to Alejandro “Alex” Melendez Aguilar, 45, had shared the content. Investigators spoke with Aguilar at his Petersburg residence in November. They allege that, during the interview, Aguilar admitted sharing explicit con...
The Petersburg School District plans to restore several cut positions and provide a one-time staff bonus, thanks to higher-than-expected state funding and enrollment numbers for the 2024-25 school year. The district received around $1.1 million more in state funding than initially budgeted for, with $849,000 coming from the one-time increase of $680 per student above the base student allocation (BSA) surviving the governor's veto this year. The remainder stems from enrollment reaching 456.8 stud...
Petersburg's high school drama program is heading to Scotland. The group has been accepted to perform in August 2026 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe -the world's largest performing arts festival. For PHS drama teacher Elsa Wintersteen, it's a dream come true – both for herself and her students. While she's never been to the Fringe Festival, she witnessed its impact through a high school friend who performed there years ago. "When she came back, I mean, all the pictures she had to show me, a...
The Petersburg High School had its yearly winter music concert on Tuesday, Dec. 17, in front of an energetic audience to help end 2024 and ring in the new year. The show highlighted all the hard work students and music director Chelsea Corrao have put into the music program. "We went into it saying we did the hard work, now it's time to make the art happen and I feel like that's exactly what we did," Corrao said. "The kids are feeling pretty confident and proud with themselves and that's all we...
Sons of Norway Hall was warm with cheer on Wednesday, Dec. 11, seafood's tastiest night of the year in Petersburg - the annual pickled herring contest. For fifty flavorful years, Petersburg's finest fish smokers and picklers have come together on a December evening to submit their specialties for judgement by the year's designated taste testers. Winners claim possession of the trophies and bragging rights for the year. But it could be said that the real winners are the scores of food lovers who...
A dead sea lion filled the back of Brandon Ware's pickup, hanging off the tailgate. Ware was wrestling with fat and fur, slowly skinning the animal. "All I have to do is gently run my knife through it," he said. "It separates the fat from the body and pulls the skin down a little bit more, just like peeling a banana." The massive animal had been terrorizing people and pets in Petersburg's South Harbor. It was killed on Saturday, but not by law enforcement. Instead, they collaborated with Ware,...
U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer Joey Boggs is back home in Petersburg this week after escorting the now-famous 80-foot Sitka spruce - known as "The People's Tree" - from Zarembo Island to the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. On Zarembo, Petersburg's Rock-N-Road Construction - Sig Burrell and his crew including Jimmy Martinsen, Clayton Martinsen, Ethan File and Tore Lenz - were the ones who harvested the tree. It was the peak of their summer construction season, and...
This is the final week of operations for Papa Bear's Pizza - downtown Petersburg's iconic pizza shop which has been family operated for the past twenty-two years. The business and the building have been purchased by Tom Westoff, owner and operator of Coastal Cold Storage - a custom seafood processor and popular breakfast and lunch restaurant which moved out of their former location on main street this fall. Coastal's restaurant is reshaping itself into Coastal Bear, with Peter Brantuas set to...
The Petersburg Borough will enter negotiations with a local developer who wants to buy seven borough-owned lots between Severson Subdivision and Skylark Way. Skylark Park LLC wants to develop the land into a major subdivision with roads and utilities that could provide cheaper housing options in Petersburg. In 2023, a survey found that the town needs over 300 more housing units in the next decade. Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht told the Petersburg Borough Assembly at a meeting Dec. 2 that...
A volunteer DJ at Petersburg's public radio station accidentally discharged a handgun during his music show on Friday, December 6. No one was hurt. Police responded and determined that the man was not a threat to the community. KFSK's Hannah Flor was at the station but didn't see the incident. It was Friday afternoon when KFSK's General Manager Tom Abbott heard a gunshot just outside his office. "I heard it, and it startled me. I looked and the volunteer was standing there, and he had a gun,"...
On Monday the Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution opposing a proposal coming before the Board of Fish two months from now which seeks to reduce the production of hatchery chum and hatchery pink salmon in Southeast Alaska by 25 percent. Max Worhatch, a Petersburg commercial salmon fisherman, addressed the assembly at the start of Monday’s meeting “to voice the commercial fishing industry’s support of a resolution to oppose the Board of Fish Proposal 156.” “Hatchery production has long been an important element of the vi...
Petersburg's student-run nonprofit movie theater, the Northern Nights Theater, has run out of reserves and will have to make some changes starting in January. The last few years have been very challenging and expensive for the organization. Sitting unused through the early stages of the pandemic led to major malfunctions with the movie projector, Theater Manager Cyndy Fry told the Pilot. "We basically had to buy the whole computer guts of the system, [and then] because of that change we had to...
Mitkof Highway was closed to through traffic for around eight hours on Sunday, Dec. 1, after a power pole snapped under the weight of snow and ice on the line – leaving power lines on the ground crossing the highway. The pole failure occurred around 2:30 p.m. just past 9-mile and caused an 11 hour 10 minute power outage for the entire circuit from the Scow Bay substation out to Blind Slough. Winds reached 35 mph with sideways rain as the crew from Petersburg Municipal Power and Light worked i...
