Mayor Ken Castner

At the Homer City Council meeting last night, Mayor Ken Castner offered up names of citizens interested in serving on the city’s commissions and committees.
    One of them was Roberta Highland, who has served more than a decade on the Planning Commission. The topic was discussed in the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting.
    “I actually gave some consideration to replacing Roberta because she'd been on for 11 years,” Castner said. “And I did talk to Roberta about it today for quite a while, just about the longevity of serving on a commission.”

Since the defeat of President Donald Trump in November, there have been hundreds of bills introduced across the nation at every level of government by conservative politicians to change voting procedures.
    Including Homer.
    The Homer City Council, ostensibly a non-partisan body, faced an ordinance last night that would have fundamentally changed the way elections are conducted. It was introduced just a few weeks ago by Councilmember Heath Smith.

With the U.S. Census largely complete, it’s time now for the Alaska Redistricting Board to redraw house and senate districts, boundaries that will be in use for the next decade.
    Peter Torkelson is the executive director of the Redistricting Board. He gave an introduction to the process to the Homer City Council this week.

  The Homer City Council put into code the launching procedures for motorized personal watercraft within city limits at its meeting Monday night. It also introduced an ordinance to expand the “no wake” zone around the spit and Beluga Slough.
 

At a recent budget work session, Mayor Ken Castner had a question about communications equipment used by city employees. He asked City Information Manager Nick Poolos if cell phones were going to replace mobile radios any time soon.

“What’s the deal with radios?,” he asked. “Why are we still using radios around Homer when we have great cell phone coverage?”

March 8 was International Women’s Day, and during that night’s Homer City Council meeting Mayor Ken Castner took a moment to recognize the accomplishments of Daisy Kettle, a young Homer woman.

The Homer City Council Monday night moved forward an approximately $20,000 expenditure to figure out which solution would be best for solving an on-going issue with the lone sewer pump-station that serves the Homer Spit.
    “So that particular lift station happens to collect all the sewage that comes off the spit.”
    Public Works Director Jan Keiser addressed the city council during its Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday. She said the lower volume of sewer in the wintertime has been causing serious problems for years.

It appears Homer’s mayor is becoming more comfortable casting his tie-breaking vote. After barely using it at all during his first term in office, Mayor Ken Castner on Monday night cast a tie-breaking vote and threatened a veto.
    The first instance was when the council took up a resolution supporting the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association and opposing proposed changes in the Kachemak Bay State Park management plan that would force the association’s Tutka Bay Hatchery to close.

On this week's Coffee Table, meet the candidates for mayor of Homer.

Challenger, Councilmember Donna Aderhold and incumbent Mayor Ken Castner talk about their candidacies and take questions from the listeners.

Absentee, special needs, and questioned ballots for the Homer Municipal Election were counted Monday afternoon by the city’s Election Canvass Board. Nearly half of the 1,901 ballots cast, 863 of them, were made in one of those ways. There was an exceptional turnout of 37 percent.
    The influx of votes did not change any of the outcomes from last week. However, in the mayoral race, challenger Donna Aderhold picked up 474 votes to incumbent Mayor Ken Castner’s gain of 363, narrowing the gap between them to 84 votes. Castner’s victory margin was 52 percent to 47 percent.

At last night’s Homer City Council meeting, the council extended the City of Homer Disaster Emergency Declaration to October 27, 2020. And, they inched closer to a mask mandate.

Mayor Ken Castner said he spoke with Governor Dunleavy on several teleconferences last Wednesday through Monday, about a letter the council sent last month to the governor, requesting a statewide mask mandate or the power to declare masks mandatory in Homer. Dunleavy declined to mandate masks for the whole state but affirmed that the City of Homer can require masks.

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 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.