Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly 2020

Last night, for the second year in a row, a Homer man gave the invocation for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting. Last year it was before a packed Homer City Council chambers, but due to social distancing rules, this year the invocation was given over Zoom. Nevertheless, Barrett Fletcher wore his church’s traditional headdress to deliver the prayer, a colander.
    “I am Barrett Fletcher, the founding pastor of the First Lower Peninsula Congregation of Pastafarians, and I’ve been asked to do the invocation.

Ever since the Kenai Peninsula Borough entered a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, assembly meetings have been held via Zoom video conferencing in order to comply with social distancing guidelines issued by the State of Alaska and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    But despite the dangers inherent in public gatherings at this time, some in the public -- and on the assembly -- think it’s time for video meetings to end.
    A gentleman named Robert, who did not give his last name, commented at Tuesday night’s assembly meeting.

    The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly met via Zoom video conferencing Tuesday afternoon to make adjustments to how it distributes federal CARES Act funds received from the State of Alaska.

    Among other items, the change will reimburse single audit fees for awardees, provide funds to install air purification systems in all borough and school facilities, and increase funds for the 911 backup dispatch center project. Cities will get an additional $8.1 million to divvy up.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough will soon be moving into the age of “remote sensing.” The assembly approved a nearly-half-million-dollar no-bid contract with a company to provide the borough with “Pictometry Oblique Imagery” for the purposes of property assessment. Currently, the borough assesses real property from the ground. The contract with Bellevue-based EagleView will be for photographing private property from the air.
Nikiski Assemblyman Jessie Bjorkman, however, felt that was an invasion of privacy.

This fall, voters in the Anchor Point and Ninilchik areas will consider whether to join forces on their emergency services.
     The Kenai Peninsula Borough assembly approved an ordinance last Tuesday that will ask voters on the Oct. 6 ballot whether they want to become a single service area for fire and emergency medical services. The move has had several public meetings and has been in the works since earlier this spring.

The latest attempt to keep an easier, hybrid vote-by-mail system from coming to Kenai Peninsula Borough residents was turned back at Tuesday night’s assembly meeting. A veto made by Mayor Charlie Pierce on Monday of Ordinance 20-24 was overturned on a 6-to-3 vote.
    In defense of his veto, Pierce had previously claimed on social media that the vote-by-mail system would be mandatory, which is not the case. Assembly President Kelly Cooper called a post on Pierce’s campaign Facebook to that effect on June 13 irresponsible for its inaccuracy.

After failing to block an ordinance in the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly that would provide for an expanded number of options for residents to casts votes, foes of voting-by-mail, led by Assemblymembers Norm Blakley of Sterling and Jesse Bjorkman of Nikiski, have filed a referendum petition application to have the measure repealed by voters in October.
    The Borough Mayor's Office and assembly members were notified by the clerk of the filing on Thursday.

About two weeks after the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly passed an expanded elections options ordinance, it came up for a reconsideration vote about four hours into Tuesday night’s regular meeting. A reconsideration vote is a final effort to change something that’s already passed.
    During the meeting, Seward Assemblymember Kenn Carpenter explained why he asked to have the expanded elections ordinance reconsidered after it passed 6-to-3 two weeks earlier.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly’s marathon meeting this week overflowed into Wednesday afternoon after reaching midnight on Tuesday night.
    When the body resumed its Zoom meeting, it was in the middle of debate over amendments to modify borough elections under Ordinance 20-24. The ordinance would provide for voting by mail, give more time before a run-off election, and would remove statements attached to ballot propositions.

At Tuesday night's Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting, there will be a public hearing on an ordinance to establish a vote-by-mail option for elections in the Borough. Communities all over the country are considering vote-by-mail due to the current public health crisis and because of concerns about free and fair elections. Assemblymember Willy Dunne of Fritz Creek introduced this ordinance because of a recommendation from a Borough stakeholder group that issued a report in January of 2019.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly took up debate on the Fiscal Year ‘21 budget Tuesday night, but before they could begin, the matter of not one, but two, potential conflicts of interest needed to be addressed.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly voted again Tuesday night to allow public roads and rights-of-way to be gated off into private streets and subdivisions. Two weeks ago the ordinance passed 5-to-4.
    After the assembly passed the ordinance two weeks ago, Homer Assembly member Willy Dunne asked for a reconsideration vote in one last attempt to sway more assembly members to his side. At the meeting he kept up his insistence that the ordinance was bad public policy due to the overwhelming public opposition to privatizing public property.