Shorebird Festival launches a flight of its own
When the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival was conceived, Homer was only a few seasons outside the doldrums of the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.
It was a time of concern about the future of Mariner Lagoon, the habitat where shorebirds rested and ate – locals talked about filling it in for a park.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service occupied offices in the small mall by the Best Western Bidarka Inn – it lacked the presence of the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center that later, once constructed in 2004, would combine many federal agencies under one scientific roof. It lacked an auditorium for the big-name featured speakers.
But that didn’t much matter at the time. They had a million shorebirds, said Poppy Benson, one of the festival’s originators.
“I was at a training session, and I remember someone was talking about putting on a festival – a carp festival. And I thought, Really? A carp festival?” Benson recalled.
Kenai Peninsula School District won’t see red after all
As Kenai Peninsula Borough School District funding settles into a rosier outlook than expected, the district is hoping to get its expenses squared away in its budget, as well, before the 2012 fiscal year calendar turns a page to 2013 on June 30.
A big part still up in the air is ongoing negotiations with employee unions over three-year contracts to start in fiscal year 2013.
Negotiation teams for the district, the Kenai Peninsula Education Association and Kenai Peninsula Education Support Association, meeting since January, had not come to agreement by the end of April, prompting a two-day session of mediation May 1 and 2 that also ended without agreement on the big remaining sticking points — salary and health care. Generally, the next step after mediation is for the parties to enter advisory arbitration, which would occur in the fall.
HoWL DiRtBaGs Clean Up Homer
They’re dirty, they’re stinky, and they’re picking up your trash. For six days, the HoWL DiRtBaGs have been wading through ditches and trudging through town, picking up litter to raise money for their HoWL summer camp scholarships.
The DiRtBaGs picked up 4,444 pounds of trash this year. They took home the top prizes at the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Clean-Up Day for both litter picker-uppers and recyclers. The DiRtBaGs hauled in 386 bags of trash, 66 of which were just recyclables. They also rolled over two dozen abandoned tires up and out of the ditches.
Community News – May 9
Cash prizes come in as $Homer Bucks$ A new Homer Chamber of Commerce campaign enters into a new practice of giving $500, or less, cash winners “Homer dollars” to use at local stores. The Homer-grown contest features the town’s own forefather and town namesake, Homer Pennock’s picture. Who needs Ben Franklins? Chamber Executive Director Monte [...]
More than 18,000 pounds kept out of landfills
On Saturday, April 28, dozens of local citizens, businesses, nonprofits and government agencies came together to participate in the Seventh-Annual Electronics Recycling Event, a program of Cook Inletkeeper.
Electronic waste is the fastest growing segment of our nation’s waste stream. Electronics may be safe to use, but when discarded they can leak toxic chemicals like lead, mercury and cadmium into our water and air.
Recycling the precious metals in electronics helps reduce the need to find new sources.
More than 100 households participated this year, on par with turnout over the past several years, but slightly down from last year’s record-breaking 130 households.
Police – May 9
5/1 A caller reported a dead moose in the neighbor’s yard. A caller reported an injured eagle on Roger’s Loop and Sprucewood. A caller reported finding a pocketbook outside at Homer High School. A caller reported a dead moose behind their house on Lake Street. An unknown caller reported a bear on their property over [...]
For the Record – May 9
The following records are cases and records filed in court. Individuals are innocent until proven guilty, and copies of the records are publicly available. Misdemeanor Karen R. Haynes, 57, driving under the influence; criminal mischief in the fifth degree. Kent L. Smith, 52, misconduct involving a controlled substance in the third degree. Traci L. Prevost, [...]
Tsunami debris reaches Montague
Chris Pallister’s worst nightmare came true over the weekend when he took a first look at the outer islands of Prince William Sound on a flight to check for snow thaw.
Beaches were exposed from ice, but a whole lot of other flotsam – large chunks of wall insulation, hundreds of gas canisters – were there as well.
For 50 miles or more, massive amounts of debris litter the beaches. Black snarls of fishing nets and canisters that may still contain oil, fuel and kerosene. Carcasses of urethane foam torn out of buildings in the Japanese Earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck last spring also washed ashore.
On May 5, the Gulf of Alaska Keepers had planned to get started cleaning beaches. This is why Pallister was checking on the progress of break-up. He is the president of the Gulf of Alaska Keeper Organization, a group that monitors 17 beach cleanup sites and 122 miles of coastline. Over the past 10 years, GOAK gained an idea on what constitutes the normal haul of heaved up trash – they’ve collected 1 million pounds.
‘No’ to $2 head tax on tourists
At the end of hearing from about a dozen water taxi and charter boat operators on a proposed $2 head tax, the Homer Port and Harbor Commission nixed the idea entirely.
They also crossed off the proposal to build a new $2 million Harbor Office to replace the ailing building. And they put a ceiling of $4 million on the amount of the revenue bond.
The commission took public testimony at its Wednesday meeting on four proposed fee increases toward helping to pay for $12 million in harbor improvements. They were looking at fuel wharfage, moorage increases, fee rates at the Deepwater Dock and the head tax as ways to raise funds toward debt payment on a $6 million revenue bond. The other $6 million would be paid for in grants available to the City of Homer. A grant deadline looms in July, so the idea was to have the financing figured out ahead of time, said Harbormaster Bryan Hawkins.
But the first number to change in the request is the amount. Instead of $6 million requested of Homer in the form of funding a revenue bond, the commission voted to lower it to $4 million.
iPods pair young with elderly for scientific study
Homer seniors got a helping hand on Thursday from three high school students and their wrestling coach, who gave the seniors iPods and showed them how they work.
Homer Senior Citizens are one of only 15 nursing home facilities in the nation to take part in this study, called “Well Tuned: Music Players for Health” by the Atlantic Institute on Aging. The iPods were purchased through a grant to Homer seniors.
“They want to see if it’s true that music improves cognitive capacity for seniors,” Executive Director Keren Kelley explained to the seniors. “Each one of you will get your own iPod, this little thing here, which holds 200-400 songs.”
Old record player consoles provided a handy contrast. Kelley asked, “How many remember the old record players? You couldn’t take that phonograph with you… but you can take this everywhere you go. Welcome to the 21st Century and the world of the iPod shuffle.”
