The attached building at left was meant to be a bedroom for the upstairs apartment at the old Elbow Room -- but city officials say that's not what they agreed to. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
Plans to turn an old bar into a way to raise money for emergency housing in Unalaska are slowing down.
That’s after the city discovered that the nonprofit Alexandria House had worked on the project all year without a building permit.
They told pastor John Honan to stop work and apply for one -- but the plans he submitted weren't what they expected. As KUCB's Annie Ropeik reports, that's put the project on partial hold.
Two boat captains were in Unalaska District Court on Thursday after being caught with undersized red king crab.
Thirty-two-year-old Elliot Neese is the captain of the F/V Saga. The vessel was cited during a delivery of red kings last week. Dockside samplers found that 3.3 percent of the crab on board was illegal -- either too small, or female.
Neese called into court from his vessel Thursday. And so did Peter Liske, the 66-year-old captain of the F/V Valiant. He was found with a catch that was 2.7 percent undersized in late October.
Unalaska made it through a stormy weekend with the lights on, only to lose power Monday morning after a mechanical failure at the powerhouse.
The outage began around 10:30 a.m. and lasted about 10 minutes. Public utilities director Dan Winters says it's the first unplanned, island-wide the city's had in three years.
"We were swapping engines at the powerhouse, taking down one of our big ones, and ... then everything went black," he said Monday night. "There was a bug in there somewhere."
A patch of black ice claimed a truck on Airport Beach Road Tuesday morning, without seriously hurting its driver.
The man was heading toward the airport when the car in front of him started to turn into the LFS parking lot. The driver of the green Chevy 4x4 tried to slow down, but he lost control on the slick roads.
"He slid into the ditch, hit and rolled," says police sergeant Bill Simms.
While the driver did have some injuries to his face, Simms said the man decided to take himself to the clinic for treatment.
City council will meet tonight at a special time to debrief from the midterm election and take up changes to a few capital projects.
That includes budget amendments for replacing and redesigning the floats at the Bobby Storrs Small Boat Harbor. Council will vote on adding more than $2 million from the city ports fund to the project’s budget, along with about a $1.8 million state grant.
Polls are open until 8 p.m. at Unalaska City Hall. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)
Update, 9:30 p.m. Tuesday: The polls have closed at Unalaska's City Hall, and preliminary election results are in.
The two Democrats running for U.S. Congress received a slim majority of the vote in Unalaska. So did Alaska's incumbent governor, Republican Sean Parnell.
Increasing the minimum wage was a much clearer choice for local voters. More than 80% voted in favor. And for the second time in a decade, Unalaskans showed support for legalizing marijuana.
Operations are on hold at the City Dock after high winds damaged the only working crane for loading cargo.
Ports director Peggy McLaughlin says the crane was being moved Friday morning to accommodate an incoming Horizon Lines container ship. A gust of wind caught the machinery and slammed the crane against its emergency stops.
"It hit it pretty good and there’s some obvious repair work that needs to be done to that end of the crane where the stops were," McLaughlin says. "There was a little bit of visible damage on the crane."
