The Soldotna Regional Sports Complex was granted $0.5 million last night to continue designing an expansion, including the addition of conference spaces and an indoor turf field.
Rick Roeske from the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District said the way to keep top talent around is to make sure Soldotna offers young professionals a premiere quality of life…
Roeske: “More than ever skilled workers, especially young ones, are choosing where to live based on lifestyles as much as the availability of jobs.”
The SoHi girls’ soccer team turned out en force to plead for more practice time. Senior Taryn McCubbins...
McCubbins: “All the Anchorage teams, they have that dome they can use in the winter. They have all that extra practice time. I know that when I graduate High School, I’m going to still be here and I love to run, I love to play soccer and this would just give me so many more opportunities and not just myself, but my teammates behind me, community members, we would have that option.”
But with just 4,300 residents within the City, it’s been a tough sell. Councilor Linda Murphy said the expansion should be the responsibility of the Borough…
Cm. Murphy: “Mayor Navarre has talked in the past about the possibility of forming a central peninsula recreation service area, where the residents of the central peninsula would tax themselves to support recreation and it would include things like the sports center, the pools in the schools. I mean, the Borough came to us and asked us to fund a school pool that isn’t even in the city limits, and we did that.”
Murphy was the only “no” vote on the ordinance.
City Manager Mark Dixon said he has no qualms with building a center which will serve the wider community, since the sales tax revenue the City enjoys comes from the building’s patrons.
He said the only City Department which currently pays for itself is the building department, with a recent boom in new construction.