The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly voted down a funding request from the Kodiak Economic Development Corporation at its last meeting.
Since January, the Kodiak Economic Development Corporation – also known as KEDC – was designated as a 5013c nonprofit organization, established a board of directors and hired a part-time project manager. And at Thursday’s Borough Assembly meeting, its president John Whiddon – who also serves on Kodiak’s City Council – requested the Borough chip in $20,000 from fiscal year 2022’s leftover economic development funding toward KEDC’s to-do list.
“We’re trying to diversify and attempting to diversify the economy, encouraging entrepreneurism in a way that not’s being currently done and create a sustainable economy by providing support to new and existing businesses,” said Whiddon.
Whiddon said the organization had already seen some success with a kelp pilot program on Kodiak, funded in part by a $250,000 Denali Commission grant through KEDC and a workforce housing study that’s underway.
But it wasn’t enough to sway all members of the Assembly – who voted 3 to 1 in favor of the funding request. Three Assembly members, Joseph Delgado, Jared Griffin and Geoffrey Smith, were absent for the vote, which meant the resolution would have needed unanimous support to pass.
Assembly member Scott Arndt was the lone “no” vote. He said past funding requests approved by the Borough for economic development initiatives hadn’t been fruitful.
“In the past, the Borough’s – the money spent on economic development there was absolutely, or next to no return on, I did not feel it was a good investment,” said Arndt.
Although, Arndt said he wouldn’t be opposed to a future funding request from the group as their work progressed.
Among those disappointed in the vote was Borough Mayor Bill Roberts, who said voting down the resolution would be a “sad thing.”
“I think anything we can do for economic development in this community is really important, having lived through the closures of the shrimp fishery, the king crab fishery … we’re constantly talking about diversifying,” said Roberts.
The Kodiak Economic Development Corporation started in March of 2020 to hand out COVID-19 relief money to local businesses. The organization is working towards securing more than $1 million more in grant funding for shipyard improvements, according to Whiddon.