Author: kfskadmin

Petersburg’s city council will be conducting its first round of interviews with three candidates for city manager.
The short list includes Karl Hagerman, the city’s public works director and soon-to-be-acting city manager after Scott Hahn leaves the job at the end of this month. In a work session Thursday, councilors also decided to interview two out-of-town candidates. They are Stephen Geisbrecht, a manager in Electra Texas and Mark Hoppen a former manager in Gig Harbor, Washington. Geisbrecht initially asked to withdraw his name from consideration last month but the city council convinced him to remain in the running. He’s been the city administrator in Electra since 2003 and has degrees from the University of Phoenix and St. Mary’s College in California. Before he became a government administrator, he worked for a rental car company, a home security company and in real estate information.
Hoppen graduated from the University of Washington and taught high school classes and coached basketball in the 1970s before working for 15 years as administrator in Gig Harbor. He has also worked for the city of Puyallup, Washington, and has served on Washington State’s public works board. He currently works as a consultant focusing on non-profit management.
Karl Hagerman has been Petersburg’s public works director for a decade and started work in the city’s water and waste water departments in 1992. He grew up in Petersburg, graduated Petersburg High School in 1985 and attended the University of Alaska and Northern Arizona University. Hagerman lists three current and former city managers as his references and writes that he will continue as public works director for the city if he is not selected as manager.
Former city councilor John Havrilek withdrew his name from consideration a week ago. The council hopes to video-conference the interviews with the two out-of-town candidates and conduct a similar interview with Hagerman sometime in the next week. The next step would be face-to-face interviews for the finalists.

Members of Petersburg’s police department Tuesday made their case for forming a new police union before an Alaska Labor Relations Agency panel. Both the city of Petersburg and the union currently representing the employees argued against the formation of a third bargaining unit for city employees.

Governor Sean Parnell votoed funding for three capital project requests for Petersburg. The vetoed projects include half a million dollars for upgrades to for Petersburg’s crane dock, 100,000 dollars to plan for renovating the police station and 150,000 dollars for renovations at the Sons of Norway Hall.
That leaves over $2.7 million in the capital budget for Petersburg area projects. Most of that, $1.8 million will go to fund a commercial vehicle drive-down dock in the harbor.
The Mt. View Manor elderly housing building will be getting 370,000 dollars to put toward a new roof and another 11,000 dollars for kitchen repairs. Petersburg Medical center will receive 167,000 dollars for the first phase of roof replacement. The Clausen Museum will get 30,000 dollars to plan for expanding that building and another 75,000 dollars will help shore up the retaining wall on the museum property. Petersburg’s public library can count on $263,000 in additional state grant money for a new library building and Petersburg’s gun range will see $25,000 dollars for improvements.

After being closed for most of last year, the Boys & Girls Club of Petersburg is open again. Grant funding for the Club was not included in the City’s budget this year, but officials say it will remain open with support from the organization’s main office in Anchorage.

Purse seine permits are up almost 40 percent over last year and gillnet permits 30 percent. Their value has been rising steadily since lows in the last decade, but this year’s spike is exceptional.