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What next? April can be tough, but so can visiting relatives Community/C-1
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Game 5 Brown Bears battle Ice Dogs in series finale Sports/B-1
CLARION P E N I N S U L A
APRIL 13, 2014 Soldotna-Kenai, Alaska
Vol. 44, Issue 165
50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday
Pool to stay open District to reinstate funding for Skyview facility By RASHAH McCHESNEY Peninsula Clarion
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After months of debate, public comment and one municipality pledging funds to keep it open, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District on Friday announced it would restore funding to operate the Skyview High School pool. Citing the changing fiscal climate at the state and local levels, district spokesperson Pegge Erkeneff wrote in an email that district administration would recommend funding for the facility be reinstated in the district’s 2014-15 fiscal year budget. The district’s Board of Education is scheduled to take up the budget during its Monday meeting.
Saved for the bells
See POOL, page A-2
Senate OKs state capital budget
Grant to help with repair of Russian Orthodox Church bell tower
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ven a 120-year old building needs a bit of sprucing up once in awhile. Alaska’s Historical Commission has announced a $12,000 grant that will essentially put a new hat on an old church-going lady with the renovation of the bell tower at the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church in Kenai. The blue paint is peeling, cracks in the floor of the tower sometimes cause leaks in the foyer of the church and the louvers, or wooden window slats, have got to go, said Father Thomas Andrew, rector of the church. See GRANT, page A-2
By BECKY BOHRER Associated Press
Top: Father Thomas Andrew points to the louvers that are installed in the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church’s bell tower Friday in Kenai. The tower will be refurbished as part of a $12,000 grant the church received from the Alaska Historical Commission. Above: Paint on the building’s cupolas is peeling, and cracks in the floor of the bell tower sometimes leak.
Story and photos by Rashah McChesney/Peninsula Clarion
JUNEAU — The state Senate passed a $2.2 billion state capital budget Friday, along with a bill to raise the borrowing limit of the Alaska Municipal Bond Bank Authority as part of an overall package to help build a new heat and power plant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. See BUDGET, page A-2
A taste of college life
Petie, Tatianna and Doug Clary talk to Bettina Kipp Lavea during the Advice and a Slice event, Friday, April 11, at Kenai Peninsula College.
Event introduces prospective students to KPC By KELLY SULLIVAN Peninsula Clarion
“I love to dance,” Iris Snow Mustang said. “They must have known I was coming!” Across the room a resident flashes his phone through a soda bottle making an impromptu strobe light, and heavy bass echoes off the walls.
A glimpse through the gaping glass windows of the multipurpose room in the Kenai Peninsula College Residence Hall Friday night left a few scratching their heads. Mustang was one of a handful of dancers padding around the room in a knee-length cotton nightshirt and pajama pants. “It’s not normally this loud,” said Leslie Byrd, laughing. The Residence Life Coordinator was wran-
gling her fellow employees, residents and a handful of High School and GED graduates giving college life a 24-hour trial run. Byrd had her hands full, but a didn’t bat an eye at the shoe-less partiers. This year the second annual Advice and a Slice fair at the Kenai Peninsula College offered prospective students the chance for
Photo by Kelly Sullivan/ Peninsula Clarion
See TASTE, page A-2
Tourism expected to hold the line By ELWOOD BREHMER Morris News Service-Alaska Alaska Journal of Commerce
It’s almost time for the rush of family and friends from the Lower 48, and Alaska’s tourism industry leaders are expecting a good, but not great, 2014 visitor season. John Binkley, president of Cruise Lines International Association Alaska, formerly the Alaska Cruise Association,
said he is expecting 972,000 cruise visitors to the state this year, a slight decrease from the 999,600 cruisers to Alaska in 2013. While the final 2013 tally did not quite reach the 1 million cruisers, it was the first year since 2009 that the benchmark was even approached after the global recession and a sincerepealed cruise passenger state tax increase hit the industry hard. Less than 900,000 pas-
sengers toured Alaska by cruise ship in 2010 and 2011. Binkley said this year’s projection is based on less available cruise openings caused by some of the lines adjusting their schedules from last year because of Environmental Protection Agency regulations. “When (the cruise companies) were making their decisions for 2014 we still had the cloud of ECA, the Emission Control Area, hanging over
us that the EPA had mandated with the expensive fuel, so that affected the deployment decisions as to where they were moving their ships,” Binkley said. Passed in 2010, Emission Control Area standards required ships operating within 200 miles of U.S. or Canadian coasts to burn fuel containing less than 0.1 percent sulfur by 2015. See VISIT, page A-5 C
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Today’s Clarion Obituaries..................... A-3 Opinion......................... A-4 Alaska........................... A-5 Nation........................... A-6 World.......................... A-10 Police/courts............... A-12 Sports........................... B-1 Community................... C-1 Weddings...................... C-1 Dear Abby..................... C-2 Crossword..................... C-2 Horoscope.................... C-2 Classifieds................... C-3 Mini Page...................... C-9 TV...................... Clarion TV
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