Alaska’s budget deficit is a real concern and Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Mike Navarre traveled to Juneau last week to be a part of discussions on the state’s fiscal future.
Mayor Navarre: “Business leaders and some government leaders from around the state to talk about the need for fiscal plans going into the next session and how to coordinate on a plan, how to help advance that in the environment of relationships between the governor and the legislature and recognizing that the legislature is going to have a lot of say in it and they’ve got some real challenges.“
He says being involved with the discussions is important because of the amount of state funding the Kenai Peninsula Borough receives.
Mayor Navarre: “We get so much funding from the state on an annual basis for education, for roads, for revenue sharing, and for the health and social services budget, for Medicaid, for our hospitals in both Central Peninsula and South Peninsula, so there is a lot of portions of the state budget that are important to the Kenai Peninsula and will end up directly affecting us.”
Navarre says this upcoming budget cycle for the state will include many tough choices.
He says he hopes to communicate the process with the residents of the Kenai Peninsula as well as make known the impacts that those decisions will have on the borough.