Peninsula Clarion, November 19, 2014

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Sweet

Hoops

Save some room for dessert

Kentucky puts up dominant effort

Food/B-1

Sports/A-12

CLARION

Partly sunny 41/29 More weather on Page A-2

P E N I N S U L A

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Vol. 45, Issue 43

50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday

Lynx offlimits

Question Have you had or do you plan to get a flu shot? n Yes n No To place your vote and comment, visit our Web site at www. peninsulaclarion. com. Results and selected comments will be posted each Tuesday in the Clarion, and a new question will be asked. Suggested questions may be submitted online or e-mailed to news@peninsulaclarion.com.

Hunting, trapping, closed for the season By RASHAH McCHESNEY Peninsula Clarion

Koch said Kelley brings an educational background in planning and GIS that is going to be “extremely beneficial to the city.” “Kenai is on the cusp of significant development and I see many changes,” he said. “Someone who has educational training how to deal with development issues and economic issues is going to be very valuable.” Koch said Krizmanich, who was hired in January from Colorado, wasn’t a great fit for the position. “We ran in both directions,” he said. “We hadn’t been fortunate through several recruitments in the past. We were lucky enough to find someone

It’s the end of a cycle for lynx and area hunters of the short-tailed cat will likely not get another chance at them on the Kenai Peninsula until about 2020. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game sent a reminder in early November to hunters and trappers, in part because this year’s closure of the two game units on the Kenai Peninsula deviated from the way the lynx season has been restricted during previous years. Lynx, which are on roughly a six-year abundance cycle on the Kenai Peninsula, were typically taken primarily by trapping and snaring. In the past, when lynx trapping seasons were closed, hunting was still allowed because harvest by that method was minimal, said Fish and Game area biologist Jeff Selinger. During the 2008-09 lynx season, roughly 6 percent of the lynx harvested were shot, but by the 2013-14 season nearly 40 percent of the harvest was reported as being killed with a gun, according to Fish and Game data. “What we’ve seen recently is a real increase in people using the predator calls and an increase in predator calling in general,” Selinger said. The result of that renewed interest is a higher percentage of the lynx being shot rather

See KENAI, page A-14

See LYNX, page A-14

In the news Man arrested for women’s underwear thefts

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ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska State Troopers say they have detained a man suspected of stealing women’s underwear during burglaries in Kodiak. KTUU-TV reports an 18-year-old was taken into custody Monday. Online court records early Tuesday didn’t indicate he had been formally charged. Troopers say the burglaries occurred over three months. Residents would return home to find items — mostly women’s underwear — missing. They had been alerted to keep their doors locked. The agency says the 18-year-old is suspected of breaking into seven homes and trying to get into three others. Officers called to investigate a report of a home invasion at 11:18 a.m. Monday saw a man running away. They learned the identity of a possible suspect, confirmed a description of his car and made an arrest.

Inside ‘All around us, it’s a solid four feet of snow that is so thick and so heavy you can hardly move it with a shovel.’ ... See page A-6

Index Opinion.................. A-4 Alaska.................... A-5 Nation.................... A-6 World..................... A-8 Police, courts....... A-10 Sports...................A-12 Food...................... B-1 Classifieds............. B-3 Comics................... B-6 Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.

Photo by Rashah McChesney/Peninsula Clarion

Good eats

Colleen Sonnevil serves Lisa Kendall a piece of pumpkin pie cheesecake during a nutrition class at the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank on Tuesday in Soldotna. On Tuesday, Sonnevil’s class had french onion soup and beer batter bread roll with swiss cheese melted on it and a chicken salad and pita bread. The class is offered Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. through Dec. 11. On Thursday, the group will be making beef stroganoff. For more information, call 262-3111.

New planner looks to clean up codes By DAN BALMER Peninsula Clarion

After two months on the job, new Kenai City Planner Matt Kelley has gone from the California sun to the land of the midnight sun. Kelley, 33, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, made the move to Alaska from Fort Bragg, California in July after his wife, Melissa Kelley, was hired at the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. When he saw a vacancy for Kenai city planner, he said the position was an opportunity to put his coastal planning experience to use. He was hired as Kenai city planner in early September. Kelley has seven years of

county planning experience he gained from working for three counties in northern California. He started out as a planner in Shasta County, and then worked as a solid waste planner for Contra Costa County. In his last position, he was a coastal planner for Mendocino County, which has a population of about 87,000 people. He said it would be a welcome adjustment to transition from a county with a higher density population compared to a city with a population shy of 8,000 people. Kelley graduated from California State University Chico in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Geography with a concentration in Planning and

Development. He has a certificate in Geographic Information Systems Technology (GIS). Kelley Matt Kelley said the GIS portion of his job requires he maintains the citiy’s GIS land-use and development database, which includes water and sewer lines, subdivisions and zoning information. Kelley replaced Francis Krizmanich, who was not retained after his six-month probation period ended in July. Kenai City Manager Rick

Limits on driveway width at issue in Soldotna By KELLY SULLIVAN Peninsula Clarion

Soldotna resident Jerry Farrington has been trying to add 6 feet to his driveway for more than two years. Applications and appeals have bounced between the Kenai Peninsula Borough Board of Adjustment, Soldotna Planning

and Zoning Commission and city council in a series of public hearings and meetings concerning the width of Farrington’s personal parking space. “They say ‘no’ and I say ‘yes,’” Farrington said. “I am persistent in that respect.” Farrington said the continued request “is a matter of safety and convenience.” The

slope of his property makes entering and exiting his driveway unsafe during the winter months. There is no sidewalk along West Riverview Avenue, and street parking is unsafe for pedestrians, he said. “I understand the bureaucracy and paperwork, and that the city would want to know who has 24-foot driveways,”

Farrington said. “The city staff should have the ability to grant a driveway over 24 feet without having to go to the planning and zoning or city council.” City council member Linda Murphy proposed an ordinance (at the Nov. 12 city council meeting) that would increase the 24-foot limit to 30 feet wide. Both Murphy and Mayor

Nels Anderson said they were disappointed with the planning and zoning’s decision to deny the variance. Since Farrington submitted his first request in 2012, the commission had the option to recommend revisions to the city code twice, which would extend the 24-foot limit, but declined, See WIDTH, page A-14

Fairbanks increasing use of brine for slick roads By JEFF RICHARDSON Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

FAIRBANKS (AP) — Annual bouts of freezing rain in Interior Alaska have spurred road crews to use a tool that they wouldn’t have considered until recently — trucks loaded with massive tanks of salty brine. The Alaska Department of Transportation purchased a pair of roughly 2,000-gallon brine tanks three years ago and began using them consistently last year. Sand trucks also have been equipped with smaller tanks of brine, which blend it into the grit to help the sand better stick

to slippery roadways. Their use wouldn’t have been considered in Interior Alaska not long ago, when five straight months of sub-freezing temperatures were the norm. But winter drizzles have become a fairly common occurrence in the past decade, adding a new challenge for road maintenance. When a heavy dose of freezing rain covered Fairbanks in November 2011, Fairbanks roads never recovered. It was then that DOT officials realized something needed to be done. “That’s basically what’s driving this,” said Dan Schacher, the local DOT maintenance and operations supervisor. “We

lived with that ice for the rest of the year.” On Sunday through Tuesday, as temperatures crept above freezing, brining was occurring 24 hours per day to cover slippery spots near local railroad crossings and intersections. Crews paid special attention to a notoriously slick section of the Steese Highway between Chena Hot Springs Road and Farmers Loop that DOT workers have nicknamed “the luge.” The brine trucks are capable of dispensing as much as AP Photo/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Erin Corneliussen 10,000 gallons of brine per day, spraying as much as 30 gallons In this Nov. 12 photo, a truck fit with a brine distributor tank spreads brine at the Department of Transportation in Fairper lane mile. See BRINE, page A-5 banks. C

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