Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce has announced that he will resign from office to focus on running for Governor of Alaska. This news comes after his campaign finished in the top four vote getters in the regular primary where the four automatically advance to the General Election in November, which will be determined through Ranked Choice Voting. Pierce had previously committed to stepping down after the August primary. Mayor Pierce’s resignation will become effective at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, September 30, 2022.
According to a post on Facebook:
“It has been a pleasure and great honor to serve the residents of the Kenai Peninsula Borough these past five years. I leave the borough with a sound fiscal plan, a $30 million Fund balance, have guided the KPB through the Covid crisis, reduced mil rates and many other accomplishments that have made the KPB a great place to live and prosper. I thank and appreciate the excellent work of our dedicated borough employees who have make these accomplishments possible.”
Pierce also spoke with KSRM’s ‘Sound Off’:
“This morning, I announced that I would be resigning my duties as mayor so that I can go run the gubernatorial race. It’s hard to do both jobs simultaneously and to do justice, I think, and to be fair to the process, I need to go and run the campaign that I claimed I would do this if I met the requirements to become the final four. We find ourselves in the final four, we’re excited about that. To do justice of that, and to give consideration to all sides concerned, we need to go and run. We need to run this race.”
Mayor Pierce talks through the process of the Kenai Peninsula Borough replacing him:
“I think they got a month to put some things in process and that would be to temporarily appoint an individual to take care of the day-to-day needs of the mayor and then to prepare for a special election. I think code calls for if there’s a year, and there is a year left in my term, if there’s a year or more, then you have a special election. So I suspect that’s where we’re going to go, but I want to certainly help in that process of making sure that there’s a smooth transition.”
Pierce was asked if this was a decision made recently given the results of the regular primary election:
“No, we had been declaring this early. I think that there was several months ago, I made notice to the Assembly that this very thing could happen if we made the final four. My campaign team long before we made the final four was trying to encourage me to drop and go run and, of course, my responsibility as a mayor came first and foremost and so I made the decision just to stick it out, see if we made it to the final four, which we have, and my team is ready to go and run now.”
Sean Kelley, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Attorney, in a statement said:
“The KPB Legal Department received Mayor Charlie Pierce’s resignation from office tendered on August 26, 2022 and effective September 30, 2022.
It is expected that the KPB Assembly will address the issue of a vacancy in the office of the mayor at its next regularly scheduled meeting in accordance with the process proscribed under State law. Operations at the borough are not impacted. Operations will continue as normal and all public services remain open for business.
Next week we will publish a publicly available memorandum to the Assembly regarding the succession process. It is a process outlined under Alaska Statutes, Title 29. With respect, the KPB Legal Department will not comment on that process prior to publication of its recommendations to the Assembly. I anticipate that the memo will be available Tuesday (8/30) afternoon.
The KPB Legal Department has no further comment at this time.”
This is a breaking news story, more details to follow.
