KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Last night the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly handily dealt with all its agenda items, approved the disposal of property seized for not paying taxes, and authorized two contracts for design work.
And as KMXT’s Maggie Wall reports, there assembly had a brief training on the coronavirus.
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The road to the Salonie Creek Rifle Range will be getting new fish passage culverts and the borough boiler room will get a renovation. Both projects had contracts for the engineering phase approved by the assembly last night.
Also last night the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly received the semi-annual report from Bayside Fire Department chief Howard Rue, who said Bayside in 2019 had 189 calls.
“Which is an increase over 30% from 2015. The majority of my calls are EMS with 55%, and you can see the rest of the breakdowns. We actually had 26 fires which a pretty substantial part of these are actual working fires. That we were there working with the city, or go out on our own. We had a lost person that we worked with to help get them back to safety Control burn, good intent calls, automobile accidents MVAs. Trees going down, hazmat calls. [We’ve] been getting a lot of smoke calls last year, power lines going down, smoke detectors.”
Rue added that Bayside recently received state certification as a registered fire department.
And he noted that fewer people are getting burn permits, which is a concern since the permits allow the fire departments to know ahead of time that smoke in a certain area may be an authorized burn instead of a home fire.
Borough Manager Michael Powers gave the assembly an update on this week’s meeting of the local emergency services council which is coordinating efforts to provide a response to the coronavirus should it makes its way to Kodiak.
But it wasn’t all serious business last night. Manager Powers gathered staff together in order to present the Employee of the Year Award and the Employee of the Quarter Award—both of which were given to the same person, Elliot Blacha, a borough maintenance mechanic who does a bit of everything to keep things running.
(Trumpets playing.)
“You didn’t think we would let this go by easily would you?
“Mr. Blocha, if you would come up, please.
“Thank you very much. So this is one of the better parts of my job when we recognize employees for their hard work. And this evening, we’re recognizing Elliot for all of his hard work. He was not only Employee of the Quarter this quarter, but also Employee the Year.
“That means he gets two, yes, two checks out of it. This, and semi-matching placards to hang on his wall.”
For his part, Blacha said it was easy to be a good worker when he got to work with so many good people.
