“Near-deaths and freezing, running out of gas are some of the issues surrounding being able to go between communities,” said Gordon Brower, director of the North Slope Borough’s Planning and Community Services Department.
North Slope
Sweeping budget lowers spending on schools, university, Medicaid, ferries
Dunleavy says his budget would ensure that the money the state spends matches the money it brings in — without new taxes, PFD cuts or drawing down savings.
How Alaska school districts planned to spend that $20 million
Gov. Michael Dunleavy proposed doing away with $20 million in education funding approved by the Legislature in 2018. Superintendents and lawmakers say school districts were counting on that money, and many have already started spending it.
U.S. Air Force ‘barren lands’ survival course teaches how to stay alive in Arctic wilderness
Survival course trainees are exposed to subzero temperatures and winds that gust up to 30-plus miles an hour. “They don’t go back inside after they come out here and begin the training,” said instructor Sgt. Garrett Wright.
Don’t count on oil to bail out Alaska’s budget soon, says unpublished state tax memo
The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a hot area for oil development right now. But don’t count on new production there to bail out the state budget any time soon. That’s the takeaway from a previously unpublished, two-month-old analysis drafted by former independent Gov. Bill Walker’s administration.
With spring whaling around the corner, sinew thread makers are hard at work
“Everything just falls into place,” says Nancy Leavitt of the hard work involved in sinew thread making. “The problems, the stress, the thoughts you have. Most of them just disappear.”