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The Legislature is in its 10th year of struggling to balance Alaskans’ wishes and wants for a large Permanent Fund dividend with the checkbook reality that is much less than the wants. It’s been an annual political and fiscal battle ever since Gov. Bill Walker in 2016 bravely cut that year’s PFD in half after legislators had approved an unaffordable dividend while the state budget was in a deep billion-dollar deficit, dug deeper by low oil prices. Mike Dunleavy, who was then a state senator, vowed to push legislation to undo the gover...
It’s been seven weeks since the borough manager ordered a closure of the town’s nearly 50-year-old barge ramp over structural and safety concerns. Any answer to the community’s needs for a dependable facility for the essential weekly freight barges is a long way off — at a cost of millions of dollars. Possible options include repairing the existing 140-foot-long steel ramp that floats with the tides; scrapping it and getting a new one built for the same downtown location; creating an expanded fill area next to the Marine Service Center and buil...
More than likely, the Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy will strike a deal next month to increase state funding for K-12 education in Alaska. That’s the big checkbook fight as lawmakers face a May 21 constitutional deadline to finish their work. The increase in state aid will not be enough to solve all the money problems at school districts across Alaska, but it will be enough to prevent the worst of the crisis from hitting students, teachers and parents for the 2025-2026 school year. In Wrangell’s case, it probably will be enough money to...
Wrangell is big on annual traditions. The Fourth of July, salmon fishing, high school homecoming basketball games, Christmas tree lighting, tax-free shopping days and putting away the snow shovels and ice melt. Of course, there are the less welcome yearly traditions, such as paying property taxes, getting an annual physical and digging through the final packages of last year’s frozen fish. The annual spring cleanup is sort of a mix of the eagerly awaited and the yearly event that feels good even if it requires some manual labor. Kind of like e...
No one likes another requirement to pass through security before boarding a flight to see family or friends, visit a medical specialist, attend a business meeting or, even better, take a vacation. But the federal requirement that travelers on domestic flights must show a REAL ID, or other approved enhanced-security photo identification, will take effect on May 7. The deadline comes 20 years after Congress approved the law. Over those two decades, the frequently criticized law has been postponed several times, same as the morning northbound...
North Slope oil production has been in steady decline since 1988. The trans-Alaska oil pipeline is more than three-quarters empty. It’s no one’s fault, that’s just how oil reservoirs behave. They are not some kind of eternal spring that replenishes itself. Even as companies work hard to find new oil fields and increase production from the older reservoirs, it’s not enough to permanently reverse the inevitable. And with that decline, so goes state revenues. Even today, in its diminished capacity, oil remains the single largest source of tax rev...
Alaskans won’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight the evening of Monday, March 31, but they could lose out on a chance to be richer. The deadline to file for this year’s Permanent Fund dividend is 11:59 p.m. March 31. Complete the online application by then and, come the first week of October, the state will deposit the PFD into your bank account. If online is not your thing, head to the Legislative Information Office upstairs at the Kadin Building on Front Street, above the Tongass Federal Credit Union office, pick up a paper application, get...
The federal and state stars are not lining up well for Wrangell’s budget future, at least not for the next few years. And that will mean some hard choices for the community, particularly when it comes to deciding the future of its schools and how to pay for that future. The borough has been using money from a federal program that dates back to 2000 to cover much of its annual contribution to the school district operating budget. But Congress failed to appropriate the money last year — the Republican-controlled U.S. House declined to take up...
Going on attack against Canada makes as much sense as picking a fight with your best friend and neighbor, the one you share holiday meals with, the one who steps up when disaster hits the neighborhood, the one who helps make sure you and your family are safe. Which is to say it makes no sense whatsoever. President Donald Trump says Canada should become the 51st state. Canadians have declined. If the tiff would have ended there, no harm, no foul. But it hasn’t ended, and the fight could soon cost Alaskans money. Trump is throwing tariffs at Cana...
The borough received two proposals in the past few months to buy some of its land at the former 6-Mile mill site. One was a pretty firm proposal. The other was a concept. Tideline Construction, part of the half-century-old Juneau-based Channel Construction operation, applied in January to buy more than nine acres of borough-owned land at 6-Mile. Tideland offered to buy two parcels at the assessed value of about $250,000 and would like portions of three neighboring lots. It wants to grow its scrap metal recycling operation and expand into...
The school district and borough share a money problem. And it’s a community problem that needs an answer this spring. The schools need more money to continue even the basic programs for Wrangell’s 260 students. The state funding formula over the past eight years has been flat, which is to say far short of keeping up with inflation, which is to say wholly inadequate. The borough assembly has tried pitching in, but its check-writing ability is limited by two factors: A state law that puts a cap on local contributions to school district budgets, a...
As if years of political interference and, for many elected officials, disinterest weren’t enough to sink the Alaska Marine Highway System, rust and age could finish the job. Maybe the answer is some duct tape to keep the ships running just a little longer until they turn 65 years old and could qualify for Medicare. But that’s too long to wait — the marine highway needs urgent care. The ships are aging, which is a polite way of saying they are long past their prime and getting older and rustier. Salt water accelerates the process. The Matan...
Though February is the shortest month of the year, there still is plenty of time to get your fingers working at the keyboard — or thumbs on your smartphone — to help guide decisions that will affect the town’s economy, health and children’s fun in the years ahead. It’s as if someone proclaimed February as Community Survey Month. But that’s OK. Better that people have an opportunity to share their opinions before decisions are made than being left behind to complain after the decision making is finished. And it’s a triple header of opportunit...
No matter what any crowd-pleasing elected official says, Alaska cannot afford a long-deserved increase in state funding for schools and a large Permanent Fund dividend. There just isn’t enough money in the state checkbook to do both this year — not unless Alaskans want to start paying an income tax or a state sales tax, which are both even less popular than a middle seat in the last row of a six-hour flight. More than 90% of the spendable dollars in the state budget comes from two sources: An annual draw on Permanent Fund investment ear...
Admittedly, a lot of people avoid surveys. They have other things they want to do with their time than answer questions. But this isn’t a political poll or an advocacy group asking your opinion about a hot topic, or a company asking how much you love their product. The borough has given the Sustainable Tourism Lab at Oregon State University a homework project. The students will run an online survey of Wrangell residents, asking their opinions about — yes, you’re right — tourism. What’s good about it, what’s not so good. What are the benefit...
The Wrangell School District — its students, staff and parents — will need to practice deep-breathing exercises to relieve the stress as they wait to see if the state Legislature and governor can agree on adequate funding for public education while at the same time waiting on Congress to reauthorize a quarter-century-old federal aid program for rural schools. These are significant and serious stress issues, particularly for Wrangell. State funding, based on a per-pupil formula, and the federal Secure Rural Schools money that comes through the...
Just two days after he was sworn in as Alaska’s sole member of the U.S. House, Nick Begich should have been happily celebrating and graciously thanking his supporters. Instead, he was flapping his lips. Or, more accurately, flipping his thumbs and other typing fingers. The freshman member of Congress, elected to fill one of the 435 seats in the House, disagrees with a decision by President Joe Biden to ban offshore oil and gas leasing in vast areas off the East Coast, West Coast and much of the Bering Sea offshore western Alaska. Begich p...
Wrangell, like much of Alaska and the country, relies on fundraising for all sorts of good causes. Many of those causes look pretty similar to public services that are covered by taxes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that elected officials and the public should keep in mind as they increasingly talk about cutting government spending and relying on donors to pick up the tab. In Wrangell’s case, the borough assembly decision last year to reduce financial support for the Senior Center, school district and public radio sta...
Borough officials met with the Washington state developer who has grand plans for the former mill property at 6-Mile. They listened as he presented his ideas at a public workshop. And they wisely made no commitments, other than to continue listening. It’s not that the borough is against development proposals to create jobs; City Hall fully supports any reasonable idea that would help the town’s struggling economy. It’s just that officials don’t want to write any checks, make any promises or sign any commitments until they know more. Cautious is...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has a choice for his final two years on the job: He can continue talking about how state law requires him to include an outrageously large Permanent Fund dividend in the budget — even though it would dig a deep budget hole which, thankfully, legislators will never approve — or he can help solve the problem. It looks like he is sticking with the irresponsible approach. He proposed a budget last week that is politically popular with his supporters but which he knows the state cannot afford without drawing down its rem...
A Washington state developer with ideas of turning organic waste into new products is coming to town to look over the former mill property near 6-Mile, lay out his ideas and answer questions from community officials. The borough plans to assemble most everyone from City Hall with an interest in development of the property, including members of the assembly, planning and zoning commission, port commission and economic development board. Officials will hear from Borgford BioEnergy, which set up a new company this year, Alaska BioEnergy. The...
Sometimes, the best explanations are the simplest. Especially when it comes to economics. The complicated way to describe the consequences of Alaska losing population, particularly working-age residents, is to explain that fewer people have moved north than have moved out of the state in each of the past 12 years. That net outmigration is making it hard for employers to fill jobs, which means reduced hours of operation, longer waits for services and less money in the economy. The decline in working-age residents — ages 18 to 64 — is esp...
No question about it, the state is delinquent in funding public schools in Alaska. It has failed to do its homework, turn in assignments, come to class prepared and whatever other analogy you want to use. The mathematical fact is that the state’s per-pupil funding formula hasn’t had a permanent raise of any significance since the Chicago Cubs broke a 108-year drought and won the baseball World Series in 2016. And while 2016 was a good year for Cubs’ fans, that shouldn’t also be remembered as the last year the Alaska Legislature and governor agr...
Not everyone in Wrangell welcomes more cruise ships or the visitors they bring to the community. There are detractors who fear too many ships and their passengers could change the character of the town. They look at Ketchikan, Juneau, Sitka and Skagway and see more than a million visitors a year crowding the sidewalks and shops, the buses crowding the streets and the summer workers crowding already tight housing. But they need to look at the numbers for Wrangell; actually, two sets of numbers. Wrangell could see 40,000 cruise passengers next...
It’s more than 2,700 miles from Wrangell to the nation’s capital — if you have a private jet. Or more than 3,600 miles if you plan to ride the state ferry and drive. Either way, Wrangell is far from Washington, D.C. Except not really this year. With a special Christmas tree, hundreds of handcrafted ornaments and a local hand at artful floral arrangements, Wrangell will make its presence known in the nation’s capital. The official U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, a tall spruce cut from Zarembo Island, is on the road and on its way to Washington, due...
