Borough Mayor Mike Navarre introduced an ordinance for a new position entitled “Special Assistant to the Mayor – Oil, Gas and Mining” at the January 6 assembly meeting.
The ordinance would entail appropriating $67,500 for a new position within the borough and Mayor Navarre spoke about why this position is needed.
Mayor Navarre: “The primary reason is with the discussion about the LNG facility, that’s going to have huge economic impacts and opportunities for the Kenai Peninsula Borough and its residents and the planning stages start now. There’s legislation that’s starting this year during the legislative session, we need someone that’s going to be paying attention to that and also look at the socioeconomic studies as part of the environmental impact studies. We have to do our planning now because that will determine what projects and infrastructure is paid for as part of the project.”
We asked Mayor Navarre what he’s seeing for the LNG project moving forward in 2015.
Mayor Navarre: “That’s something that’s really at this point, up to the Walker administration and the legislature but we’re having a teleconference next week. The municipal advisory group that’s working on that, Governor Parnell’s administration put that together, our teleconference next week is with the Commissioners who are part of Governor Walker’s administration and that transition so it will be interesting to see which direction they are going we will have some more information then and over the course of the next several months we’ll see whether or not if that thing is going to gain traction or continue to move forward or what happens with the price of oil, those types of things.
There will be a hearing on that ordinance at the Assembly’s January 20th meeting.