Sorted by date Results 3102 - 3126 of 6972
The Petersburg Fire Department responded to a house fire on the 800 block of Wrangell Ave. on Tuesday that was quickly extinguished thanks to the quick thinking of a neighbor who happened to be passing by. Sergeant Derek Thorsen, of the Petersburg Police Department, was walking down Wrangell Ave. around 10 A.M. on Tuesday while off duty when he saw smoke coming out of the kitchen window of the home. He called 911 and went to investigate the source of the smoke. He saw flames coming out of the...
On Aug. 11, Abigail Anderson will be leaving Petersburg to study in Celle, Germany for her sophomore year of high school. Anderson said she was first inspired to study abroad after listening to one of her classmates give a presentation on his time spent studying in France. "That sounds cool to do," said Anderson. "Go off to another country and learn their language and learn their culture." She applied for a student exchange program through the Alaska District Rotary Club, which sends about 24...
Petersburg Medical Center CEO Phil Hofstetter has been in town for just over a year, and said he has accomplished everything he had set out to achieve during his first year on the job. He came to PMC from the Norton Sound Health Corporation in Nome where he was vice president of hospital services for about six and half years, but he had been working in the Nome area for almost 20 years. Hofstetter was one of four finalists who applied for the position last year, but he was ultimately offered...
WRANGELL - Wrangell resident and attorney Michael Nash, 68, passed away in a plane crash near Ketchikan last Thursday. Alaska State Troopers were notified by Ketchikan Flight Service of an overdue aircraft around 3:07 p.m., July 11, according to a dispatch on the department of public safety's website. Nash was flying his plane, a PA-24 Comanche, and was due to land in Ketchikan at 2:15 p.m. "The US Coast Guard, Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad, Alaska Wildlife Troopers and Saxman VPSO responded...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — State budget cuts have University of Alaska officials anticipating the possibility of program and staff reductions, while Anchorage’s largest homeless shelter will cut its hours and services, reports said. The university Board of Regents will decide Monday whether to take the uncommon step of declaring “financial exigency,” The Anchorage Daily News reported Saturday. The declaration will allow university officials to more quickly discontinue programs and academic units and remove tenured faculty across the system....
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Legislature failed Wednesday to override budget vetoes by Gov. Mike Dunleavy that will prompt a massive 41% cut of state funding to the University of Alaska and lay waste to other programs the governor deemed unaffordable. More than one-third of lawmakers missed the vote — many because of an ongoing dispute about where the Legislature should have met for the special session. Lawmakers needed 45 votes — a three-fourths majority of the 60 members of the state Senate and House — to override the vetoes by Dunl...
JUNEAU – On Wed., July 17, Gov. Mike Dunleavy amended his call for the Second Special Session to include the unfinished capital budget appropriations bill and to change the session location from Wasilla to Juneau. Lawmakers will gather in the Alaska State Capitol on Thurs., July 18, to begin working on the expanded agenda and to continue working on the many pressing issues facing our state. “Legislative leaders from all four caucuses are meeting frequently with the governor. We have identified areas of alignment and found a productive next ste...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) —The head of the U.S. Forest Service visited Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to investigate timber sales and related issues, a report said. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski hosted Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen during the July 6-7 visit, CoastAlaska reported Monday. Christiansen stopped in Wrangell, Ketchikan and Prince Wales Island as part of a flying visit with Alaska’s senior senator. The meetings were not publicized in advance. Murkowski questioned Christiansen about the service’s southeast Alaska timber sales during b...
An investigation by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation revealed that the Le Soléal did not dump sewage into Frederick Sound near Le Conte Bay earlier this month after a report of "long brown sludge" seen near the cruise ship's anchorage. The DEC conducted an onboard inspection, reviewed the electronic monitoring records for the ship's pumps, observed samples taken of the ship's treated water and talked to crew members of the Le Soléal, said Ed White of the commercial p... Full story
The borough assembly approved a resolution on Friday increasing the millage rate in service area one to 12.3 mills in response to Gov. Mike Dunleavy's decision to veto 50 percent of the School Bond Debt Reimbursement funding. The millage rate is the amount per $1,000 of a property's assessed value that is used to calculate taxes within the borough. Resolution 2019-11 increases the previous millage rate of 11.45 mills by .85 mills for property owners for in service area one. Residents outside of...
Cars were driving by honking and rock 'n' roll music was playing as nearly 100 residents gathered in front of the Petersburg Courthouse on Tuesday at 12 P.M. to protest Gov. Mike Dunleavy's 182 vetoes. Protestors were carrying signs that read "override," and "save our state." They were also signing their names on a piece of canvass that had the letters S.O.S. on it. One of the organizers, Chelsea Tremblay, said that the canvass will be sent to legislators to show that they have the support of...
For this season, about 532,000 salmon have been commercially harvested in the Southeast Alaska region, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Blue Sheet that is updated daily. Chum salmon make up a major portion of that number at 205,000 harvested. About 163,000 pink salmon have been harvested so far, with 80,000 Chinook salmon harvested. Coho and sockeye salmon have the lowest numbers at 31,000 and 53,000 harvested this season respectively. The gillnet fisheries began opening up...
The warm and dry period that began in the latter half of June and continued into July has been unusually long and broke two high temperature records, according to Tom Ainsworth, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service forecast office in Juneau. The average temperatures for the month of June in Petersburg were two degrees above normal, according to Ainsworth. The normal average temperature for June is 54.1 degrees, but last month the average temperature was 56.1 degrees. June 27...
It was around noon on July 3 when Tim Koeneman was driving out the road to take his dog for a walk when he began to notice porcupine carcasses scattered on Mitkof Highway between Blind Slough and Manmade Hole. He said he counted about 14 porcupines in the roadway. "Approximately half of what we counted were young porcupine," said Koeneman. State Trooper Cody Litster was out on the water when he began getting phone calls from residents saying there were dead porcupines in the middle of the road....
Since she was 12 years old, Kara Newman has dreamed of living in Scandinavia and later this month, she will finally achieve that goal. Newman, 15, said she wanted to go to Scandinavia to better understand the culture that she grew up in here in Petersburg, although; she won't be staying in Norway, but in Sweden. Newman said that by living in Sweden, she will be in the heart of the region, with Finland to the east and Norway to the west. "I'm so excited to go," said Newman. "This has been my...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An Australia mining company is seeking permission to start exploratory drilling for the rare element vanadium in southeast Alaska. Northern Cobalt Ltd. has applied to the U.S. Forest Service for the proposed project on Snettisham Inlet, CoastAlaska reported. The site is in the Tongass National Forest about 35 miles southeast of Juneau. Vanadium is used in steel alloys, as well as rechargeable industrial batteries used in power grids and industrial plants. There are no active federal mining claims at the site. E...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - The message on the front page of Alaska's second-largest newspaper was unmistakable. A nearly 2-inch (5-centimeter) headline, outlined in red, in Monday's edition of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner contained a single word: OVERRIDE. It appeared over a full-page editorial calling for state lawmakers to "save Alaska" from severe budget vetoes by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the likely economic devastation that would follow. Emotions are running high ahead of a joint legislative s...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Budget vetoes of $444 million by Alaska’s governor could cause widespread job losses, economists said. Analysts and business leaders predict lost jobs are only one of the consequences of Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavey’s vetoes, The Anchorage Daily News reported Wednesday. Losses from the vetoes would be roughly between 4,500 and 7,000 jobs, according to an analysis by the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research. Higher local property taxes could also result from the 182 line-item vetoe...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — One of the most powerful Republicans in the Alaska Senate is bucking the Senate president’s call to meet in Juneau on Monday, as legislative factions barrel toward trying to hold special sessions in two different cities, hundreds of miles apart. Senate Majority Leader Mia Costello, in an opinion piece published by her hometown Anchorage Daily News, said Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a legitimate call for lawmakers to convene in Wasilla and she will heed that call. “It doesn’t matter how we feel about the governo...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska officials closed some forest lands to all uses as a wildfire approached the Chugach National Forest, a report said. Smoke from the growing Swan Lake wildfire pushed into Anchorage Sunday, The Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday. Air quality was listed as unhealthy in Anchorage as of 11 a.m. Sunday. The fire on the Kenai Peninsula in south-central Alaska was ignited by a lightning strike June 5 and has been burning in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The fire had stretched to about 144 square miles (373 square...
The fireworks display tonight at 11P.M. at the ball field is moving forward as planned, said Assistant Fire Chief Dave Berg, as parts of the state face fireworks bans due to wildfires and dry conditions. On June 27, the Alaska State Fire Marshal's Office implemented an immediate suspension on the sale and use of fireworks across most of the state, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, Fire and Life Safety. The ban affects areas that face fire risk levels in high, very high and...
The Petersburg Medical Center Board of Directors passed the hospital's 2020 fiscal year budget at their board meeting last week. The balanced budget anticipates $16,695,000 in both total revenue and total expenses for the new fiscal year that began on July 1. A preliminary budget was approved by the board in March, and several changes have been made to the budget since then, according to PMC Controller Rocio Tejera. The amount of money budgeted for employee wages was increased since salaries...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly will be holding an assembly meeting on Thursday at 10 A.M. to discuss and possibly pass a resolution setting a supplemental millage rate for the 2020 fiscal year that began on July 1. The millage rate is the amount per $1,000 of a property's assessed value that is used to calculate taxes within the borough. The meeting was originally supposed to be held on Friday, but it was cancelled due to a lack of quorum. The next meeting wasn't going to be until July 18, but...
Petersburg Medical Center Controller Rocio Tejera gave her monthly financial report to the PMC board of directors last Thursday explaining the hospital's financial standing during the month of May and the fiscal year-to-date. Both PMC's gross and net operating revenue were above target for the month of May. The gross operating revenue was at $1,873,317, which was 24 percent above the budgeted $1,503,353 for the month. The net operating revenue was up 16 percent at $1,501,766. The hospital's...
A list of Petersburg Medical Center's capital items and projects for the 2020 fiscal year was presented to the Board of Directors at their meeting on Friday. The list included over 20 items from nine departments for a total of $827,646, but PMC Controller Rocio Tereja said that the hospital will not be going over $500,000. "We have no intention of going over $500,000 on capital," said Tereja. "We need to sit down, talk about it and see what's really needed and go from there." The list was just...
