On Thursday, the Bethel Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for a liquor store that the Alaska Commercial Company wants to build.

For several years now, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta tribes have named public safety as their top priority. Some communities in the region don’t have any law enforcement. The ones that do often don’t have enough, or don’t have any training. On Thursday, June 13 that situation changed for a few communities across the region when Yuut Elitnaurviat in Bethel graduated a class of 13 rural law enforcement officers.

Napakiak applied for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to help repair its eroding boat landing; spring storms wiped out most of it this year. Now barges, boats, and hovercraft don’t have a place to park.

The state’s battle to reduce the size of its budget played out in microcosm in the chambers of the Bethel City Council, which voted unanimously to raise the rent charged to the state for the DMV office in front of city hall. The state had requested a rent lower than market value due to budget cuts, but the city council refused. The difference is several thousand dollars per year, but council member Mitchell Forbes called it principle, the city’s “$6,000 pushback to Gov. [Mike] Dunleavy’s approach to rural Alaska.” 

The Alaska Commercial Company, better known as AC, wants to open another liquor store in Bethel. On Thursday, June 13 the Bethel Planning Commission is scheduled to vote on whether to give the business a permit it would need to do that. Receiving a conditional use permit means that the commission considers the proposed location safe to operate a liquor store. In AC’s case, that location is the old Sammy’s Market on Bethel’s Third Avenue.

10:00 a.m. The reported tundra fire off Bethel’s Wildlife Lane on Thursday morning turned out not to be a tundra fire at all. Instead, Bethel firefighters extinguished a burning pickup truck and bicycle in the Old Crow sandpit. The flames did not spread beyond the vehicle.