Barr
Soccer
AG pressured to release report
Kenai takes on West in wind
Nation/A5
Sports/A8
CLARION
Partly sunny 45/29 More weather on Page A2
P E N I N S U L A
Vol. 49, Issue 159
In the news Grammy-winning artists to headline Salmonfest Two Grammy-winning artists will headline this year’s Salmonfest. Organizers of the well-attended Ninilchik event announced this week that Jason Mraz will perform Friday and Ani DiFranco will perform Saturday night at the event. The California Honey Drops, Keller Williams and WookieFoot have also confirmed they will be at the music festival. Other acts will be announced at a later date. Tickets are already available for the festival, which will be Aug. 2-4, at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds in Ninilchik, at salmonfestalaska.org. —Victoria Petersen
State OK funding Medicaid through grants, Dunleavy says JUNEAU — Gov. Mike Dunleavy told President Donald Trump that the state is open to the idea of receiving Medicaid funding through fixed amounts each year. Dunleavy spokesman Matt Shuckerow tells Alaska Public Media that the block grant approach could allow the state more flexibility in how it spends Medicaid funding. The Republican governor wrote in a letter to the president last month that Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, had urged the state to become the first receive the federal funding this way. The federal government currently pays an agreed-upon percentage of each state's Medicaid costs. The government program provides health care to people with lower income. More than a quarter of the state's population is covered by Medicaid. — Associated Press
Index Local................A3 Opinion........... A4 Nation..............A5 World...............A6 Religion............A7 Sports..............A8 Classifieds.... A10 Comics.......... A13 Police.............A14
Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.
Friday-Saturday, April 5-6, 2019 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
$1 newsstands daily/$1.50 Sunday
Community defends small schools By VICTORIA PETERSEN Peninsula Clarion
Parents and community members living near Moose Pass School and Nikiski Middle-High School are speaking out against cuts to education funding and potential school closures. The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has said if Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed budget passes, it could result in the closure of six schools in Moose Pass, Seward, Nikiski, Homer, Soldotna and Anchor Point. At the March 25 Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education meeting, more than a dozen parents, students and educators from Anchor Point’s Chapman School spoke to the school board in support of keeping their school open. At the end of the meeting, board member
Effort to move legislative sessions to Anchorage advances By BECKY BOHRER The Associated Press
“It means people at the other locations don’t
Supporters of a proposed ballot initiative seeking to move legislative sessions from Juneau to Anchorage have gotten the OK to gather signatures to try to qualify it for next year’s ballot. Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer says supporters need to gather 28,501 signatures from across Alaska. The proposal seeks to relocate “regular and special meetings” of the Legislature to Anchorage but not move the capital.
See SMALL, page A2
See MOVE, page A14
Bruce Jaffa waits in line to speak to Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly against closing Moose Pass School on Tuesday in Soldotna. (Photo by Victoria Petersen/Peninsula Clarion)
Dan Castimore noted he hadn’t heard much input from the other schools on
the potential closure list. “It means one of two things,” Castimore said.
High March temperatures curb winter weather By DAN JOLING Associated Press
ANCHORAGE — Unusually high March temperatures lopped weeks off Alaska’s long winter and reflect a warming climate trend, state climate experts say. March is normally reliable for dog mushing and cross-country skiing. However, extreme warmth melted snow and made ice on waterways hazardous for travel in the state. Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, didn’t record a flake of measureable snow. “It was as if we didn’t have March this year,” said Martin Stuefer, state climatologist and an associate research professor with the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “We had April instead.” Researchers don’t make climate conclusions based
Mallards feed in a puddle of melted snow on the Delaney Park Strip, in Anchorage, on Wednesday. Much of Anchorage’s snow disappeared as Alaska experienced unseasonably warm weather in March. (AP Photo/Dan Joling)
on a month’s data, but Alaska’s warm March reflects an upward warming climate trend in America’s largest state, Stuefer said.
“We see the last several years were way warm. There’s a clear climateinduced warming. There’s no doubt about it,” he said.
The March warmth was due to a high pressure ridge over Alaska and northwest Alaska that lasted two weeks. Low pres-
sure over the Bering Sea produced southwest winds along Alaska’s west coast, pushing warm air from southern latitudes into the Arctic, according to Stuefer. Fairbanks, in the center of the state, hit temperatures in the 50s. People broke out shorts and barbeque grills, Stuefer said. “People were in a happy mood, many people who wanted to get rid of winter,” he said. The state’s second largest city also for the first March ever had consecutive days when the low temperature did not dip below freezing. Temperatures in northern, western and interior Alaska exceeded the daily average by double digits, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. See WARM, page A3
Public health releases guidelines on safe needle disposal By BRIAN MAZUREK Peninsula Clarion
As spring gets underway on the peninsula, the melting snow slowly reveals what has been hidden for months. Unfortunately, used syringes are often among the items
unburied. These serve as stark reminders of the public health crisis facing the peninsula and the nation as a whole, and when spring comes the evidence of the opioid epidemic can no longer remain hidden. Because peninsula residents have come across
used needles in public parks and on sidewalks after snow melts, Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services releases guidelines every spring of how to properly dispose of syringes. According to DHSS, the options for safely disposing of found
Acclaimed musician returns to Soldotna By JOEY KLECKA Peninsula Clarion
With time spent in the world’s most prestigious musical halls and festivals, Alaska’s Eduard Zilberkant will seem like a giant filling the space at the Soldotna Christ Lutheran Church. The musician will take over the Soldotna church on Saturday evening for a classical chamber perfor-
mance with the University of Alaska Fairbanks String Faculty, a trio that consists of violinist Dr. Bryan Emmon Hall, violist Gail Johansen and cellist Ryan Fitzpatrick. The Russian-born Zilberkant is a classically trained pianist and orchestra conductor who currently teaches and performs at University of Alaska Fairbanks, and has toured many of the
world’s finest musical establishments, including the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, Poland, the Teatro di San Carlo Opera House in Naples, Italy, and the Volgograd Opera House in Russia. To another classically trained pianist like Soldotna’s Performing Arts Society leader Maria Allison, Zilberkant’s resume and body of work See MUSIC, page A14
needles are limited on the peninsula, so it is important to know what they are. Public Health nurse Sherra Pritchard said that the city and community councils of Kenai, Soldotna, Sterling and Nikiski also organize annual cleanup weekends,
which typically occur in May. Pritchard said that in 2015, 65 sharps and syringes were found during Nikiski’s cleanup day, with that number dropping significantly in the following years. According to a press See SAFE, page A2
State Health Care Services director is out By ALEX MCCARTHY Juneau Empire
The director of the Division of Health Care Services is out, according to a statement from the Department of Health and Social Services. Margaret Brodie is no longer the director of the division, DHSS spokesperson Clinton Bennett said Thursday. “We cannot provide any more details about her departure because it is
a personnel matter,” Bennett said via email. “Renee Gayhart has been appointed acting director of the Division of Health Care Services.” The Division of Health Care Services, according to its website, aims to “provide to all eligible Alaskans access and oversight to the full range of appropriate Medicaid services” and “protect Alaska’s most vulnerable populations through our certification See OUT, page A14