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Drawings for the future mariners' memorial at Heritage Harbor were unveiled at Wrangell's monthly Port Commission meeting on Nov. 6 in the City Hall Assembly Chambers. Drawn up by architect Christopher Mertl of Corvus Design in Juneau, the memorial plan calls for a concrete plaza designed to resemble wooden planking, a pavilion and weathered steel patina memorial wall evocative of the prow of a ship. "When it takes that curve it rakes out," explained Harbormaster Greg Meissner, going over the dr...
The big, predominately green, bear-stymying garbage receptacles ubiquitous to the island may be soon partnered up with a blue variety as Wrangell weighs the benefits and costs of investing in a curbside recycling program. Members on the Borough's Economic Development Committee were abuzz with the idea at their Thursday night meeting following a public presentation for a solid waste recycling management plan submitted by consultants Richard Hertzberg and Chris Bell the previous evening. The bigge...
Tuesday's Regular Borough Assembly meeting was preceded by a public hearing on Ordinance 887 being proposed, an amended section of the Wrangell Municipal Code largely dealing with the control of animals within City and Borough limits. The revised ordinance has already been sent back to the Ordinance Review Board before for retooling, and this latest appearance would be its second reading. A number of the island's residents showed up to express their concerns that the wording of several sections...
Candidates for Alaska House District 36 met in Wrangell Thursday evening for an on-air forum hosted by radio station KSTK. Republican candidate Chere Klein and Independent Dan Ortiz – both from Ketchikan – are running in the Nov. 4 election to represent the district's communities in the State Legislature. KSTK's director Cindy Sweat acted as the evening's moderator. Candidates were given five minutes apiece for opening statements, alternating who got to answer questions posed by the public fir...
Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dan Sullivan visited Wrangell Thursday as part of a broader tour of Southeast Alaska. "We're on a pretty big Southeast tour," he explained, visiting Ketchikan and Petersburg before moving on to Fairbanks and Barrow. Early in the day, Sullivan visited Wrangell's Marine Service Center, which he seemed impressed with during an interview before his evening meet-and-greet at the Stikine Inn restaurant. "That looks like a really impressive job creator," he...
Aleisha Mollen Wrangell School Board, three-year term Occupation: Service Manager, Wells Fargo Why do you want to be on the Wrangell School Board? "I care deeply about the youth here in Wrangell. They are a great group of kids and I want them to have the best educational experience possible. They are the future leaders in our community and our nation and I believe that making sure they have the opportunity at a better education will better us all. Making a difference in the schools today can...
Continuing pool woes concerned the Wrangell Borough Assembly when members Maxi Wiederspohn, Pam McCloskey, Mark Mitchell, Becky Rooney and Mayor David Jack met in their City Hall chambers Tuesday evening. “It seems that everything here has gone wrong at the same time,” reported Borough Manager Jeff Jabusch. Last month Wrangell public pool staff discovered a number of problems, including a significant leak, roof issues, some corrosion and electrical problems with a heat exchanger. Jabusch said a public pool in Juneau had experienced similar hea...
Despite the at times uncooperative weather, the Borough of Wrangell successfully hosted this year's annual Southeast Conference at its Nolan Center, from Sept. 16 to 18. About 180 visitors arrived for the three-day conference, fully booking every inn, hotel and lodge in town. Volunteers opened their houses to some attendees as well, but to accommodate the remaining attendees Trident Seafoods allowed the conference use of its bunkhouses. Volunteers were essential to the event's success, fixing...
Field trips aren’t just for elementary school students, as Wrangell Planning and Zoning commissioners decided Thursday they will need to examine a request to vacate public property first-hand before reaching a final decision. The request to vacate came from The Bay Company, a marine and sports equipment business on Front Street and neighbor to Silvernail Work Road. Currently a portion of the road serves as a northeastern access point to the Marine Service Center (MSC), but the remainder that would link up with Episcopal Street remains c...
By the time the fog finally dissipated Tuesday afternoon, the 56th annual Southeast Conference (SEC) was already underway at Wrangell's Nolan Center. Poor visibility prevented the appearance of the conference's opening speaker, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell, but there were a number of interesting presenters on hand to cover a wide array of topics near and dear to the region. “It's just a great opportunity to learn about all of Southeast,” commented Chere Klein, the Republican candidate for House District 36 in November's upcoming election. “It...
Closely mirroring the mood of the last Wrangell Borough Assembly meeting, dogs were on the mind of the Port Commission as it met for its first meeting of the season Thursday. Wayne Kaer came to the meeting bearing several grievances, the most urgent of which were the harbors’ uncontrolled canines. Kaer had not been able to speak his mind at the last Borough Assembly meeting because he had arrived after the time for public comment had already passed. He told commissioners that dogs’ rubbish was r...
With only a month left to prepare, organizers for the 2014 Southeast Conference (SEC) are finalizing an agenda and adding names to the register of attendees. “We’re happy to have anyone that wants to come,” said Shelly Wright, SEC executive director. Registration opened at the beginning of the month. The Nolan Center will be hosting the conference, which promotes economic interests and brings stakeholders together to discuss issues for Alaska’s southeastern communities. “It is a good draft agenda,” Wright commented. A number of weighty top...
Yard operators at Wrangell's Marine Service Center were excited last Wednesday as their new mobile lift pulled the Marauder, a Juneau-based tug, out from the water on its third attempt. Rated at 300 tonnes (just over 330 short tons, or 661,000 pounds), the lift was initially unable to pick up the 85-foot tug until the crew emptied its tanks and stripped down the tires and equipment. "We're happy to finally get out," said the Marauder's skipper, Harold Medalen. The Marauder was due to be...
After much discussion, the Wrangell Borough Assembly voted 4-0 Tuesday evening to approve a formal transition agreement that will allow Southeast Alaska Power Agency (SEAPA) to take over the operation and maintenance of the Tyee Hydro Facility from the Thomas Bay Power Authority. "It's been a long time coming," said assembly member Julie Decker as she moved to approve the measure. The current agreement is the product of months of negotiations between representatives of Wrangell, Petersburg and SEAPA. "Concessions were made by everybody a...
The Wrangell Assembly approved bids for two projects at a special meeting last week. The assembly will use Commercial Passenger Vessel excise tax funds to purchase $22,340 worth of new park benches and waste receptacles that will be installed in town. “We’re are going to put them in the downtown area, mainly along Front Street, to match the theme of our older-style light poles,” said City and Borough of Wrangell Manager Jeff Jabusch. Graber Manufacturing out of Waunakee, Wis. bid the lowest, and the borough will receive the equipment from...
Some burly men were duct taping a video camera to the side of a plasma cutter in a shipping container at the Marine Services Center Friday afternoon. The camera was a GoPro. The plasma cutter belonged to Superior Marine Services, and the shipping container was transformed momentarily into a set for a television show. "This is gonna be (expletive) awesome!" one man said. A moment later, the plasma cutter started roaring. It cut an elaborate metal "S" out of a piece of plate metal. The cameras -...
The Wrangell Ports and Harbors Commission voted 3-0 June 5 to take over management of the Meyers Chuck dock and seaplane float from the state Transportation Department. State officials originally proposed the transfer and offered $1.4 million to sweeten the deal. About half of that money will go into a reserve fund, to be supplemented by dock fees with the goal of eventually replacing the seaplane float and dock at the mainland community, which has seven remaining full-time residents. Greater potential also exists to use that portion of the...
The borough assembly voted 5-0 Tuesday to pass both the property tax rate and the municipal budget for the fiscal year 2015. At a May 13 budget workshop, officials pledged the mill rate of 12.75 mills will remain unchanged this year. That means that a house assessed at $200,000 would pay a property tax bill of $2,550. Since presenting the budget at a public workshop May 24, officials have received news of $37,219 in additional revenue, composed of a $23,821 shot in the arm from increased revenue sharing and a $13,398 increase from the state...
Sentinel writer The first boat to come out of the water was named for the patron saint of lost causes. The new $1.3-million giant red boat lift pulled the Ketchikan-ported fishing tender St. Jude out of the water Saturday. Estimates of the 100-foot by 24-foot boat's weight range between 121 tons and 189 tons. The lower end of that range would have put the boat within the lifting capacity of the other machine, however, a weight reading of 198 tons meant harbor officials put the ASCOM lift in play...
A mix-up with the new 300-ton boat lift meant the five shipping containers with the unassembled lift were sent to Anchorage instead of Wrangell this week. The error apparently occurred sometime after the containers were off-loaded in Tacoma. Instead of being placed on a Wrangell-bound barge from Seattle, they were placed on an Anchorage-bound barge by a cargo subcontractor employed by AsCom S.p.A, the Italian-based manufacturer of the new lift, according to harbormaster Greg Meissner. The containers made it as far north as Juneau before being...
$4.6 million is definitely better than zero. The state’s proposed capital budget would set aside more than $1.6 million for Wrangell-based projects, up from nothing in Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed capital budget announced Dec. 12. An additional almost $3 million in proposed infrastructure “reallocations” will also be headed to Wrangell, with some slight modifications to allow the use of the funds to be more flexible. The capital funds include: $615,000 for a Wrangell connection to the upper reservoir, which will allow the Department of Public...
A long-discussed lift doubling the capacity of the Wrangell boatyard could arrive by the end of the month, officials said. The lift, which Harbormaster Greg Meissner plans for the harbor to use in conjunction with the existing 150-ton lift, shipped from Italy in March and was set to arrive in Tacoma, Wash. by Wednesday, though harbor officials have revised estimates for the arrival in the past. "My hope is it'll get here on April 22," he said. That would put the arrival one day shy of a year...
The borough assembly held an almost hour-long closed-door executive session Tuesday to discuss litigation stemming from a suit involving borough police department personnel. Alesa and Jerry McHolland filed the suit in Wrangle Superior Court in November 2013. It alleges wrongful termination, “deliberate and incessant discrimination,” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” It accuses former borough Manager Tim Rooney, Police Chief Doug McCloskey, and Lt. Merlin Ehlers of harassing and terminating Alesa McHolland in 2011, when sh...
Hotel reservations and empty tables at local eateries may be a little hard to come by this fall. About 250 officials and leaders from all over Southeast will descend on Wrangell Sept. 16 to 18 as the annual membership meeting of the Southeast Conference comes to town. The Conference’s mid-session meeting was held March 12, 13, and 14 in Juneau. Wrangell’s role as host borough comes after a report issued by the 2013 session, which highlighted Wrangell’s success with the so-called blue economy, a combination of fisheries and marine servi...
The Chamber of Commerce honored Lucy Robinson with the Citizen of the Year award at Saturday's annual dinner. The event also honored new chamber members, the Business of the Year, retiring school system personnel, and distributed the Chamber Membership Appreciation Award. It drew more than 200 members and guests to the Nolan Center for dinner, drinks, dessert auctions, and games. The dinner is the sole event dedicated exclusively to Chamber fundraising, Director Cyni Waddington told the crowd....
