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The first reading of an ordinance that would raise Petersburg electric utility rates by 4% starting on July, 1, 2026 came before the Petersburg Borough Assembly at last week’s meeting. The Petersburg Borough Assembly voted 7–0 to advance Ordinance 2026-08, which updates electric utility rates and charges for fiscal year 2027. The increase was identified through the borough’s Waterworth financial forecasting software, which Utility Director Karl Hagerman implemented last year in place of the previous rate study process. For a typical residential...
The 68th year of Little Norway Festival opens Thursday, May 14, for four days of parades, smørbrød, live music, competitive herring-tossing and all manner of communal revelry that could only happen in this town. The celebration runs through Sunday, May 17. "I love that everybody comes to town," said Kelli Slaven, who coordinates the festival schedule for the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce. "I love seeing all the people downtown - the kids running, familiar faces and new ones. It just kind of mak...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly approved the first-reading of an ordinance increasing the borough’s marine passenger fee by $3 per passenger, from $5 to $8, effective January 1, 2027. The fee is assessed once per cruise on marine passenger vessels upon first entry into any borough port. The borough has collected the fee since March 2018, using it to offset costs tied to cruise traffic — including restroom cleaning, janitorial services, library operations during the tourist season, and bridge and trail maintenance. The ordinance cites substantia...
This year's Little Norway Festival is bursting with music. Local acts take the festival's downtown main stage across Friday and Saturday this year, spanning jazz, classic rock, Appalachian folk and everything between. Evening shows at Kito's Kave and the Harbor Bar keep the live music rocking and the dance floor bumping into the middle of the night. And the weekend closes with a classical music piano concert at the Lutheran Church. "I absolutely love it," said Robyn Cardenas, who curated the...
Sally Dwyer will arrive at Sons of Norway Hall at 5 a.m. this Saturday as she has been doing for the past 50 years. Dwyer coordinates the smørbrød - the traditional open-faced Norwegian sandwiches - served at the Sons of Norway Kaffe Hus, held Saturday, May 16, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Sons of Norway Hall on Sing Lee Alley. Even for those 18 years when she didn't live in Petersburg, she flew home for every festival to continue the traditions. Dwyer's preparations this year include 150 m...
"Anchor's Aweigh!" keeps the cast in constant motion, but not just since it's set on an old schooner, the SS Flounder. Intrigue and misadventure keep the characters coming and going, not to mention the fact that they're aboard for a singles cruise. After a long day at Little Norway, it'll be a treat for the audience to take a seat and watch the Mitkof Mummers work their magic. This magic doesn't make itself though. The Mummers have rehearsed 4-plus nights a week since March, all leading up to...
Mike Corl grew up with softball in his bones. He remembers that there were games practically every night. There was a local softball league. "Back 25, 30 years ago, I'd be in Little League or my mom would be playing softball," he said. "There were lots of teams. Traveling teams." That era wound down eventually, and the league went with it. But the tradition found a way back has been a fixture of the Little Norway Festival ever since, returning this year with six teams, roughly 80 players and...
Walk downtown Petersburg during Little Norway Festival and you'll find artwork just about everywhere you look. It's in the galleries and on the walls of pop-up shows. It's on the parade floats. And it's in the storefronts of Petersburg-Wrangell Insurance, IGA, First Bank and Wells Fargo - where the students of Rae C. Stedman Elementary School have their work on display for anyone passing by. "[The festival] is quite a concentrated experience of visual creativity," said Firelight Gallery owner Ma...
Somewhere along the way, a trunk ended up in the Clausen Memorial Museum's storage. Nobody knows how it got there. It has no museum reference number, no donation record, no accompanying note. What it does have is a name, carved into the wood: Gertrude, Arnie's daughter. "We don't know where it came from at all," said Anne Lee, curator at the Clausen Memorial Museum. That trunk - "an America trunk," the kind Norwegian emigrants packed for a one-way journey to the States - became the seed of the...
The Little Norway Festival closes Sunday evening with a world class piano concert at Petersburg Lutheran Church. Corbin Beisner - a concert pianist who has performed at the Conservatoire Liceu in Barcelona, the Liszt Saal in Rome, and concert halls across Europe and the United States - arrived in Petersburg this week for a 7 p.m. recital Sunday at Petersburg Lutheran Church. The program includes the complete Moonlight Sonata, a full Grieg section, Christian Sinding's "Rustle of Spring" and...
Construction on a long-planned sewer line repair project at the Petersburg Community Aquatic Center will begin May 18, and the pool will close for at least the first month of work as contractors cut through concrete slab floors to access blocked and disconnected drain lines beneath the locker rooms. Parks and Recreation Director Stephanie Payne told the Petersburg Borough Assembly on Monday that the project, carried out by Ketchikan Mechanical Inc. and Rainforest Contracting, will run through...
Petersburg’s street sweeper is back on the job after a weeks-long breakdown, as the borough and the Alaska Department of Transportation race to clear months of accumulated safety sand from local roads ahead of Little Norway Festival week — and ahead of the annual repainting of lines on the state’s highways. The heavy sand load is evidence of the region’s punishing winter. Relentless snowfall through the season required repeated applications of sand and grit to keep roads safe, leaving more material on the ground than a typical year. Getting...
Petersburg juniors and seniors will get a crash course in adult financial life Friday morning when Tongass Federal Credit Union hosts its biennial Get Real Financial Reality Fair at the Parks and Recreation gym. The fair works like a high-stakes simulation game. Each student arrives at a registration table, picks a career and receives a corresponding income, then works their way around a circuit of staffed tables — buying a home, choosing transportation, selecting health insurance, setting up a phone plan and managing daily expenses — all while...
Petersburg Medical Center Youth Programs is heading into summer with roughly 1,300 hours of programming planned, a slate of new and redesigned camps, and a message for families who might think the cost puts it out of reach: help is available. “If your kid wants to participate in a program, we’ll get them in a program,” said Katie Holmlund, who directs the PMC Youth Programs. Several successful former summer programs are returning, as are many of the mentors who run them. Holmlund said 75 percent of this summer’s staff are returning mentors...
The Petersburg Public Library and the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program are offering two youth programs this summer, backed by a new grant that will help cover the cost of both — part of a broader menu of learning and outdoor opportunities available to Petersburg kids in the coming months. The library’s annual reading program is returning in a new form this summer, rebranded as the Great Summer Challenge and running from June 5 through July 19. Program Coordinator Kari Petersen said the six-week initiative is open to children ages zer...
A free Tai Chi program at Petersburg Medical Center has quietly been building a following since fall 2023, and this month it's opening the door to new participants with a beginner class starting May 13. The program is part of a substantial four-year federal grant focused on fall prevention, administered through the Administration for Community Living under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The grant funds two evidence-based programs in Petersburg: Bingo Size, an exercise and...
A Silicon Valley company and a Petersburg-raised developer are teaming up to bring a small artificial intelligence data center to the former Ocean Beauty pier and cannery facility, a proposal that drew both cautious enthusiasm and skepticism from the public at last week's borough assembly meeting. Sam Anoka, founder and CEO of Greensparc, addressed the assembly April 20 via Zoom, outlining plans to deploy what he described as a micro-scale data center at the property owned by Andrew Mazzella,...
Construction has begun on the expansion of the Tlingit and Haida Airport Subdivision near Mountain View Manor, and the first visible sign of that work - the removal of roughly 300 feet of the area's popular boardwalk trail - has prompted some dismay from residents who say they were caught off guard by the closure. The boardwalk trail section that runs through the muskeg from the Mountain View Manor area toward the Hungry Point Loop trail will remain closed to the public for the duration of...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously approved a joint resolution last Monday with the City and Borough of Wrangell establishing a framework for sharing hydroelectric power from the Tyee Lake project and coordinating future energy-intensive economic development. Wrangell Borough Manager Mason Villarma, in a March 24 report to the Wrangell Assembly, described the resolution as formalizing “a proactive framework for collaboration as both communities pursue energy-intensive economic opportunities.” Villarma framed the agreement as set...
The Friends of Petersburg Libraries marked their 25th anniversary Tuesday with a celebration at the Petersburg Public Library that doubled as a community tribute to two figures who have shaped the library and the town's cultural life for decades: revered Petersburg historian Don Nelson and retiring library staff member Chris Weiss, who served the library for nearly 40 years. The event drew community members, library staff, borough officials and representatives from the Clausen Museum to share...
The U.S. Forest Service is bringing its Tongass National Forest Plan revision process to Petersburg this week, with an in-person community workshop scheduled for 5-7 p.m. Thursday, April 23, in the Borough Assembly Chambers. The event is part of a series of workshops running across 19 Southeast Alaska communities through early May — a rare opportunity for the public to provide direct input before the agency completes a draft plan. Revision coordinator Erin Mathews described it as “a bonus” engagement round not typically built into the feder...
Petersburg's new utility director, Steve Harbour took the podium at the March 16 borough assembly meeting to address what he recognized as a public information problem. "In the two years I've been at Power and Light, I've built up a lot of questions and heard a lot of misinformation," said Harbour, "Nobody's fault. I worked pretty close with Power and Light for years as an electrician, and I couldn't answer some of the stuff I'm going to talk about tonight." The 45-minute presentation that...
Petersburg police, fire and EMS personnel conducted a multi-agency active threat training exercise at Stedman Elementary School after school hours on Wednesday, April 15. The Petersburg Police Department issued a public service announcement ahead of the exercise alerting residents that emergency vehicles and personnel would be visible in and around the school and asking the public to avoid the immediate area. The drill was organized by Petersburg Police Sgt. Drew Ayriss and EMS Coordinator Ryan...
The number of cruise ship stops in Petersburg is down again this year, continuing a trend that has seen the town’s port call count slip from around 110 in 2022 to 85 scheduled for 2026. But local travel agents say the picture on the ground is more stable than the numbers initially suggest. The drop in stops this year is due to the closure this winter of Sitka-based, Allen Marine-owned Alaskan Dream Cruises. Its fleet, the Alaskan Dream, Admiralty Dream, Baranof Dream and Chichagof Dream, carried between 40 and 80 passengers each and have b...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly voted unanimously Monday to support House Bill 78, legislation that would restore a defined benefit retirement option for Alaska public employees and teachers — and added language calling on the Legislature to reject an amendment that critics say would burden local governments. Resolution 2026-10, passed at the April 13 regular assembly meeting, expresses the borough’s support for HB 78, which would allow employees in the Public Employees’ Retirement System Tier 4 and Teachers’ Retirement System Tier 3 to opt...
