City Council and Borough Assembly to Touch Base on Consolidation Vote, Building Code

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Tonight, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly and Kodiak City Council will hold a long awaited work session to discuss two items that have been controversial due to the difficulty in communication between the two bodies.

One topic is the consolidation of the borough and city into one unit of government and the other is the memorandum of agreement the borough and city hold to share one building department.

The assembly recently decided to put an advisory question to voters about whether to discuss consolidating the borough and city and went forward without sitting down with the city council. Members of the council expressed frustration over the lack of communication.

The council is also considering terminating the memorandum of agreement it holds with the assembly. This summer, the assembly reverted back to the 1997 Uniform Building Code in order to relax engineering requirements for home owner / builders in the borough. The building department now needs to inspect homes according to two codes, the 1997 UBC and 2012 International Residential Code. The council wanted to wait and talk with the assembly before it went forward on dissolving the MOA.

A discussion regarding communication between the assembly and council is also an item listed on the agenda.

If you’d like to attend the joint work session, it’ll be tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Kodiak Public Library.