Homer City Council 2020

Everyone on the Homer City Council seems in agreement that Rob Dumouchel of Eureka, California, is fit to be the next city manager. After about an hour of questions and answers over Zoom video conferencing, the council voted unanimously to offer him the job.
    During the interview, Dumouchel was asked why he chose to apply for the job in Homer.

Alaska Chief Medical Officer Anne Zink was the special guest of the Homer City Council at Monday night’s regular meeting, with Mayor Ken Castner moving a question and answer session with her to the top of the agenda.
    Frustration was clear in Castner and council member’s questions as they pointed out how Homer and the South Peninsula have become the hottest Covid-19 spot in the state, second only to Anchorage.

The Homer City Council continued meeting via Zoom video conference Monday night. It was a relatively short meeting, but the body got quite a bit accomplished.
    After an update on the Covid-19 situation with the ferry Tustumena, which sailed into Homer during the council meeting, Councilmember Donna Aderhold asked the city’s Unified Command how it’s handling the reopening of city parks.

The Homer City Council received a lot of interest in the position of city manager when the job was advertised for the second time this year. After going through the resumes of more than three-dozen candidates, five were selected for audio interviews with the council. Those were held on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Afterwards, the council settled on moving forward with only one of the candidates, Rob Dumouchel of Eureka, Calif.

Last week the Alaska State Legislature met briefly to appropriate CARES Act funds, the federal pass-through money approved by congress to help alleviate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and last night, the Homer City Council met to take the first step to accept its nearly $8 million portion of those funds.
    In introducing the ordinance accepting the funds, the city is taking responsibility for their proper use, prompting Council member Rachel Lord to suggest a substitute.

The Homer City Council is heading into a third month of holding its meetings via video conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And while emergency proclamations and ordinances have got the council covered as far as meeting remotely goes for now, City Clerk Melissa Jacobsen thought it would be a good time to start the conversation on streamlining the city’s code, which has grown to keep up with the times.
    In that effort, she transformed about 100 lines of code to roughly five.

During Monday night’s Homer City Council work session, known as the committee of the whole meeting, Personnel Director Andrea Browning had some good news regarding the search for a new city manager. On the day after the application period closed, she reported there were 45 hopefuls for the job.
    She said the candidate selection is even stronger than it was a few months ago.

Despite promises of financial aid from the federal government and an easing of travel and business restrictions in Alaska by the state government, the City of Homer is still anticipating hard times for its businesses.
    At Monday night’s meeting, City Councilmember Rachel Lord spoke to a resolution she co-sponsored enacting measures intended to help businesses who lease property from the city at the harbor, on the spit and at the airport.

At Monday night’s Homer City Council meeting, Mayor Ken Castner responded to the governor’s announcement relaxing business closures in response to a slowing of Covid-19 infections in the state.
    Early in the meeting, Castner stepped in to read from a number of Powerpoint slides detailing what is opening and the restrictions still in place while open.

The Homer City Council held its second meeting under the new conventions of social distancing last night, with council members attending remotely. And while the Zoom connection proved much clearer, there was one glitch that came out of nowhere to begin the Committee of the Whole meeting at 5 p.m. when Mayor Ken Castner tried to begin.
     “Any objection…,” the mayor began before being interrupted.
     “No. I can't hear you,” a man with a Posh accent said. “Yeah, no. Yeah. Hello? Hello, Hello, just a second. Hello?”

Things were anything but normal at Monday night’s regular meeting of the Homer City Council.
Only the mayor and one council member were present in chambers, while the other five attended the meeting via telephone. A few staff were in attendance as well, and while citizens were allowed, attendance was less than sparse.