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Gov. Mike Dunleavy used his veto powers last week to take away $50 million in state funding approved by the Legislature for local school districts across Alaska. He said low oil prices had cut into revenues, and the state could not afford to spend the money. He used the same oily excuse for his other budget vetoes, including cutting two-thirds of the money legislators had appropriated for major maintenance work at nine schools in Alaska, leaving behind $13 million in funding for just three projects from a list that exceeds $300 million....
The public advisory board for the Alaska Marine Highway System has recommended that the state call an end to the Matanuska's 53-year career in the fleet. The final decision whether to sell the unseaworthy ferry rests with the governor and his Department of Transportation commissioner. "There is currently no set timeline for action," said Sam Dapcevich, the department's spokesman. The 408-foot-long, 499-passenger ferry has been out of service since the fall of 2022, when it went into the...
WRANGELL — The Wrangell Borough Assembly has approved a $2.296 million contract to construct gravel streets and install buried utility lines at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision near Shoemaker Bay, almost $400,000 more than the engineers estimate of $1.9 million. The contract with Petersburg-based Rock-N-Road Construction, which was the only bidder on the job, will push total development costs for the 20 residential lots to about $4.1 million, more than double what the borough hopes to recover from the land sale. The bor...
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal would cut funding by more than half for the Essential Air Service program, which has ensured daily jet service to Wrangell, Petersburg, Yakutat and Cordova for almost 50 years. The program covers 65 small communities in Alaska — which includes 11 in Southeast — and 112 communities in the Lower 48, Hawaii and Puerto Rico as of late last year. Congress created the Essential Air Service subsidy in 1978 to ensure a minimum level of service for communities that otherwise might receive no regularly scheduled f...
The president’s budget proposal for the federal fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 is full of bold moves, big changes and controversy. That was expected. But one proposed spending cut stands out as closer to home than others. The budget office proposes to reduce federal funding for the nationwide Essential Air Service program by 52%. Among 177 small communities in the 50 states and Puerto Rico, the program covers daily air service to Wrangell, Petersburg, Yakutat and Cordova. What is particularly aggravating is the budget office’s explanation of...
After losing more than $500,000 in federal funding, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska has put on hold this year’s community food distribution of herring roe and salmon. The Southeast tribal nonprofit’s Traditional Foods Security Department had planned to use the money to continue the program, which over the past three years has distributed more than 52,000 pounds of herring roe on kelp, 120,000 pounds of salmon and 31,000 pounds of black cod to the tribe’s 21 recognized communities. Wrangell is among the commu...
WRANGELL - Alaska Airlines has been flying the "milk run" for decades, serving the string of Southeast communities between Ketchikan and Juneau, but this weekend will be the first flight for the Milk Run Music Festival in Wrangell. Two days of music, food booths, corn hole competition, kids events and more are planned for Friday and Saturday, May 2-3, in front of the City Dock. The Nolan Center is the backup plan if the rain gets to be too much. "We're hoping for great weather," said Reme...
Fiscal conservatives like to say that Alaska has a spending problem. Solve it, cut programs, and the good tax-free life can continue — along with a fat Permanent Fund dividend every fall. The other side in the budget debate says the state has a revenue problem. They cite the political refusal to consider changes in oil taxes, mining taxes or corporate taxes, the rejection of a return to the pre-oil-days personal income tax, even the denial of an increase in the lowest-in-the-nation motor fuel tax rate. They say raise new revenues and a good l...
WRANGELL — More than five dozen high school students from around Southeast, along with their art teachers, will be busy painting, inking, printing, beading, knitting and more during Artfest, a four-day series of workshops in Wrangell this week. Artfest will run Thursday through Sunday, April 24-27, at the high school, with an art show open to the public from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday, said Tawney Crowley, the Wrangell School District’s art teacher. The festival for Southeast students started in 1997 when Wrangell art teacher Kirk Garbisch helped or...
I figured all terrorism was equally bad. No distinctions allowed. Aiding in the murder — stealing of life, liberty or property — from innocent people deserved strong punishment. Terrorism by the far-left or far-right, foreign-born or U.S.-born, religious zealots or atheists, rich or poor, people wearing burkas, balaclavas or Brooks Brothers suits are all equally punishable under the law. Anyone and everyone who encourages or helps terrorists belongs in prison for the public’s protection. Except in the Trump administration, where who you know,...
A Canadian environmental nonprofit group, long critical of the Red Chris Mine in the northern watershed of the Stikine River, has released a new report that cites increasing underground seepage of contaminants from the mine’s tailings pond. The report comes as British Columbia regulators are considering the mine operator’s application to expand ore recovery by changing to underground tunneling instead of open-pit surface mining. The gold and copper mine started operations in 2015 and sits about 50 miles east of the Stikine River community of...
Alaskans have until 11:59 p.m. Monday, March 31, to file for this year’s Permanent Fund dividend, whether they file online or mail a paper application to the PFD office. But if they mail the application, it absolutely positively must be postmarked by March 31. Anything dropped in the mail after that date will be rejected. Last year’s dividend was $1,702, though this year’s amount — which will be set by legislators during the budget-writing process this spring — likely will be at least several hundred dollars less. The state is facing a combine...
Alaska’s two U.S. senators both believe that President Donald Trump’s pro-development administration will be good for the state’s natural resource economy, creating jobs, boosting tax revenues and building long-term prosperity. Both support the president’s initiatives to unlock resources that had been placed off-limits by the administration of Joe Biden and others before him. And both want the federal government to operate efficiently and reduce spending. Beyond those shared beliefs, however, the two came across as worlds apart in their a...
WRANGELL — Confronted with an engineering report that cited “concern for potential failure of the ramp,” Wrangell borough on Thursday evening, March 13, notified freight haulers that the municipally owned barge ramp downtown was closed, immediately. The borough made arrangements for the weekly freight barge to use the old sawmill dock at the Marine Service Center as a temporary unloading and loading site, Borough Manager Mason Villarma said Friday, March 14. “This should have happened some time ago,” he said of shutting down the 47-year-o...
Though a $5 million federal grant to help pay for expanding the generating capacity at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric station is "clearly frozen," the head of the Southeast Alaska Power Agency hopes the funds will be released soon and the project can stay on schedule. The agency's lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and others "feel fairly confident ... that freeze will be thawed," Robert Siedman, chief executive officer of the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, or SEAPA, said earlier this month. The Tyee...
Passenger and vehicle traffic aboard the Alaska Marine Highway System moved slightly higher in 2024 from 2023, but still is less than half its peak from the early 1990s. The state ferries carried just over 185,000 passengers and about 65,000 vehicles last year on its routes stretching from Southeast to Prince William Sound and into several Gulf of Alaska coastal communities. That’s down from more than 400,000 passengers and 110,000 vehicles 1990-1992. And it’s down from more than 325,000 passengers as recently as the early 2010s. Marine Dir...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has decided to cancel plans to replace the controllable-pitch propellers aboard the state ferry Columbia next year, opting to keep the 52-year-old ship in service until a replacement vessel is built. The propulsion system project was estimated in 2022 to cost as much as $20 million. The Columbia, the largest vessel in the fleet, serves the ferry system’s longest and most heavily traveled route between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska. It had been scheduled to head into a shipyard for much of next y...
As if years of political interference and, for many elected officials, disinterest weren’t enough to sink the Alaska Marine Highway System, rust and age could finish the job. Maybe the answer is some duct tape to keep the ships running just a little longer until they turn 65 years old and could qualify for Medicare. But that’s too long to wait — the marine highway needs urgent care. The ships are aging, which is a polite way of saying they are long past their prime and getting older and rustier. Salt water accelerates the process. The Matan...
It’s time to expand the generating capacity at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric station to handle growing demand — particularly from heat pumps — the plant’s operator said of its plans to line up $20 million in funding and a federal permit to add a third turbine to the facility. The Tyee Lake station started supplying Wrangell and Petersburg in 1984. It was built with two turbines rated at 10 megawatts each, with an empty bay at the Bradfield Canal facility to add a third turbine when needed. That time is now, said Robert Siedman, chief executi...
The Alaska Senate is considering a bill that would allow parents who are owed child support to apply for the Permanent Fund dividend of the parent who is delinquent in their payments, providing a work-around to collect from parents who do not bother to apply for their annual PFD. “The reality is that in some cases,” said Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar, the bill’s sponsor, the owing parent either forgets to apply or decides not to apply out of spite to deny the money to the other parent. Under state law, garnishment of the dividend for child...
No matter what any crowd-pleasing elected official says, Alaska cannot afford a long-deserved increase in state funding for schools and a large Permanent Fund dividend. There just isn’t enough money in the state checkbook to do both this year — not unless Alaskans want to start paying an income tax or a state sales tax, which are both even less popular than a middle seat in the last row of a six-hour flight. More than 90% of the spendable dollars in the state budget comes from two sources: An annual draw on Permanent Fund investment ear...
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...
WRANGELL — The mayor convened the public workshop, inviting Washington state-based entrepreneur Dale Borgford to lay out for borough officials his plans to build biomass boilers that would burn trash from around Southeast to heat large commercial greenhouses at the site of the former 6-Mile mill. He also wants to build a plant capable of filling large plastic bottles with 40,000 gallons a day of clean water from a creek at the north end of the property, or from rainwater if the creek flow is insufficient. And his list includes a plant to turn f...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has a choice for his final two years on the job: He can continue talking about how state law requires him to include an outrageously large Permanent Fund dividend in the budget — even though it would dig a deep budget hole which, thankfully, legislators will never approve — or he can help solve the problem. It looks like he is sticking with the irresponsible approach. He proposed a budget last week that is politically popular with his supporters but which he knows the state cannot afford without drawing down its rem...
Alaska Airlines has received a federal subsidy since 1976 to provide Wrangell and Petersburg with twice-daily jet service, and community leaders in each community are rounding up support to urge the government to issue a new contract after the current agreement expires in 2025. “I want to ensure it stays around,” Wrangell Mayor Patty Gilbert said of her petition drive to show community support for Alaska Airlines under the U.S. Department of Transportation Essential Air Service program. Sixty-five communities in Alaska —including 10 more in So...
