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The Ketchikan City Council on Aug. 18 voted to adopt a seasonal sales tax rate structure. The current 4% rate within the city limits will increase to 5.5% from April 1 through Sept. 30, and will drop to 3% from Oct. 1 through March 31 each year. The change will take effect April 1, 2023. The city sales tax rate currently is 4% year-round, and is added to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough tax rate of 2.5% on each sale. According to a memo written by City Finance Director Michelle Johansen, the annual increase in revenue expected with the changes is...
The Ketchikan Public Library last Friday morning held a Drag Queen Storytime event that attracted so many participants that library staff held three readings. The reading room is able to hold 25 people, Children’s Library Assistant Anne Marie Meiresonne said, and it was brimming for each reading. The event has attracted much controversy in recent weeks, with supporters and detractors attending Ketchikan City Council and Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly meetings to share their support and opposition, as well as debating the issue on social m...
The Race to Alaska launched a flotilla north to Ketchikan from Port Townsend, Washington, on Monday. The 750-mile wind- and human-powered race has two starts: 5 a.m. Monday for the first leg, which organizers call the “The Proving Ground,” and noon Thursday for the second leg, which organizers call “To the Bitter End.” R2AK advertising is notoriously humorous and full of hyperbole. One description of the race on its website explains the event as: “It’s like the Iditarod, on a boat, with a chance of drowning, being run down by a freighter,...
Canada’s Minister of Transport has announced that cruise ships are again welcome at the nation’s ports, starting April 6. The COVID-19 pandemic stopped all cruise ship traffic in 2020 as Canada closed its waters, and the revenue hit was substantial for Alaska businesses and municipalities that rely on summer travelers. Even when cruise ships resumed limited operations in 2021, they had to bypass Canadian ports and traffic to Alaska was a fraction of past summers. A major barrier to the ability of ships to sail between the Lower 48 and Ala...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 last Thursday to uphold its previous decision to convene the Southeast and Yakutat finfish and shellfish regulations meetings in Anchorage March 10 through 22 rather than in Ketchikan. Originally, the meeting — already postponed for one year due to the pandemic — was scheduled for Jan. 4-15 in Ketchikan. But on Jan. 1, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the meeting was being postponed “out of an abundance of caution due to the record-breaking rise of COVID-19 cases in the United State...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries, which had planned to hold its Southeast and Yakutat shellfish and finfish regulations meeting in Ketchikan this month before a surge in COVID-19 cases and winter-weather travel problems forced its cancellation, has rescheduled the sessions for March 10-22 in Anchorage. The board, however, was scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon via Zoom to possibly reconsider the decision to move the meeting to Anchorage. “Given the myriad of factors to consider, the board will vote on the meeting location,” according to a boa...
Women In Safe Homes has transformed a former youth detention center in Ketchikan into a safe haven for domestic and sexual abuse survivors. The new shelter opened Oct. 23, and serves residents of southern Southeast, including Wrangell. “We have people here right now from Wrangell,” Agnes Moran, executive director of WISH, said last week. The nonprofit will pay travel costs for out-of-town residents who need to stay at the facility, she said. About a dozen people a year from Wrangell come to the shelter, Moran said. The organization houses alm...