Author: kfskadmin

The Petersburg City School District has new contract agreements in place with its employees this month, following negotiating sessions with teachers and support personnel this spring. The two employee groups will see small salary and wage increases but have agreed to switch to a cheaper health insurance plan to help the school district save money. Joe Viechnicki reports.

Ketchikan-based artist, author and musician Ray Troll is coming to Petersburg this week for four days of public events that start Thursday. Troll is nationally-known for his realistic yet fanciful depictions of fish, wildlife and other subjects of the natural world. He describes his art as scientific surrealism. Troll may be most prominent for his fish-art t-shirt. Their images are usually captioned with clever puns or turns-of-phrase like “life’s a fish and then you fry” “ain’t no nookie like chinookie” or “if you must smoke, smoke fish”. Matt Lichtenstein asked Troll what drew him to drawing fish.

Petersburg baseball players got some hitting advice from a Hall of Fame third baseman over last weekend. Kansas City Royal great George Brett took time out from a recent sport fishing trip in Petersburg to answer questions and give pointers to Petersburg little leaguers Saturday at the high school gym.

The Petersburg City Council last week agreed to add another 184 thousand dollars in spending to next year’s budget. The funds will mainly go to support emergency services, the citywide computer network, and economic development. More than half of the money will come out of the city’s general fund which is already facing another deficit year. Councilors at Friday’s special meeting quizzed staff about the requests, but they ultimately agreed the items were too important to deny.

Saturday marked the official reopening of the U.S. Forest Service’s newly renovated picnic area at Blind Slough, a popular recreation site 17 miles south of Petersburg. It was also National “Get Outdoors Day” and one of the rainiest Mitkof island has seen in weeks. However local residents still spent the day in high spirits.