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Sweet
No snow
Treat your Valentine to cake, ice cream, pie
Iditarod restart moved to Fairbanks
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CLARION
Some sun 30/18 More weather on Page A-2
P E N I N S U L A
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2015 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
Vol. 45, Issue 113
50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday
Mayor puts health care on agenda
Question Do you agree with the governor’s plan to expand Medicaid? n Yes n No To place your vote and comment, visit our Web site at www. peninsulaclarion. com.
Navarre proposes task force to look for solutions
In the news Convicted militia leader loses request for new lawyer
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FAIRBANKS (AP) — An appeals court has turned down a request by a convicted Alaska militia leader to fire his latest attorney for his appeal of a federal sentence for conspiring to kill public officials, among other charges. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the request by Schaeffer Cox, whose current attorney replaced an earlier one, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. In response to the court’s decision last Wednesday, Cox on Monday asked to represent himself. The appeals court also has declined to hear complaints from Cox about the Illinois prison where he is serving his term. Cox, 30, was convicted in 2012 of nine federal charges, including conspiracy to kill federal law enforcement officers. Cox, who headed the group Alaska Peacemakers Militia, was sentenced in January 2013 to serve nearly 26 years in prison and gave his notice of appeal shortly thereafter. In another filing, Cox complained about his incarceration at the U.S. Penitentiary Marion, one of two federal prisons with “communication management units.” Those are areas created in 2006 to restrict communications of inmates believed to have the potential to incite terrorism through coded messages. In his filing, Cox said the prison used to let him contact multiple attorneys, but beginning in December the policies became stricter. Cox said that’s when prison staff made him use censored mail to contact lawyers other than his attorney. The appellate court, however, did not directly address the issue. The court clerk said in a short note Wednesday that Cox is supposed to contact the court through his attorney.
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By IAN FOLEY Peninsula Clarion
how the change could affect businesses, however. Mike Stedman, an owner of Wings Airways and Alaska Seaplanes, said that losing an hour of daylight each evening in the summer could reduce the number of floatplane flights his company operates because those planes can’t land in the dark. Stedman estimated that several components of the business would take about a 20 percent hit if flights were reduced. MacKinnon also said that those in the financial industry,
Health care costs are out of control, according to Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Mike Navarre. Speaking at the Kenai and Soldotna joint Chambers of Commerce luncheon Tuesday at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex, Navarre stressed the importance of finding a solution to rising health care costs. “We’re spending a ridiculous amount of our GDP at the national level, and our resources at the state level on health care,” Navarre said. Navarre said that since 1999, borough wages have increased 86 percent. However, health care costs have gone up 330 percent in the same time frame. “You should be shocked,” Navarre said. “I am.” Navarre said one explanation as to why the borough spends more and more in health care costs each year is growing costs of the borough’s previous retirement system. “It resulted in a huge unfunded liability in large part because people are retiring earlier and people are living longer,” Navarre said. “Perhaps more importantly we grossly underestimated the cost of retirement
See TIME, page A-14
See HEALTH, page A-14
Photo by Kelly Sullivan/ Peninsula Clarion
Say cheese!
Beth Lyons and Anne McCabe help Amy Lou Pascucci during one of the beginning steps of making Paneer Tuesday at the Kenai Community Library in Kenai. Lyons said, in the past, she has visited the library mainly so she and her children could check out reading materials. More recently she, and she believes the wider community, come for classes such as Pascucci’s cheese-making workshop, and as a place to congregate.
No more springing forward? Bill would exempt Alaska from Daylight Saving Time By MOLLY DISCHNER Associated Press
JUNEAU — A state Senate committee has advanced a bill that would exempt Alaska from daylight saving time, a measure that its sponsor said would be good for the health of state residents. The bill, from Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River, would exempt Alaska from the annual time change beginning in 2017. That means Alaska would be five hours behind the East Coast, instead of four hours behind, from about
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March to November. The delay in implementation is meant to give certain industries, like the cruise industry, time to prepare for the change. The bill moved from the Senate State Affairs Committee on Tuesday. MacKinnon told the committee that there are health effects associated with changing the clocks each spring and fall,
and she wants to help Alaskans avoid those problems. Those include increased rates of heart attacks, suicide and traffic accidents in the spring, she said. The bill would also help address productivity and school attendance issues that occur after the time change, MacKinnon said. Eagle River resident Lynn Willis told the committee via teleconference that he supported the change, and it could improve safety for some jobs because it would mean more morning light. There were concerns about
Price of crude oil still on a wild ride By JONATHAN FAHEY AP Energy Writer
NEW YORK — The price of oil is on a wild ride, and there is little agreement on where it’s headed. After falling nearly 60 percent from a peak last June, the price of oil bounced back more than 20 percent as January turned to February. Then, on Tuesday, it sunk 5 percent,
closing just above $50. Oil has fallen or risen by 3 percent or more on 14 of 27 trading days so far this year. By comparison, the stock market hasn’t had a move that big in more than three years. Predicting prices is especially tricky now because the oil market has never quite looked like this. Oil price collapses of the past were triggered either by plummeting demand or an
increase in supplies. This latest one had both. Production in the U.S. and elsewhere has been rising, while slower economic growth in China and weak economies in Europe and Japan means demand for oil isn’t growing as much as expected. As recent trading shows, any sign of reduced production inspires traders to buy oil, and every new sign of rising supplies sends prices lower. In a
report Tuesday the U.S. Energy Department, citing unusual uncertainty, said the price of oil could end up anywhere from $32 to $108 by December. “There are many more laps to come on this roller coaster,” said Judith Dwarkin, chief economist at ITG Investment Research. As oil bounces up and down, so will the price of gasoline, diesel and other fuels. Almost
no one expects a return to the very high prices of the last four years, so drivers and shippers will continue to pay lower prices. It’s a question of how much less, and for how long.
Oil will rise Those expecting a quick and lasting price jump see mounting evidence that drillers in the See OIL, page A-14
Kenai shares animal City OKs rescue boat purchase control numbers By BEN BOETTGER Peninsula Clarion
Kenai city manager Rick Koch and chief animal control officer Cora Chambers presented data about the city’s animal shelter to the council and members of the public during a council meeting on Feb. 4. The presentation was in response to a letter to the council from Judy Fandrei, Ellen Sheehan, and Amanda Motonaga of the non-profit Peninsula Spay and Neuter Fund regarding “impact of changes made at the Kenai Animal Shelter.” Changes
addressed in the letter included those which the authors believed would have a positive impact on the shelter’s service, such as the spaying or neutering and microchipping of adopted animals, and purported negative changes such as closure of the shelter’s outdoor drop-off cages and its 32 hour-per-week operating schedule, both of which the authors said made the shelter’s services less accessible to the public. In a slideshow presentation, Chambers and Koch presented the city’s data on animal shelter activity, noting that the percent-
By BEN BOETTGER Peninsula Clarion
The Feb. 4 meeting of the Kenai City Council began with renditions of the national anthem and “America the Beautiful” by the Kenai Central High School brass quintet and proceeded to discussions of a rescue boat and telephonic participation in council meetings. The council voted unanimously to appropriate $13,500 from the city’s general fund to the Public Safety Improvements Capital Project fund for the purchase of a boat for the
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fire department. That money, added to a $90,000 state grant, paid the $103,500 cost of the boat to be purchased from Dennis Bevegni of Juneau. According to a memo from Kenai fire chief Jay Tucker to city manager Rick Koch, the 25-foot aluminum-hull boat will replace Kenai’s current 1985 inflatable-hull rescue boat. The council then debated an ordinance introduced by member Tim Navarre to allow up to three members of the city council to participate in meetings via telephone. Currently the city code al-
lows two members to participate via telephone at any given meeting, and for members to participate telephonically at up to four meetings each year. The proposed change would allow three council members to participate telephonically at a single meeting and for any individual council member to telephonically participate in an unlimited number of meetings. “My intent in this ordinance is to allow more participation and that we have a full council at meetings whenever possible,” Navarre said. See KENAI, page A-14