It’s Election Day In Kodiak

Jay Barrett/KMXT

This is Election Day on Kodiak Island. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will stay that way until 8 p.m.

There is only one contested race today: that is for the one-year seat on the Kodiak Island Borough School Board, which three write-in candidates are seeking. They are Jana Turvey, Petal Ruch and Jerry Lampl.

Incumbents Peggy Rauwolf and Jeff Stephan are seeking re-election to the other two school board seats, which are both for three-year terms.

On the borough assembly, incumbent Sue Jeffrey is seeking re-election, and Judy Fulp is running for one of the two seats open for three years. The other seat had nobody wanting to run for it when the sign-up period ended, but Dave Kaplan has announced a write-in campaign for it.

There are only two candidates for the two Kodiak City Council seats – incumbent Tom Walters and former police department employee Paul Smith, an Episcopal priest.

In the service area elections, only one has a full slate of candidates.

One of the reasons there might be suppressed interest in seeking public office is because of new, more detailed – some would say more intrusive – financial disclosure forms candidates must fill out. Ballot Proposition Number One is designed to alleviate that reporting requirement. If passed, it would allow borough candidates to file the old forms with the borough clerk’s office, and they will be available for public scrutiny there. Residents of the city of Kodiak passed a similar proposition many years ago.

Speaking of the ballot propositions, Number Two would authorize the sale by the borough of up to 115-million dollars in bonds to pay for a new Kodiak High School. The state would reimburse the borough for 60-percent of that cost, leaving about 46-million dollars for borough residents to pay over the course of the 20-year life of the bond.

KMXT will have the election results as they come in tonight after the polls close, but the borough clerk’s office has previously announced it would not have vote totals for any write-in candidate until later in the week. That’s because they have to be counted by hand.