The Soldotna City Council met on Wednesday, October 11th to discuss potentially accepting grant funds from the state.
The ordinance (2023-030) would accept grant funds from the State of Alaska, Department of Natural Resource, Vision of Forestry and Fire Protection. It would also increase the estimated revenues and appropriations by $470,000 in the Parks and Recreation Capitol Project Fund for Spruce Bark Beetle Mitigation and Hazard Fuel Reduction.
This was introduced by the city manager and was brought up for discussion.
According to John Czarnezki, the Director of Economic Development and Planning, Soldotna received a $200,000 grant from the Division of Forestry, and those funds were used to conduct work at the end of West Street Ave. Once the work was completed, there was a bit of money leftover, but there was not much time to do much more work, due to the fact that the snow was melting, and was softening the ground at a rapid rate. They were able to do approximently five acres of additional work to the Centennial campground. But that left them with a budget of about $45,000. There was still more work to be completed on the campground, as well as Swiftwater and the airport.
“And we contacted forestry and asked them if it’d be possible to amend our grants and extend our grant and they asked us to submit a proposal we requested just over $500,000, and we also requested that we added Parker park into the list of areas to clear and they responded in August with a $470,000 grant again, no match required, and they extended us to June of 2025 to complete the work. Again, no match. And as soon as soon as we have your blessings, we will go out to bid and start getting people on line to do the work,” said Czarnezki.
Mayor Paul Whitney did ask if, in the future, there would be a possibility of grants being available to assist private property owners to remove some of the trees they cannot afford.
And while at the moment there is not, Czarnezki said that they would continue to look for solutions.
After a vote, the ordinance passed with five members in favor.