Ketchikan City Council member Jack Finnegan filed to run for reelection in the upcoming municipal election. There are three 3-year seats and one 1-year seat up for grabs on the Ketchikan City Council. 

The council serves as the city’s legislative power, and is responsible for creating ordinances and approving the city budget. It’s made up of a mayor and seven council members.  

KRBD spoke with candidate Jack Finnegan about his goals and priorities if reelected to office. 

Finnegan: My name is Jack Finnegan. I currently serve on the Ketchikan City Council. I’m completing a three-year term. It’s my second term. I was first elected in 2022 for a one-year seat, then re-elected in 2023 for a three-year seat, and now I have put my hat in the ring again for another three-year seat.

Morrison: And why are you running?

Finnegan: Well, why am I running? That’s, you know, an excellent question for any candidate. I think when I first ran, I had sort of a two-pronged answer to that question. One was I wanted to serve my community in a meaningful way. And two, I saw service on the city council as an excellent way to develop a better understanding of how the municipality functions, where its strengths are, some of the challenges that we face. And now having been on the council for almost four years, I will say that it has been a very stark education, very instructive as to what some of the great strengths we have are and where we have room for improvement. I see a lot of value in that education with respect to making decisions about everything from the budget to some of the policy matters that come before the city council. So at this stage, now running for my third term, which if I were to be elected would be my limit, I get to apply the lessons that I’ve learned over the last four years of service toward the decisions that I’ll be making if I am reelected to the council for the forthcoming budget cycles and other policy matters. 

Morrison: Could you talk a little bit more about some of your priorities?

Finnegan: Sure, priorities for me certainly include some of the longstanding infrastructure needs that we’ve been trying to address. You know, we’ve got portions of our infrastructure that are years, sometimes even decades, past their given service life, and we have been extraordinarily fortunate to have such committed staff who have dedicated so many of their working hours, and you know, weekend hours and overnight hours toward keeping the lights on. For example, if we have a power outage or keep the telecom systems working if things go south, I would really like us to move past the reactive nature we’ve had to a lot of these aged infrastructure needs. You know, we’re often literally or figuratively putting out fires with respect to some of this machinery and some of this outdated serviceware, and I’d like to see that become a thing of the past. It’s a pretty steep reach with respect to the fact that we’re operating at a deficit. We’ve been in a deficit for some time, and there’s not going to be any simple way to get out of that deficit. And a lot of these projects for infrastructure upkeep, replacement, and repair are incredibly expensive, and we face a challenge in that we have a slightly contracting population right now. We don’t have new rate payers for the utility specifically, you know, on which to disperse the revenue generation. So that’s one of the reasons that we’ve seen increases in in utility rates in recent years, and we’re anticipating increases in utility rates in future years, and I think part of the challenge there has been since we’re using this aged infrastructure, we don’t have a lot of flexibility with respect to things like power generation, and I’d like to see us get to a place where we’re not as burdened by those those costs, and would, you know, give us an opportunity to kind of rebuild for the future.

Morrison:  What is something that you’re most proud of during your tenure on the council?

Finnegan: You know, it’s hard to pin to one specific item or issue. I will say, you know, when you serve on the council, the most proximate issues are those that tend to be before you. I will say that I have been very grateful in my years on the council to serve on the library advisory board, which in recent years, and even this year, is facing some – there’s some uncertainty around the library, its funding mechanisms right now, and whether or not the borough is going to assume library powers. But I think, you know, I see the library as a critical community resource, and having had the opportunity to be the city council’s liaison to the library advisory board has given me a much deeper understanding of the library’s function and its value, and I am very pleased to have been able to advocate on the library’s behalf at those board meetings, and then as a council member in budget meetings, for example.

Morrison: Outside of your tenure on the council, what other leadership roles do you think sort of help your duties on the council?

Finnegan: That’s a great question, and I will say I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to take advantage of the many offerings that Ketchikan provides. And that’s long been my sort of informal slogan for Ketchikan and what it does. Ketchikan provides, and it provides opportunity. It provides community. It provides boundless opportunity for adventure. And in my time living here, I have been able to get involved with various nonprofits. I serve on the board of the Ketchikan Agricultural Producers Association. I serve on the board of First City Players. I’ve worked with numerous nonprofits. I work in the tourism industry. I have a charter operation of my own. I’ve worked in the schools. You know, my first several winters here, I was a regular substitute teacher, and I’ve worked with youth in various capacities through most of my life, and by virtue of the experience I’ve had with the youth of our community, with the tourism industry, with various nonprofits here in town, I feel like it’s given me a pretty well-rounded understanding of what some of the needs are for our community, where people are hoping to see some some new growth or some changes. And then again, with respect to the years I’ve served on council, I feel like that’s given me a sharper understanding of the city’s own needs. And so, by virtue of that collection of experiences, I think it makes me a pretty well-rounded city council member.

Morrison: And aside from what you’ve sort of already talked about, what is something that you would like listeners to know about you? 

Finnegan: That I’m not rigid in my thinking on any one matter, and I am eager to hear what your thoughts might be. City council members have phone numbers and email addresses on the city website, and you’ll often hear if you watch or attend a city council meeting, you’ll hear city council members talk about the number of calls, texts, emails, in-person discussions they’ve had with residents of the city, talking about various issues. I can do better work as a city council member if I hear what you, as the residents of the city, think about any matter that comes before the council, or a matter that should come before the council, so I am eager to have those conversations. Don’t hesitate to call. Feel free to text. Please email me. I want to hear what you think, and I’m going to listen. Listening to what our constituents have to say is really first and foremost in the job. I mean, we have serious decisions to make at that table, on many of the meetings that we have, and I can make better decisions at that table if I know what the people of the community think and want.

Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

The post 4 questions with Ketchikan City Council candidate Jack Finnegan appeared first on KRBD.

Voting is happening now for Alaska’s primary election. Bill Walker is one of the many candidates on the ballot, running as Independent with running mate Randy Hoffbeck.

Walker, who served one term as governor from 2014 to 2018, is running again. During his most recent trip to Ketchikan, KRBD’s Sydney Dauphinais spoke with Walker about his plans and priorities.

Editor’s note: this transcription has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Sydney Dauphinais: To start off, why are you running for governor?

Bill Walker: I’m running because, as a lifelong Alaskan, and I formerly served as governor, I see the fiscal situation that Alaska is in as a crisis. I am running with my lieutenant governor candidate, and Randy Hoffbeck was my commissioner of revenue, so we are running with solutions to resolve the fiscal situation that we’re in. Certainly there’s other issues that bring us to the table, but the fiscal situation is very critical. The affordability of living in Alaska is there. I’ve been very involved in the gas line for a long time. That’s a big issue, but really, it’s our financial underpinning we need for the state to grow like it should.

Dauphinais: So you said that you have ideas for fiscal solutions. Can you speak a little bit about that?

Walker: One thing I love about this campaign, especially with Randy, is that we’re about solutions and not slogans. So when we say a fiscal plan, we’ll give you lots of detail about what we’re talking about on the fiscal plan. You know, I say that Alaska is not broke; it’s broken, and we need to fix Alaska so we don’t become broke.

So one of the things that people talk about is broad-based revenue and taxes and all that, and I say no, no, not until we get our revenues from resources fixed. You know, 10 years ago there was a Senate Bill 21 that passed by, I believe, by one vote, and there was a repeal effort in 2014, the year I was elected governor, and I was very much in support of repealing Senate Bill 21. I thought it was going to be a disaster. 90,000 Alaskans said repeal it. 99,000 said keep it. So it stayed, and it’s been 10 years, and we have lost money every year. We’ve been underwater ever since, and sometimes some years to the tune of a billion dollars. In my case, it was $4 billion. I was the governor when it first came into effect, and we lost half our revenue that year, so it’s been a disaster. So we want to go from that Senate Bill 21 legislation to a gross tax on our resources. In other words, rather than having all the deductions, all the audits, all the litigation, all the secret settlements, just take it off the top. Pretty much every other state in the nation just does a gross for that reason. They don’t want to mess with all the downstream deductions and this and all the other things we do. So we want 13%. That’s not the highest in the nation, but it’s not the lowest in the nation either. Gas right now is 13% already. The only gross we use in the state of Alaska, quite honestly, is on fisheries. That’s the only gross we use. Everything else is on a net.

I love mining. I’m a big resource development guy, but in 2024, according to testimony before the legislature by the Department of Revenue, we extracted the value is about $4 billion of resources from Alaska, our share was a negative number. We actually lost money that year. So, you know, we’re the only state in the nation that does on a net, on a gross. We’re talking you know two or 3% We’re not talking a big number on that, but we don’t want to hurt any industry at all. But my goodness, I don’t, I don’t think getting a negative number on a $4 billion extraction is really what we should be doing. So it’s a matter of getting our revenues from resources right, and then deciding what we do after that.

You know, we’ve identified just those couple things as about a billion and a half dollars of additional revenue, we need to grow the pie, but Alaskans have already given twice. They’ve given us a lower dividend, and the percentage of market value has caused the permanent fund corpus, the body of it, to grow not as fast as we’d like it to, because we’re using part of that to fund government services. So, Alaskans are paid twice, and I’m not against a broad-based tax down the road, perhaps an income tax, but not until after we get our revenues and resources right.

Dauphinais: So, how would you say that these priorities and this campaign more broadly differs from your previous ones?

Walker: In previous ones, we talked and we’re talking in concepts, and now we’re talking in specifics. This is a very different kind of campaign, and I’ve enjoyed this more than any campaign I’ve ever been in because we don’t have lots of contributors. We don’t run around trying to raise money and win the money raising contests. We are focused solely on solutions. Sometimes, when you have tons of endorsements or certain things that you kind of can’t do, because who’s endorsed you, you know, it has certain sort of expectations, and not directly, but I think there are those expectations, and we don’t have that. We’re free agents. We can say and do whatever we think is best interest of Alaska without hesitation. I sometimes refer to it as what I call the political stutter. That’s when you get asked a hard question. You have to remember who your donors are, who your supporters are, and have to be careful how you answer. We don’t. We just answer very quickly, and every answer is what we believe is the best interest of Alaska. I was born in the territory. I’ve seen the ups and downs over the years, and I know what works and what doesn’t work.

Dauphinais: We’ve talked a lot about the financial crisis that the state is in. What other priorities do you have?

Walker: Well, certainly education is. A big frustration I have is that our our turnover rate with educators is is very high because we don’t have a pension plan, we don’t have a retirement plan, and every year you sort of wait almost like the sort of Democratic who’s who’s not going to be here in the school system next year because of the cuts that have to be made, because there’s less and less and less funding. We need to get away from that. We need to get back to educators being valued at what they do. The most important jobs in Alaska are the educators, as far as I’m concerned. So, you know, I read a book when I was governor, it was titled “The Smartest Kids in the World and Why.” And my takeaway from that is that the highest numbers on graduation were places where the educators were honored, they were respected. You know, you go to a mall and there was special parking places for educators. It was not always monetarily rewarded, but they were held up in highest esteem. We don’t do that here in Alaska anymore. We used to, and we need to do that again.

Dauphinais: How would you plan to do that?

Walker: With proper funding. Again, it all sort of stems from the fiscal plan. If you don’t have a fiscal plan, we’ve been living off of borrowed money for the last 13 years, and we’re now down to about $3 billion in savings. What happens when that’s gone? So that’s the concern we have: is that we have to have the foundation. I’m a carpenter by DNA, and if you know if you don’t have a proper foundation, the rest of it is just noise. You’ve got the fiscal plan that is the foundation for the future of this state. I watch the marine highway system, you know, over the over the decades, used to be the rising star in the state of Alaska was the Alaska Marine Highway System. Now it’s on a decline, and it has been for quite some time because money hasn’t been put back into it. Again, we get back to the fiscal plan.

Dauphinais: Yeah, in Southeast, the Alaska Marine Highway System is very important. Do you plan on reviving that? If so, how?

Walker: You know, I’ve thought about this a lot. I would have done it, if I’d had a second term to do this, I think it’s time that we pull Alaska Marine Highway System out of the Department of Transportation. I think it needs to stand on its own. I think it needs to grow on its own. We have 237 airports in Alaska, which we own. The next highest state is Oregon with five, so it kind of puts it in perspective. So we have 237 airports. We’ve got 1000 miles of highways to maintain. The marine highway system needs to be on its own, be separate, and I know that when it was combined, it was for efficiency purposes. And I love efficiency, don’t get me wrong, but I think it kind of got lost into a bigger system, and it’s critically important not just to Southeast, but to all of Alaska, you know, to not have a connection into into Prince Rupert, that changed a lot of things in Southeast and in Alaska in general, so it’s time that it be it be separated and let it grow and become what it used to be quite honestly and I think it’s been held back not intentionally but I think it’s been held back because it’s big it’s part of a to me almost a stepchild in in this process, and not really the attention that should have received.

Dauphinais: So, when you were governor previously, you said if you had another term, that’s something that you would have liked to address. What are other things that maybe went unaddressed previously that, given the chance, you would like to address going forward?

Walker: Well, the rest of the fiscal plan. You know, when we were $4 billion in the hole, I called together several 100 Alaskans to the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a three-day summit on our fiscal situation. We all stayed in the dorms because it was cheaper. It was summer. We were available, and we came up with a fiscal plan. We took that and went out and had 500 town hall meetings around the state. And Randy Hoffbeck, my lieutenant governor candidate, was the captain of all that. And we then presented the fiscal plan, listened to what we heard, modified it, took it to Juneau, and presented it to the legislature. We got some of it through, not all of it through. We want to finish the fiscal plan, and that’s what we would have done the second term is finish the fiscal plan, so that we aren’t in the situation that we’re underwater financially, and that we’re underfunding education, underfunding every facet of governmental services you can name. So, really, it’s about finishing the job, and I think with our experience, having served once, having been there, we can hit the ground running on the fiscal plan and get that through, and get Alaska back on track financially.

Dauphinais: So it really sounds like getting the fiscal plan put in place is what would happen before anything else, like a day one priority.

Walker: Absolutely, it has to be. It has to be up front because everything else flows from that. I mean, if you don’t have the financial wherewithal to fix things, it’s hard to fix things without funding. As an example, our deferred maintenance, you know, it was 1.4 billion a few years ago. I haven’t seen any numbers since then, but I mean, deferred maintenance doesn’t get better with time. It gets worse with time. Deferred maintenance doesn’t have a real constituency. You don’t have ribbon cutting and golden shovels and handshakes and pictures that are on deferred maintenance. But it’s got to get done. But I want to do it in such a way that it’s done on bite sizes, so that in the local communities, the local contractors have the first opportunity to do that work, rather than bringing in a large outfit from Seattle or Portland or LA to do the whole thing. I want to make sure this is done so there’s a double benefit from that in the economy, the local community contractors, as well as just getting it done.

Dauphinais: What’s something that you are particularly proud of from your previous term as governor?

Walker: You know, I sort of went against the grain and accepted Medicaid expansion on my signature. I let the legislature have their opportunity to do it. They wouldn’t take it to the floor to vote. I gave them a special session. They wouldn’t, so I signed it myself, knowing I was going to get sued, also knowing I was going to win, and so I think the last number I heard was 70,000 more Alaskans have health care coverage because of that signature. So I was pleased with that. I was pleased that we created the governor’s Tribal Advisory Council, and to have a relationship with the tribes in Alaska that have never really had much access to administration, and so we brought them to the table. The 17 and let them select who they wanted at the table. We dealt with energy, we dealt with housing, we dealt with subsistence fishing, we dealt with all the issues that you know, and I think that was very productive to have that relationship with them. You know, I created a climate change action committee, which came out with a report about the impacts on Alaska from climate change and what and what some of the solutions are. I’m a big believer of ‘don’t just bring me the problem.’ You know, bring me your idea on the solution as well, and I learned that Governor [Wally] Hickel had that philosophy in his hotel, so that’s what they did. So we were aggressive in that regard, and we had a cabinet that I honestly didn’t know and didn’t keep score of what their political persuasion was. I didn’t care, I just wanted the best, and they were selected based not on who they knew, but what they knew. And when I interviewed them, certainly their resume was important. But I looked for passion. If they had the passion, that’s who I hired. I wanted people in those positions that had a real passion for what they’re going to do, and not just that they were qualified. So passion took precedence over anything else.

Dauphinais: When did you file to run?

Walker: You know, we filed on kind of the last day.

Dauphinais: That’s what I thought. Why?

Walker: It was intentional. We waited, we waited and we watched and we read to see who is going to talk about the fiscal, who’s going to talk about the hard stuff? And we didn’t hear much. We heard a lot of talking about build this, build that. You know, some people are coming out and saying, you know, vote for me. I’ll give you a full dividend. And no one is talking about the fiscal situation. And so we just said, are we going to really stand by and and let this go through and and not bring this topic out because we’re talking about it, others having to talk about it, and so so that’s why I mean it was it was we’re trying to be respectful the system and let it sort of you know time for somebody new this that new other thing but but we didn’t hear anybody talk about the fiscal and because that’s really our our specialty if you will. And I’m a resource development person. We have some ideas about that that I’m happy to discuss on resource development, how we can do it better, and how we can do it more aggressively, but certainly very responsibly. So, it was on the last day, but we’d been looking at it for some time and talking about kind of waiting for somebody to come out and carry this message. We didn’t see it.

Dauphinais: That does give you a limited time for campaigning. What is a message that you are hoping to get across in these next couple, you know, basically weeks?

Walker: So our message really is about solutions, and we really, you know, I think we say solutions, not slogans, because really, as an example, you know, a good politician would run from the hard stuff. We run to it, the Permanent Fund Dividend, as an example. You know, I reduced it in 2015 because we had a $4 billion hole in our budget, and we reduced the budget by a billion dollars. And before we did anything on the dividend, if we had continued to pay full dividends, the dividend program would not be in existence today, because it would have over overdrawn it, and now it wouldn’t be there. It just wouldn’t be there. There wouldn’t be a dividend today. So, I made that difficult decision. So we decided, all right, let’s start with the dividend. Let’s start with that. I mean, you’d think I would run from it, but nope. We run to it. So we’ve come up with a concept on the dividend. It’s a dividend from resources. In other words, all the resource revenue we received on taxation from oil, from gas, from mining, from timber, from fish, all goes into a pool, and 50% of that goes to the dividend, with a guaranteed floor of $1,000.

In other words, on the low years of oil prices, like when I was governor, it would be a you know a minimum of $1,000 dividend. But when oil goes to $100 or $110, like it is now, well, the dividend goes up because the revenues go up. So we would use the earnings from the dividend from the permanent fund on the steady-eddy kind of education forward funding, education, public services, public safety, public health, and then the volatile part over on the dividend part with the floor. So when oil goes to $100, you know fuel in Alaska goes to about $6, $7, $8, depending upon where you live, sometimes the highest $15, the dividend will go up that year because there’ll be more revenue from the resources that year. So, we think that’s better. We pulled that, and 67% of Alaskans said, “I like that idea. The revenues from resources create an alignment, and I think that’s important in Alaska. We have an alignment on that. So, that’s one of the things that we have spent time talking about on a permitting side to do resource development in Alaska, whether it’s mining or oil and gas, whatever. It takes 10 years to get a permit. In other states, it’s a matter of months, and the reason is that it’s just a long process in Alaska. So we are the owner of the resource. We’re an owner state. We’re owners of the land, other than of course a lot of federal land in Alaska, but we should be doing the permitting ourselves. We should begin the permitting process ourselves. So when someone comes in to lease a piece of property for development, they can go to work rather than waiting 10 years. The problem is with the 10 years, you only have a few companies out there that are large enough to wait that long to endure that risk. The biggest risk is not if you’re going to find something. Are you going to get the permit? So we should permit some of these things, and so that we don’t have to wait 10 years.

The other issue that brought me back into the race is the gas line. I’ve been working on the gas line for a long, long time, and we’ve been very close a number of times, very close. But then we have an election like we did in 2018, new governor, new plan, or other other political decisions that have caused it to not be built. We need it now. It used to be something that was sort of nice to have. We absolutely need it now, and you know it’s the largest stranded conventional gas in North America up on the North Slope. We re-inject more gas every day on the North Slope than they consume in California, Oregon, Washington combined. Largest 9.2 billion cubic feet a day. So we need to get that gas to market. We need to get it to Alaskans. And having worked on that before, I’m ready to pick it up where we left off. And you know whatever hand we’re dealt, we’ll play it. You know if this Glenfarne Group is the one, that’s great. We’ll help them every way we can. If they step away, we’ll find out if it’s economic. You know what I do differently than what’s being done now is on the gas line. I would make it much more transparent. I think Alaskans need to know sort of what the deal is, and so. So I would be much more transparent with a gas line.

Dauphinais: What does that transparency process look like? Look like. What does that mean to you?

Walker: That means making the contracts, if negotiated, public. That means if someone comes and says, ‘I need this concession,’ Alaskans should know what they’re going to get out of it. If you’re going to give something, you want to know what you’re going to get back, and so you don’t know that without seeing the contracts. There’s no reason not to make that available.

Dauphinais: Where can listeners learn more about you?

Walker: walkerhoffbeck.com is our is our website and everything we talk about we put on there and post that on there. We had a webinar recently, sort of a town hall meeting, if you will, and so that’s posted on there as well. So go take a look, and we hope that you recognize that our goals are absolutely not a political career or looking for a job. We’re looking to fix Alaska, and we believe we have the the background and the intestinal fortitude to do what’s best for Alaska.

The post Gubernatorial candidate Bill Walker talks fiscal plans, resource development during trip to Ketchikan appeared first on KRBD.

The Alaska Department of Health announced last week its intent to give nearly $75,000 to a Ketchikan nonprofit. The money will be awarded to social services organization Community Connections to help streamline workflow and scheduling in Ketchikan and on Prince of Wales Island.

The project is twofold. One portion of the money will go to improving scheduling and communication for wraparound children’s mental health services.

Max Mercer is the grants director at Community Connections. He says because their children’s mental health programming has so many moving parts, communication can get confusing.

“When the schedule changes because the kid is sick or the kid needs more help or the parents are late or the staff is late, or whatever, we’ve really struggled with communicating to all of those people who are this circle of wraparound supports around the kid,” Mercer said.

The plan is to hire a consultant to help coordinate scheduling and, hopefully, reduce the burden on administrative staff to allow for more reliable and consistent care.

The other piece of the grant will be used to hire a separate consultant to work on the nonprofit’s electronic health records system. Community Connections implemented the system in 2024. Operations Director Milbia Fuller says the system works, but they want it to be more useful. The goal is for it to aid in important decision making by communicating things like how much service each client gets or how much progress they’re making toward their goals.

“It’s always about how we can continue to provide quality services to people who need who need them, and also increase our caseload when we can,” Fuller said. “So getting this grant is going to help us optimize some of our systems and reduce that administrative burden on our teams so we can really focus on client care.”

This award is part of the first round of a series of funding announcements from the state’s Rural Health Transformation Program. Community Connections was just one of 19 projects across the state that will be awarded for improved healthcare access. More funding for projects will be announced every Friday, according to the Department of Health.

The post Ketchikan nonprofit awarded grant to improve scheduling for youth mental health services appeared first on KRBD.

Southeast Alaska is seeing some unseasonably warm weather for this time of year.

Communities in the southern part of the region are under heat advisories for parts of this week, with temperatures forecast in the low 80s. That includes the Ketchikan area and communities on Prince of Wales Island.

Haines and Skagway in Lynn Canal in the northern part of the region also have advisories.

“We are definitely under a period of unseasonably high temperatures,” said Brooke Sullivan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau. “Normally, we’re under all that overcast and rainy weather. Usually around this time of year we’re starting to transition into, you know, some cooler temperatures.”

Dry, warm weather is due to high-pressure systems and stagnant winds, according to Sullivan. The Lynn Canal area is influenced by high pressure out of Canada. For other areas, it’s periods of high pressure in the Gulf of Alaska lasting several days at a time.

“We’re seeing that pattern persist, and don’t exactly have anything to attribute it to — not like any bigger cause or reason — but just this year, seeing high pressure lingering for a little bit longer into the season than normal,” Sullivan said.

Above average warm and dry conditions are expected to continue in the region for another three to four weeks.

“And then I think once we get into the fall, we’ll fall back into our pretty normal pattern where we start to see more atmospheric rivers back to our usual overcast, rainy conditions,” said Sullivan. “So at least we’re going to end the summer on a high note.”

While the weather is unusual in Southeast’s rainforest climate, Sullivan said the region is not yet considered to be in a drought.

The post Parts of Southeast Alaska under heat advisories this week appeared first on KRBD.

It was a rainy evening in Thorne Bay, on the eastern side of Prince of Wales Island. Rod Morrison, superintendent of the Southeast Island School District, walked up to a house and pointed to a newly constructed wooden deck by the front door. The aroma of freshly cut lumber filled the air. 

The deck, and nearby wheelchair ramp, is one of three that high school students recently built for the community’s teacher housing. They also constructed a food pantry, and a home deck in Naukati, a small town 40 miles northwest. 

Morrison said the eight-week summer construction class is one way the district is trying to prepare its students for the workforce. 

“You know, our students in Southeast Alaska, especially on the island, not all of them go to college, but they all go to the workforce,” Morrison said. “And it’s really important to us that the kids, when they leave our schools, can contribute and make a wage, and do what they’d like to do.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the construction industry has seen steady growth since the pandemic. But training opportunities for the trade, especially for those under 18 years old, are few and far between on the large, isolated island. 

It’s the first time the school district has had full-fledged career and technical education, or CTE, programming since they lost state funding for it almost a decade ago. They’re the recipient of two federal grants to fund teachers, materials, training opportunities and more. 

The push is part of a collaborative effort with three other school districts on the island to increase student access to CTE programming. They’re also partnering with tribally led entities, Sealaska Heritage Institute and Generations Southeast, to make these courses happen. 

Morrison said the construction class is the first step in building new career pathways for students on the island. 

“The idea is that Alaska’s workforce comes from the Lower 48,” Morrison said. “We want to help supply Alaska workforce with Alaskans.”

The new construction class provided high school students with real-world building experience. Students also learned basics, like rise and run, while constructing staircases and decks. 

Students even got paid an hourly wage. 

“I think it’s good for the kids to have something constructive to do during the summer,” said course instructor Daniel Nelson. “A lot of times on these small islands, the island doesn’t have a lot to offer for teenagers.” 

Nelson is an experienced construction worker and will soon be teaching several CTE classes on the island. 

“I think it benefits them with a 9-5 job, understanding what it takes to show up every morning, to be diligent, to work hard, and to understand what a job is going to look like after high school,” Nelson said.

Nelson, who was pretty hands off when students were building, said he wants them to walk away from the class knowing how to build a deck of their own. He said even if students don’t pursue a career in construction, the skills they learn is something they can add to their toolbelt. 

Many of the roughly half dozen students who enrolled in the construction course took a woodshop class last school year, where they learned how to use power tools. Others have prior experience in construction work and wanted to build upon those skills. 

But Tristan Dolan, a sophomore at Thorne Bay School, said he had no construction experience and wanted to learn something new. 

“I think my favorite thing about this class was just learning the overall idea of how it would go on a construction site, or like a part of it, and just seeing the overall idea,” Dolan said.

Morrison, the superintendent, said the new course provides a different medium to learn math. He said that’s beneficial to students who might otherwise be unmotivated in a traditional classroom setting. That, he said, can also build confidence. 

“You know, in my opinion, a lot of young people struggle with confidence,” Morrison said. “I think when you build something and you see it come together, there’s a sense of pride that happens with that.” 

Morrison said the district plans to ramp up the island’s CTE courses in the coming school year. The district is going to offer an electrical program where students can get their apprenticeship card with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They also plan to offer courses in welding, scuba diving and other trades. 

Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

The post School districts on Prince of Wales join forces to revive island’s career and technical education appeared first on KRBD.

Greyer Schwegel was good with his hands, said family and friends. The 18-year-old from Hollis had a mechanic’s brain – so much so that his friends would often call on him to fix up their cars. 

“He was the most undependably dependable person you ever met, because he was all over the place all the time,” said Cody Schwegel, Greyer’s dad. He’s a pastor at Liberty Church in Craig. 

Sitting in a meeting room on a recent Friday afternoon, Cody’s eyes lit up as he talked about his son. 

“He was like a 10-millimeter socket – when you needed him, he wasn’t around, but then he would show up right in the right time,” he said.

Cody said his son wanted to help people, and he wanted to love people. He said he never left his friends without saying “I love you.”

Greyer and his buddy, 17-year-old Paul Lingley IV, were killed on July 14 when their dirt bikes collided with each other in Hollis, on the eastern side of Prince of Wales Island. The tragedy has rattled the tight knit island, and people from all over have stepped up to help the family. GoFundMe pages for both families have exceeded their fundraising goals.

Cody said both kids were tried and true Alaskans. At a young age, Paul would regularly be seen playing outside. His dad, Paul Lingley III, said when they lived in Juneau, his quick-witted son would often play games with the neighbor kids. 

“We’d have some pretty epic kickball games, come home and there’s 16 kids in your yard,” Lingley III said. “You got to play with them, but he just liked being outside and playing sports mostly.” 

That love of sports stuck with his son. He enjoyed several sports, but his dad said basketball was his favorite. He played a pivotal role on Klawock High School’s team – serving as point guard. His jersey number, 20, has since been retired. 

And being a key player went beyond the court. Paul lived in a single-parent household, and helped clean and get his siblings ready for school. He also drove his siblings and other family members around town, something he loved doing. When Paul wasn’t driving them, his dad said he was distributing food through a local food program.

“He liked it,” Lingley III said. “He likes talking to people, and he didn’t mind the work. I mean, got to drive around and deliver food, so it was fine.”

Greyer’s role in the community and in his family was just as crucial. He was a caregiver for his younger brother and often took him fishing or four wheeling. If he shot a deer or caught a fish, Greyer would first fill the freezers of elders in his life. 

His dad also said some of Greyer’s friends credit him for being alive today. He said his son supported them through very difficult times, and that his heart and forethought were impressive. 

“I can’t tell you how many I counted said that he was their best friend,” Cody said. “One kid that I’ve not met, but he spent time with, said that he was the most real person and had the best outlook on life that he had ever seen.” 

His dad said Greyer also worked hard. He recently started a job at a mine, which his dad said was the worst job there – but Greyer loved it. He also enjoyed woodworking and even made and sold his own deer calls. 

Cody said his son was a man of faith who valued family, and one day had dreams of having a family of his own. His dad said the two were already looking at plans to build a house. 

“There were so many things that I never got to do with him, that I’m like – it tears me up, you know? The gray hair, and the Christmas mornings of having his kids, and being a part of buying a house or moving into their first house, and all of those amazing memories that don’t get to be,” Cody said.

Cody hopes that this tragedy can put into perspective how fragile life is. He said people on the island are hurting, but he urges them to be honest with their feelings and not cover them up. 

Paul’s dad urges parents to spend as much time with their children as they can. 

“Love your kids, play with your kids, go outside and play, throw a ball with them, because it’s important,” Lingley III said.

Paul’s dad said there’s no place he’d rather be than Prince of Wales Island during this tragedy. He said the community support has been amazing. Over 100 people showed up for a recent bonfire held in memory of the boys.

Greyer’s celebration of life will be at 1 p.m. on August 8 at Liberty Church in Craig. His dad said there’s no dress code. There will be a dessert potluck in Greyer’s honor.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Greyer Schwegel lived in Craig. He lived in Hollis.

Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

The post Teens killed in Prince of Wales dirt bike collision remembered for their kindness appeared first on KRBD.

Candidate filing for the City of Craig’s municipal elections opened today.

There are two seats open on the city council, each for two year terms. There are also two seats open on the Craig School Board, both for three year terms. 

Candidacy forms must be submitted to Craig City Hall by 5 p.m. September 4th. To qualify as a candidate, citizens must have lived in Craig and have been registered to vote at least 30 days prior to the election. 

The election is October 6. 

The post Candidate filing opens for Craig municipal elections appeared first on KRBD.

A hiker was rescued near George Inlet outside Ketchikan on Tuesday afternoon. Alaska State Troopers were contacted by 38-year-old Michael Sherzdian just before 4 p.m. who reported he had fallen down a steep embankment near water and injured himself.

The U.S. Coast Guard responded to the scene at around 4:30 p.m. with the South Tongass Fire Department. State Troopers and members of the North Tongass Fire Department responded in a patrol boat shortly after. All parties worked together to extract Sherzdian in stable condition and put him on the Coast Guard boat.

At around 6:20 p.m., the Coast Guard crew transferred Sherzdian to Emergency Medical Services at Bar Harbor. He was then transported to PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center.

The post Hiker rescued near George Inlet outside Ketchikan appeared first on KRBD.

Miles down a gravel U.S. Forest Service road on the eastern side of Prince of Wales Island, a small stream trickled down from a dense, moss laden forest. Sophie Weaver trekked down to the streambank, marked by colorful wayfinders, and pointed to an old culvert underneath the road. 

“If you come look at this pipe, you can see it’s way undersized,” Weaver said. “The water is pooling up.” 

Weaver is the Southeast Alaska project manager for Trout Unlimited, a national organization that, among other things, aims to enhance fisheries. She said the pipe is less than half the size it should be to properly allow water to flow, and fish to pass, underneath the road. A new, larger culvert will be installed by the end of the summer.

It’s one of six the organization is replacing this year near Luck Lake, south of Coffman Cove. The lake and its tributaries are home to a variety of fish species, from coho and sockeye salmon, to steelhead, to Dolly Varden. The project will reconnect a mile of fish habitat. 

“When you have all these fragmented culverts that are disconnecting really important spawning and rearing habitat upstream, those are reducing populations of fish,” said Marian Giannulis, Trout Unlimited’s Alaska Communications and Engagement Director. She said the former logging roads and culverts serve as transportation routes.

There are around 450 culverts and bridges on Prince of Wales’s Forest Service roads that block fish passage. 

“And when you’re coming in and replacing them, allowing the full access to native habitat, upstream habitat, those are bolstering populations of salmon that are supporting the commercial fisheries, the sport fishing and tourism industry across Southeast Alaska, and also just subsistence fisheries,” Giannulis said. “And food security in rural Alaska, which is incredibly important.”

The organization partners with the Forest Service to determine which culverts need to be replaced. They prioritize projects with ecological and community benefits, like those that improve fisheries and transportation. In addition to enhancing fish passage, Giannulis said the culvert replacements near Luck Lake will better connect communities to homes, recreational activities and subsistence resources. 

And that’s because small, failing culverts can lead to road washouts during high rain events. Most new ones are at least four times the size of the old ones being replaced and can accommodate larger water flows. They’re also designed to more closely resemble the stream’s natural habitat. 

But it’s not just culverts the organization is replacing. They’re fixing up the streams to enhance water flow and fish movement. Giannulis said those will have natural steps and pools so migrating fish have a place to rest.

“So, maybe a larger fish could handle the exertion of passing through a space like this without resting areas. But when you’re talking about juvenile fish, it’s the difference from them surviving or not a lot of times,” Giannulis said.

And Giannulis said the benefits of restoration projects like these go beyond habitat and transportation. She said they also support the economy by bolstering the region’s fishing, recreation and tourism sectors. And they’re hiring local contractors to carry out the projects.

It’s also the organization’s first restoration effort on Prince of Wales Island in about two decades. Over the next few years, they plan to restore six more culverts on the western side of the island. The projects are funded by a mix of federal dollars from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as state and private moneys. 

Giannulis said at first glance, some of the restoration sites might not look like a place where fish could be found. But she said having full connectivity to rearing grounds is what sustains salmon populations in their freshwater habitats. 

“The number of culverts across Prince of Wales and across the Tongass National Forest in total, and the broader Southeast Alaska in general – it’s cutting off access to hundreds and hundreds of miles of upstream habitat that salmon need to be able to survive and to thrive,” Giannulis said.

The Prince of Wales projects aren’t Trout Unlimited’s only restoration efforts underway in the region. They’re partnering with the Forest Service to design a new culvert in the Last Chance Campground, near Ketchikan. And they have ongoing projects near Wrangell, on Kuiu Island, and in the Chugach National Forest, in Southcentral Alaska. 

Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

The post Nonprofit works to enhance fish habitat on Prince of Wales appeared first on KRBD.

Running water was restored Tuesday in Hydaburg, a small community of about 400 people on the southern end of Prince of Wales Island. The town was without running water for over a week. 

According to Hydaburg Mayor Anthony Christianson, recent issues with the city’s water pressure began in early July. In response, city workers bled the system to remove airlocks in the line. Christianson said that only temporarily fixed the issue, and the city again had low water pressure within a few days. 

“So, they had to go look further up the line and found that the line from the reservoir area where we draw from the river to the station where we chlorinate and filter our water – there was breaks, like three breaks in the line,” Christianson said. “So, they had to go up and repair those three breaks and flush that, and clean that, and clear it out.”

Christianson said workers followed the underground water line to stabilize pressure in the system. They’re also replacing a section of piping. The town is under a water boil notice and is asking residents to conserve water when possible. Hydaburg’s burn ban notice, which was issued earlier this week when there wasn’t running water, is still in effect. 

This isn’t the first time the city has experienced issues with its aging water infrastructure. Christianson said within the last year, it’s experienced freeze-ups and breaks. 

The city is also waiting to build a dam and is currently pulling water with a pump from a nearby river. Christianson said that can complicate things. 

“You’re pretty much subject to the ebb and flow of the river, and how much rain comes and goes, and a higher siltation,” he said. “So, the pump’s been struggling in keeping up with that as we wait to build a dam.” 

In response to Hydaburg’s water crisis, numerous communities and organizations across southern Southeast Alaska donated potable and bottled water. Each Hydaburg household was supplied with potable water and a case of bottled water every day. 

Klawock and Craig, an hour’s drive from Hydaburg, sent down their water operators to help resolve the issue. Groups in those towns also offered showers to those in need. 

Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

The post Hydaburg restores city water appeared first on KRBD.