Two Kodiak Island Borough neighborhoods won't have snow removal service until at least Nov. 21. That's after the contractor that was responsible for the Bay View and Monashka Bay Road service areas opted out.
Brechan Construction used to have the contract. The company did not immediately respond to KMXT’s request for comment. At a borough assembly work session on Oct. 31, Borough Manager Aimee Williams didn't say why Brechan was out, either. She did say the borough put the contract out for bid at the end of September.
“The Borough was informed by Brechan Enterprises that they are no longer interested in being a contractor for service areas," Williams said. "In response, borough staff initiated the preparation of a bid package to secure a contractor for the Bay View and Monashka Bay Service Areas for the upcoming winter months.”
Usually, sanding and ice control services across the borough are provided by various contractors. AIM Maintenance is the contractor for Service Area #1 and MK Enterprises is the contractor for the Women's Bay Service Area.
Williams said two local contractors bid on snow removal contracts for a northern section of the borough to cover the Bay View and Monashka Bay Road areas and staff recommended awarding the contract to AIM Maintenance.
AIM Maintenance is a locally owned and operated contractor that offers a variety of services, including snow removal and gravel spreading according to its website. The borough’s contract documents indicate that Athenas Williamson is the owner and manager.
The proposed contract would cost the borough's service areas roughly $2,000 -$3,000 per occurrence of snow and ice in the Bay View and Monashka Bay Road Service Areas.
Representatives from the two affected service areas brought up concerns with the proposed contract. Fred Roberts, who is on the board for the Bay View Road Service Area, said that waiting on the contractor to respond on their own instead of having the contractor respond when the service areas call them, is not what’s been done in the past. Roberts and Tom Lance of the Monashka Bay Road Service Area spoke in favor of removing the “self-dispatch” portion from the proposed contract with AIM Maintenance.
“We want to continue on as we have for the past 35 years," Roberts told the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly. "We want to be able to call out for road service when we need it, not when the contractor thinks we need it.”
Borough assembly member Ryan Sharratt requested that the contract be updated to remove the “self-dispatch” section from the final version and staff bring that to the assembly for approval at its next regular meeting. He also took issue with the quality control program portion of AIM Maintenance’s bid for the contract, saying he thought it was unsatisfactory.
The borough assembly was set to vote on the contract with AIM Maintenance during its meeting on Thursday, Nov. 7, but that was canceled due to a lack of quorum.
So now a snow removal contract can’t be officially approved until at least Nov. 21, when the borough assembly holds its next regular meeting.
Meanwhile temperatures are dropping and icy road conditions typical of the island’s winter months are already here. On Sunday morning, Nov. 3, sections of road south of town near the state airport were slick and icy. One truck even ended up in a ditch near Boy Scout Lake.
Within the last five years, historical weather data indicates that temperatures averaged in the low 30s during the month of November in Kodiak, yet snowfall and ice amounts that same month varied widely.
In 2015 for example, Kodiak had a half an inch of snow by the end of September. In 2020, the first snow of any amount more than .1 inches fell in Kodiak on Nov. 14, but last year that didn’t happen until Dec. 4.
Editor's note: The featured image for this story has been updated to show a local Kodiak road with snow from a previous winter.
