Author: kfskadmin

The City of Petersburg honored a local family last weekend for a donation of land to the towns Public Library project. The land will allow for a park adjacent to the proposed site for the new library building.

Petersburg streets were packed with locals and visitors over the weekend during the 51st annual Little Norway Festival. The celebration of Norwegian culture included four days of food, music, art and more.
KFSK’s Alex Hotz attended a variety of events and has this report:

The University of Alaska is working with commercial fishermen to study how best to keep whales away from fishing gear.
Researchers with the Seagrant Marine Advisory Program are spending several days on the water in the Petersburg-Wrangell area this spring and summer. They’re studying whale behavior around gillnetters and the methods some fishermen use to avoid or deter the animals. Often, that can simply involve making some sort of noise like reving the engine or banging on the side of the boat.
The local study is already underway with a few gillnetters who are part of the states king salmon test fishery in district eight. Seagrant has a companion effort in the works with seiners in the kodiak area. The idea is to figure out what methods work best and provide that information to all fishermen around the state.
The program’s Sunny Rice of Petersburg and Kate Wynne of Kodiak call it MAD whales, which an acronym for monitoring, avoiding and deterring whales. They spoke with KFSK’s Matt Lichtenstein:

Local and visiting artists are showing off their works throughout Petersburg’s Mayfest celebration. KFSK’s Alex Hotz visited several displays around town and put together this audio portrait.

The Petersburg City Council this week voted against budgeting 50 thousand dollars to update the town’s comprehensive plan. City administrators had planned to hire a consultant to help revise the 9-year old document, but the councilors were not ready to spend the money. Matt Lichtenstein has a look at that decision and some other news from Tuesday’s special budget meeting.