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PETERSBURG (KDN) – Southeast Alaska is on track to receive its millionth cruise ship passenger this week. The milestone was announced at Southeast Conference on Tuesday by Meilani Schijvens, who produces the Southeast Alaska by the Numbers report that tracks the region’s economic performance. Juneau Mayor Ken Koelsch attended the conference and said on Tuesday that he planned to return to Juneau for a Thursday ceremony welcoming Southeast’s millionth passenger. This year is the first since 2009 that more than 1 million cruise passengers will...
Petersburg played host to the Alaska Recreation and Park Association’s 2016 conference last week, with around fifty parks and recreation director and employees in town. On Thursday morning, they were joined by about 30 students and a handful of community members for the keynote address by Greg Morton. Morton is the CEO of the Northern California Human Resources Association, based in San Francisco, California. His message was all about the importance of balancing life and work, and overcoming personal challenges. In 2014, he suffered a s...
The Petersburg High School swim team headed to Juneau last weekend, and put up some good performances even though the team scoring didn’t reflect individual efforts, according to head coach Andy Carlisle. “We didn’t do great score wise, but we weren’t really paying attention to that,” he said. “We were just focusing on individual swims.” Carlisle said there were a few disqualifications, which hurt team scoring, but they happened because swimmers left the starting block early. The swimmers were...
It's been just under a month since Ian Andersen departed Prudhoe Bay on his bike, and he spent part of last week in Petersburg. Andersen will spend the next year or so riding from Alaska to Argentina, and he couldn't be more excited, because he's making the 17,500-mile trip to raise awareness for spinal cord injuries and disabilities. When it comes to bikes, Andersen, 24, will be the first to tell you he doesn't know much about them. He completed a couple of two or three weeklong tours with...
PETERSBURG – Southeast Alaska’s economic growth is flattening out after five strong years, according to a new report for Southeast Conference. Southeast Alaska by the Numbers, a report prepared every year ahead of the regional development group’s annual September meeting, has mostly good news for the region. The report covers changes in population, jobs and visitors from 2010 to 2015. Compared to 2010, Southeast is faring well in four of five major areas: Population, labor force, job earnings and visitors, all of which saw growth of at least...
ANCHORAGE – Gov. Bill Walker illegally vetoed Alaska Permanent Fund earnings that were required to be transferred to dividends, a lawsuit filed Friday by a state senator and two former state senators claims. Facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, Walker in June cut in half the annual checks that give all residents a share of the state's oil wealth. He kept enough money in place to award qualified Alaskans a $1,000 payout rather than an anticipated $2,100 check. That simply is not legal under the legislation that created the fund, said De...
ANCHORAGE – It’s already known that the yearly check given to nearly every single Alaskan from the state’s oil wealth fund is going to be about $1,000, but state officials plan to reveal the exact amount later this week. Since Gov. Bill Walker is in Asia this week, his spokeswoman says the amount of this year’s Alaska Permanent Fund dividend will be revealed Friday morning on the governor’s website. The first checks should be deposited Oct. 6. This year’s check could have been twice as much, but Walker vetoed half the money appropriate...
PETERSBURG – Southeast Alaska biomass experts believe that the low price of oil shouldn’t put wood heat projects on the chopping block. When the price of diesel remained higher than $4 a gallon, wood-fired boilers were sold as a relatively cheap heating option for public buildings in Southeast. The campaign to promote wood heat has been successful in Southeast – especially in the Ketchikan and Prince of Wales Island areas – as all levels of government, tribal governments and private enterprise invest millions of dollars into biomass project...
The walls of her classroom might still be a little bare, but Joyce Metsa is working on that while settling into her new role teaching math at Petersburg High School. Metsa began her teaching career in 1988, with a few breaks here and there, and spent the last 10 years as an educator in Metlakatla. She doesn't see herself teaching in five years, because retirement is calling her name, but for right now she's loving Petersburg and her new students. "There's an openness to kids here," she says....
PETERSBURG – Three packages of major reforms to the Alaska Marine Highway System went under the microscope on Wednesday at Southeast Conference. Facing an aging fleet, declining service and tightening state budgets, the regional economic development organization is working to rethink the $150 million transportation network serving Alaska’s southern coast. The Alaska Marine Highway System is an agency within the Alaska Department of Transportation. For most of its life, it has been managed by state employees and overseen by appointees of the...
The borough"s blue cart recycling program began at the beginning of the year and seems to be running smoothly, according to Public Works Director Karl Hagerman. "Overall the community has really accepted the new system," he says. "Customer satisfaction, I think, is pretty good and we"ve received very little negative feedback over the program." After the start of the program, Public Works distributed a handful of smaller 64-gallon blue carts to low volume households who requested them. The... Full story
WRANGELL - Emergency assistance was dispatched from Wrangell early Sunday evening, after a private boat struck a log near Farm Island. Fire Department Chief Tim Buness said emergency dispatch received a 911 call from one of the boat”s passengers at 5:23 p.m. Responders were notified and an initial unit was ready to depart within minutes. “We sent a float plane up with three medics on board,” Buness said. He estimated it took about twenty minutes to arrive at the scene. “We also sent one of the bigger boats with Alaska Vistas with more EMTs (E... Full story
WRANGELL – Costs for the transition of operations at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric facility may be higher than first expected. Board members for Southeast Alaska Power Agency learned at their September 8 meeting that the unfunded pensions liability for Wrangell employees at the plant were more than double what was estimated when it assumed operations. SEAPA CEO Trey Acteson explained consultants had put the city"s liabilities to the state Public Employees" Retirement System at $648,206, which i... Full story
Petersburg is hosting two conferences this week and next. On Thursday and Friday the Alaska Recreation and Park Association meets. On their schedule are topics entitled: “Love Your Job…Love Your Life; Managing for Millenials; Laughter Yoga in Your Parks and Do You have a Dog Park? Or Has Your Whole Community Accidentally Become a Dog Park?” Who says Parks and Recreation Dept. directors don”t have a sense of humor? Next week the Southeast Conference meets on Monday through Thursday. President Garry White points out in his conference welcome...
The school year is well underway and Jasmine Ieremia is back in class at PHS after spending a year studying abroad with the Rotary Exchange Program. She"s been back in town for four months, and the time has allowed her to reflect on living in Thailand. Ieremia says she missed American culture, and the tonal language of Thailand was difficult. She knew enough to get around and do regular everyday things, but conversation was limited. Another hurdle was the steep learning curve of driver and...
JUNEAU – The final step is expected this week for a nonprofit organization to take over a Juneau health center serving homeless and uninsured residents that it started managing last year. Wrangell-based Alaska Island Community Services began managing Front Street Community Health Center in May 2015 at the request of the center's board. Board member Mariya Lovishchuk said a final vote on the transfer will take place this week, The Juneau Empire reported. AICS offers medical, dental and behavioral health services in Wrangell, Gustavus and N...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – A Juneau-based organization has received nearly $930,000 in federal funds to help revitalize Alaska Native languages. The Sealaska Heritage Institute will use the grant from the Administration for Native Americans to support a program dedicated to teaching the languages of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian. The project will serve participants in Juneau, Sitka, Metlakatla and Hydaburg over a three-year period. The institute is looking for eight participants to become proficient in one of the three languages. Four mentors w...
The Petersburg Children"s Center began the school year earlier this month with a new look after recently completing a renovation. Teachers and kiddos were welcomed with a spacious expansion, but it wouldn"t have been possible without overwhelming support from the community. "This whole process has included many, many people. Jim Schwartz and Bob Lynn have been here throughout the entire project," PCC director Brandi Heppe wrote in an email to the Pilot. "Jim Roberts and Kurt Wohlhueter were...
To comply with HB156, the school board unanimously approved the sex education curriculum and the teachers of the curriculum for the school year at their board meeting Tuesday night. The board held an open work session Monday night to hear from staff that will be teaching this year”s sex education courses. The teachers gave board members a rundown of past curriculum and their approach to this school year. “It was almost two hours of information. I feel like we came away with a real clear understanding of what is being taught,” said board presi...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Alaska imports 96 percent of its food, and the governor says that should change. Gov. Bill Walker spoke during a conference for the National Association of Farmer”s Market Nutrition Programs, the Juneau Empire reported. “When we became a state, we used to raise half the food that was consumed in Alaska,” Walker said. The state now produces 4 percent of the food its residents consume. “That”s partly because we have grown since statehood in population, but also we”ve sort of lost our vision a bit,” Walker said. “We got a...
DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, Alaska (AP) – A 45-year-old man from Mexico was located unharmed Monday after failing to return on time from a hiking trip to an abandoned city bus in the Alaska wilderness made famous by the popular book and movie, both titled “Into the Wild.” Denali National Park officials say the search for Carlos Castrejon was called off after he was found in good condition. He was last seen Wednesday when he set off to find the abandoned Fairbanks city bus near the national park. He intended to be back Saturday. Offic...
WRANGELL – A former Wrangell resident joined an Alaska canoe group in supporting a North Dakota tribe protesting construction of an oil pipeline across sacred lands. Earlier this month Ken Hoyt met up with members of the Juneau-based One People Canoe Society for a three-day spiritual journey on the Missouri River. For a week they joined a growing group of people protesting construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near tribal land. The pipeline is planned to be an 1,172-mile connection be...
A state outreach program designed to shake some sense into Alaskans, with the help of a mobile earthquake simulator worth over $100,000, stopped by Petersburg last week. Each year the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (DHSEM) sends out a mobile trailer unit to different communities in an effort to raise awareness of earthquake risks. However, this year is the first for the simulator traveling around Southeast Alaska, according to Jeremy Zidek, public information...
Suzanne Wood, co-founder of Mitkof Highway Homeowners Association, on Sept. 1, sent a letter to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority seeking records for the 11 August 2016 Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority’s Resource Management Committee Meeting and Executive Session and for the 24 August 2016 AMHTA Board of Trustees Special Meeting. The documents, according to the letter, “are necessary for us to ascertain how the Trust could transition from the ongoing and forward-moving AMHTA-US Forest Service administrative land exchange process to s... Full story
PETERSBURG – A school on Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska that saw only a handful of graduates last year is closing its doors due to a lack of students. The small school on the northern end of the island in Port Protection is closed for the fall semester. The closure comes after the recent shuttering of two other schools in the Southeast Island School District, KFSK-FM reported. Superintendent Lauren Burch said the Port Protection school had only a few graduates this year and that there are no school-age children left in the small c...
