Sorted by date Results 1475 - 1499 of 6799
There are now 5 active cases of COVID-19 in Petersburg as of Wednesday according to the Petersburg COVID-19 Dashboard. The count is down 14 cases since the Petersburg Medical Center last put out a press release on October 11. The dashboard labels both PMC and the Petersburg School District risk levels as moderate. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reported 830 new cases of COVID-19 in the state Tuesday. There were also 19 new resident hospitalizations and eight Alaska resident...
The Borough Assembly walked through each of the six maps being considered by the Alaska Redistricting Board during Tuesday's meeting and discussed each map's affects on Petersburg. The districts are redrawn every decade based off data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Each of the 40 districts must be socioeconomically integrated, reasonably compact, contiguous, and have an approximately equal number of people. This year that number is 18,335 per district. Members from the Alaska...
The Borough Assembly held their second reading for Ordinance #2021-15 along with a public forum during Tuesday's meeting which would update a chapter of old city code regarding disease control and move it into the Petersburg Municipal Code. The ordinance, which was approved in its first reading 6-0 with Assembly Member Taylor Norheim absent, would limit the powers of a health officer and revise antiquated language. Many people spoke during the public hearing about their problems with the...
Proposition #2 passed during the October 5, 2021 municipal election, allowing the Frederick Point East subdivision to be removed from Service Area One after it gathered the necessary majorities of Service Area One voters and Frederick Point East voters. The next step in the process is to code properties in the subdivision to the right tax code according to Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht who said the tax assessor is in town if the borough needs a second pair of eyes to help with the...
The 2021-2022 Dungeness crab harvest is predicted to total 4.23 million pounds, over two million less than the last harvest, according to Joe Stratman, the lead shellfish biologist for region one with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Numbers released so far include the harvest data for the 2021 Dungeness crab summer season in Registration Area A, which is comprised of the inside waters of Southeast Alaska. The commercial Dungeness fishery summer season totaled 3.09 million pounds...
A switch replacement at the Blind Slough hydroelectric plant will have to wait until April of next year after the work slated for this fall was delayed according to Utility Director Karl Hagerman. The work, unrelated to the Blind Slough hydroelectric plant refurbishment project, aims to replace a remote operated switch called a VacPac at the plant's substation. "There was some concern from the utility, actually many years ago now, that that VacPac had reached the end of its service life and so...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska State Troopers on Monday said a Kake man who reported missing on Saturday was found dead by a canine team searching for him. Troopers said the body of 55-year-old David Dalton was found Monday about 2.5 miles from where his pickup truck was parked near Sitkum Creek, south of Kake, on Kupreanof Island “It appears that Dalton succumbed to the elements,” troopers wrote in an update posted to their webpage. The body has been sent to the medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy. Dalton was last seen Friday...
The 45th annual Oktoberfest Art Share, sponsored by the Muskeg Maleriers, will be held Saturday in the community gym. The event will be similar to its previous iterations and will feature the creations of local artists including rosemaling, baked goods, Christmas decorations, and more. Sally Dwyer, one of the organizers of the event, said there is something for everybody. "We've got quilters, we've got painters, we've got booksellers, we've got artists, we've got cupcake makers, brownie makers....
WRANGELL – It gets so heavy, sometimes you just want to put it down is how Virginia Oliver describes preserving the Tlingit language. “You want to cry,” she said, “because it feels like your brain is going to explode. But then, your Elders just tell you, ‘It’s too heavy right now, just put it down for a little while and pick it back up.’” The international Endangered Languages Project and a U.N. agency estimate there are 200 fluent Tlingit speakers left, but the majority of the sources for that data are a decade old, Oliver said. She estim...
Members of the Alaska Redistricting Board traveled to Petersburg Thursday to present proposed redistricting maps and receive public comments. The board was on a tour of communities in Alaska to allow residents to view the maps and learn more about the process. The districts are redrawn based off data collected from the 2020 U.S. Census and are required to have approximately equally sized districts. In Alaska, the state is divided into 40 districts which each contain about 18,335 people...
The Petersburg School Board discussed COVID-19's continued impact on the school during Tuesday's meeting. The majority of students have returned to in-person learning according to Superintendent Erica Kludt-Painter. Classes were moved online on September 28 after several cases were reported among students and staff at Mitkof Middle School and Petersburg High School. The schools reopened on October 5, but some students remain in quarantine because of close contacts. "It's been a relatively normal...
The Petersburg Medical Center reported 16 active cases of COVID-19 Wednesday after several cases were cleared by Public Health. Seven new cases were recorded Monday, two of which were diagnosed in Petersburg while five cases were identified among Petersburg residents visiting another Alaskan community. PMC says there is concern of significant community spread in Petersburg, especially from gatherings where people are not masking or social distancing. Both the PMC and school risk levels are...
The Borough Assembly unanimously certified the results of the October 5, 2021 municipal election during a special meeting Friday morning. Borough Clerk Debbie Thompson read 12 additional ballots, which did not affect the results of the election. Incumbent Bob Lynn received the most votes for Borough Assembly with 708, the newly counted ballots added five to his total, and Thomas Fine-Walsh claimed the other three-year term with 592 votes and increased his tally by three since election night....
The Petersburg School Board reviewed the results of Performance Evaluation for Alaska's Schools (PEAKS) tests Tuesday during a report given by Testing Coordinator Bridget Wittstock. The PEAKS tests were not conducted in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they returned in the spring of 2021. According to Wittstock, the State of Alaska expanded the window for testing to allow for as many tests to be taken as possible, but only about 64% of the eligible population participated....
Artwork from the Five Finger Lighthouse Society auction is on display this week at the Clausen Museum. The society reached out to artists, most of them locals, to contribute art to the show as part of the fundraiser. According to museum director and participating artist Cindi Lagoudakis, 46 pieces are on display at the museum while a few more are being reserved for the auction. The art can also be seen and bid on through their bidding owl website which museum-goers can open by scanning QR codes...
The United States Forest Service is proposing to combine three Resource Advisory Committees in the South Tongass region according to Alaska Region Secure Rural Schools Coordinator Kevin Hood. The Wrangell-Petersburg, Prince of Wales, and Ketchikan committees face problems with lack of quorums at meetings, preventing business such as approving recommendations for the allocation of federal Secure Rural Schools funding. The merger would see the three RACs be consolidated to form a new South Tongass...
This year's moose harvest has tallied 108 moose so far in Hunt RM038 as of Wednesday according to Petersburg Area Biologist Frank Robbins. "The current harvest tally is 108 which means we've exceeded 100 in the harvest again, and we have since 2014," Robbins said. Since last week, the area that has seen the most activity is Kupreanof Island. 13 additional legal moose were taken from the island, bring the new legal total to 48. One illegal moose was reported is the past week from the island,...
The Petersburg School District purchased a 2021 Honda Pilot EX-L according to a report from Director of Facilities and Maintenance Aaron Buller. The car serves to replace the school’s Ford Explorer which was on its last leg and finally broke down. According to Buller the vehicle’s transmission is shot and the school was recommended replace it rather than fix it because of its age and worth. The vehicle is used for student transport and mail runs and has been used for driver’s education in the past according to Buller. The board approved the p...
WRANGELL - Melissa Curttright has been a registered nurse for 16 years — the past two weeks in Wrangell. Like so many other hospital workers, the pandemic changed her plans. The 52-year-old RN from Oklahoma City said she saw 75% of her hospital’s intensive-care unit staff leave, and then she took to the road. She’s been traveling now for almost a year. Wrangell is her latest assignment through SnapNurse, an Atlanta-based nurse staffing agency, after Los Angeles. Alaska has contracted with an Atlanta company to send as many as 470 health care...
WRANGELL - Ann Hilburn began learning American Sign Language for an elective course in college, thinking it would benefit her aspirations of becoming a nurse. That class led her to change her career field entirely. “I had just fallen in love with sign language,” she said. She’s passing that love on to a dozen Wrangell High School students taking her class for their foreign language requirement. Hilburn is new to the district this year. It is a language unto itself, 17-year-old senior Caleb Garcia-Rangel observed, which people unfamiliar with...
WRANGELL - Wrangell’s Tent City Days start Friday and run through Sunday, with 20 events scheduled for the fall festivities that come a day before Alaska Day on Monday, which celebrates the U.S. purchase of the territory from Russia in 1867. In keeping with the historical theme, there are some gold rush-named activities among the varied three-day schedule. And in keeping with COVID-19 safety, organizers advise on the event’s Facebook page: “Please mask up. Follow state/local health mandates. Don’t feel well? Stay home and call your medical...
Petersburg held its 2021 Municipal Election Tuesday and the unofficial results have incumbent Bob Lynn retaining his seat on the Petersburg Borough Assembly and Thomas Fine-Walsh winning his first term on the assembly, succeeding Taylor Norheim after he decided not to run for reelection. Both seats on the Borough Assembly were for three-year terms. Lynn garnered the most most votes out of all assembly candidates with 703 and Fine-Walsh recorded 589. Brandi Thynes received the third most votes wi...
The Borough Assembly held its first reading of Ordinance #2021-15 during Monday's meeting, which would move chapter 9.04 of the former city code into the Petersburg Municipal Code. The ordinance updates old language and removes duties that the local health officer has not historically performed. Duties being removed include inspections of foodstuffs, power to compel vaccinations, the investigation and removal of allocated persons, and disinfection of premises. It also states that the health...
Orin Pierson will assume general manager duties at the Petersburg Pilot effective October 1, according to co-publishers Ron and Anne Loesch. He will oversee all business, advertising, production, writing and office supply operations at the newspaper. Loesch will continue writing opinion pieces while his wife Anne will train Pierson to perform business office duties such as billing and accounts payable. Pierson worked for the newspaper between August 2006 and June 2016 when he left to work for KF...
Students and staff at Petersburg High School and Mitkof Middle School returned to the school Tuesday after moving online last week according to an update from the school district. The Petersburg School District Health Advisory Team met Friday to assess the level of community spread of COVID-19 and the impacts on positive cases within the school and close contacts. Though staffing levels were tight, the school believed in-person learning could continue at Stedman Elementary School and resume at...
