The City of Kenai’s Shop Here All Year voucher program, designed to incentivize shopping locally in Kenai, started on February 1 and aims to offer financial incentives to help both shoppers and businesses in Kenai flourish despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mayor Brian Gabriel expressed concern at Wednesday’s meeting of the Kenai City Council towards one member of the council that he feels may have been spreading misleading information about a failed attempt to expand the program.
Before the program’s launch, the Kenai City Council held a meeting that went past midnight, largely to discuss potential expansions to the program. City administration originally pitched the program as a program made up of $100,000 in incentives. Council Member Teea Winger suggested that the program become A Million Reasons To Shop In Kenai, drastically expanding the program to house $1 million in incentives, while expanding the types of shopping that count towards vouchers, such as marijuana dispensaries and groceries.
That substitute failed, after lengthy debate, though the council still managed to triple the incentives, making it a $300,000 program.
Mayor Gabriel said on Wednesday that he was disappointed in what he saw as an effort by Council Member Winger, though he never identified her by-name, to mislead Kenai residents on her appearances on KSRM’s Sound Off.
He claimed that Council Member Winger misrepresented why he was against her substitute to the ordinance, having voted against the $1 million expansion: “We had a Council Member that went on the call-in program Sound Off and there were a few things they discussed, Ordinance 3177-2020 – the Shop Here All Year program – which was the main discussion, it was on the substitute that this Council Member had proposed… [My vote] doesn’t say I don’t care about small business, the thought process that I put into behind this ordinance.”
Council Member Henry Knackstedt did not express concern about Winger, but did say that the outcries on social media about the discussions to kill the $1 million substitute went over a line of decency: “A Facebook rant that literally scared small children: that was relayed to me by somebody that has children. I saw it and I was called out a number of times. I didn’t appreciate that one bit. Also, this body as a whole…I thought it was detrimental to our city and our city moving forward. It quite angers me that it would actually happen. The Sound Off part, a family member has listened to it so it’s been relayed, so it’s second-hand, but it sounded like it was much the same. In which case, for whatever reason, I was called out. My name: ‘Knackstedt: you blow my mind. What the heck?’ Don’t like that! Who does that?”
A call to calm the tension in the air was offered by Council Member Jim Glendenning, saying that the long discussion, the subsequent complaints on radio, and the social media attacks should all serve as tools with which the council can use to learn and grow.
During Wednesday’s meeting, the council unanimously approved the introduction of Ordinance 3191-2021 which aims to offer $200,000 to up to 1,000 Kenai residents to support the purchase of groceries and other necessary household goods, mainly items that are typically excluded from other shop-local incentive programs. The details of that program will be discussed at a pubic hearing at the council’s February 17 meeting.
