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CLARION
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P E N I N S U L A
TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2014 Soldotna-Kenai, Alaska
Vol. 44, Issue 221
50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday
By-mail voting up for debate
Question Have you successfully negotiated the new roundabout on Binkley Street in Soldotna? n Yes, worked like a charm; n Yes, but it was not a good experience; n No, I’m avoiding it; n No, I just haven’t tried yet.
Assembly to take up measure
To place your vote and comment, visit our Web site at www. peninsulaclarion. com.
By KAYLEE OSOWSKI Peninsula Clarion
sidered, Hamrick said KPTMC proposed a 4 percent bed tax, the same as what the City of Seward currently has in place. “We settled on the 4 percent because … it was really important that … whatever we had was equal throughout the borough so that there wouldn’t be any areas that were charging a higher rate,” Hamrick said. Homer and Seldovia both have sales tax rates of 7.5 percent. A 4 percent bed tax would create a total tax of 11.5 percent, still under Anchorage, Ju-
Originally, it was thought that holding Kenai Peninsula Borough elections by mail would be more cost effective, but according to a fiscal note, it would actually cost more money. “I was disappointed because I initially thought … that we could actually save money, but the extra printing and postage costs added up,” said assembly member Bill Smith. However, the assumed savings were a secondary consideration, Smith said about an ordinance he sponsored to require vote-by-mail elections. His main motive is to increase voter participation. A public hearing on the ordinance is scheduled for tonight’s borough assembly meeting. Last year, the borough saw about 21 percent of voters turn out, which Sen. Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna, said is “dismal at best.” While costs are estimated to rise if elections are held by mail, Smith called the increase modest. According to a fiscal note prepared by Borough Clerk Johni Blankenship, costs for mayoral election years are estimated to increase by $57,420 and by $23,090 for non-mayoral election years, if the assembly approves vote-by-mail elections. The largest savings would be in personnel costs with a decrease of $10,910. Three boards — logic and accuracy testing, absentee voting officials and canvass — would require only 30 people compared to 116 for polling place elections. “We kept everything except for day-of-election workers,” Blankenship said. Contract services, which includes ballot stuffing and outthe-door postage cost, would see one of the highest increases at $19,750. The borough pays for return postage for the voted ballots as well. “We also have a charge, a pretty large charge, when they are returned undeliverable,” Blankenship said.
See TAX, page A-7
See VOTE, page A-7
In the news Outage darkens Kenai Peninsula
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A system wide power outage blacked out the central and southern Kenai Peninsula Monday. Homer Electric Association spokesperson Joe Gallagher said the power outage began at 4:15 p.m. and affected 32,000 meters of line. The outage was related to a fault along the transmission line from the Bradley Lake hydroelectric plant on the south side of Kachemak Bay. HEA was able to energize the high voltage transmission lines found to be at fault, he said. “It appears something happened on the transmission line and affected the entire HEA system,” he said. Gallagher said by 6 p.m. power was restored to Nikiski and Kenai to Beaver Creek on the Kenai Spur Highway. At 7:45 p.m., HEA began restoring power to the rest of the affected areas. By 8:30 p.m., power had been restored to all affected areas. “Power runs through individual circuits through various substations,” Gallagher said. “We stagger the load to not overrun the system at one time.” According to HEA, the duration and size of the outage was compounded by two transmission related construction projects underway. A small section of the transmission line between Soldotna and Funny River is out of service due to construction work at the HEA substation in Soldotna. In addition, HEA and Chugach Electric are working on the transmission system between Soldotna and Cooper Landing. Gallagher said the cause of the outage was not yet determined but under investigation. — Dan Balmer
Index Opinion.................. A-4 Nation/World.......... A-6 Sports.....................A-6 Classifieds............. A-8 Comics................. A-11 Pet Tails............... A-12 Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.
Photo by Dan Balmer/Peninsula Clarion
An employee with Endries Company stands on a new culvert being installed beneath Beaver Loop Road Monday. The Kenai Watershed Forum is overseeing the project that will allow juvenile fish to migrate between Beaver Creek and the Kenai River. Completion of the project has been delayed for three more weeks but is expected by the second week in July. A section of the road has been closed, cutting residents off from the Kenai Spur Highway intersection.
Beaver Loop project continues Delay irks residents By DAN BALMER Peninsula Clarion
For the past three weeks, Kenai residents Andrew and Sara Smith have had to drive 30 miles out of their way every day to get to work in Soldotna. Sara Smith, who works at Lucky Raven Tobacco on the Kenai Spur Highway, lives half a mile down Beaver Loop Road from the Spur Highway intersection. But a road closure to replace a culvert between her house and the
intersection has forced her to drive to the other end of Beaver Loop Road to Bridge Access Road and through Kenai instead. To make matters more complicated, their mailbox is on the other side of the construction site. “I haven’t checked my mail in a week because I don’t have the extra gas to go all the way around and back after work at midnight,” she said. “It has been High levels of groundwater have delayed the culvert replacenothing but a pain in the butt.” ment project on Beaver Loop Road that has pushed the The road closure is for a completion timeline back three weeks before the section of See DELAY, page A-7 road can be reopened.
Borough bed tax measure on docket By KAYLEE OSOWSKI Peninsula Clarion
A Kenai Peninsula Boroughwide bed tax may be headed to the October municipal election ballot. But first the borough assembly has to consider whether or not to pose the question to voters. At the 6 p.m. assembly meeting today, an ordinance to establish a 4 percent bed tax contingent on voter approval will be introduced. The ordinance, sponsored by
assembly member Bill Smith, proposes that 75 percent of the tax collected in unincorporated areas of the borough would go to tourism promotion for the borough. The remaining 25 percent would be used for borough school purposes. Tax collected in cities would go to their revenues. “I’m trying to keep pressure off the general mill rate which hopefully if this bed tax passes it will help do that,” Smith said. Shanon Hamrick, executive director for KPTMC, said a
4 percent bed tax is estimated to bring in about $2.4 million, based on 2013 taxable accommodation sales numbers. Of the $2.4 million, about $1.4 million would go back to cities, $796,609 would go to borough marketing and $265,536 would go to schools. “In order for the borough to maintain our schools for as good as we can, we’re going to be looking at spending more money on them than we have been,” Smith said. While other percentages and allocation amounts were con-
Swarm of recent earthquakes puzzles scientists By RACHEL D’ORO Associated Press
ANCHORAGE — A moderate earthquake shook northwest Alaska on Monday, the fifth temblor of the same magnitude since April in an area with otherwise little activity, seismologists said. The magnitude-5.7 quake struck at 4:01 a.m. Monday northeast of the village of Noatak, the Alaska Earthquake Center reported. As with other temblors in the earthquake swarm, the quake was felt in Noatak,
an Inupiat Eskimo community of 560 people. “It woke me up,” said resident Alvin Ashby. “Some people slept through it.” People there aren’t used to earthquakes, and these have some residents worried, said Ashby, who has lived in the community most of his life. Before the swarm that began April 18, the last known quake of similar size in the area was a magnitude-5.5 quake that occurred in 1981, earthquake center seismologist Natasha Ruppert said.
‘At this point, we don’t really understand the nature of these earthquakes.’ — Natasha Ruppert, seismologist The swarm of magnitude-5.7 quakes is connected to more than 300 smaller aftershocks, some with magnitudes in the high 3s, Ruppert said. The first quake and the others of that magnitude have been located in roughly the same area about 20 miles from Noatak. The comC
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munity is 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Monday’s quake was preceded by one minute by a magnitude-4.2 foreshock and followed by at least 10 aftershocks. Minor damage from the earthquakes includes cracks in
walls in Noatak, but no injuries have been reported. Ruppert said old seismic faults have been mapped in the area, but there are no known active faults, although that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. She said sometimes surface fault scars could be hidden by vegetation or glacial deposits. “Obviously, since we are having all this earthquake activity, there must be some active faults in the area,” Ruppert said. Since the first of the swarms See QUAKES, page A-7