Peters: Anytime its like a holiday which Memorial weekend is coming up and the weather is nicer we do notice that people choose to partake and some of them make the poor choice of getting behind the wheel, its why we do focused enforcement efforts around holidays. Right now the National Click It Or Ticket campaign is going on so we have Troopers out on the roadways doing extra overtime hours on so that could account for us catching more of them

We asked Peters about what drivers can do to help keep dangerous drivers off of the road.

Peters: REDDI stands for Report Every Dangerous Driver Immediately,  essentially if somebody is on the road, they’re driving they’re weaving in and out of traffic they’re speeding, going overly fast around corners, running through stop signs just practicing unsafe driving behaviors, as Troopers we need to know about it because we can’t do anything until we get reports until we know something is happening, we can’t be everywhere so we encourage people to help us by calling in and reporting what they’re seeing, the more information they can provide to us the better our chances are of tracking down that dangerous driver.

As always we encourage you to call 911 when you believe there is a risk of death or injury due to a dangerous drivers behavior.

KPB Mayor Navarre: “Now, therefore I, Mike Navarre, Mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2013 as Motorcycle Awareness Month on the Kenai Peninsula and urge all residents to ride and drive safely, exercise extreme caution to reduce accidents and casualties this summer, and remain sensitive to the increasing number of motorcycles on the roads.”

Koch said additional enforcement officers will be stationed along the beach this year, but violations are difficult to prosecute, since the crime needs to be witnessed, and can’t easily be detected afterwards…

Koch: “It’s difficult only from the standpoint of you really can’t put enough people down there to enforce that kind of a thing consistently, so the other option is put more dumpsters out, appeal to folks to use those dumpsters and some increased enforcement, with these other enforcement officers, they’ll be looking at that, too.”

Koch reiterated that the City of Kenai doesn’t oversee enforcement for the fishery, but has made multiple requests to the state departments to step up its efforts. The City does hire seasonal workers, eight are expected this year, to cite parking violations and other incidental issues like littering.

Dr. Atwater: “We’ll be using our fund balance and reserves to balance our budget, and that total amount is not yet known, but that’s where we’re going to have to draw upon to make the balance, but looking ahead to the following year, the Board will be considering whether it makes sense to increase the size of class size, which would be a reduction in personnel.”

Dr. Atwater said there is some possibility that the Borough could increase the district’s funding, but they’ll hold off on making that decision until…

Dr. Atwater: “Everything else needs to be fleshed out with the number of students that return to us for school next year. So, we don’t really know our level of revenue until we know our number of students.”

We recently spoke to Craig Chapman, KPB Finance Director.

Chapman: “Well the current code applies a interest rate of 15 percent on unpaid taxes, and there’s a penalty of 5 percent per month, up to 25 percent. The Ordinance that’s being proposed would reduce the interest rate to 10 percent and the maximum penalty also to 10 percent.”

We asked Chapman why this Ordinance was put forward…

Chapman: “On an annual basis, we go through the code and review different items to see whether or not they need revision and this is something that’s needed to be revised for a period of time and the current rates are excessive and so we’re proposing to substantially reduce that.”

Our Governor has been aggressively behind an oil tax bill to reduce taxes for the majors for a long time. In fact, last year a bill he was pushing failed to make it through the Alaska Senate. The main argument opponents to Senate Bill 21 expressed over and over again is “What makes you think you can trust the major oil companies to make the heavy investment that will result in new and increased oil production.”

The Senate urged the oil companies to make a commitment to increase activity and investment on the North Slope, and waited many weeks for them to do so. But Conoco Phillips, B.P. and Exxon Mobil were totally silent. They made no commitments of any kind. It’s no wonder that some Senators called the bill a giveaway and a crapshoot. Where is the commitment?

On the other hand, our economy is declining in Alaska along with severe declines in the flow of oil in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline year after year. Something has to be done to reverse this devastating trend. Certainly we all are interested in seeing our robust economy come back.

Many folks are leaving our state for other oil producing areas in our country. These areas like North Dakota, Texas and California are booming mainly because of the new horizontal drilling developments in shale oil.  Their costs for producing a barrel of crude oil are much lower than ours and North Slope producers in Alaska simply cannot compete in the marketplace.

Senator McGuire summed it up well when she told senators that “One thing we know for sure is that the driver in investment is fiscal policy, and when we, as those that govern, have been told time and time again that our fiscal policy is not competitive and broken, it is absolutely incumbent upon us under the Alaska Constitution to make every effort we can to change that tax policy in a way to encourage investment.

Opponents are busily trying to gather 31,000 signatures from Alaskans who are against the new law, that is 10%, but that is not the only requirement. The group must collect at least 7 percent of voters who voted in the last General Election in 30 of the state’s 40 house districts. That is a gigantic task. The sad part of the effort to repeal the new law is that it creates doubt which will no doubt cause the oil companies to drag their feet until the matter is finally settled in the fall of 2014.

If Alaskans can actually trust Conoco-Phillips, B.P., and Exxon Mobil to do their part and get much more oil flowing in the pipeline then we as Alaskans have every reason to be optimistic about the future of our state. Remember, we have produced only less than half of our known oil reserves.

Think About It!         John C. Davis   5/22/2013

Senator Begich said the increase of oil and gas exploration, shipping, tourism and fishing activity in the region, means Alaskans rely upon the Coast Guard to ensure safe seas in the Arctic.

He expressed concern that the White house hasn’t added funding for the operations, and wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, suggesting she transfer the U.S. Air Force (USAF) C-27J cargo aircraft to the Coast Guard.  Begich’s office said the transfer would give the Coast Guard the new maritime patrol aircraft it needs and would result in $800 million in savings.

Sen. Begich’s letter to Sec. Napolitano available here.

Syverson: “What we’re hoping for, right now, Soldotna High School is hoping to put in a new track and turf field at Soldotna High School for two reasons: one, for our athletes to have a safe place, especially for our soccer teams in the spring, when there’s snow and ice, the turf fields are much safer. And our track was built in 1980 and we have not hosted a track meet in about 15 years, so we would like to start hosting track meets there again. And eventually our goal, along with having a great facility for our students  is to be able to put in bids with the Alaska Activities Association to host state events.”

At last night’s meeting of the Borough Assembly, Vice President Hal Smalley congratulated KCHS Boys and Girls Track and Field teams for winning the Track and Field Championships…

Asm. Smalley (Kenai): “these are sweet victories. They really are. And over the years, there have been just tremendous athletes that have come out of all of our high schools, but in particular, the red, white, and black has done very well over the years. And they’re getting a brand new track, so there will be some champions in the future there.”

Ogle: “I don’t think that fiscal notes would necessarily be an onerous, heavy burden on administration. To me, in the organizations I’ve been involved with, fiscal notes are being built from the minute you start thinking about doing a project or an activity, and a fiscal note for the Borough, I would imagine Department Heads could take their calculations and assessments of what something would cost, and it’s really cut and paste into a fiscal note.”

Ogle thanked Assembly President Linda Murphy and Member Kelly Wolf for bringing forward the proposal.

Ogle: “I’ll quote the Borough Assembly President: ‘I just want us to all know what we are voting for when we vote.’ And I would just add to that that the public also needs to know what you are voting for, too.”

McRae: “I didn’t appreciate a bulldozer being brought on my property. That was a problem. It cost me some timber. I tried contacting Spruce Bark Beetle Kill and got nowhere for quite some time. Now, my understanding is moose hunting does not occur in January, but someone got a moose in January on Spruce Bark Beetle Kill. This site was not supervised.” 

McRae said the program put in three driveways, plugging up the area with debris, and no funding has been spent on cleaning the area up and had also led to snowmachiners trespassing on her land and taking trees.

The Mayor said he would look into the specifics again, after previous information had led him to believe McRae’s property wasn’t included in the affected area.