A humpback whale is swimming free after being untangled from mooring lines near Prince of Wales Island on Thanksgiving Day (11-22-18). A NOAA biologist and a local pilot postponed Thanksgiving dinner to disentangle the whale.
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A Sitka couple who miraculously survived a massive landslide at Redoubt Lake in 2013 want to officially name the small lake formed that day for their border collie, Luna, who was never found.
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Business owners Brit Galanin and Alana Peterson took the lead in Sitka for Alaska Startup Week. They told the Sitka Chamber of Commerce (11-14-18) that Sitka -- while a good place for entrepreneurship -- needs a more collaborative and supportive environment for people taking risks starting up businesses.
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Sitka schools had 38 students less than expected in October -- the month when enrollment is officially counted and reported to the state for budgetary purposes. The impact the decline will have on this year’s budget is not yet fully known.
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NOAA and the University of Alaska are involved in a study that they hope leads to the integration of human experience into fisheries management. It could change decades of fisheries management in Alaska in which ordinary peoples’ observations, expectations, and knowledge have played no role at all.
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The City of Sitka is performing an audit of homes eligible for property tax exemptions, and at least one senior is crying foul. Mary Todd Anderson is hoping others join her in opposing the city’s plans to visit her home once a month for an entire year, to ensure that she’s actually living in her exempt property.
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The Greater Sitka Legacy Fund has announced nearly $16,000 in grants to Sitka organizations this year, and is looking to make even more grants in the future. But the fund has got to raise more money itself for that to happen.
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Sitka students overall are performing better on standardized testing than the state average, but Alaska Natives are not doing as well as their non-Native peers. The so-called “achievement gap” has been a source of concern in the Sitka School District for over a decade.
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A trial date has been scheduled in September, 2019, for a former Sitka police detective who’s blown the whistle on procurement practices in the department, and claims he was demoted as a result. A Sitka-based forensic agency has volunteered to investigate the charges for free.
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In what the parties are calling a unique public-private partnership, the Sitka Electric Department has just installed five new cell phone towers -- on behalf of wireless service provider GCI. The deal could help shave Sitkans’ electric bills by around $2-million over the next 20 years.
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