The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly barely passed an agenda item that would change the special assistant to the mayor from a part-time position to a full-time position as well as removing the position’s designation as Chief of Emergency Services. The assembly previously failed to pass the resolution, but was heard through public hearing through approving a notice of reconsideration given by Assembly Member Richard Derkevorkian, who cited a fellow assembly member as well as the borough mayor from being absent from the initial resolution.
One of the votes against adopting the resolution in April was Council Member Lane Chesley, who flipped votes this time around, thus approving the motion to reconsider. Through it passing, the assembly was allowed to deliberate on the subject once again.
He said:
“The reason I changed my vote is because I was contacted by a number of constituents who had criticisms of the mayor that I wanted to have an opportunity to bring to the mayor so that he could address them. That’s why I voted to do this because I think it’s fair that you have a chance to be able to address those. Some of the comments that I received is that because of the budget cuts that you have instituted in the departments and things like that, there was a sentiment that instead of rebuilding your department, that maybe we should be rebuilding some of the other departments before yours.”
In response, Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce said:
“We’ve got an almost $170 million budget. It’s a big borough, 42 schools. It’s a lot of area to cover. There’s a lot of accidents that occur that we’ve never even shown up to investigate because we didn’t have the staff to investigate it or even talk to the individuals to determine how and when it happened or why it happened. If we’re ever going to get control and manage our work comp, we’ve got to have people to do it with.”
Aaron Rhoades, Chief of Staff for Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce said:
“There are a lot of big-ticket items that are going to play through shortly. I think the help that we can use, whether that’s the individual that was named, I think we’ve demonstrated we’ve saved the taxpayers significant amounts of money because if that’s what this is about, money, than this money is currently in our budget, it’s not coming from somewhere else. We’re not asking for more. It’s because we’ve saved the Borough taxpayers significant amounts of money and we’re asking for a consideration two months before that. In the businesses that I run, if you’re small with people, it will cost you more in the end. Deferred maintenance on people is much more expensive.”
The Mayor’s office is currently in need of additional resources to serve as liaison to the Borough’s various boards and commissions, assist with upcoming capital projects, a potential $65 million bond package that would be subject to voter approval, work with cities and their councils to collaborate on borough and city issues, and other duties as assigned.
Click here for more information on Resolution 2022-027.