City pursues $5 million port-harbor revenue bond
Fees will increase to help pay for a backlog of neglected harbor maintenance after the Homer City council passed a measure Monday night to pursue matching grant funding with a $5 million revenue bond.
The Port and Harbor Improvement Committee recommended four main areas to target for fixes with $9 million. Of that, $4.7 million would come from revenue bonds and the rest from grants, including two Denali Grants totaling nearly $1 million.
One noticeable absence from the list was the Homer Harbormaster’s Office, a building that has caught fire twice, and dates back to the early 1980s in a cobbling together of three other buildings. Council member Francie Roberts asked why it was taken off the list. A replacement building has been on a town priority list for nearly 30 years.
“It always ends up getting removed for some reason,” said Mayor Jim Hornaday.
Homer’s 7th annual bike to work week
National Bike Month is an opportunity to celebrate the unique power of the bicycle and the many reasons we ride. Whether you bike to work or school; to save money or time; to preserve your health or the environment; to explore your community or get to your destination, get involved in Bike Month in your city or state — and help get more people in your community out riding, too.
Somehow we’re already into the thick of Bike To Work Week, and by the time this goes to press several events have already concluded. On May 13, there was a group Spit ride which was open to riders of all ages and abilities. The afternoon was blustery, but still people showed up and enjoyed a mellow bike out to Coal Town Coffee for treats before the ride back. Even blustery snow showers could not stop the fun.
Japan’s nuclear loss is Alaska’s natural gas gain
Japan’s decision to walk away from nuclear power has it scrambling for natural gas, giving the U.S. a chance to be a large-scale energy exporter.
A week ago, Japan pulled the plug on the last unit of the Tomari nuclear plant, leaving the country without nuclear energy for the first time since May 1970. Just across the Pacific a few days earlier, Alaska approved a plan for a pipeline to move natural gas from the North Slope to the coast for liquefaction and export.
The two seemingly unrelated events mark the beginning of an emerging strategic energy partnership, built around the United States’ growing glut of natural gas, that could reduce its trade deficit with Japan and strengthen its bond with the world’s third-largest economy.
It takes a community to build a park
When we first moved to Homer last summer, finding a playground was at the top of my kids’ to-do list. Not only are playgrounds a good place to run off the extra energy that kids seem to continuously exude, they are also important for meeting new friends and developing social skills.
The closest playground to our house is at Karen Hornaday Park, less than a mile away and a nice walking distance. We made only one trip to that playground last summer, because once was enough to see that it just wasn’t a fun place for small kids to play. Many structures were missing pieces or just not built for little legs to climb (heck, I even had a hard time climbing up some of the ladders). It was also very dirty, even by Alaska standards, with the base set in gravel and sand.
Should BOG include wildlife spectators too?
What cheats Alaska hunters of more moose: Wolves and bears, or insects and hares?
I am always amused by people who support America’s mission to establish democracies around the world, yet who are determined to subvert democracy here at home. I am likewise amused by people who protest against government coercion, yet who revel in tyrannizing anyone who doesn’t see the world their way.
According to our state Constitution, the Board of Game is supposed to represent the interests of all Alaskans. Its members should include representatives from all major “interest” groups. It should not be monolithic. Each member should strive to find ways to meet the needs of all interest groups, instead of trying to hog all the wildlife for just one interest — harvest.
Emergency response funding faces better future
Roughly 250 people have been trained on the Kenai Peninsula as Community Emergency Response Team volunteers. Each of us has invested considerable time, effort and devotion to learning how to minimize the havoc wreaked by disasters big or small.
We haven’t been paid for our time or expenses. Rather, we have donated them, asking in return only that our community reciprocate by providing needed equipment, supplies and training, both in the classroom and through exercises like the tsunami drill and Alaska Shield.
To achieve this, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management has applied far and wide for grants. Small amounts have trickled in here and there over the past few years. But we haven’t hit any jackpots until a few months ago. The borough was finally offered five state Homeland Security Program grants.
Business as usual, or cautionary tale?
s the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s transportation “bailout” from the state business as usual or a cautionary tale?
Recently KPBSD changed their mission statement, in part, to read: “the mission of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is to develop productive, responsible, citizens who are prepared to be successful in a dynamic world.”
No argument from me there. It makes me consider two things. First, what does it take to be a responsible citizen? Secondly, how can our district model this for young people? I’m not talking about our teachers. They model active participation every day, and for this I am sincerely grateful. It’s the decision-makers I’m frustrated with.
Pebble Partnership’s quake data lacking
Ken Taylor, the outgoing vice president of environment for the Pebble Partnership, invited Alaskans to read their recently released Environmental Baseline Document in a Compass piece dated March 16. He encouraged citizens worried about Pebble to dive into its 30,800 pages. The document doesn’t describe mine plans, so it’s unclear how it would alleviate concerns about mine development. But I dived in nonetheless, focusing on their analysis of earthquake risk.
America’s lost-energy decade
If we had begun exploring in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2002, its oil and gas (and jobs and revenue) would be flowing now.
Ten years ago this week, the U.S. Senate debated whether to open a small section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas production. Under the terms of the ANWR amendment, a maximum of 2,000 acres in the non-wilderness portion of the refuge (less than 0.01 percent of the whole) would have been opened to surface development. But the amendment was defeated, and we are paying the price today.
In an energy-strategy speech Tuesday, President Obama once again listed the importance of producing “more oil and gas here at home.” Whether that happens depends on what the president and other policy makers have learned since the ANWR debate a decade ago.
Prosperity, theology, and spirit of corporatism
In 1905, Max Weber wrote “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in which he described how a religiously instilled work ethic became a moral imperative reinforcing capitalist economics. Weber went beyond the surface structure of Protestantism and probed deeper political and economic aspects of how religion became the foundation of pre-corporate capitalism.
The economy has moved on, and so has Protestantism. Today the largest and fastest-growing Christian churches in America espouse a new type of Christianity called prosperity theology, also known as gospel prosperity or Christian materialism, which does for 21st-century corporate capitalism what early 20th-century Protestantism did for regular capitalism — connect economics to God’s blessing.
