The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly enacted an ordinance that provides for the submission to the qualified voters of the Central Emergency Service Area at the regular municipal election, the question of the issuance of $16.5 million in GO bonds to pay the cost of replacing the CES Fire Station #1 in and for the service area.
A preliminary engineering report was completed recently which documented numerous issues indicating that the current CES Station #1 is undersized, has structural and building code deficiencies, and lacks storage, living, office, fire truck and ambulance space. Through the study, it was determined that the station is inadequate for daily operations, emergency response, workload, and staffing to meet the demands of the CES fire service area.
The estimated cost to build and equip the replacement fire station doesn’t exceed $16.5 million and an estimated .36 mill rate increase throughout the Central Emergency Service Area will be required to pay debt service on the GO bond debt.
Borough Assembly Member Jesse Bjorkman said:
“I think it’s important that we talk about the needs of infrastructure to our community whether it be improving response time for fire emergency personnel, improving road maintenance, improving internet infrastructure so that all of the people of the Kenai Peninsula can continue to prosper in their life, in their work and they can do so with a reliance on the fact that those emergency services, those roads, transportation, those things are going to be there when people expect them to be. We can’t have things fall apart as people are trying to conduct commerce and certainly in the desperate time of emergency need.”
CES Fire Station #1 was constructed in 1956 as a community hall. Subsequent additions in 1964-1967, 1973 and 1984, converted the building to the current fire station it is today, but even with that, the building can’t keep up with the demands of today’s operations as all reasonable measures for station expansion has been exhausted.
If approved by the voters at the October 4 municipal election, the resulting impact on the annual tax levy would be an increase of approximately $36 per $100,000 of assessed taxable property value (based on the total FY23 assessed valuation, an 3.5% average rate of interest and a 20-year payback period).
The ballot measure will look like this:
PROPOSITION NO. __
CENTRAL EMERGENCY SERVICE AREA STATION BONDS AND APPROVAL OF PROJECT
Shall the Kenai Peninsula Borough incur indebtedness and issue up to $16,500,000 of general obligation bonds of the Central Emergency Service Area?
The bond proceeds will be used to pay the costs of planning, designing, acquiring property for, site preparation, constructing, installing and equipping new Central Emergency Services Fire Station located within the Central Emergency Service Area and pay costs of issuing the bond.
The indebtedness will be repaid from ad valorem taxes levied on all taxable property located within the Central Emergency Service Area. The Central Emergency Service Area will pledge its full faith and credit for repayment of the indebtedness.
Voter approval for this proposition authorizes for each $100,000 of assessed real and personal property value in the Central Emergency Service Area (based on the estimated FY2023 service area assessed valuation) an annual tax increase of approximately $36 to retire the debt.
The proposition set forth in Section 3 shall be printed on a ballot which may set forth other general obligation bond propositions, and the following words shall be added as appropriate and next to an area provided for marking the ballot for voting:
PROPOSITION NO. ____ YES ____ NO ____
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