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    Last month some Kodiak residents vented their frustration at the City Council over what they saw as inaction over vagrants accosting people in the heart of downtown.
    “There are drunks down there all the time. It’s disgusting,” said Judi Kidder.
    “What’s it going to take? A Rape? A murder? Some woman getting beaten to a pulp?” asked Lisa Zeimer. “It is a disgrace and it is a blight on our community and I cannot believe that the council lets this stand.”
    Both spoke at the city council meeting on May 9th.
    In response, the Kodiak Police Department has very visibly increased the number of foot patrols of the area in and around the Mall, where vagrants and public inebriates gather.
    “The numbers for arrests for public intoxication or for possessing an open container in a public area are trending upwards, because it’s part of our overall more proactive and aggressive strategy with trying to address those things,” said Police Chief T.C. Kamai.
    However, he said throwing people in jail only treats the symptoms of the vagrant issue in Kodiak, which has many causes and few solutions.
    “I think we live, over all, in a safe town, but there are certain areas, and this might be one of them, where just simply by virtue of having some intoxicated people just kind of hanging around in the area where an extra bit of caution would be prudent, I think.”
    The chief echoed Mayor Pat Branson’s suggestion from the May meeting for people to report every incident where they feel unsafe or uncomfortable, not just the serious ones:
    “We want to keep track of it and we have the ability to send officers down to the area and they can look and perhaps even identify,” he said. “And maybe just by virtue of being there and responding to a complaint, just their mere presence might discourage these folks from continuing that behavior.”
    The Kodiak Police blotter shows 15 reports of “community policing” and checks of bars in the downtown area on Sunday while officers were on foot patrol. Saturday saw 25 and last Friday 21 more.
    “We’re doing the best we can,” Kamai said.

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    Two weeks ago Kodiak residents took to road system beaches and cleaned up marine debris during the first ever Coast Walk. Participants signed up to clean 31 of the 81 identified beaches and collected more than 1,645 pounds of marine debris.
    Tom Pogson is the marine debris coordinator for Island Trails Network, the organization that hosted the event, and said in an email that items are still coming in and that number will definitely go up. Not all of the debris bags have been collected or turned in to ITN, and the preliminary poundage is only from marine debris that has been sorted.
    Pogson said the event definitely helped open the community’s eyes to the extent of marine debris washing ashore, and he was pleased with the outcome. He said there is more work to be done, especially since 50 road system beaches have yet to be cleaned. ITN still has clean up kits available to the public and encourages folks to check ITN’s website for remaining beaches and information about other marine debris clean up and incentive programs taking place throughout the archipelago.

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    Health professionals throughout the community are hoping to figure out how Kodiak is doing with health services these days. A new online survey went live last week and asks a number of questions about participants’ current health and experiences with local services. Karen Leatherman is the communications and public relations coordinator for Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center and said the survey helps take the pulse of the community, determine where gaps in health services may be and how to improve.
    “That’s not just how Providence is doing, but how all community health service providers are doing with addressing the health needs of our community.”
    Leatherman said the survey is conducted every five years and the last one was in 2008.
    “One of the major findings from the 2008 survey was the need for a community wide coalition to address some of the health, physical and mental wellbeing, for residents of Kodiak island. One of the organizations or coalitions rather that formed out of that was Healthy Tomorrows.”
    She emphasized fact that the survey really is a community wide effort, with various entities supporting the project.
    “The Kodiak Island Borough, the Senior Citizens of Kodiak, Kodiak Public Health, KANA, Kodiak Community Health Center, the Filipino American Association and there’s more project supporters. And it really would be great to have some participation and people filling out the survey.”
    There are incentives to fill out the survey. Those who participate can be entered into a drawing for roundtrip Alaska Airlines tickets to Anchorage, as well as gift cards for fuel and local museums. You can take the survey online at Alaska dot providence dot org forward slash KHA. 

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Storis, now decommissioned, is being auctioned by the U.S. General Services Agency. U.S. Coast Guard file photo

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    The historic Coast Guard Cutter Storis, which spent most of its post-World War II career sailing Alaska waters, is on the auction block. Alaska’s Congressional delegation had managed to stave off disposal since its 2007 decommissioning, but the federal government has decided it is time to move on.
    Heather Handyside is a press secretary for Senator Mark Begich.
    “Well I think we had been hoping to be able preserve the Storis, and find it a place specifically in the museum in Juneau," she said. "However, as you probably know, it does take a little bit of money to maintain these older, historical vessels, and so, unfortunately we weren’t able to keep it and it’s being auctioned off.”
    The Storis was listed last week on the auction site of the General Services Administration. The opening bid, which did not meet the reserve price, was $60,000.
    Joe Geldhof, the secretary for the Storis Museum in Juneau, said it appeared the GSA was not willing to wait any longer for Congress to give the ship away:
    “Well, a number of us around the country and throughout Alaska were surprised with the General Services Administration’s acts in putting it up for auction," he said. "We were on a track for the Congress to dispose of the Storis by giving it to the museum. And we were frustrated, as many people are, in dealing with Congress by various maneuvering and stuff. But this caught a lot of people by surprise, the GSA play.”