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The Permanent Fund dividend ranks among the most divisive issues in Alaska politics, along with such longstanding battles as oil taxes, salmon fisheries catch allocations and subsistence rights. Sadly, the dividend has grown in political importance in recent years, overwhelming all other issues confronting the state. Candidates scramble to find a dividend flag large enough to wrap around themselves for campaign speeches, reasonable voices get drowned out by chants of “I want my PFD,” and state budget work is held hostage by advocates for a sup...
Legislation to restore and increase the state licensing fee on sportfishing guides and operators ran into problems in the Senate Finance Committee last week, as lawmakers questioned why out-of-state boat owners who bring up guests are not required to get a license and pay the fee. “My district has got to be one of the top guided areas in the state,” said Committee Co-Chair Sen. Bert Stedman, whose district stretches from Sitka to Prince of Wales Island, including Wrangell. And while that means a lot of non-residents pay local operators for fis...
Alaska property owners have paid more than four times as much in premiums than they received back in claims under the National Flood Insurance Program going back to 1980. “It’s kind of ugly,” Lori Wing-Heier, the state’s insurance division director, told legislators this spring. “We don’t have the storms they get in Texas or Louisiana.” The nationwide program, which is voluntary for states and communities, has been around for more than half a century. It pools together property owners from all the states and territories, much like group he...
In a two-page letter to the community, Schools Superintendent Bill Burr on Friday cautioned that ongoing staffing shortages, particularly aides and substitute teachers, could push the schools into considering a move to distance learning in lieu of in-person instruction. “As we have had a number of unfilled positions over the last month, we need to continue looking at the need to move toward distance learning,” he wrote in his letter Friday. “We have worked very hard to keep our schools open during (COVID) mitigation and adversity, but without o...
Just as other communities, Wrangell is enduring a springtime bloom of COVID-19 cases. As of April 20, the state health department reported 79 new cases in the community in the past 30 days. Most of those were reported to the state in late March and early April, with new infections declining in the past week. The spread of the highly infectious disease is of particular concern at the schools. “We have had an increase in COVID and other illnesses during the past month and the schools have been struggling to find ways to stay open,” Sup...
The borough assembly has started work on its budget for the fiscal year that will start July 1 and will need to decide on a school district request for more funding in addition to paying higher fuel and property insurance costs and spending on necessary maintenance of public facilities. Revenues are up, however, with more money coming in from sales taxes and federal payments in lieu of property taxes on national forest lands. Borough staff and assembly members started their budget review during a work session April 20. The borough’s annual c...
This isn’t about a time-out for misbehaving children; it’s about adults who behave as children, or worse. The federal law requiring face masks on airplanes is no longer in effect. That means big changes for flyers. For travelers who had grown tired of masking up before heading into airports and boarding planes, they are free to show their smiles and put away or throw away their masks. For travelers who remain concerned about catching COVID-19, they are free to keep wearing masks in their best efforts to protect themselves and others. What it sh...
The borough could receive about $300,000 under a Senate Finance Committee plan to pay back municipalities across Alaska for years of short-funding of the state’s share of local school construction bond debt. The committee version of the state budget includes $221 million to pay back municipalities for incomplete state reimbursement payments going back five years. Years of low oil prices and large state budget deficits prompted governors to short-fund the reimbursements, with legislators lacking enough votes to override budget vetoes. This y...
Global supply chain shortages and delays have extended past grocery stores, car dealers and electronics to the Alaska Marine Highway System. The state ferry Kennicott was delayed coming out of winter overhaul. Instead of returning to service last week, as had been scheduled, the ship was rescheduled to leave Ketchikan on Thursday for a trip to Juneau, Yakutat and Kodiak before sailing into Bellingham, Washington, to fully start its summer runs. The Kennicott’s scheduled return to service was delayed due to supply chain issues, labor constraints...
The Alaska Senate by a wide margin last week approved legislation to tax e-cigarette products just as the state taxes cigarettes and tobacco products. The legislation, which is scheduled for hearings this week in two House committees, also would raise the legal age to buy and sell tobacco products, including vaping devices and liquids, from 19 to 21 years old to match federal law. The House and Senate are working toward a May 18 adjournment deadline in the constitution, pushing both chambers to move quicker on legislation. “The goal here is t...
With more than 260 would-be ferry passengers stuck on a waitlist for travel out of Bellingham, Washington, and sailings full until late July, the Alaska Marine Highway System has scheduled an extra run of the Matanuska to bring the people and their vehicles to the state. The additional sailing is scheduled to leave Bellingham on May 25. There was time in the ship's schedule, which ferry management had been holding open in hopes the Matanuska could restart service that week to Prince Rupert,...
The community is short of public restrooms near the City Dock and could be short port security staff this summer if people don’t apply for the jobs soon. One is an immediate concern, while the restroom shortage requires a longer-term solution. Tour operators and borough officials met last Wednesday to discuss the upcoming visitor season, which could be a challenge for borough staff and tourism operators, said Port Director Steve Miller. “Finding a driver, finding security. No one is applying for the jobs,” he said. “I haven’t jumped on that y...
Just when we thought Alaska politics couldn’t get any sillier, we now have so many candidates running for Congress that debate organizers will need to borrow the microphones from all the karaoke bars in the state to accommodate everyone on the stage. Just imagine harmonizing 48 voices in “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Almost twice as many candidates have filed to run in the June primary for the late Don Young’s seat in the U.S. House than lost to the congressman in his unbroken streak of 25 consecutive election victories. If you believe in heaven,...
A full house at the Nolan Center listened as the chamber of commerce honored Mia Wiederspohn as Wrangell’s youth leader of the year, Barbara Neyman as educator of the year, and Sarah Merritt as citizen of the year. The chamber presentation described Merritt, who has worked at the legislative information office in town since 1996, as “an outstanding citizen … understated, kind, solution focused, and devoted to the democratic process.” Merritt said she returned to Juneau after earning a degree in political science in South Dakota, later decidin...
Dealing with a shortage of pilots until more can be trained, Alaska Airlines has announced it will cut 2% of its roughly 1,200 daily flights through the end of June. “We don’t believe it will have an impact here in the state of Alaska,” Tim Thompson, company spokesman in Anchorage, said April 12. Even without changes to the daily flight schedule into Wrangell, the cutbacks could affect travelers making connections in Seattle to other Alaska Airlines’ destinations. The airline canceled several hundred flights the first weekend of April due to...
Juneau-based Alaska Seaplanes will add Wrangell to its route map starting May 26. The company, which operates a fleet of 14 single-engine aircraft, mostly nine-passenger planes, will run a daily flight from Sitka to Petersburg to Wrangell and back to Sitka. Encouragement from SEARHC “was instrumental” in starting the Sitka-Wrangell service, Andy Kline, Alaska Seaplanes marketing manager, said last Wednesday. SEARHC is based in Sitka where it operates the Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, providing acute, specialty and behavioral health care ser...
The state budget plan adopted by the House last weekend includes an additional $143,000 in one-time funding for Wrangell schools, almost a 5% boost from a state aid formula that has not changed in five years. The district has been relying heavily on federal pandemic relief money and reserves to fill budget holes the past couple of years, and plans to do the same for the 2022-2023 school year. District officials acknowledge it’s not a sustainable financial plan. State funding to school districts is based on a per-student formula, and Wrangell h...
Tribal members can apply for a fourth distribution of federal pandemic relief funds administered by the Wrangell Cooperative Association. This round of financial aid is limited to $2,000 per household. The application period closes May 16. Tribal members can select to receive the assistance for utilities, groceries, heating fuel or gasoline, or a combination of any of the four choices in increments of $500, $1,000 or $2,000 if the applicant prefers that the aid go all to one category. Previous rounds were limited to covering utility bills or...
Awards are always appreciated, and thank you to the chamber members who honored the Sentinel as the business of the year, announced at the annual dinner last Saturday. I’d like to dream that the award means everyone agrees with every opinion I have shared on these pages in the past 15 months since I bought the Sentinel. Or at least agrees with me 90% of the time. I’d also like to dream my arthritis will magically go away, but then the doctor would need to treat me for being delusional. Truth is, I’d probably settle for people agreeing with me h...
The Alaska Marine Highway System has been hoping since last August to bring back the Columbia to service this year after an almost three-year absence, but with the start of the summer schedule only weeks away the state has not announced a decision on the ship. The Columbia’s summer return is contingent on hiring enough crew to replace staff that were laid off, retired, quit or moved to other ships since the state’s largest ferry was pulled out of service in the fall of 2019. “We’re pouring a lot of effort into recruitment, but headway has bee...
The state Board of Fisheries’ decision last month to move the Southeast commercial shrimp pot fishery from a fall start to spring means there will be no harvest this year. The Department of Fish and Game told the board that a spring harvest could help build up the region’s shrimp stocks, which are in decline, by taking fewer egg-laden shrimp than in the fall. Wrangell shrimpers, however, are questioning the wisdom of the switch, which they said could hurt marketing efforts and reduce the value of the catch — with no clear benefit to the resourc...
It’s been more than two years since “coronavirus” became a household word, and though case numbers have subsided from last summer’s surge and record highs this past winter, the disease is still in town. Wrangell recorded about 10% of its total pandemic infections in the last two weeks of March, the state reported last Friday. Of the 517 Wrangell cases recorded by the state in the past two years, 54 came in the last two weeks of the month. “It’s still here and it’s still making people sick,” Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer,...
I’m not anti-Facebook. Well, maybe a little, but more agnostic than antagonistic. I see its purpose and its benefits to connect people, providing something akin to a community bulletin board, a soapbox for ideas, a scrapbook for the town. Just because I don’t maintain my own Facebook page doesn’t mean I am ignorant of its value. I don’t own a pickup, but I can see where a truck would be better for moving furniture than my 2006 VW Beetle — though not as cute. I don’t own an Apple Watch, but I certainly understand that some people like having a $...
The House Finance Committee has rejected the governor’s proposal to rely almost entirely on federal funds to operate the Alaska Marine Highway System next year, with the Senate Finance Committee moving in the same direction. The committees differ on the amounts but both want to see more state money in the budget for the ferries, using some federal infrastructure money to replace state dollars but not nearly as much as the governor. Total appropriations for the ferry operating budget next year would be the same under all three versions — gov...
The borough set a record last year for sales tax collections, exceeding budget estimates for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2021. And so far this year, sales tax receipts are continuing on another record pace. Multiple factors are leading to the increase in sales tax collections, officials said. The borough collected $3.26 million from its 7% sales tax on goods and services last year, about $300,000 more than in the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2019 and $600,000 above the 2017 number. Sales tax revenues have exceeded budget estimates each of...
