The Board of Fisheries began its first day of a week’s worth of meetings today in Anchorage, starting with public testimony.
Kenai City Manager Rick Koch is there to again request a 2017 meeting in Kenai.
Koch: “You have to sign up by 2 o’clock the afternoon of the 2nd and then you are able to testify, it looks like, on the 3rd. So I’ll be there to testify in favor of having the Board of Fish select the Kenai Peninsula as the site of the 2017 UCI meeting.”
Kenai Peninsula representatives have been requesting the change of location for years, as the last meeting of the Board of Fisheries held on the Kenai was in 1999.
Earlier this year the board ran into scheduling troubles and decided to reconsider the meeting location for the 2017 Upper Cook Inlet Finfish Meeting.
Koch: “The dates that they selected for the Upper Cook Inlet 2017 meeting, there are not any facilities available in Anchorage, or at least the ones they’ve checked into. Obviously, the solution that I personally think is the one to select is, well, just don’t have it in Anchorage. Have it on the Kenai Peninsula and you don’t have to change any of your schedule.”
Koch met with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Kenai/Soldotna and Anchorage advisory committees and members of both wrote letters of support for a Kenai Peninsula meeting.
Governor Bill Walker and Speaker of the House Mike Chenault are among other representatives to have publicized their support of a Board of Fisheries meeting on the Kenai Peninsula.
Click here for the Board of Fisheries meeting live stream and agenda.
