The U.S. Forest Service is seeking input on how it should manage Prince of Wales Island’s federally owned landscapes. The public comment period is open for a Landscape Level Analysis project, or an LLA.

The Forest Service held a public workshop at the Generations Southeast Building in Klawock on Wednesday. 

Ken Ostrom, Deputy District Ranger on Prince of Wales, says these public meetings satisfy requirements from the National Environmental Policy Act. That’s a federal law that requires the agency to evaluate social and environmental impacts of their actions. The meetings are also valuable in getting an understanding of community priorities.

“It’s just an interactive project,” Ostrom said. “It’s based on communications and in full disclosure of what we have planned. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and we need that feedback.”

The long-term plan includes sustainable recreation, like trails and campgrounds, water passage improvements for fish, and invasive plant management.

Ostrom says the invasive plant management projects on POW typically get the most pushback. He wants people to know that the Forest Service is cautious and strategic when using herbicides. Ostrom says last year, they only treated six acres out of over 3 million on the island. And the treatment areas are typically away from where people live. 

Ostrom says it’s important to be preventative with treating these invasive species. 

“Like I say, we do just a very little bit because we don’t have the invasive problems that they do in other places,” Ostrom said. “And so it’s better to be in front of it than to be chasing it.”

At the meeting, department representatives expressed concern about Canada thistle and other invasive species crowding out the plants native to the region. That can alter nutrients in streams, change stream temperatures and impact fish habitats.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, fish biologist Hannah Harris said the Forest Service’s 2026 schedule for the island is busy. Many of the projects planned are for stream restoration, something she says they’ve made a lot of progress on in recent years. 

“2025 was a year of change for the Forest Service, and continues to be,” Harris said. “But even with a lot of uncertainty and some delays, we’re able to accomplish some projects under POWLLA that we’re really proud of.”

The plan is a live, ongoing document that was initially drafted in 2019. 

Public comment opened on April 15 and is accepted until May 15. That can be submitted online or in person at the Thorne Bay or Craig Ranger Stations. 

The Forest Service will be incorporating public comment into the finalized draft plan next month when the comment period closes. The full plan can be found on the Forest Service website. 

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The Ketchikan Gateway Borough School Board on Wednesday approved the district budget for the upcoming fiscal year. It includes a cut of over 50 staff members and the closure of two elementary schools in an effort to cut back on costs and pay back millions in debt. 

Interim superintendent Sheri Boehlert told the school board that the budget is a compromise — meaning they’ve avoided cutting entire programs. But it’s come at a substantial cost. It includes a cut of over 50 staff members and the closure of two elementary schools in an effort to cut back on costs and pay back millions in debt. 

“We’ve scaled everything back so much that it almost feels like it’s totally cut, because we are making it nearly impossible to do the work that we know needs to be done,” Boehlert.

Boehlert said that includes cuts to the district’s central office, library programming, and mental health supports. It also includes a cut to Revilla, the district’s only alternative school, despite them gaining another grade next year. Ketchikan High School is budgeted to have 15 fewer staff members. 

Earlier this month, the board voted to close both Fawn Mountain and Point Higgins Elementary Schools. That will save the district an estimated $3.2 million. These cuts and closures are due to millions of dollars of debt to the borough, declining student enrollment and high operating costs.

Boehlert said after school populations shift with the reconfigurations, she expects the incoming superintendent will flex the budget and move some staff members across schools as needed. 

A handful of people voiced concerns about the proposed lack of school counselors and mental health supports.

“We do personal counseling… anxiety attacks, self harm, suicidal ideation, there are kids walking in with, you know, snot bubbles because they’ve gotten broken up with or a friend is being mean to them,” Natasha O’Brien, a retired school counselor, said at the meeting. “We got the notification from the state that Ketchikan was experiencing a suicide cluster of attempts. We’re cutting counseling in the wake of that. It’s just beyond me.”

The board later voted to replace one social worker position with one counselor position. They also voted to remove a curriculum director from the budget — a position in central office the board agrees is important, but has gone unfilled for years.

District administrators have struggled with being stretched thin and understaffed in the central office. But board members have said they’re not comfortable adding positions to the budget right now .

Interim Business Manager Lisa Pearce said she understands the perception of adding an administrative position when they’re cutting dozens of staff members and closing schools — but it might be imperative for sustainability. 

“I’m not going to say [your education system] is going to fail, but it is certainly going to lack even the luster of what you have this year,” Pearce said. “That can’t be done by principals who are managing buildings, that can’t be done by one superintendent. Those are investments for the future, so that you have someone who can lead your district in taking these programs forward.”

Board member Jordan Tabb proposed the amendment to remove the curriculum director from the budget. But he clarified it’s not because he sees the position as less important than others — and they’ve been in similarly difficult situations before.

“Like a few years ago, there was a situation where it was thought of as, ‘do we want preschool, or do we want principals?’” Tabb said. “And I think that was a very unfair way to categorize a challenging budget situation, because our administrators and our executives are very important.”

The 2026-2027 budget is required to be submitted to the borough by May 1.

At the meeting, the school board approved a partial list of teacher contracts, and more are expected in the coming month. 

The new superintendent, Kara Four Bear, will start on July 1. 

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Two tribal groups on Prince of Wales Island are asking the Federal Subsistence Board to reverse Ketchikan’s rural designation. The board’s decision last year to reclassify Ketchikan from a non-rural designation allows all residents to hunt and fish on lands once closed to them. 

The Craig Tribal Association and Shaan Seet, a tribal organization on Prince of Wales, submitted requests for reconsideration to the federal Office of Subsistence Management last July. Both cite what they say is the board’s failure to “fully consider the unintended consequences” of allowing 13,000 new subsistence hunters from Ketchikan to access Prince of Wales Island’s deer population.

The requests go on to say that the rural designation intensifies pressure on “a cornerstone of our food security, cultural practices, and economic sustenance.”

The board is set to vote Friday on whether the requests meet the criteria for a full reconsideration process. If it does, the Office of Subsistence Management will conduct a one to two year analysis of the request for reconsideration.

Ketchikan was granted rural status a little over a year ago, but the Ketchikan Indian Community worked for years to get rights to federally regulated subsistence activities. 

KIC argues that the rural designation allows its tribal citizens to exercise traditional subsistence practices. For years under a non-rural designation, people from Ketchikan couldn’t hunt or fish on federally managed lands and waters.

KIC chief executive officer Emily Edenshaw said advocating for Ketchikan’s rural status is a fight the tribe will never stop. She said Ketchikan has “always been rural.”

“We are not on the road system,” Edenshaw said. “We meet rural designation by every standard and more. We’ve had schools shut down. We’ve had a grocery store shut down. Cost of living is higher. Access to goods and services, health care. I mean, you name it, we meet that definition.” 

Craig Tribal Association President Clinton Cook declined to comment. But in the tribe’s request for reconsideration, Cook argues that the board expanded subsistence eligibility without mitigation efforts like harvest limits. 

Elders with both Craig’s tribe and Shaan Seet report that hunts were getting harder and the deer population was declining even before Ketchikan’s rural designation. A report from the Office of Subsistence Management states that Ketchikan’s rural designation will also have impacts on hooligan in the Unuk River and southern Southeast Alaska’s salmon populations.

Ketchikan’s tribe officially proposed the reconsideration of non-rural status in 2022. Ketchikan’s local governments supported it. The Office of Subsistence Management conducted a formal study, and their analysis was inconclusive on whether Ketchikan was more rural or urban. They said there was enough evidence to support both. 

But the subsistence board’s decision to reclassify Ketchikan as a rural community last year came as a surprise and went against the Regional Advisory Council for Southeast Alaska’s recommendation. 

The request for reconsideration of Ketchikan’s rural status is being considered by the board in a private executive session tonight. The Federal Subsistence Board will reconvene tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. 

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.

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The City of Craig put out a survey last month asking for input on how they should manage the growing tourism on Prince of Wales Island. The results were presented at a city council meeting last week.

The survey was requested by residents and 188 people completed it. The city received 134 resident surveys and 54 non-resident surveys. Many said they want less tourism in town. Fewer said they’d like to see more. 

Andy Deering lives in Craig. He helped draft the survey and tally results. He’s skeptical of rising tourism in the community, but was still surprised with some of the results — like how people responded about tourism affecting their quality of life. 

“Only 14% said positively,” Deering said. “And I was actually expecting that number to be higher. I mean, I’ve heard all kinds of people grousing and griping about the tourism and particularly the cruise ship tourism, but tourism in general, but that number is pretty low.”

Many respondents also said they think tourism will affect fishing and hunting competition, exposure to health risks, and their personal privacy. Marine pollution is another top concern. Results also indicate people’s opinions vary based on the type of tourism —  more are in favor of independent travelers or charters than they are cruise ships.

There’s only one cruise ship dock on Prince of Wales Island, and it’s in Klawock. But many passengers spend their time on the island down the road in Craig. 

The survey states that the City of Craig doesn’t control cruise ship schedules or passenger numbers. It’s still unclear what will be done with the results, but people seem to agree it’s a good starting point for how the town should approach rising tourism — even if some say a spike in visitors is inevitable.

Mayor Kasey Smith thanked city staff and community members for their hard work putting together the results. He wanted everyone to be able to voice their opinion before making decisions. 

“Now that we’ve done that, it is coming right around the corner,” Smith said. “So there are some decisions that you know are going to need to be made here relatively quick.”

One of those decisions, Smith said, is how and when they should give out access permits for public community areas. More people responded that they don’t want access permits granted for community areas like Graveyard Trail and Cannery Point. Several respondents indicated they’re worried about congestion on walking trails and increased foot traffic.

Smith said he wanted more discussion on access permits, but he pointed out they could be a useful way to get funding.

“We all agreed that we don’t want to use community dollars to promote tourism or maintain trails,” Smith said. “But we want to keep these trails up to date and in good shape, not only for people from out of state, but for ourselves. And one way to do that is through access grants. “

An overwhelming majority of survey respondents said they would support a Tourism Advisory Committee to provide community input and make recommendations to the City Council on tourism-related matters in Craig.

The idea for the survey emerged last fall, when community members and the city met in the Craig high school auditorium to air their grievances about the town’s rising tourism industry. 

The survey was available for around a month, and the deadline was early April. Results can be found online.  

The first cruise ship is scheduled to dock in Klawock in less than two weeks. Around 50 cruise ships are expected to visit the island this summer. 

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A Ketchikan man on Friday was found guilty of two felony assault charges after a stabbing in October.

Forty-five-year-old Justin William Carpenter was initially charged with one count of first degree assault after police say he stabbed his landlord over a disagreement about a laundry machine. Carpenter was later indicted on two first degree assault counts, one third degree assault count and one attempted murder count. Carpenter was found not guilty of the attempted murder charge.

Prosecutor Jackson Willard, an attorney who represented the state, said during his closing arguments that Carpenter tried to kill his landlord. He argued that Carpenter was the initial aggressor. 

“He was literally fighting for his life,” Willard said. “He had to grab Mr. Carpenter’s arms to prevent himself from being stabbed, even worse than he already had been.” 

Willard also referenced Carpenter’s testimony, saying that the landlord grabbed Carpenter’s arm while talking about laundry. Willard argued that stabbing someone is “not a reasonable reaction” to being grabbed on the arm. 

Carpenter’s attorney, Ariel Toft, said in her closing arguments that it was a case of self-defense. She argued that Carpenter was boxed in, grabbed from behind and wrestled to the ground by his landlord. 

“Remember when we discussed injury selection, that just because somebody uses force against someone doesn’t mean their intent is to hurt or kill that person,” Toft said. “Their intent may be to protect themselves, get somebody to stop hurting them, or get themselves some time to get away.” 

Toft also argued that the state failed to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. 

The jury’s verdict came after a weeklong trial at the Ketchikan Courthouse. Superior Court Judge Katherine Lybrand presided over the case. 

Carpenter’s sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 1 at the Ketchikan Courthouse. 

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.

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The board tearfully and unanimously voted to close both Fawn Mountain and Point Higgins Elementary Schools at the end of this school year. The decision is one that’s been looming for years —  the board restructured the district’s elementary schools last year in an effort to save money. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough. 

Now, with a 3-year plan to pay back over a $5 million debt to the borough, and the state having previously threatened to withhold funds until the board balances their budget, the financial constraints have seemingly come to a head.

Several districts across the state have recently considered consolidating schools or shutting doors in an attempt to meet constricting budgets. Board member Jordan Tabb said that’s not a coincidence.

“It’s almost like every district in the state of Alaska does not have the funds they need to run the district to support their students,” he said. “So you may look at what’s happening here in Ketchikan and say, ‘Wow, Ketchikan isn’t managing its money well.’ We will take the blame where it’s due, but every educator and every administrator in the state has a choker around their neck in the form of limited state funding.”

Tabb said without changes at the state level, he thinks they’ll be in a similar position next year.

“We can’t charge tuition, we can’t run bake sales, we can’t go to the borough, and whether they’d like to give us more money or not, they can’t,” Tabb said. “So we’re sitting here season after season and year after year, having less and less to take care of our children, and watching a cascade of failures occur.”

The decision to close the schools was pushed back from late last month, when the board directed district staff to come up with a comprehensive school closure plan — one that includes where kids from Fawn Mountain and Point Higgins will go, and how they will get there. 

That plan includes centrally-located schools they call “learning hubs,” and all K-5 students from the closing schools will attend Houghtaling Elementary, instead. It also includes a reconfiguration, with Schoenbar Middle School adding an additional grade and becoming a 6-8 model. Previously, the three district elementary schools were grades K-6 and Schoenbar was grades 7-8. 

The vote to close schools came after nearly four hours of back-and-forth discussion over how to balance next year’s budget, and what positions could be cut from where. 

Acting business manager Lisa Pearce said the budget presented Wednesday night was balanced, but irresponsible. 

“I understand that it’s important to put people in front of classrooms, but you got to keep the lights on,” Pearce said. “This budget does not have that. It’s a balanced budget at the cost of the basic infrastructure pieces that are required to keep this school district running.”

Pearce said there were budget items that could work in an ideal world, but she said it’s not a good idea to operate on those aspirations. Realistically, she said, the budget was likely about $1.2 million short. She said there wasn’t enough money set aside in the budget presented for non-personnel costs like utilities and transportation. There’s also no buffer for contract negotiations.

She urged the board to think about other ways to cut back, like moving to a 7 class period day the high school.

There was ample discussion Wednesday on whether the district should reserve money for important positions that have routinely gone unfilled, like multiple school counselors or a curriculum director. Most board members agreed to axe the curriculum director position from the budget. 

“In three years, we’ll hopefully be done paying this debt to the borough and could afford to add a curriculum director,” board member Ali Ginter said. “At this point, we can’t even afford curriculum.”

Interim Superintendent Sheri Boehlert said central office and administrative staff are already stretched thin, and some positions that could get removed from the draft budget are crucial. She said she knows the board seemed to have a consensus that they’ve been fine without a curriculum director, but that shouldn’t be the status quo.

“If we had a curriculum director, they would be guiding us right now on, ‘these are the programs we need to maintain because these are the ways curriculum pathways go through schools,” she said.

Boehlert also said after she finishes her contract as Interim Superintendent, she will not return to her previous position as principal of Schoenbar.

One thing all board members seem to agree on: it’s unreasonable to cut staff from Revilla Junior and Senior High School, the district’s only alternative school. The budget presented Wednesday would cut staff, despite the school gaining an additional grade in the next year.

The board unanimously voted to reject the budget in first reading. They directed district staff to fix the budget as presented to save an additional $1.2 million.

The school board will meet in a special meeting this Friday, and again for a regular meeting on the 15th. They need to approve the district budget by the end of the month in order to present it to the borough.

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The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly on Tuesday approved a rezoning request to allow for a proposed substance abuse healing center north of town. That’s after the Ketchikan Indian Community purchased the site, which was the former Salmon Falls Resort, last fall. 

The rezoning decision came after hours of public testimony and two days of back-to-back meetings. Ketchikan Indian Community members and north end residents took to the assembly chamber’s podium – some in support and some against using the property for a tribally-led healing center at the former resort.

Tribal CEO Emily Edenshaw was the first to speak on Monday. Like some others, she wore a black t-shirt that read “I support KIC and the Healing Center at Salmon Falls.” 

Edenshaw said the assembly’s decision goes beyond zoning.  

“I ask you all this: what if we do nothing? Because right now the reality is that in our community, our people are struggling. And KIC is doing something about it,” Edenshaw said.

According to the tribe, the proposed healing center would be a 24-hour supervised residential facility with counseling and structured clinical programming. That could include job training. The tribe said the facility would not be a detox center.  

KIC’s original request was to rezone five adjoining lots on the property from Future Development and Low Density Residential zones to the General Commercial zone. But the zoning request was later altered to reclassify just three adjoining lots after borough staff recommended denying the rezone of the two other parcels.

A rezone request must be vetted by the borough’s planning commission and approved in two separate meetings by the assembly before taking effect. The borough’s planning commission decided in January that rezoning wasn’t necessary because the tribe’s intended use for the property fit within its current zoning parameters. But borough officials indicated that the property’s commercial history as a bar, restaurant and hotel supports the rezone for the three lots. An information packet from the borough states commercial use on some of the property was once permitted under a previous version of the zoning code.

Many of those who spoke in favor of the rezoning request on Monday were affiliated with KIC. 

“I could tell you right now, we are never going to sell that property, said KIC facilities management director Jim Gillian. He said that healing is part of KIC’s plan, and that the Salmon Falls site once belonged to his people.

“It’s ingrained in us. It’s our land, it’s our property, it’s our tideland,” he said.  

Gillian called the property and its waterfall a “unicorn.” 

“I want to assure others that we’re not letting go of this land,” Gillian said. “It’s our most favorite piece of land. We love this land, and we want to take care of it, and we want to be good neighbors.” 

Charles Edwardson, who like many, spoke at the March meeting, urged the assembly to approve the rezoning request. He said that “lives will be saved today, tomorrow and many years to come.” Others spoke to the need for a local substance abuse healing center or shared their own experiences with substance misuse. Tlingit and Haida President Richard Peterson also testified in favor of the zoning request.

But like in prior meetings, not everyone who testified was on board. Many who spoke against the rezone are residents of the nearby Waterfall Creek Subdivision, which was established in the 1980s as a low-density, rural residential neighborhood. 

Colby Slanaker, who spoke at all three meetings, believed the rezone request goes against the historic use of the property. He’s concerned about what the property could become under the rezone. A General Commercial rezone could allow for a range of wholesale, retail or service establishments. Dan Lindner had questions about emergency response times, security and physician capability on site. 

Kayla Young, who read a letter from Waterfall Creek resident John Rosenfeld, said a rezone is incompatible with the surrounding area’s land use. 

“Once the designation is in place, it opens the door to a wide range of large-scale commercial and institutional uses that could permanently alter the character, safety and livability of the neighborhood,” Young said on behalf of Rosenfeld. “We are not asking you to deny the need for services, we are asking you to place them somewhere they belong, in appropriately zoned commercial areas with existing infrastructure and compatibility with surrounding uses.” 

Some residents who were opposed to the zoning request said that approving it would go against the borough’s recently passed comprehensive plan, which sets policy for development and growth in the area. Some also felt that an approval could constitute spot zoning, or rezoning of a parcel that is not in line with the surrounding area. Borough attorney Glenn Brown said because of the historic use of the Salmon Falls property, spot zoning is “less of a concern in this one case.”

Some assembly members still had concerns about the rezoning request after over two hours of public testimony. A few of them suggested compromises that would give nearby property owners a seat at the table. The assembly adjourned around 10:30 p.m. on Monday due to time constraints but continued to deliberate on Tuesday.

After several amendments were introduced and failed, the assembly approved in a 5-1 vote KIC’s zoning request with a compromise brought forward by assemblymember Bridget Mattson. It would require planning commission approval of a conditional use permit if the tribe were to bring detoxification facilities or port and vessel services to the property, which were concerns for some nearby residents. KIC members said during the Monday night meeting that they have no plans of bringing a detox center or cruise ship facilities to the property.

At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, assemblymember Rodney Dial said the Salmon Falls request was the hardest rezone he’s dealt with in ten years. KIC’s next steps in bringing the holistic healing center to fruition is interviewing for a director and hashing out a site plan, among other things. 

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.

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At SEAMAX, Ketchikan’s new theater, there’s one movie playing: “Edge of the Wild.” 

It’s an around 20 minute documentary-style production with drone footage across Alaska — and it’s a 4-D, multi-sense experience. The seats tilt and shake. Water sprays out of the arm rests to accompany footage of white water rafting in Hope. Wind blows in your face when you’re dog mushing in Seward. The seats vibrate like you’re on a bumpy dirt road on an ATV excursion in Ketchikan. 

The ground floor theater can seat around 70 people. The main purpose of that theater is to show SEAMAX’s own movie, Edge of the Wild, produced just for this experience. 

Travis Robbins is a partial owner of SEAMAX. He lives in Ketchikan, and says this idea was in the making for years. 

“I’m one of those guys that just likes to write down ideas constantly, and it was just a dream,” he said.

Years ago, around 2017, he went to the Phoenix Zoo with his kids and watched “A Bug’s Life.” There, something clicked.  

“It had, like, the butt ticklers and the spray water and stuff like that,” Robbins said. “I was like, man, if we could have something in Alaska where you did this and got to experience Alaska in this 4-D style thing, it would be epic.”

When the owners of the old Coliseum Theater announced they would be closing, Robbins already had the idea for SEAMAX. He thought they would have to construct a whole new building for it, but the old theater closing lined up perfectly with their plans. He says when they bought the building, they made a promise to the previous owners that it would remain, in some way, a movie theater. Robbins and his business partner, Mark Sivertsen, teamed up with two of their friends from the Lower 48, Mike Opatril and Lance Ziebarth, to fund the project and put their ideas into action. 

And it didn’t come without setbacks. Last November, people broke in and vandalized the space, slashing the big screen they had just installed. For a while, they didn’t know if insurance would cover it — or how they would pay for it without any operating revenue.

“People think you can just go on, you know, Amazon.com and order a screen,” Robbins said. “It’s not that simple.”

Those screens are specific and expensive, and installation is a precarious process, said Ian Ziebarth, a project manager for SEAMAX.

“We’re not some big theater company out of the Lower 48 that, do this every day,” Ziebarth said. “We’re just regular people. We’re just people trying to figure out how to run a theater and make it as cool as possible for everybody… we have to learn the ropes of running a movie theater and getting all the best movies and all that for everybody.”

Some people were skeptical. They lashed out online, worried they were losing an important feature for locals for the sake of tourism dollars. Even as construction began, Robbins and Sivertsen mostly stayed quiet about it. The project moved quickly, with all of the construction and film production happening in less than a year. Some of that process entailed figuring things out on the fly. 

“That’s why we had bit our tongues this whole time,” Robbins said. “We were really concerned that we were going to give people false promises. And, I mean, we got kind of beat up a little bit on it, on the social media aspect, but we had to just kind of ignore it.”

Robbins and Sivertsen say the movie does have local, community interest. The “Edge of the Wild” producer traveled across Alaska to get drone footage, and they hired a Ketchikan local to do narration. It’s a unique, jam-packed experience with a Ketchikan-focused, trivia style informational pre-show.

They recognize it is marketed toward tourists. Sivertsen said that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“Tourism is, unfortunately, one of the driving markets here right now, and so you kind of got to work with the hand you’re dealt,” Sivertsen said.

He said he wants to bring in profit and make it a benefit to the community. 

“The main thing is that we’re able to employ people year round,” Sivertsen said. “That’s my ultimate goal. One, to have a successful business, and two, to keep people employed.”

Sivertsen says they have been working with locals in every aspect of the project, from construction to social media to audio production. He hopes that the upstairs theater, which has been updated, will eventually show Hollywood movies and new releases. It’s unclear if that will include evenings in the summer, or just in the off-season. 

Robbins says they need local support, and a successful summer, to make that happen. 

“Without a different concept to keep the money coming into the theater, this thing would have been a parking garage or, like they say, another jewelry store,” Robbins said. “So I’m personally uber thankful that we’re able to keep a movie theater in Ketchikan. It’s going to take some, definitely some tourism money to keep it alive.”

They’re still figuring out what Hollywood movies they’re going to show and when. Robbins said they might show classic Christmas movies around the holidays, for example — but he wants the concept to be special, and to be utilized by the community. He said the previous theater often sat empty. He doesn’t want that.

“I know everyone’s like, ‘hey, like, we miss the movie theater,’ but we need you guys to show up too,” he said. “I mean, we’re gonna have to have people showing up to watch the Hollywood movies in order for it to make sense to keep the production going and stuff.”

SEAMAX is already selling tickets for this spring and summer, with shows beginning later this month. Tickets are available on their website. 

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The City and Borough of Wrangell and the City of Ketchikan have adopted a joint resolution to establish a Maritime Prosperity Zone. They’re looking to build upon their strengths – from shipbuilding to port infrastructure to maritime logistics. Each community has deepwater access, has developed expanded maritime industrial infrastructure and uses low-cost renewable hydroelectric power.

Wrangell’s borough manager Mason Villarma said they’re responding to an executive order issued by President Trump in 2025 to “restore America’s maritime dominance.” 

“We realized that there’s strength in a partnership with Ketchikan to get the home ports, to get the maintenance facilities together,” Villarma said. “So we’ve deemed ourselves collectively as the Southeast Alaska Maritime Industrial Corridor, and so we’re seeking designation for our two communities. There’s only 100 communities in the United States that will get this declaration.”

According to Trump’s Maritime Action Plan, those hundred selected communities will have that designation for 10 years. 

According to the President’s executive order, maritime workforce and shipbuilding capacity has “been weakened by decades of Government neglect, leading to a decline in a once strong industrial base.” It goes on to say that “the United States constructs less than one percent of commercial ships globally” while China produces “approximately half.”

The executive order’s goal is to allow the selected communities to apply for federal funding and improve workforce development. 

Villarma said federal subsidies and technical support will help the communities that participate in the program. He said the new maritime prosperity zone would help expand domestic capacity and national security. 

“As our national security fleet continues to grow at the Coast Guard and U.S. Navy, there’s opportunities for Alaska to create jobs and do that work here,” Villarma said. “So most of that work, you know, 60% of it, goes to Washington, California, and now they can’t even get into yards. So it’s a really great opportunity.”

JAG Marine Group, for example, has a large-scale shipbuilding and repair yard in Ketchikan and wants to expand in Wrangell. Villarma said the federal designation would help this effort.

Ketchikan City Councilmember Jack Finnegan said if the maritime zone is selected, it could help catalyze private investment in the region’s maritime industry. He said it could also help grow Ketchikan’s population. 

“Anytime we have the opportunity to strengthen an industry that’s so critical to our community, I think it just bolsters the workforce,” Finnegan said. “It feasibly draws more workers here. It draws more families here.”

And that’s important to both Ketchikan and Wrangell. The latest economic data show that young people leaving Southeast is impacting the workforce. 

A resolution to support the Maritime Prosperity Zone will go before the Ketchikan Borough Assembly on Monday. Borough Mayor Austin Otos expects the assembly to approve it. 

KSTK’s Colette Czarnecki contributed to this report.

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. 

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The Forest Service is revising the Tongass National Forest management plan, and will use community input as guidance on how they will manage the forest for the next 10 years or so. 

Delilah Brigham, a planning officer for the Tongass, gave a presentation of suggestions to a room of about 20 people in the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center on Wednesday.

 “In order for us to make sure that we are providing the lifestyle and recreational opportunities that they want from their public land, we have to have that feedback from the public in order to incorporate it into a plan revision,” Brigham said.

Brigham says when they’ve asked communities about their visions for the Tongass, there’s been emphasis on recreation opportunities, sustainable timber management and protection of existing ecosystems. 

The National Forest Management Act recommends management plans be updated every 10 to 15 years. The management plan for the Tongass was last updated in 2016. Brigham says when getting feedback from people in Southeast, there’s been a lot of interest in balancing recreation use for tourists and locals. The current iteration of the plan, she said, doesn’t touch on tourism much.

The Forest Service has been getting input from people across the country. But Brigham, who lives on Prince of Wales, says the local input is crucial. 

“These communities in which we’re having the workshops, people are living and working and are in the National Forest every single day,” Brigham said. “People who are living here are more affected by our management activities than somebody who lives in West Virginia. They want us to really look at our management of the Tongass National Forest, because it’s important to them as well, but our management activities aren’t impacting them directly, like it does here with these communities.”

Brigham specified that the document presented is not an official draft plan, but an engagement document of suggestions for community members to build on. She said public feedback is essential to providing a robust forest plan — and she’s not worried about contradictory directives coming from Washington, D.C. She said they will have to adhere to the plan no matter what comes from the White House.

“The plan gives the vision of what we want to accomplish on the Tongass,” Brigham said. “Executive orders and other direction that comes from Washington D.C. gives more on, ‘this is what we want you to focus on,’ but our plan is the guiding document, and actually how we implement it.”

Jeff DeFreest is with the Recreational Aviation Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for protecting access to the backcountry. He lives in Ketchikan. He showed up to the event because he’s specifically interested in protecting the Forest Service cabins in the Tongass. Some of those cabins are fly-in only. He wants the cabins to be specifically addressed in the plan. 

“When it comes down to congressional funding, they’ll make priorities and it’ll be, you know, ‘do this, do that, build a trail,’” DeFreest said. “But the cabins could really easily fall through the cracks in funding and delegation of congressional dollars.”

He wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Some of these cabins that are not getting as much use, or they’ve been neglected because of lowered budgets, and so basically being allowed to decay, and, you know, with deferred maintenance on them, and then it’s too expensive for the Forest Service to fix them.”

Forest Service staff provided feedback forms for attendees to fill out and specify their interests and concerns. Submittals are welcome until May 6. The Forest Service will then synthesize the community input to draft plan content and release the draft environmental impact statement this fall. The final plan is expected next summer. 

In the next several weeks, there are in-person feedback sessions being held across Southeast, including in Craig, Hydaburg, Naukati Bay, Kasaan and Thorne Bay. 

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