The cities of Kenai and Soldotna discussed and voted on extending their Disaster Emergency Declaration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic last night in their City Council meetings.
The Kenai City Council voted to extend the Disaster Declaration. Resolution 2020-96 called for a 90 day extension that would go till March 31, 2021. An amendment proposed by Councilman Jim Glendening that would have the Disaster Declaration go to 31 days, instead of the initially proposed 90 days, was passed by the City Council.
Councilman Glendening says, “Right now, we have a declaration in place to apply for CARES and FEMA money. Anything in the future must also have a declaration in place at the time any CARES and FEMA money is implemented. That is well understood. Right now, we’re sitting in a warm bath of CARES dollars and vaccine distribution. At this point, we don’t know what’s going to be offered or made available to us in the near future from the government. I think we need to have a recovery plan as part of our discussion for the economy and for public health. We can’t get a straight line to April from here because we don’t know what we don’t know. Right now, there’s no more CARES dollars and what may come will have strings attached.”
That amendment would have the Disaster Declaration end on January 31, 2021.
Councilmember Teea Winger said, ”I think evaluating this every 30 or 31 days would be a good thing. We have a lot of changes coming out. We have a vaccine that hit the market. We’re starting to see numbers going down in the reports the last few days. I think the uptick is hopefully behind us. We’ll have a new President after January. I think there will be a lot of changes. I think these are things that should be evaluated.”
City Manager Paul Ostrander clarified concerns some members of the council had with regard to having only a 30/31 day Disaster Declaration compared to Soldotna and the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly. He said, “The reality is, you could revisit every month and that’s fine. The three things that are in the memo the temporary leave, the moratorium on penalty interest and water/sewer disconnects is going to be in place at least through March 31st, unless we are all completely wrong with what’s going to happen over the course of the next three months.”
As a result, the Kenai City Council’s Disaster Declaration will be considered monthly versus every 90 days for Soldotna and the Kenai Peninsula Borough.
Also last night, the Soldotna City Council voted to extend the Disaster Declaration for the city for 90 days. Section 1 of the resolution states that the Disaster Emergency Declaration issued on March 19, 2020 by the City Manager will extend 90 days from December 31, 2020 to March 31, 2021.
Originally, the Soldotna City Council issued a Disaster Emergency Declaration on March 19, 2020. It was extended several times in July and again in October. It was scheduled to expire on December 31, 2020.
The Disaster Declaration for both Kenai and Soldotna activates the City’s emergency response plan and makes available resources as needed for the ongoing response and the recovery from the current and potential impacts. Kenai and Soldotna also request the State of Alaska to provide disaster assistance by making available resources as needed in the ongoing response and recovery from the current and potential impacts of the pandemic, to provide individual assistance for affected businesses and individuals, and to provide technical expertise and guidance, to help the cities in response and recovery from the event. They also request assistance from federal agencies where state capability isn’t adequate.
The Kenai and Soldotna resolutions took effect immediately upon passage.
