The City of Soldotna has allocated a corner of their new website to the discussion of why they are investigating annexation.
At the March 11 city council meeting, Borough Assembly Member Dale Bagley spoke about why he thinks annexation is in the best interest of the city.
Bagley: “Big boxes, medium boxes, national chains might move to the area, move outside the City of Soldotna, take sales tax away from the city of Soldotna, and so that’s a concern that I have, and K-Beach area would be a logical place that folks could go. They would not be taxed by the City of Soldotna and could be a problem in the future.”
He is on the annexation advisory committee for the city.
On the website it states reasons why Soldotna is interested in annexation, one being “In the decade from 2000 to 2010, according to Census data, Soldotna’s population grew 11%. During that same time period, Sterling grew 19% and K-Beach grew a whopping 34%.”
Many borough residents are opposed to the idea of being included in the city however…
Olson: “Right now we’re having volunteers gather petitions that we can present at a later date to the council, saying we are opposed to annexation. That’s going to be one of the first ones.”
That was Brian Olson who has worked to organize an anti-annexation group and communicate that to the city.
The City of Soldotna will introduce an ordinance to put $150,000 towards annexation research and analysis at their April 22 meeting.
The next meeting of the group titled Borough Residents Against Annexation will be April 30th at 6:30 pm at the Cook Inlet Aquaculture building on K-Beach.