Tuesday September 9th, the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce held a forum for Soldotna City Council and Mayoral candidates. Appearing at the forum was Soldotna Mayor Nels Anderson, and City Council members, Pete Sprague, Linda Murphy and Paul Whitney. Meggean Bos was invited but was unable to attend.
Not only were the candidates unanimous in the desire for Soldotna to be a Home Rule city and for the construction of a Visitor and Convention center, but they had something else in common: they’re all running unopposed.
We spoke with Mayor Anderson about running unopposed,
Mayor Anderson: Well, I’m kind of happy about that. I spent five thousand dollars of my own money running the last election, because my son told me I had to. I would have much preferred to have had a very a quiet election and let the voters decide without sticking up signs and putting radio ads and things on to be honest with you.
We also asked about the benefits of Soldotna becoming a home rule city.
Mayor Anderson: Actually the majority of the cities in Alaska are Home Rule, and I don’t see any negatives to it. It basically allows the city to control their own destiny, rather than have the borough or general law control the destiny of the city. This came up because of the food tax issue and ruling by the Supreme Court.
Linda Murphy said she’d support a Visitor and Convention center, but only if the city wasn’t subsidizing the maintenance and operations.
Cm. Murphy: I would really like to see it happen, as I said earlier, I would support the city helping to finance the construction of the facility and perhaps providing the real estate that it sits on. I would not want us to be in a position, unless we had a bed tax that we could dedicate to that subsidy, I would not want the city to be in the position of subsidizing the maintenance and operations.