The City of Soldotna has voted to approve a resolution that would adopt a joint resolution of the assembly of the Kenai Peninsula Borough and councils of the cities of Homer, Kenai, Seldovia, Seward and Soldotna for the purpose of intergovernmental administration of the borough and city elections. For more than 20 years, the city collaborated with the Kenai Peninsula Borough on administrating annual regular elections with the common goal of serving the public interest to work together and minimize costs. Adopting Joint Resolution 2021-001 would authorize the manager to enter into an agreement for the administration, including cost and equipment sharing of borough and city elections.
Soldotna City Clerk Shellie Saner:
“Joint Resolution 2021 would authorize the city manager to sign a memorandum of agreement with the borough. This memorandum of agreement simply formalizes the processes that have been in place for as long as I’ve been participating in elections locally. Prior to 2021, both the Borough and the city had access to the state of Alaska’s election equipment at no cost. The difference with this is it is actually formalizing the cost for the services of the borough is providing based on the fact that the borough just incurred just a substantial cost to acquire new equipment and software to program our elections.”
Historically, the Kenai Peninsula Borough and the five cities of Homer, Kenai, Seldovia, Seward and Soldotna have collaborated on the administration of the annual regular municipal election in hopes to increase efficiencies and to ensure municipal elections are conducted in a fair and consistent way borough-wide.
According to the Joint Resolution, the borough’s obligations include election and ballot programming, logic and accuracy testing, voter pamphlets, shared services for absentee voting, election worker recruitment, training and administration, equipment delivery and storage, precinct/polling site rental, and special elections support. The agreement will be in effect for five years and will be eligible for two 5-year renewals.
Cities’ Obligations and Fees:
Resolution 2021-029 supporting the Joint Resolution unanimously passed the Soldotna City Council.