City Council to Pursue Issue of Building Code Change in Borough

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Earlier this month, the Kodiak City Council discovered the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly had passed an ordinance which violates a memorandum of agreement between the two governing bodies.

The agreement allows for a building inspection program that serves both the city and borough, but the borough assembly had recently taken action to relax engineering requirements for home owner / builders within the borough. It did so without consulting the city council.

The change reverted the borough’s building code from the 2012 code to the 1997 uniform building code.

The issue came to light earlier this month, and the council will discuss it at its work session tonight. A document in the meeting packet details some of the concerns various parties have expressed about the code change and some of the action that’s taken place since the council learned about it.

According to the document, the Joint Building Code Review Committee, the city building official and city staff have all spoken before the council and expressed concern about the change in code. Furthermore, members of the committee together with the building official have protested against it at assembly meetings and committee meetings.

Since then, members of the city and borough staff have met about the code change, and the council will review the ordinance and the original memorandum of agreement at its work session.

The other prominent item on the agenda is an industrial arts district project. Its organizer, freelance historian and writer Anjuli Grantham, says city officials have already expressed interest in partnering up on the arts initiative, which would honor the town’s fishing industry and the workers who keep it going.

The Kodiak City Council work session is open to the public and will begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the library multipurpose room.