KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
On Tuesday, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly and Kodiak City Council met during a joint work session to discuss various topics that affect both governing bodies. At the meetings end, City Mayor Pat Branson asked both entities to update each other with a list of projects they hope will gain significant ground in the coming year.
— (Capitol Projects 1 :17 “The next item is a discussion of Kodiak capitol projects and I wanted to add this to the agenda just to have an exchange since both bodies were here so we could catch up and get updated on where we are with our capitol projects, and maybe we’ll just turn this over to the managers and they can give us an update.”)
Acting Borough Manager Bud Cassidy said there are 19 capitol projects that the planning and zoning commission put together.
— (Capitol Projects 2 : 38 “The Borough’s lateral expansion at the landfill for $3, 910,000, obviously pretty important, not just to the borough but to the entire community. E911 replacement equipment. The city will know that project very well. Equipment was getting relatively old, and that was for $350,000. We’re asking for $8, 500,000 for the KHS Voc Ed renovation. Obviously that’s a major development in our community. Anton Larsen Bay road extension ice free waters is about $21,420,000. Pretty aggressive project that would extend the Anton Larsen road to tide free waters and if you’ve ever been to Anton Larsen dock which freezes up most of the winter you’ll see what kind of activity occurs.”)
Other projects on the list were service area road improvements — specifically in the Women’s Bay area, traffic safety lighting, Mission road safety improvements, designing traffic flow improvements for East Elementary, paving the parking lot at Peterson Elementary and a boat ramp in Women’s Bay.
Cassidy said a priority project is the Pier 3 replacement. Switching to the city side of things, City Manager Aimée Kniaziowski said the Pier 3 project is absolutely a necessity, and the city is working with the borough to get that done.
Another project on the city’s capitol list is improvements to Shelikof Street.
— (Capitol Projects 3 :25 “We applied for funding to continue the improvements of the pedestrian from pier two to downtown for Shelikof. We’ve got some beautiful designs and concepts moving along, that’s a really problematic area of town. We were not able to get tourism money, which is what we had expected we might get last year. So we’ll go back to the drawing board and figure out what we want to do with that project. ”)
While the city’s project list was shorter, Kniaziowski detailed how dire some items were.
— (Capitol Projects 4 : 21 “For people who don’t know, the Monashka Bay pump house, where our reservoir is, that’s a very old building. It’s begun to physically separate, the two sides have. We’ve got serious bat infestation; we’ve got old, old pumps. We’ve got the electrical is out of compliance so we’re going to be focusing on doing some preliminary work on that. ”)
The projects are hopefuls for the year ahead. As with anything, funding will determine whether or not they come to be and the true timeline of completion.
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