A group of religious organizations and healthcare providers on the eastern Kenai Peninsula have collected over 500 pairs of socks to be distributed to those in need. The socks came from a number of churches – Seward and Moose Pass United Methodist Church, the Catholic Churches of Seward and …

The City Council received its first report on a study of the city’s employee classification and compensation at its meeting Tuesday night. The study remains in a draft state, but a representative from the firm conducting it briefed the council on the firm’s recommendations for Seward.

The City of Seward will soon decide whether to join forces with other Alaska communities under a state-wide effort to collect sales taxes in online transactions. The City Council elected at its Tuesday night meeting to consider a resolution to that effect at a special meeting this Friday at noon.

Emergency repairs to close Seward Highway

Jason Bickling has been selected as the new executive director of the Seward Chamber of Commerce. Bickling took over for retiring executive director Cindy Clock on Nov. 1.

The Seward Fire Department has achieved an Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating of Class 3/3Y, joining only 10 other departments in the state with a rating of three or better. The rating will go into place on Feb 1, according to a press release from the department.

Area law enforcement officers have charged two men with driving under the influence on consecutive days, one inside city limits and the other near Cooper Landing. 

A woman arrested this week for stealing a family member’s car and wallet is also the defendant in an open theft case in which she had been released on bail. Desiree Nosik, 40, has been charged with first-degree vehicle theft and second-degree theft, both felonies.

Seward quietly joined the ranks of hundreds of communities nationwide whose police force has partnered with the Amazon-owned home security company Ring earlier this month. The move, apparently finalized Oct. 15, came with no public fanfare, but its discovery early this week generated a storm…

The Seward City Council chambers overflowed on Monday as dozens appeared to press for more information and action in the case of Preston Atwood, who was murdered in late August. Many in the audience and at least one City Council member wore buttons emblazoned with Atwood’s portrait and the l…

The Seward Police Department announced today that it has forwarded its findings in the investigation into the murder of Preston Atwood to the district attorney’s office for review. Sgt. Karl Schaefermeyer told the Seward Journal that the department would continue to work on the case with pro…

The Alaska SeaLife Center Board has welcomed six new members, each of whom will serve three-year terms beginning this year. The new cohort hails from a mix of public- and private-sector backgrounds and includes local and federal government officials and professionals from several fields.

The Alaska Railroad has begun the search for a developer to replace or refurbish the cruise ship facilities at the head of Resurrection Bay. The project partner would also step in as operator, subject to any agreement ultimately reached between the two parties.

The makeup of the Seward City Council is set to change drastically with the results of last week’s municipal election. Of the four seats up for grabs, only one was retained by an incumbent. The remaining seats all go to challengers, two of whom have previous experience on the council.

Just short of two years after a dramatic storm surge eroded sections of Lowell Point Road and damaged the seawall near the Alaska SeaLife Center, the City of Seward has awarded a $2.5 million contract to restore the gravel thoroughfare to its pre-storm condition. 

The Seward City Council is asking the state Department of Transportation to find an alternative to closing the Silvertip Maintenance Station near the Hope junction on the Seward Highway. DOT announced the closure in late August, attributing it to a decline in motor fuel tax revenue and a $76…

The state has now filed charges against a third person in the August disappearance of three children from a foster home in the Seward area. Mark Quinn, 44, of Seward has been charged with custodial interference in the second degree, a misdemeanor, for his alleged role in the incident.

The Alaska Vocational Technical Center celebrated its 50th anniversary over the weekend, attracting a junket of state dignitaries led by Governor Mike Dunleavy. The governor appeared Friday at a bill signing that marked the official renaming of AVTEC’s Third Avenue dormitory in honor Willard…

The organization looking to step in as operator of local radio station KIBH 91.7 FM kicked off its first membership drive over the weekend at the Seward Music and Arts Festival, collecting a stack of membership slips two inches thick, said Kenai Mountains Public Media President Rick Brown.

The preliminary results of Tuesday’s municipal election show mayoral challenger Christy Terry ahead of incumbent David Squires by a margin greater than the number of absentee ballots, solidifying her bid to be Seward’s next mayor. The preliminary results came in 315 for Terry and 119 for Squ…

Six members of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Band on Tuesday visited Seward Middle School, where they participated in Cee Jay Levine’s music class following a performance at Seward High School. The band does around six hundred performances each year, said bandmaster Lt. Kelly Cartwright.

The Seward High School Booster Club was this year’s beneficiary of an annual dinner auction held by the Alaska Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant and Retailer’s Association, or Alaska CHARR. The auction – which included live and silent components – took place Monday evening upstairs at the Alaska Se…

Over five hundred members of the armed forces have been in Seward this week to participate in a military exercise geared at testing the Navy’s logistical effectiveness in the northern theater. The Seward portion saw a ship-to-shore simulated fuel transfer, involving hundreds of feet of hose …

The Kenai Peninsula Education Association (KPEA) says the executive committees of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association and the Kenai Peninsula Education Support Association, the two unions representing Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s (KPBSD) education and support staff, have v…

The seven candidates for Seward City Council and two candidates for mayor faced off Wednesday evening in the annual pre-election Meet the Candidates Night sponsored by the Seward Chamber of Commerce.

Three of the City of Seward’s executive staff resigned or retired over the past two weeks, two of them after three decades working for the city. 

Responding to concerns about restrictive language in a resolution approving the Seward Community Health Center’s 2020 budget, the City Council on Monday took up the matter again, replacing the offending section with an anodyne provision requiring compliance with “all applicable laws.”

In the early 1990s a small group of like-minded ladies, known as the Aurora Quilters, got together on a regular basis and sewed. In the winter of 1991/92, a quilting class was started on Wednesday evenings at the old Seward Middle School.

The Seward City Council’s approval last week of the 2020 budget for the Seward Community Health Center may prove problematic for the clinic because of apparently restrictive language contained in the resolution that may run afoul of federal rules for health centers.

The Public Safety Report is compiled from numerous sources, both official and unofficial, including police, fire, and EMS dispatches, press releases, official reports, court documents, interviews, and other sources. 

The unions that represent teachers and support staff at Kenai Peninsula schools may call a strike by the middle of this month, say David Brighton and Anne McCabe, presidents respectively of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association and the Kenai Peninsula Education Support Association.

One of the two women participating in a meeting with City Manager Scott Meszaros last week now says that she is the source of a partial recording of the meeting – but contends that she got the recording after the conversation was over, rather than recording it at the time.

The Department of Natural Resources has banned all open fires on the Kenai Peninsula and in the Mat-Su, including camp fires, warming fires, the use of burn barrels,  and charcoal grills. The Department has also extended the fire season statewide until the end of September. If burning is all…

The Seward Police Department’s Officer Morgan Woodard received the American Heart Association’s Heartsaver Hero Award in a presentation at Monday night’s council meeting. 

Update Aug. 30, 11:35 p.m. This article has been updated to reflect comments by City Manager Scott Meszaros.

The gymnasium of Seward High School filled with family and loved ones of Linnea Rose Hribernick on Saturday afternoon, as hundreds gathered to say goodbye to a beloved young woman who passed away Aug. 20, a little less than a month before her nineteenth birthday.

Investigators have found the body of Preston Atwood, 21, the young man who went missing from his home on Sunday, said Seward Police Chief Tom Clemons.

With the crystal-clear view of mountains, Alaskans seldom think of air pollution as a pressing health concern. While Alaska does not battle the air quality concerns shared by many in the Lower 48; such as smog, acid rain or surface ozone; air pollution is still an issue, and surprisingly, is…

The Seward Police Department called off a foot search for Preston Atwood, 21, a local man who went missing Sunday, but it was unclear what, if any, new information had been gleaned in the search.

The Seward City Council will meet Friday evening to consider granting the Friends of the Jesse Lee Home a reprieve from the deadline in a purchase agreement that expires the same day.

The Seward City Council approved the 2020 operating budget of the Seward Community Health Center at its Monday night meeting, but the resolution to do so included a condition that appeared to prohibit “direct hiring of staff related to behavioral health or substance use disorder services.”

The Friends of the Jesse Lee Home (FJLH) now say that the organization will miss an Aug. 30 deadline in its years-long effort to purchase the defunct Jesse Lee Home, a derelict structure dating from Alaska’s early territorial days and symbolic home of the Alaska Flag.

Thirteen years ago, Sam Gordon Riber accompanied his father on a trip that ended the elder Riber’s years-long effort to visit all fifty of the United States.

Alaska State Troopers have charged a Seward-area woman with felony drug possession after allegedly discovering methamphetamine in her car.

Prosecutors in the case of David Endresen, the 64-year-old Seward man accused of amassing a collection of child pornography, have put together a plea deal that would see most of the charges against Endresen dropped, according to documents filed in the Third District Superior Court.

Harbor 360 Hotel owner Tom Tougas has two additional lodging projects in the works, both of them on Third Avenue. Although the two projects are moving forward simultaneously, Tougas says that they had divergent origins and answer to different kinds of lodging demands.

Last week's meeting of the Seward City Council began with confusion over its own agenda and ended with an executive session in which one member refused to take part and left the chambers before it began.

The firm hired by the Seward City Council to conduct the city’s annual financial statement audit has completed its examination of the city’s finances and closed the books on 2018. The audit report contains no findings, reflecting the auditors’ opinion that the city’s financial statements cor…