Drive By

I received my first drive by tip last night. I was walking home from the school board meeting and I noticed a low pick up truck, which had already driven past me once, start to slow down as it approached me again. It was filled with three or four young men in their early twenties perhaps. I thought they were going to offer me a ride home, but they didn't. I didn’t recognize them.

“Have you heard about the controversy in the police department?”

No, I said. What controversy?

“The animal cruelty.”

What are you talking about? I asked again. Who?

“Bruce,” the driver, the only one who spoke to me, said. “You should look into it.”

Alright, I said.

And they drove off.

Public Criticism

This was read into the record during Persons To Be Heard at the February 13 city council meeting:

Dear Mayor and council,

I am here is response to the February 8th article in the Wrangell Sentinel. I am very disappointed in the way the article was written. I understand the need to sell papers but to misconstrue what a person says to make an article more appealing is distasteful in my opinion. First, I have never denied involvement regarding the WSI contract. That just doesn’t make sense; my name is after all on the contract. In my own defense, I was out of town until the end of January and have been working on getting all delinquent accounts noticed. Along with trying to finish all Government reporting and complete any unfinished projects before I leave the electrical department and move to a new city department. It is not easy to completely change the administration of a total department in 2 ½ months and I have been very stressed with this task. I do believe Lisa did a very good job of trying to pit department/employee against the council. Mayor McCandless is correct in saying that there is a misunderstanding. I did not say that it had been turned over to her or to any council person. I did say that there had been workshops and that I was not sure what was going on with everything. I admit, I did lose my patience with Lisa, her constant hounding and trying to put words in my mouth did not set well with me and I probably did not make the best impression. I have always had great pride in my job and to cause problems or embarrassment to the city or anyone serving the city is not my goal and I truly apologize if this was the case. I did follow up on the situation and found what direction needed to be made. I then made contact with WSI that day both written and verbally in regards to the past due payment and worked with them on getting the correct contract amounts for payment. They promised to make the payment by the end of the day. I passed all this information on to our City clerk and hoped everything was back on track. It was unfortunate that both I and Julie from WSI have been out of town, it’s not an excuse just inconvenient.

I was not informed that Lisa was interviewing and I told her the first time that she called that I did not have the information she was asking for at the time and to contact City hall. This office does not make a habit of discussing people’s account with people not involved with that specific account unless it’s working with public assistance offices. I did not feel I wanted to discuss this with the media and made that known. People do deserve a certain amount of privacy when it comes to their finances and I have always tried to respect this no matter who they are.

Once again I am sorry that this turned into a circus. It was not my intention but clearly it was the intention of the newspaper.

Respectfully,
Terri Henson
Electrical department



Below is the link to the article Terri Henson is referring to:

http://www.thewrangellsentinel.com/Stories/020807wsi_payments.htm

Valentines

Today is Valentines Day and I’m at work after having maybe two hours of sleep, if even that. City council lasted until midnight last night and I sent my second story on the meeting in at around 6 am. There was no way I could not write a story about ammonia being used as a refrigerant in the cold storage. It’s better that I don’t explain the importance of the previous sentence. It could take me days.

Abby sent me some emails that made me smile.

Here I am on Valentines Day two years ago in Hong Kong. Abby and I shared a romantic set meal. I don't look any different than I do today.



I emailed Abby back and thanked her for reminding me of a previous life.

Happy Valentines Day everyone.

It's past 4 pm and the sun is still out

My friend Mike in Petersburg (the reporter at the Petersburg Pilot, my counterpart) wrote a recent blog entry in which he referred to “the sense of family felt in a small town where I'm related to nobody.”

It’s a perfect phrase. I’ve written about this sentiment before but wanted to highlight it again because it is this exact quality of small southeast Alaskan towns that makes the living here worth it.

What’s funny about that phrase is that not many people in Wrangell or Petersburg could say the same thing. Everyone is related to everyone, someway, somehow. I actually can’t speak about Petersburg, but it’s definitely the case in Wrangell. It’s to do with the small population pool. Not to say that people are incestuous; just that there’s a lot of the marrying young, divorcing young, trying someone new, and so forth. There’s this saying here, “You don’t break up with your girlfriend; you just lose your turn.”

I’ve veered from where I’ve started.

Fridays in the office have become revolving door day – one visitor after another. Can’t get any work done. It’s great.