The state had been sitting on $37.5 million it collected but never spent over several years from its cruise ship passenger tax. The Legislature decided this was the year to put the money to good use. Lawmakers drained the account and sent the funds to 16 communities, based on their cruise visitor counts.

Wrangell will receive $375,000, which it can spend on waterfront projects or other infrastructure and services that would benefit cruise ships and their passengers.

“It didn’t serve a public purpose building up an account balance,” Juneau State Senator Jesse Kiehl said of the money sitting unused in the state’s commercial vessel passenger tax account.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy had not proposed spending from the account, leaving it to accumulate since 2022.

Kiehl is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which added the spending to the state budget in May. The governor signed the spending bill last month for the fiscal year that started July 1.

“The $37.5 million basically empties the account,” said the director of the Legislative Finance Division.

The state collects a tax of $34.50 per passenger from cruise ships of more than 250 passengers. Half the money is shared with cruise-destination communities which receive $5 per passenger, which includes Wrangell, and the state keeps the other half.

The tax originated with a citizens initiative approved by Alaska voters 20 years ago.

Under state law, the money can only be used “for projects to repair, maintain and upgrade port facilities and harbor infrastructure, enhance passenger safety and provide services to vessels and passengers.”

Those same restrictions apply to the funds shared with municipalities — both the annual allocation of $5 per passenger and this year’s $37.5 million one-time cash-out of the account.

In addition to $375,000 coming to Wrangell, the legislative appropriation directs $9 million to Skagway, almost $6.9 million to Ketchikan, $6 million to Juneau, $4.5 million to Sitka and $3 million to Hoonah, among the larger distributions.

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Becky Ferguson is bringing fresh produce to residents of the Wrangell Senior Apartments, while demonstrating the accessibility of small-scale agriculture.

Several varieties of lettuce are growing in a hoop house on the yard at the apartments, using a technique described by Ferguson as the easiest form of hydroponic gardening.

By placing plants directly above nutrient-rich water, roots naturally absorb both moisture and oxygen as the water level recedes. Because the system requires no pumps, timers, electricity or complex machinery, it offers a simplified option for growers of all experience levels.

Her project, which started at the end of June, was funded by the Alaska Micro-Grants for Food Security Program, an initiative administered by the state Department of Natural Resources Division of Agriculture using federal funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The competitive program provides money — up to $5,000 for individuals — to help Alaskans expand local food production through small-scale gardening, greenhouses and passive hydroponic setups. Wrangell’s Oceanview Gardens, as well as John and Artha DeRuyter, are also recent recipients of the same micro grant.

Ferguson wants to show that fresh produce can be grown almost anywhere — whether in a greenhouse, home, apartment or on a porch — using simple containers like quart jars, five-gallon buckets or repurposed totes.

She said that if a person brings her a five-gallon bucket, she will demonstrate how to craft the necessary lid and will provide a starter kit including nutrients and a food-grade bucket liner.

People can contact Ferguson through her Facebook page or by stopping at the hoop house at the senior apartments.

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This year’s deer harvest isn’t expected to reach the record highs of the past two seasons but “it’s going to be fair to good,” said the state game biologist for the Wrangell-Petersburg area.

“We had a really good dump of snow this past winter,” said Frank Robbins, the longtime state game biologist in Petersburg. “We lost a good portion of last year’s fawns,” which were unable to forage for enough food in the deep snow.

“We may have lost some older bucks,” he said, though the overall population looks strong.

The general hunting season for Sitka black-tailed opens Saturday, Aug. 1, and runs through Nov. 30. The bag limit is two bucks. No doe harvest is allowed, to help protect the population.

The past few years have been excellent for deer hunters in the Game Management Unit 3, which includes Wrangell and surrounding islands.

“We’ve had record harvests the last two years,” Robbins said.

The take exceeded 1,100 deer in each of the past two years in Unit 3, surpassing the Department of Fish and Game’s harvest objective of 900 bucks.

The harvest totaled more than 900 deer in 2023 before the record years in 2024 and 2025.

“I’m not anticipating a record harvest,” Robbins said for this year, but he still anticipates a good year for hunters.

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Photographers have a chance to win a Friends of Anan hoodie, T-shirt or coffee mug in the nonprofit’s first-ever photo contest. Entries in the Anan Wildlife Observatory Community Photo Contest are due by midnight, Friday, July 31.

Even better, the group will run a second photo contest next month, with a deadline of Aug. 31, and with the same prizes for first, second and third, said Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, a member of Friends of Anan.

Or, people can enter both contests, he said.

Friends of Anan was established a year ago to raise two things: Awareness of the bear viewing area and money to help the Forest Service, which manages the Anan Wildlife Observatory, with maintenance, staff and other expenses.

Now that the group, and its technology team of Wrangell students, has mostly completed the technical work of setting up the livestream bear cam feeds from Anan, they want to focus more on outreach to raise awareness of the bears and the importance of the observatory, said Bardin-Siekawitch, who will be a high school senior when school starts next month.

Anyone who wants to enter their favorite Anan bear photos can go to the Friends of Anan Facebook page to download the QR code, which will send them to the entry form.

Photographers are limited to three entries per contest and will need to provide up to three sentences describing each photo.

The group may use the photos on its website and other promotional materials.

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Grant EchoHawk is a nonpartisan candidate for House District 1.  EchoHawk visited Wrangell in late July and stopped by KSTK to talk about why he’s running to represent Wrangell, Ketchikan, Metlakatla and parts of Prince of Wales Island.

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The candidate filing period for Wrangell’s Oct. 6 municipal election opens Aug. 3.

The ballot will include races for mayor, two seats on the borough assembly, two seats on the port commission and one seat on school board.

Mayor Patty Gilbert, who has served two terms as mayor since 2022, has already decided she will run again this year.

“I want another term to see if I can seal up some of the goals,” she said, listing economic development projects and building and street repairs as her biggest goals.

The mayor’s term is for two years.

Candidates need to fill out a declaration of candidacy form, available at City Hall, and return it with the signature of 10 registered Wrangell voters.

The forms can be turned in at the borough clerk’s office 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, starting Aug. 3. The deadline for filing is 4 p.m. Aug. 31.

In addition to the mayor’s office, the ballot will include two three-year terms on the seven-member assembly; the top two vote-getters on the ballot will win the seats.

The terms of Assembly Members Phillip Mach and John Yeager expire in October.

One of the five school board seats will be on the ballot for a three-year term: John DeRuyter’s term expires.

And two port commission seats will be on the ballot; one for a three-year term and one to fill the remaining two years of a three-year term. The terms of incumbents Antonio Silva and DJ McConachie expire in October.

Candidates for any of the elected offices must be a registered voter and must have lived in town at least one year.

Candidates for mayor, assembly and school board must be at least 18 years old. Port commissioners must be at least 21 years old.

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Structure, a nearly year-old company that plans to design, assemble and market a new system for utilities and businesses to remotely monitor their operations, is buying Ottesen’s former warehouse on Front Street and could start putting together and delivering its equipment next year.

The company, established by a trio of Juneau friends and their business partners, has hung its signs on the building.

The floor plan is mostly open, with offices on a smaller mezzanine level, which will work well for Structure’s assembly operation to put together its controllers, called “comms vault,” or communications vault, said Jake Haas, one of the founders. 

The company is in the business of designing and building a new SCADA (Skay-dah) system, which stands for supervisory control and data acquisition. Older systems have been used since the 1970s to monitor sewage pumps and water lines, including Wrangell’s own utilities, and multiple other production operations.

Sensors on pipelines, power lines, pumps and other components transmit data back to a controller unit, allowing workers to remotely monitor operations.

Structure sees a strong market for its new system, particularly in rural Alaska communities with critical infrastructure spread out, requiring a dependable monitoring system using radio signals, fiber-optic lines, phone lines or wireless signals.

The Wrangell plant will assemble routers, switches, radio gear and circuit boards into the comms vault, a box the size of a stereo speaker, Haas said. Off-the-shelf components will be shipped into town for installation in the box, along with some custom-made pieces.

Kyle Farley-Robinson, another one of the three founding partners, said a rough estimate would be assembling the first units in the building sometime next year.

The initial number of jobs would depend on the number of orders to build the units, Farley-Robinson said last week, but could range from half a dozen to 20 workers on the assembly and testing crews.

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The volunteer group BRAVE — which stands for Building Respect and Valuing Everyone — is creating a free online Wrangell Resources Directory

“We’ve been doing the Resilience Fair for eight years,” said BRAVE volunteer Kay Larson. The fair brings together a wide range of service providers for health and family. “However, it’s just once a year and focuses on family services,” she said. “The online directory will provide year-round accessibility and more types of information.”

“Our community has had to be so self-sufficient for so long,” said Maleah Nore, another BRAVE volunteer. “People have always had to ask around but didn’t always know who to ask. We saw this as a need in the community and we’re trying to fill it.”

The directory is planned to serve as a digital hub where people can search for resources by topic or need. Food assistance, addressing domestic violence, senior services, pet services, afterschool programs, cultural activities, child care, taxi phone numbers — anything that benefits the community.

“Everything is coming together,” said Nore. “It won’t be perfect, but we don’t need perfect. We just need information.”

BRAVE is encouraging Wrangell service providers of all categories — public, private and nonprofit — to submit their information by Friday, July 24, to contact@wrangellresources.org.

Launch of the official website is anticipated later this summer.

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Jeremy Bynum is the incumbent candidate for House District 1.  Bynum visited Wrangell on July 3^rd and stopped by KSTK to talk about his position on several topics.

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Listen to the story:

The Southeast island town of Wrangell is moving forward with plans to build a massive shipyard that could repair state ferries, U.S. Coast Guard ships, research vessels, and military vessels.

Wrangell already has a busy marine service center that hauls out large commercial vessels locally and from nearby communities. This proposed shipyard would service much larger ships, up to 500 feet long, with a lift capacity of about 38,000 tons.

But the price tag is a bit shocking – between $605 and $726 million. The borough has a $50 million grant pending with the federal Economic Development Administration.

“Obviously, $605 on the low end is a staggering figure – we could probably buy Wrangell Island for $605 million,” said Mason Villarma, Wrangell’s borough manager. He admits the cost is enormous, but says developers are approaching it in steps, “phasing the project into digestible chunks.”

Villarma spoke at a recent town hall on July 14 with several project partners, including JAG Marine Group, which would operate the site; the shipyard developers Pearlson&Pearlson; the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, the region’s nonprofit hydropower company; the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority; and others.

Wrangell’s shipyard would be built on an existing 42-acre deep-water port, a former mill site that the borough purchased for $2.5 million in 2022. It’s located six miles south of town. Villarma said there was overwhelming community input on the site’s potential uses.

“We don’t want cruise ships out there,” he said. “We want this to be an industrial complex with blue-collar jobs, trades-based, and that’s really what we focused on.”

The shipyard is estimated to employ up to 500 people at full capacity, which would significantly change the town’s economic landscape, as Wrangell only has a few thousand residents. For decades, many residents worked in the timber industry until the town’s main sawmills started closing in the 1990s. 

The shipyard’s operator, JAG, runs shipyards in Ketchikan and Seward, but is based in Michigan. Charles Minton with the company said the political climate is right for industrial development.

“We want to make sure that the work stays in Alaska, is completed in Alaska,” he said, “and we service the vessels and the assets that are going to be positioned here, not only from a commercial perspective to help maintain commerce, but also from the defensive posture.”

Earlier this year, Wrangell borough leaders visited a shipyard in Florida, which project designer Pearlson & Pearlson worked on. Luke Pitts with the company said they’ll design Wrangell’s shipyard for maintenance and repair, but it would also accommodate building ships.

“We’ve done several of these projects now and have a good kind of baseline of what things cost,” Pitts said. “We’ve also reached out to general contractors that have worked in Alaska in the recent past to kind of back our estimates.”

The partners say the infrastructure needed for the project is there – for power, water and sewer, and fuel. It will take a few years to secure more than a dozen required permits. So, in theory, the project could start construction in two years and take about three more years after that. But first, hundreds of millions of dollars will need to be found.

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