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For the sake of this holiday political fable, let’s assume there is a Santa Claus and the all-knowing gift giver tracks your behavior 365 days a year, not just the month or so before Christmas — much like your phone, your web browsing history, Alexa, front-door camera or whatever other electronic tracking device that watches over you. Santa knows who has been naughty or nice long before anyone starts wrapping December presents. And let’s hope that Santa — and coastal Alaska voters — have been making the list and checking it twice for the past...
The Alaska Housing Finance Corp. is continuing its monthslong program of sending out rental and utility assistance payments — including almost $400,000 to Wrangell households as of last week — drawing on federal pandemic relief aid allocated to the states. As of last Friday, Alaska continued among the leaders nationwide in distributing the aid to households hurt by a loss of income due to the pandemic. AHFC reported it had sent out almost $193 million in payments, about 80% of the $242 million in federal funds allocated to Alaska under ren...
Wrangell marked two milestones in the fight against COVID-19 in November: The first death attributed to the highly infectious disease in the community, and a record number of new infections. The borough on Monday reported the death. To protect the individual and family privacy, neither the borough nor the state releases the name, specific age or day of death of the person, though the state reported the individual was a Wrangell man in his 60s. The state health department website only lists the death as occurring sometime in the past 30 days....
Sometimes, connecting the dots is the best way to learn. The first set of dots cost $87 million in federal pandemic aid money. That’s the price of the contract the state signed with an Atlanta-based for-profit health care staffing firm to provide up to 470 medical professionals to help out at 15 Alaska hospitals and medical clinics, schools too, for 90 days. The travelers helped relieve the strain during the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak this fall, when Alaska was in record territory for new cases and hospitalizations. The Wrangell Medical C...
As of Monday, 38% of Wrangell youth ages 12 through 17 had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, less than the statewide average of 48%, according to state health department statistics. The national rate is about 60%, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though children as young as 5 became eligible for the shots earlier this month, the state website does not track vaccination rates separately for 5- through 11-year-olds on the “Sleeves Up for School” online dashboard. SEARHC started offering vaccinations for...
I am not an economist, though I like learning and thinking about economic problems. Nor am I a statistician, human resources manager or director of hiring at a business. But I do think a lot about why so many employers in Wrangell, around the state and across the country are finding it so hard recruiting people to fill vacant jobs. As of October, while there were 7,300 fewer jobs in Alaska than a year ago, there were three times as many people unemployed, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics. Yet, it seems some days there are more...
Wrangell has set a pandemic record for the community for the number of COVID-19 cases in a month, reporting on Thursday its 50th and 51st infections in the first 18 days of November. The old record of 48 was set in August. Amid the surge in new cases in town, the borough assembly had called a special meeting for Thursday to consider an emergency ordinance requiring face masks to help limit further spread of the highly infectious disease. “Wrangell is experiencing unprecedented levels of positive COVID-19 cases,” the borough reported Monday eve...
The 58-year-old state ferry Matanuska will spend an additional two weeks in a Ketchikan shipyard so that workers can repair and replace corroded steel discovered below deck. The Kennicott will help cover Southeast during the vessel’s absence. The Matanuska is expected to resume its scheduled service on Dec. 20, running from Ketchikan to Bellingham, Washington, to pick up its generally weekly runs from Puget Sound through Southeast Alaska, said Sam Dapcevich, spokesperson for the state Department of Transportation. “During routine shipyard inspe...
I don’t celebrate my own birthday — gave that up when I grew up and mom stopped giving me money to take all my friends bowling at Dom DeVito’s Lanes, where the bar was off-limits but it still felt cool to put our pop bottles in the same holders meant for beer. Newspaper birthdays, however, are different, and they’re worth celebrating. Not only because the newspaper is still alive, despite the growth of Facebook, but because the paper’s age is a sign of strength and stamina, unlike my age, which is a sign that I talk more about arthritis...
Wrangell Cooperative Association members are eligible for a second round of pandemic assistance grants for food and utility expenses, with applications due by Nov. 30. The assistance payments will be $1,000 per household for groceries and $1,000 for utilities, the same amount as the first round administered by WCA with funds from last year’s federal CARES Act. Tribal members must fill out a certification form “to verify the tribal household applying needs assistance due to the COVID-19 pandemic and there have been no changes to household inf...
Loose trash goes in and comes out in compact, 50-cubic-foot bales, strapped up and ready to ship out of state. The combination masher and baler has been at work at Wrangell’s trash transfer station since late October. Rather than shipping out loose garbage in open-top containers, Wrangell can now load the bales into closed containers. Alaska Marine Lines, which hauls trash out of Wrangell and several other Southeast communities, had told the towns that it needed everyone to switch to closed containers after a couple of fires in open containers...
While Wrangell has counted 11 new COVID-19 infections in the past week, Petersburg was at 69 active cases as of late Monday, with a mandatory face mask order in place and public buildings closed. Almost 20% of COVID tests administered in Petersburg in the past seven days had come back positive, the borough reported on its website Monday. The active case count set a pandemic record for the community, going past the old record of 68 from March 3. Petersburg was hit with 85 cases from mid-February to the first week of March, its highest numbers...
About 40 years ago, the Sentinel published a news story about how the U.S. Forest Service was going to start moving against illegal squatter cabins on the Stikine River. Seemed reasonable that the agency would enforce the law and evict people who had no legal right to build or park their float on public land. The Forest Service announced its effort and we published under a headline something like, “Forest Service to evict illegal cabins.” The agency’s overly sensitive central Southeast spokesperson at the district offices in Petersburg calle...
The Alaska Redistricting Board has adopted a new map of legislative districts for the state, keeping Wrangell and Ketchikan in the same district. The board had considered other proposals that would have put Wrangell in with Sitka, not Ketchikan, along with Petersburg and other small Southeast communities, or moved Petersburg in with Ketchikan and Wrangell. Wrangell and Ketchikan currently share a state House district. The only change from the current boundaries for that seat is the addition of Metlakatla, to get the district closer to the popul...
The Juneau assembly will consider an ordinance that would amend the borough’s sales tax code to collect on goods and services sold aboard cruise ships, whether tied to the dock or anchored in front of town. The ordinance would amend a provision in code that currently exempts sales aboard cruise ships from the borough’s 5% tax. Services sold on board the ships but which are delivered or used on shore, such as bus or whale watching tours, cooking classes and other activities, already are subject to sales tax, but goods or services consumed abo...
With approval from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinations against COVID-19 for children ages 5 through 11 could be available in Wrangell next week. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week approved the vaccine for children, and the CDC late Tuesday also approved the shots. The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, which was waiting on that decision, will soon start opening appointments to administer Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, Maegan Bosak, a senior SEARHC official in Sitka, s...
Alaska Airlines would like to be back to 2019 staffing levels and flight schedules by the end of the year. "That's our goal," Tim Thompson, company spokesman in Anchorage, said Monday. From the worst of the pandemic-induced collapse in air travel in the spring of 2020, when the airline carried 4,000 to 5,000 passengers a day across its entire route system, Alaska was back up to 108,000 revenue passengers a day for the quarter that ended Sept. 30, moving toward its pre-pandemic number of close to 140,000. Carrying all those passengers has meant...
It’s OK with me if there are few cars to buy. My VW Beetle is more than 15 years old, but only has 72,000 miles on it, so I’m in no hurry. Besides, I like the stick shift and the CD player. And I am particularly fond of the “check engine” light that stays lit longer than the car radio holds a station. Pandemic-induced shortages of building materials, appliances and electronics are not my immediate concern. Sure, my refrigerator is louder than someone who sings opera in the shower, and my clothes dryer takes as much as an hour and a half to...
While Wrangell experienced a small outbreak of community-spread cases over the weekend, Alaska continues to lead the nation in new COVID-19 cases per capita. The state health department reported more than 2,400 new cases Friday through Monday, continuing Alaska’s ranking at the top of cases per resident nationwide. In Wrangell, the borough reported 11 new cases Saturday through Tuesday, a majority of which were community spread and mostly linked to attendees at a memorial service Oct. 19. The 11 cases came after a lull during the first 22 d...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium reports 100% compliance with its policy requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for all employees and contractors. “Very few have left employment due to the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine,” Maegan Bosak, a senior SEARHC official in Sitka, said last week. The health care provider operates in 19 Southeast communities. It has more than 1,500 employees, contractors and travelers, Bosak said, including more than 200 in Wrangell, where it operates the hospital, dental clinic, pharmacy and other services. “SE...
The nation responded to the harm caused by excessive alcohol consumption and instituted Prohibition in 1920. The idea was that people could not police themselves, the police could not protect people from the corruption and crime associated with alcohol, and the social problems would go away only if booze went away. It didn’t work, crime got worse and people figured out ways to get a drink. The nation brought back legal alcohol sales in 1933. Since then, the federal government, state and local governments have taxed alcohol, heavily in some j...
The six Alaska communities that shared in a $10 million pandemic-relief gift from Norwegian Cruise Line have found various ways to spend the money — or save it for later. Seward committed much of its share to help provide child care services. Skagway set aside nearly half-a-million dollars to pay out as cash to residents this winter. The cruise line in May announced it would donate $10 million to communities that had been on the company’s itineraries and suffered economically with the loss of cruise ship travelers last year and again this sum...
Businesses have learned over the years how to steer around government rules, avoiding many of the requirements that will cost them money. Nothing necessarily illegal about that unless the company goes so far over the line that even the federal bureaucracy can’t help but notice. It’s similar to baseball, when a runner is trying to avoid the tag. Umpires allow a little latitude when the runner steps outside the basepath, but if the player go so far outside the line that they could shake hands with fans in the stands, the ump has no choice but...
The borough will be asking for “archaeological proposals” for a ground survey of the former Wrangell Institute property, consulting with state and federal agencies and the Wrangell Cooperative Association on the process before any work begins. The borough had been waiting on guidance from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which has pledged that surveys will be conducted of former Alaska Native and American Indian boarding school sites nationwide. But the department “really doesn’t have any guidance on this,” said Carol Rushmore, Wrangell...
Wrangell’s vaccination rate continues to improve, while just two new COVID-19 cases were reported in the first 19 days of the month and people continue asking the borough for free face masks. The community’s low numbers are much improved over August and September, which together accounted for almost half of Wrangell’s COVID-19 cases since March 2020. As of Tuesday, 68% of Wrangell residents eligible for a vaccination had received at least their first dose, up from 61% three months ago, according to state health department statistics. Thoug...
