The City of Bethel has finished drafting an itemized budget for the $8.4 million in federal CARES Act Funding it received, which the city council still has to approve. The CARES budget includes $2 million in grants for Bethel businesses and non-profits that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic and changes in local alcohol law have lowered the expected revenue for the City of Bethel by almost $1 million. Plus, the city’s budget for policing continues to go up, even as a national movement calls for the opposite.

The entire Kuskokwim River mainstem opened to gillnets on July 7. Gillnets are the dominant gear to harvest salmon on the Kuskokwim. But in recent years, as restrictions on gillnets have increased, some lower river fishermen have begun experimenting with dipnets to harvest salmon. One of those fishermen is Bethel resident, Aaron Moses. He’s turned dipnetting into a summer pursuit and has begun teaching others how to use this method as well.

NovaGold, one of the companies developing the proposed Donlin Gold mine, has filed a lawsuit against a short-selling research firm. That firm released a report in May opining that the proposed Donlin Gold mine would not be built, and that NovaGold was overvalued.