Unalaska, AK – Unalaska's public safety employees and the city administration remain at an impasse in contract negotiations following an attempt at mediation late last month.

Both city officials and representatives of the public safety union say that attempts to negotiate the employees' contract, which expired on June 30 of last year, will most likely go to arbitration. At the executive session following Tuesday's meeting the Unalaska City Council voted to reject the most recent offer by the Public Safety Employees Association, the union that represents the department employees.

Unalaska, AK – Next week Unalaskans will have a chance to weigh in on where ships should be taken if they run into trouble around Unalaska Island.

Consultants from Nuka Research and Planning Group will be in Unalaska on Wednesday night to get feedback from local residents on what the best places of refuge in the area are. The idea is to compile a plan that local, state and federal authorities could use in the event of a maritime emergency, and this is an opportunity for Unalaskans to make sure local concerns and knowledge are included in it.

Unalaska, AK – A factory trawler crew member was sentenced to a brief prison term and a $1,000 fine after pleading guilty Monday in federal court to sexually harassing a fisheries observer last spring.

Eduardo Ornelas-Morales will serve 15 days' jail time and one year of probation for the incident, which took place onboard the trawler Unimak in April 2006. An affadavit filed in court alleges that Ornelas tried to kiss the observer on multiple occasions. He later pulled at her clothing and tried to grope her, at which point she reported the incident to the captain and the deck boss, according to the affadavit.

Unalaska, AK – Work has begun in earnest on construction of a new South Channel bridge. Local contractors and state Department of Transportation personnel are in Unalaska doing preliminary work for the project, which is scheduled to be completed in three years. ADOT Project Manager Shaun Combs said they'll probably finish sooner than that.

"Weather permitting, we're shooting for a two year project," he said. "Hopefully we'll be wrapping things up around October 2008, and removing the existing bridge."

Unalaska, AK – Although it's great for wildflowers and heather, the Aleutian environment isn't exactly hospitable to other types of plants, as anyone who's ever looked at one of the tortured spruce specimens around town knows. If you've experienced frustration trying to garden here, you'll want to show up for a couple of talks being given by University of Alaska Fairbanks development agent Bob Gorman in Unalaska this week.

Unalaska, AK – The body found in Udagak Bay last month has been positively identified as the fishing processor who disappeared off the Northern Victor in February.

State Medical Examiner Franc Fallico says his office made the match this week after a search effort by investigators from his office and the Alaska State Troopers turned up dental records for 23-year-old Joseph Arop in Amarillo, Texas. Arop had immigrated to Texas from Sudan before moving to Seattle and taking a job as a processor on Icicle Seafoods' Northern Victor.

Unalaska, AK – A crab boat that spent nearly four decades in the Bering Sea will begin a second life as a tourist attraction in Ketchikan later this month.

For a fee, visitors to the Southeastern port can get a tour of the fishing vessel Sea Star, which appeared on the first season of the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" before the boat was retired from the crab fishery following crab rationalization in 2005.

Unalaska, AK – Unalaska's Filipino community packed into the big gym at the City School Sunday night for a landmark event: the first performance by a Filipino artist in Unalaska.

They actually got to see four of them: Singers Kuh Ledesma, Pops Fernandez and Eric Santos and comedian Chokoleit, all of whom entertained the crowd with more than two hours of music and entertainment.

Early on in the show, Fernandez told the crowd that while this was the first performance of its kind in Unalaska, she hoped it wouldn't be the last.

Unalaska, AK – The state Department of Environmental Quality is testing bays and harbors around Unalaska for oil contamination, more than a decade after they were first identified as polluted.

Iliuliuk Bay was listed as an impaired body of water on account of petroleum pollution in 1990, and Dutch Harbor followed suit in 1994. DEC Division of Water environmental program specialist Laura Eldred said that both bodies of water were listed because of oil sheens that appeared on the surface at the time, but the DEC hadn't done on-site testing prior to last week.