The Kenai City Council voted to indefinitely postpone a second economic stimulus program that would have been to benefit Kenai small businesses. The intention would be to support tourism, travel, or hospitality businesses to encourage local spending at a time in the community’s recovery from the COVID-19 public health emergency.
City Manager Paul Ostrander recommended that Council vote to indefinitely postpone:
“Because we had provided that in January and I think the evidence in January indicated that this was an area that did need some support, I felt like there was some commitment on the part of Administration bringing this forward. We did bring this forward at the June 2nd meeting, as we were preparing to introduce it on June 2nd, we had a lot of internal discussions about the program and whether or not we felt, at the time, that it was warranted. So, I went into that with some reservations, however, between June 2nd and now, as I considered it further, and we got additional information, which is outlined in the memo which indicates that occupancy rates are very high, lodges are full, guides are, across the board, incredibly busy. Many of these industries that we thought that would be impacted more severely by COVID, it appears that there’s unexpected recovery at this industry. I felt that it was warranted to ask council for your consideration in actually postponing this indefinitely. We did include, in your packet, the program as we had outlined it, but, again, I don’t think that the need is there to warrant the appropriation of the $200,000 at this time.”
$200,000 would have been authorized for the proposed program that would have had the city partner with the Kenai Chamber of Commerce to help administer the program. It would have been called “The Second One is On Us!” to provide relief to those specific businesses incentivizing people who purchase a single tourism, travel, or hospitality service in Kenai with a participating business to receive a voucher of equal value on a second purchase at that business.
After recommendation from Administration, City Council voted to postpone indefinitely the proposed program.