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Superior Court Judge William Carey presided over the sentencing of Marvin Mitchell Jackson on state charges of Misconduct Involving Controlled Substance, a Class B felony. The court ruled Jackson is to serve 23-months in jail. The jail time will be served concurrently with his jail time on Federal charges. Jackson was also ordered to pay a police training surcharge of $100 and $500 towards the cost of appointed counsel. While investigating the drug case, police seized and searched his cell...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly gathered in its newly renovated municipal building this week during its February 27 meeting. During the meeting, the assembly passed 5-2 in its final reading an ordinance updating from city to borough code a Local Improvement District (LID) that allows for property owner-funded capital improvement projects. The ordinance would, in part, take advantage of the SECON asphalt plant while it’s in town by offering residents of select neighborhoods the opportunity to pay for their streets to be paved. The assembly a...
The Alaska Dispatch News reported this weekend that Juneau’s three lawmakers “are collecting thousands of dollars in public money meant to pay for their lodging and meals during the annual legislative session even as they live in their own homes.” This when Alaska is trying to cut its way out of a multi-billion-dollar deficit. Sen. Dennis Egan and Reps. Sam Kito III and Justin Parish, all Democrats, each get $160 a day in “per diem” payments, according to the Dispatch. The Legislature convened Jan. 17 for a 90-day session. In addition to the pe...
Luis Guillermo Arce is the first prisoner to be housed in the new community jail. Arce, age 59 of Petersburg, was arrested on Feb. 22, after Magistrate Judge Desiree Burrell issued a warrant for his arrest the day before. The arrest followed an investigation, which resulted in the filing of charging documents for Domestic Violence Assault in the Fourth Degree. Arce appeared in court on Feb. 22 and was released on his own recognizance with conditions. A plea agreement was reached pending...
WRAGNGEL – When Southeast Conference meets for its annual Mid-Session Summit in Juneau later this month, among the items high on its list for discussion is the structural reform of Alaska's ferry system. Southeast Alaskans have become dependent on the state's Marine Highway System since its establishment in 1959, essentially becoming their road network into and out of the region. It is a significant economic driver for the coastal communities it services as well, with an estimated impact of j...
WRANGELL – The City and Borough Assembly confirmed its selection of an interim borough manager to serve after Jeff Jabusch retires from the position March 31. He announced his plans to retire last September, putting an end to four decades of service to the city. In his stead, economic director Carol Rushmore has been named to serve as interim manager. As part of the arrangement, the Assembly agreed she will be paid an extra stipend for the months of March, April, and however long it might t...
KETCHIKAN (AP) – Elizabeth Peratrovich’s name now stands over the theater in the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center, placed there by the U.S. Forest Service and the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood and revealed in an emotional ceremony. Peratrovich, born in Petersburg in 1911 as a Tlingit of the Raven-Sockeye clan, is celebrated for her role in the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, one of the first of its kind in the United States, in territorial Alaska a role that dozens of people honored during the ceremony renaming the t...
The Petersburg Borough Administration offices will be closed Thursday and Friday to allow the staff to move into the renovated facility on Nordic Drive. The borough has been leasing space at Petersburg Indian Association's Halingstad Peratrovich Center on 12th Street for the past year. Finance Director Jody Tow said the Borough has leased office space for the past year and wanted to relocate before they paid an additional month's rent. Tow said the Borough paid $8,000/month to the Petersburg Ind...
Petersburg Medical Center’s strategic plan includes monitoring and improving health care services at the facility. This entails using state, federal and internal quality indicators to improve clinical excellence at PMC. Staff educational meetings and reports to the hospital board are a function of monitoring progress of the plan. Staff will monitor for new and changing regulations and implement those changes with education of employees and reports to the board. Policies will be updated to reflect changes in regulations, according to the strateg...
The Petersburg Girls Scouts enjoyed a day long STEM workshop at the Sons of Norway Hall lead by Kelly Fitzgerald of the Alaska Girl Scout Council. The girls rotated through four sections on: engineering, ecology, ornithology and seismology. Susan Harai, a professional engineer licensed in the State of Alaska, lead the engineering project which was a geodesic dome made of newspaper triangles. The triangles are the strongest structure shape and are used throughout building trusses and bridges. The girls built the dome then further added to the...
WRANGELL – The hospital approved a response to the Wrangell Borough Assembly regarding the future of its billing services contract. At an August 23 meeting, the city’s governing body asked that Wrangell Medical Center put together an assessment of its two-year contract with TruBridge, which took over billing services for the community-owned hospital the summer of 2015. The contract offered the company 2.2 percent of the transactions it processes on behalf of the hospital, with the intention of addressing its excessive accounts receivable and...
WRANGELL – After meeting with one candidate in a closed-door session last week, the Wrangell Borough Assembly has decided to put the city manager position back out for advertisement. In the position since 2013, present manager Jeff Jabusch announced last September his plans to retire on March 31. Prior to that, he spent the better four decades as the city finance director. From a pool of 25 candidates a selection committee made up of Mayor David Jack, city staff and some Assembly members winnowed the field to four candidates. Of these, two d...
WRANGELL – A Wrangellite took part in the 44th annual March for Life, which last month made its way through the streets of Washington, D.C. Since 1974, the annual nondenominational march is held each year on or around the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which held that abortion was protected under the right to privacy in the Constitution. Opponents to the court decision have since met at the National Mall on about every January 22 since, marching from there to the s...
WRANGELL – At its rescheduled meeting last week, the City and Borough Assembly approved a bid by the Stikine Inn to purchase adjacent tidelands for less than assessed value. Southeast Properties LLC, which has owned the hotel for a decade, proposed purchasing from the city 5,450 square feet of submerged tidelands and 2,000 square feet of uplands to the north and west of the property's current boundaries. The assessed value of the site was at $101,200, based on estimated fair market value as...
JUNEAU (AP) - A supporter of Alaska’s sweeping criminal justice legislation is no longer a member of a commission that has recommended changes to the law. Juneau Police Department Lt. Kris Sell declined to comment after she resigned from the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission, the Juneau Empire reported. Commissioners provided input for a law that focused on punishments outside of prison or jail time. Sell was a vocal proponent of the legislation approved last year. She told a Senate committee Jan. 25 that her time on the commission helped s...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – Alaska State Trooper investigators have seized marijuana with an estimated street value of more than $600,000 from an illegal grow operation near Tok. Acting on a tip, Fairbanks troopers in the Statewide Drug Enforcement Unit on Wednesday contacted the occupants of a home at Mile 1316 Alaska Highway. Troopers say a suspected grow operation was on property next to the home. The property owner gave officers consent to seize illegal marijuana plants. Troopers seized 10 pounds of processed marijuana packaged in quarter-ounce b...
JUNEAU (AP) – The University of Alaska system has agreed to resolve issues stemming from a federal review of its handling of campus sexual assault and sexual harassment cases. The agreement, signed by system President Jim Johnsen on Friday and released Monday, outlines steps the system will need to take over the next several years. It follows a review, initiated in 2014, by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Johnsen, in a letter to the university community, said the system did not enter into the agreement grudgingly and...
KENAI (AP) – With several marijuana businesses up and running on the Kenai Peninsula in south-central Alaska, industry estimates show the businesses could contribute $5.3 million annually to the local economy. Eight marijuana businesses have opened on the peninsula since last summer and nine more are planned. Of those businesses, two are retail stores and the rest are cultivators, The Peninsula Clarion reported. Dollynda Phelps of cultivation company Peace Frog Botanicals presented a survey of current licensees to the Kenai Chamber of C...
KENAI (AP) – More than a dozen environmental groups are seeking to join lawsuits filed by the state of Alaska over a federal ban on certain hunting techniques in national refuges and preserves. The two lawsuits filed in January claim the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service illegally pre-empted the state’s authority to manage wildlife by banning state-approved hunting practices. The federal regulations prohibit the killing of black bears in their dens with the aid of artificial light and shooting brown bears over bait st...
Tanner crab estimates are down from the previous season although there is enough to go around for a successful fishery. Mature male Tanner abundance estimate is 4.9 million pounds, down from the 5.6 million estimate from the previous year, according to a Alaska Department of Fish and Game press release. "The Tanner crab harvest strategy sets the season length based on the mature male biomass estimate and the number of pots registered at the start of the fishery," ADFG region one lead crab...
Petersburg's hospital board received an update of the Medical Center's strategic plan for the years 2017-2020 at last month's meeting. Part of the plan addresses people and includes patients, employees and physicians. The planning effort has been in use for decades, "and gives focus and direction as the hospital plans for the future. I'm a firm believer in the plan," said PMC CEO Liz Woodyard this week. The first stated goal is to reduce employee turnover to less than 20% by January 2018. The...
PETERSBURG (AP) – A seafood processing company will stop canning salmon at its facility in the southeast Alaska city of Petersburg this year in response to a growing demand for frozen salmon. Tom Sunderland, vice president of marketing for Ocean Beauty Seafoods, said the company will make more money selling frozen salmon than canned salmon this year. He said the company will focus on freezing salmon at its plant northwest of Petersburg in Excursion Inlet, which has “substantial freezing capacity,” KFSK-FM reported. “And by doing so, the hope is...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – A year after tens of thousands of common murres, an abundant North Pacific seabird, starved and washed ashore on beaches from California to Alaska, researchers have pinned the cause to unusually warm ocean temperatures that affected the tiny fish they eat. Elevated temperatures in seawater affected wildlife in a pair of major marine ecosystems along the West Coast and Canada, said John Piatt, a research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Common murres are an indicator of the regions’ health. “If tens of thous...
Alaska Power & Telephone is announcing its redesigned website www.aptalaska.com that is now live. Central to the new format are clean straightforward visual references on each page directing customers and visitors to locations within the site quickly and easily. The new homepage also provides continual at-a-glance access to the latest product and service announcements as well as career opportunities, news releases and our award-winning customer newsletter, TALK. With the increasing number of customers who prefer self-service support over...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – The search has been called off for the six veteran fishermen aboard a crabbing boat missing in the icy, turbulent Bering Sea. The fishing vessel Destination went missing early Saturday after an emergency signal from a radio beacon registered to the ship. The signal originated from 2 miles off St. George, an island about 650 miles west of Kodiak Island. The Coast Guard released a statement Monday night saying the search has been suspended. “We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the six crewmembers dur...
