The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, through Resolution 2023-014, has established funding priorities to be submitted for the 2023 Alaska legislative session.
Emergency response and mitigation, road safety and maintenance, solid waste management, as well as quality school facilities, are paramount concerns throughout the Borough’s requests for state funding. Each of the listed projects represents a solution to address needs identified by the Borough’s operational assessment, School District planning, Service Area boards, and input from the public.
Borough Mayor Mike Navarre explained the process of submitting Borough priority list.
“This is just really a list for submission into the CIPIS program that will provide an opportunity if funding is available for legislators to apply some funding to these categories. Now, there aren’t a lot of small community projects on this list; those projects can be submitted directly to legislators. They can load them into the CIPIS system and if they come to us and ask for a resolution of support the Assembly could do that rather than trying to compile a whole bunch of small projects from individual communities, some information of which was gathered when we did the community assistance program meetings. These are larger projects.”
In establishing this list of projects for submission to the Capital Improvement Projects Information System (CIPIS), a concerted effort was made to identify and prioritize projects that address areawide needs and provide the maximum benefit to all the taxpayers of the Borough.
Primary large projects submitted through CIPIS include:
- $4,500,000 for Emergency Power Plant replacement and improvements for South Peninsula Hospital in Homer
- $10,000,000 to Improve roads currently maintained by the Kenai Peninsula Borough Roads Service Area
- Close to $8,000,000 for the Seward Flood Service Area for Flood Mitigation Projects
- $2,000,000 to improve transfer facilities in various location across the Borough
- $275,000 to rehabilitate the Sport Court of Susan B English School as a recreational asset to the service area residents in Seldovia
- $3,500,000 to expand and renovate the Fire Station (WES station 3) in Anchor Point
- $10,867,503 to build a community center, in the remote village of Kachemak Selo, that will function as the main center for all community functions to include community meetings, community athletic functions, and academic activities
Navarre specified some of the specific items on the Borough’s list.
“Other than that (Kachemak Selo) the other ones that are on there are Western Emergency Services, their facility in Anchor Point needs upgrading; you know they’ve gone to 56-hour employees now reconfigured some space. The flood service area, we talked about, that’s one of our federal projects. South Peninsula Hospital is also one of our federal projects and area-wide road improvements– we just asked for lump sum money because you could utilize it anywhere the road service area has roads across the Borough.”
The prepared booklet contains capital priorities for the Borough, the School District, and Borough Service Areas.