Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 461
The Petersburg Borough Assembly on Sept. 8 formally accepted nearly $8.9 million in federal grant funding for a new small-vessel haul-out at Scow Bay, clearing another hurdle before the long-planned project goes out to bid hopefully by the end of this month. Assembly members voted unanimously to approve Resolution 2026-26, accepting an $8,880,791 BUILD grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration. The resolution authorizes Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht to countersign and accept the grant agreement once the federal...
The Mitkof Mummers are back with another fall show in the works — and they are looking for townspeople to help fill out the cast of a fall comedy in which a giant egg walks into a police station insisting he was pushed. The community theater group gathered for a casting call and first read-through last week to launch their fall production: “Hard Boiled: A Nursery Crime,” a one-act children’s comedy by Tracey Wells, published by Pioneer Drama Service. As is tradition for the Mummers’ fall shows, it’s geared toward young audiences. The play is pu...
A retrospective of paintings, carvings and jewelry by Petersburg artist Karen Cornelius closed at the Petersburg Public Library on Tuesday, Sept. 1, and on its last day the artist walked through the exhibition with the Pilot, reflecting on her lifetime of art making. Cornelius kept returning to one idea: that she makes art to get people to look harder at the world around them. "I am so in love with colors and nature and the creation that we have," she said. She wants viewers to "look more...
The Rainforest Festival returns to Petersburg Sept. 10-13 for its 19th year, with a lineup organized around island biogeography — the study of how wildlife reaches, adapts to and lives on island systems like the ones that define Southeast Alaska. “We have this really unique system of islands that we live on in Southeast Alaska,” festival volunteer Sunny Rice said. She pointed to the Coast Range walling the region off from the rest of the continent, and to the rivers that thread the mainland to the islands — “big rivers … that serve as corridor...
Petersburg homeowners who are tribal citizens may be able to get help paying their mortgage, property taxes, home insurance or utility bills through a federal program that closes at the end of September — but completed applications are due Wednesday, Sept. 10. The Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority is working to fully spend the money remaining in its Homeowner Assistance Fund, a U.S. Treasury program THRHA has run across Southeast Alaska since 2023. Petersburg is one of 13 eligible communities, along with Angoon, Craig, Douglas, J...
Six candidates filed to run for three Borough Assembly seats before Tuesday's filing deadline. Incumbent Jeigh Stanton Gregor filed for reelection, while incumbent Rob Schwartz opted not to run again. Two of the three Assembly seats carry three-year terms, and four candidates are running for them: Stanton Gregor, Sarah Fine-Walsh, Donna Marsh and Tom Kowalske. The third seat is a one-year term and drew two candidates, appointed incumbent Scott Newman and Don Koenigs. Every other board on this...
Petersburg Medical Center is testing a different way to pay for a trip to the doctor: a flat monthly fee, no copays, and as many primary care visits as a patient needs. The hospital has gone live with a direct primary care plan - a subscription model CEO Phil Hofstetter described to the borough assembly this month as a way to make routine care more affordable and to reach residents who are uninsured, underinsured or carrying high deductibles. "It's a subscription-based primary care model, and...
Petersburg's Community Aquatic Center reopened its pools this week after being closed since mid-May for a sewer-line repair beneath the facility's concrete floors. However, while contractors finish up the job and reconcrete the locker room floors, swimmers will need to adjust to reduced capacity and altered access, announced Parks and Recreation Director Stephanie Payne. The leisure and wellness pool and the lap pool have reopened as of Tuesday morning on Aug. 18. The sauna and the second-floor...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly, sitting as the Board of Adjustment, voted unanimously Monday night to grant in part an appeal by the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and order the borough Planning Commission to take a formal vote on the tribe’s subdivision application at 1200 Haugen Drive. The CCTHITA, doing business as Tidal Network, had appealed the Planning Commission’s inaction at its July 14 meeting, when a motion by Commissioner Floyd to approve the minor subdivision died for lack of a second. Because no...
The remains of an infant girl who was taken from a Thomas Bay cave nearly a century ago are coming home to Petersburg next month for burial. Stephanie Aikins, who is coordinating the project for the Petersburg Indian Association, said the infant — known to those working on her return only as “Baby Girl” — will arrive on the morning jet Friday, Sept. 4. A welcoming ceremony of singers and dancers is planned on the tarmac as she is unloaded. “She will be back on her land for the first time in almost 100 years,” Aikins said. For Aikins, this repat...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly last Monday passed the second reading of an ordinance establishing a new Thomas Bay Service Area, building the legal and financial framework the borough says it will need as it prepares to sell off state-platted land it acquired three years ago. Ordinance 2026-17 creates the service area and adds a new chapter to borough code defining its boundaries, the services it may provide, and how those services could be paid for. But according to a memorandum from Community Development Director Liz Cabrera, adoption “does...
For a third straight summer, Katie Holmlund - the youth program coordinator behind Petersburg Medical Center's Kinder Skog outdoor program - led a group of local teenagers on a sea-kayak expedition down the south end of Mitkof Island, roughly 50 kilometers over 10 days in collaboration with the guiding outfit Onward and Upward. Eight students and five instructors launched from Banana Point, worked their way out to Woewodski Island, and backtracked home. By the last few days, the adults were most...
Shannon Baird, finance director for the Petersburg School District, has been named a recipient of ASBO International's 2026 Emerging Leaders Scholarship Award, an honor that comes with a $2,000 travel reimbursement grant and free registration to the national organization's annual conference this fall. Baird said she was one of 17 recipients selected nationwide this year. The award recognizes newer professionals in school business and accounting, and winners take part in their own reception and...
Independent U.S. House candidate Bill Hill brought his campaign to Petersburg last week, fielding questions at a Q&A session hosted at the Harbor Bar and later sitting down with the Petersburg Pilot to make his case for unseating first-term Republican Rep. Nick Begich III. Hill, a lifelong Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and retired school superintendent from Naknek, is running as an independent in a race he now frames as effectively two-way, after Democrat Matt Schultz ended his campaign and...
Pink salmon - the backbone of Petersburg's seine fleet - have finally started to show up last over the past week, after what state biologists were comparing to the poorest early returns on the books. "Pink salmon's been, up until this last week - in particular Sunday - pretty poor so far," Troy Thynes, the Southeast Alaska management coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told the Pilot. He described strong escapement and harvest in District 13 near Sitka, and a dramatic jump in...
A long-delayed project to replace Petersburg's downtown streetlights is finally underway, with the first new poles installed last week and the rest expected to go up over the coming weeks, Utility Director Stephan Harbour told the assembly Monday. The borough is installing 13 new LED poles downtown and purchased two more as spares for accident replacements - 15 in all - at a cost of about $138,000. Two were already standing as of Monday, one in front of the federal building and one across the st...
Nearly seven decades ago a major Hollywood film crew rolled into Petersburg to shoot the sprawling Alaska statehood epic "Ice Palace." For their new exhibit, the Clausen Memorial Museum brings that movie back for two screenings. The museum will celebrate the opening of its new exhibit Saturday, Aug. 8, with a 3 p.m. matinee screening of the film. A second showing is set for Aug. 14 at 6 p.m. Standard museum admission covers a tour of the exhibit, the screening, and concessions - popcorn and...
Tausani Ieremia, of Sitka, was setting the net aboard the Petersburg seiner Odin on the morning of Sunday, July 26, when the boat's own purse line snared his ankle and dragged him over the stern and into the water near Saint Joseph Island, west of Prince of Wales. In the minutes that followed, the 22-year-old fisherman was pulled under by the net, lost consciousness and stopped breathing. The Odin's crew pulled him back, revived him with CPR. He was helicoptered by the Coast Guard to Sitka then... Full story
A citizen initiative that would exempt Petersburg residents 70 and older from borough sales tax will go before voters Oct. 6. In the local election last fall, Petersburg voters chose to eliminate the senior sales tax exemption that applied to all qualified residents over 65 and replace it with an income-based senior sales tax exemption. Petersburg residents will now be asked to restore the sales tax exemption for all seniors, regardless of income, with the minimum age increased to 70 years old....
After nine months of public meetings and hours of public testimony, the Petersburg Borough Assembly adopted its wireless communication facilities ordinance last Monday. Ordinance 2026-14 passed its third and final reading. Mayor Bob Lynn and Assembly Members Jeff Meucci, Bob Martin and Scott Newman voted for it. Vice Mayor Jeigh Stanton Gregor and Assembly Members Rob Schwartz and James Valentine were excused from the meeting. The ordinance creates a new chapter of borough code governing wireless communication facilities and other towers and...
Tidal Network’s application for a minor subdivision at 1200 Haugen Drive, near the Fire Hall, was halted at last week’s Petersburg Planning Commission meeting on July 14 when no commissioner seconded the motion to consider the application. Last month, the Petersburg Borough Assembly approved the sale of the land — a 10,036-square-foot lot carved out of a much larger borough-owned property next to the fire hall, where Tidal Network plans to build a communication tower. The contract was signe...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly voted unanimously Monday to authorize the borough manager to apply for and execute two state revolving fund loans, each of up to $150,000, to pay for a pair of wastewater studies the borough is required to complete under its federal discharge permit by Nov. 1. Both loans would come through the Alaska Clean Water Fund. The first would fund a wastewater disinfection study to evaluate disinfection alternatives, develop preliminary engineering recommendations and identify improvements needed to meet current and futur...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly gave unanimous first-reading approval Monday to an ordinance that would establish nepotism standards for the borough’s elected officials, filling a gap the mayor said has sat in the borough charter without implementing code. Mayor Bob Lynn said he and Borough Clerk Becky Regula reviewed the borough’s existing provisions earlier this year and concluded they were not sufficient. “We looked at three or four different other ordinances that other boroughs here in Alaska had, and we turned it over after some thought to...
The Coast Guard Cutter Elderberry has a new officer in charge, following a change-of-command ceremony held July 15 at the Sons of Norway Hall. Senior Chief Petty Officer Jacob Pegoda, officer-in-charge of the 65-foot buoy tender for the past three years, turned over command to Senior Chief Petty Officer Craig Campomizzi. The new commander of Coast Guard Sector Southeast Alaska, Captain Ginny Naldony, traveled to Petersburg for the ceremony. Pegoda received a commendation for his years at the...
Sharlay Mamoe started work as executive director of WAVE on July 1, taking over from Rikki McKay, who departs Petersburg this month to continue her education in social work. Mamoe comes to the job from the Petersburg Children's Center, where she spent eight years, most of them as director. Before that she worked a decade at the cannery. McKay is staying on through July 24 to help with the handoff. The two have been working side by side since July 1. WAVE board treasurer Indigo Hanahan said the...
