Mayor ponders budget belt tightening — Nonprofits say costs of cuts go beyond borough funding

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Money doesn’t grow on trees.

It’s an especially fitting adage in trying financial times, such as the situation Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Dave Carey is concerned the borough may soon find itself in. Oil prices are down, which may affect how much state revenue sharing funds the borough receives. The borough also doesn’t yet know what impact the new sales tax exemption on nonprepared foods will have on its coffers.

In response, Carey is considering pruning the borough’s budget, including funding for nondepartmental organizations — such as the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District, the Kenai Watershed Forum, Central Area Rural Transit System, Small Business Development Center and the Kenai Peninsula Tourism Marketing Council — by starting those organizations out at zero in the administration’s proposed budget.

That zero may or may not turn into funding as the organizations state their case for why the borough should fund them and more information on the borough’s financial status becomes clear.

Axing the amount of nondepartmental funding the borough gave these agencies last year would save over $600,000. But agencies say the money they’ll lose from that cut would actually be much higher.

That’s because money may not grow on trees in the literal sense, but when it comes to governmental funding, it does grow in budgets.

Gaining leverage

In the world of government grant funding, “local support” is often the magic phrase that opens the federal treasure chest. Many governmental funding programs give out matching grants, awarding funding that meets, and often exceeds, money pledged on the local level. In the case of the agencies that have received borough nondepartmental funding, those local dollars are leveraged into larger sums through higher levels of governmental funding. For those grant programs, if the borough’s contribution doesn’t come, state and federal funding may not, either.

Jennifer Beckman, executive director of CARTS, said the organization can at least double the amount it receives from the borough through leveraging. Depending on which funding sources Beckman matches the local contribution with, CARTS could turn $50,000 into as much as $165,000, she said.

John Torgerson, director of the Kenai Peninsula EDD, said the organization leverages the $50,000 it receives from the borough into state and federal grants to round out its budget. About 20 percent of the EDD budget comes from the borough, 30 percent from the federal government, 25 percent from the state and the other 35 percent the EDD generates on its own, in part through the programs it operates, like rent from its Business Incubator Center, he said.

“We can say it is a package deal. The $50,000 helps us leverage more money from other partners. It makes a good package when we show that we have support of all the public sectors,” Torgerson said.

“Without borough funding, some of the programs would be more difficult to do.”

Torgerson said zero-based budgeting is not an unusual tactic, and he welcomes the opportunity to sing for his supper, as it were — to demonstrate to the mayor and borough assembly the work EDD does with its funding.

“There’s a lot of good questions and one way to really bring a lot of these things to the forefront is, not necessarily to zero us out of the budget, but to start at zero and look at the jobs being performed and evaluate each one of those functions. Maybe $50,000 is not the right number. Maybe $50,000 should be lower, or maybe it should be higher depending on the job we do,” he said.

Nonprofit, not a handout

While the EDD is a nonprofit organization, Torgerson doesn’t see the borough’s funding as a charitable contribution. The EDD is more like a contractor performing services for the borough, most notably economic planning, in return for the funding it receives.

“The more of a service we can do for the borough, the more we can help out the people of the borough. It’s almost a straight-up business arrangement. It’s a similar arrangement with the federal government and the state — we perform a function for the money we get,” he said.

A similar argument could be made for the other agencies. Yes, they’re nonprofits, but they provide services of benefit to the borough, without the borough having to hire people and operate the programs itself.

The Kenai Watershed Forum received $100,000 from the borough in nondepartmental funding for the first time last year to conduct a specific task — repair or replace culverts that are impeding fish passage on borough roads.

Robert Ruffner, executive director of the watershed forum, said the money came after former Mayor John Williams saw the culvert work the organization was doing on state roads with the Alaska Department of Transportation. Williams decided to reinvest fish tax money into habitat protection by writing the $100,000 into the budget for the watershed forum to expand its work to borough roads. The assembly agreed.

“I think it’s really good the borough is working on getting its house in order in terms of that particular issue. It is a big deal all over Pacific Northwest,” Ruffner said.

Since receiving that money in July, Ruffner has leveraged it into a little more than $400,000 in funding from Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Department of Commerce through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he said.

“We took one dollar from the borough and turned it into five for roads,” Ruffner said. “We were more successful than I thought at leveraging other funds. There’s a general sense of enthusiasm amongst the funding agencies at having local governments really stepping up wanting to fix them.”

Ruffner said there are probably 30 culverts on borough roads that “really need to be fixed,” he said. Remediation costs range from $30,000 up to $2 million, which is taken into account when prioritizing projects. Funding at the federal level is still available to continue work on the culverts, but far less would get done without the borough contribution.

“There are a lot of federal programs out there that work on those types of issues. The biggest issue is getting the nonfederal match secured,” Ruffner said. “Occasionally there’s some grant opportunity that doesn’t have a federal match requirement, but it’s pretty rare. We certainly wouldn’t be doing five or six a year. It’ll scale way back.”

Costly cuts?

KPTMC Executive Director Shanon Hamrick contends that the borough will lose money, not save it, by cutting the organization’s funding.

Last year KPTMC returned $4.50 for every dollar invested in the organization, Hamrick said. When tourists come to the peninsula, they contribute greatly to the economy. Some sales taxes target tourists specifically, including the per seat, per day tax that went into effect in 2007, and the sales tax on nonprepared foods, which is now only collected during tourism season. In 2007 alone, tourism contributed $400,000 new dollars to the borough economy from the per seat, per day tax, Hamrick said, and she expects 2008’s figure to be even greater.

“What they have to acknowledge is that their contribution to KPTMC is not a contribution to a nonprofit organization. It is an investment with a marketing agency that conducts marketing on behalf of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. For every dollar spent with us, we return many, many times over in dollars that come in by people coming to visit,” Hamrick said.

Carey doesn’t dispute that tourism brings revenue to the borough. But he does question how much effect KPTMC and its Outside marketing efforts have on visitors coming here, as opposed to people coming because they’re repeat visitors or from word of mouth.

“I want to see data that advertising is what brings people here,” Carey said. “ I don’t know how many people see an ad Outside and say, ‘Oh, I’ll go to the Kenai.’”

Alaska has gotten far better publicity lately than KPTMC could provide, with Gov. Sarah Palin’s notoriety from her vice presidential campaign and Alaska’s quarter and statehood stamp coming out. Carey suggested Alaskans use the notoriety to encourage friends and family Outside to visit.

“Call those people back and invite them to come to Alaska. That is a stronger marketing tool than putting ads in Outside newspapers and magazines,” he said.

A downturn in the economy is the worst time to reduce peninsula marketing efforts, Hamrick said, because that’s when tourism dollars matter most, yet are hardest to get. People may decide to come to Alaska for reasons other than KPTMC, but Hamrick wants them to come to the Kenai, not get captured by other areas’ marketing efforts.

“By not investing in marketing during this economy, especially, we are going to see unprecedented losses to other areas of Alaska that are aggressively marketing,” Hamrick said. “If we want to quit marketing, we can just sit here and watch all of our visitors going north instead of going south, because you can bet they’re aggressively reaching out to the visitors coming here this year, because the fact is Alaska tourism will be down this year.”

Hamrick was expecting this year’s budget to be $650,000, compared to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough tourism marketing arm, which has a budget of more than $900,000, with 80 percent of that coming from its borough, Hamrick said.

Hamrick was expecting about half of KPTMC’s budget to come from the borough, since Carey advised her in the fall to submit a borough funding request of $325,000 this year — a 10 percent increase over last year, Hamrick said.

That was when borough finances appeared sounder. Now, Carey wants his administration and the assembly to evaluate each of the nondepartmental agencies in line for funding.

“That’s the first question that has to be asked — is this something the borough should be funding, period?” Carey said. “Second, once the answer is yes, is certainly looking at the impact of it. On a number of them, certainly, we’re looking at it in terms of how much it leverages and is that a proper function of the borough? … It’s always balanced with, is this the best way for us to take the taxpayers’ dollars out of their pocket?”

If it’s determined that borough funding for an organization, like KPTMC, should cease, that doesn’t mean the organization will disappear. If taxpayers want to support it, they still can, Carey said.

“If we can leave more money in their pockets through lowering the mill rate, with the savings that will occur, they could then make their own choice to give that money to KPTMC, if that’s the decision we make,” Carey said. “Other than government taking money and deciding we know best, leave money in the hands of taxpayers and let them decide what’s best.”

Hamrick said she appreciates the desire to lower the mill rate, since she’s a taxpayer, too, but doesn’t believe doing so at the expense of KPTMC is in the borough’s best interest.

“People having lower property taxes isn’t going to mean a thing if they can’t pay their mortgage because they don’t have enough business coming through their door,” she said.

Carey: Taxpayers should have more money left in pockets

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Dave Carey is keeping an eye on troubling financial times he sees on the horizon as he prepares the borough’s fiscal year 2010 budget.

“I am going to be very conservative. If I don’t know we have money in the bank, I’m going to assume we do not have it,” he said.

Several factors have put him ill at ease. Oil prices have dropped over the past year. During a trip to Juneau four weeks ago, legislators gave notice that the resultant decrease in state funds could mean a decrease in funds passed on to local municipalities, Carey said.

“The forward funding they set aside for revenue sharing was very much now in play. Up to 50 percent of that could end up not coming to us,” Carey said.

He’s heard that increases in state education funding are secure, but he’s concerned about the capital budget, which has not yet been released. Projects that had been cut from previous attempts at state funding were expected to see money this year, but that may no longer be the case, Carey said.

Local revenue is also in question, he said. He does not yet know how much the seasonal sales tax exemption on nonprepared food will decrease revenue, and property tax revenue may not come in as expected, either.

Property tax assessments have been sent out, and as of Friday 1,740 people had contacted the assessor’s office seeking to have their assessment lowered — thus having to pay less in taxes, Carey said. He said Monday that he’d heard 340 of those assessments were being changed.

Carey is also waiting to hear how much the borough can expect in oil and gas industry property taxes. Last year the borough budget included $603 million in oil and gas industry property taxes, Carey said. The state does assessments on all oil and gas property taxes, and businesses still have a chance to appeal and get their assessments lowered.

“The question is, how much do we get?” Carey said.

Carey is required to submit a budget to the assembly by May 1, but said he may not have answers to these questions before the budget is due. As a result, Carey said he’s taking a cautious approach by examining all aspects of the budget for areas that can be trimmed. Times are tough for borough taxpayers, too, he said, so his goal is to keep as much money in taxpayers’ hands as he can, possibly through a mill rate reduction.

“We’re committed that in these difficult economic times, if we can lower how much money we take out of people’s pockets, it would be better than if we increase it or even if we keep the same,” Carey said.

Carey asked borough departments to submit budgets with no more than a 4 percent increase, he said. And service areas are being examined for ways to save funds, although that isn’t an area Carey has much control over, since borough voters approve service area mill rates.

Grants are being examined to make sure they are “good” grants — ones that won’t stick the borough with years of costly maintenance, management or upkeep costs after the grant capital is spent. The level of forward funding required also will be examined in applying for grants. Many grants require the recipient to pay costs up front and apply for reimbursement, which can strain a municipality’s fund balance if it doesn’t have the money available to do that.

Carey also has moved to zero-based budgeting for nondepartmental agencies, including the Kenai Peninsula Tourism Marketing Council and the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District. Affected nonprofit agencies will start out with no borough funds allocated to them, although money may be added back into the budget as the agencies’ purposes and contributions are examined, and the appropriateness of borough funding is considered, Carey said.

“Primarily in these tough economic times, I believe government has to be extremely frugal in how we spend public money, which is what my goal is and that is what we will do,” Carey said. “It is obviously a partnership between myself and the assembly and the people as to what the mill rate will be and what the budget will be and it is very much a concerted team effort.”

Editorial: Belt tightening good, but don’t squeeze too tight

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Dave Carey is right in taking a cautious approach to the borough budget this year. Financial storm clouds are on the horizon — with a drop in oil prices affecting state revenue sharing, a decrease in sales taxes from the exemption of nonprepared food and a question mark over how much the borough will feel the deepening national financial crisis. Whether the storm amounts to a drizzle or a hurricane, it’s good fiscal policy to put sandbags in place now, before the rains come.

Carey has asked all departments to submit budgets with no more than a 4 percent increase. He’s looking at service areas and grants for ways to save money and avoid costly obligations down the road. He’s also instituted a zero-based budgeting approach to the nonprofit organizations the borough has funded in the past, meaning the organizations will have to justify why and how much the borough should fund them.

These are all sound financial practices, and Carey’s desire to lower the mill rate to keep more money in taxpayers’ pockets is an idea that’s sure to be popular.

That desire can be carried too far. Government’s role is to provide essential services on behalf of the people funding it. But when “essential” is defined too narrowly, it does a disservice to residents, even if it means they have some extra cash after tax season.

In the case of the nonprofits, they do a service to the borough far beyond the value of the funding they receive. They leverage local funding into much more on a state and national level, and do important work with it without the borough having to hire people or create programs.

There is a line that delineates what’s proper for the borough to fund and how much that funding should be, and this is a good time to examine it. If the mayor and assembly decide to cut, they should do so with their eyes open the full impact those cuts will have on these organizations, the services they provide and the revenue they bring into the borough.

Belt tightening is in order, but let’s not strangle ourselves in the process.

Price is right? Nikiski activist shows initiative against borough taxes, spending

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

For not being part of Kenai Peninsula Borough government, James Price has had a considerable impact on it.

He’s been directly involved in changing borough policy, lowering taxes, limiting assembly authority, and has helped bring two lawsuits against the municipality.

All this from a guy who’s only elected position is a term on the North Peninsula Recreation Service Area, who’s never worked in government, and who wasn’t even particularly interested in politics before moving to Nikiski.

“Before I came to the state of Alaska, I never voted. Now I register more people to vote than most people know,” he said.

Price moved north in 1988 from Portland, although he’s originally an oilfield worker from Texas. He’s a journeyman pipe fitter and has his process instrumentation certification from Kenai Peninsula College. He’s worked on Cook Inlet oil platforms and the North Slope, does construction work periodically and has commercial fished sockeye salmon for years, although he’s gravitating away from that, he said. Currently he’s working cutting vinyl through his own business, but is looking for another endeavor.

“In the next month or so — I keep threatening to do it, and I need to — I need to get a job,” he said.

That’s not to say Price doesn’t have plenty to keep him busy. He estimates spending more than 1,000 hours a year on his political activities in the borough, which include his involvement with the Alliance of Concerned Taxpayers to rein in borough taxes and spending, and the Alaskans for Grocery Tax Relief Now group, which was behind the Oct. 7 ballot initiative to seasonally eradicate sales taxes on groceries in the borough. He also helped found the now-defunct Alaska Voters Organization, a watchdog group that reviewed legislative bills and kept tabs on the Legislature.

To some, Price and his associates are activist heroes, fighting for residents against a government that overtaxes, overspends and overlooks the wishes of its citizens. To others, their attempts to change policies, limit assembly authority and file lawsuits when their efforts don’t produce the desired results, makes them a nuisance, at best, or domestic terrorists — as former borough Mayor John Williams once called them — at worst.

To Price, he’s doing what he believes is right, even if many government and elected officials don’t agree with him.

“It comes out of my total frustration in dealing with government,” Price said of his political involvement. “Basically, I don’t accept the fact that government has to be the way that the borough says that it is. I believe that government is by and for the people.”

Price’s tool of choice is the initiative process, whereby citizens can effect direct changes in government by putting measures before voters — in effect sidestepping the usual route of public policymaking through elected and governmental officials.

“I couldn’t even dream of living in a state that doesn’t have initiative power, because without it I think that people are second-class citizens,” Price said. “It keeps government honest. It keeps government in line with what the will of the people is. It forces the state to be more responsive to the people.”

Price’s first exposure to politics came in 1998, when he served as campaign chairman for his friend Aaron Goforth’s bid for a state House seat.

“And that actually made me interested in trying to make some changes, to make a difference in the community,” he said.

Price has run unsuccessfully for seats in the state Legislature and borough assembly. From 2003-2006 he served on the North Peninsula Recreation Service Area board. But he’s had far more impact on how the borough does business as an outsider, wielding the power of the initiative.

He’s sponsored, co-sponsored and supported initiatives that have had wide-ranging impacts on the borough. The first was in 2001, when he and fellow members of Peninsula Citizens Against Private Prisons blocked a proposal to build an 800- to 1,000-bed, medium-security, private prison in the borough.

Price himself, or one of the groups he’s involved with, has proposed an initiative most years since then. ACT has targeted taxing, spending and borough policy, with measures to lower and cap the borough sales tax rate, cap borough spending at $1 million, and institute term limits on the borough assembly and school board.

In Nikiski, Price fought plans by the North Peninsula Recreation Service Area to pay to turn the vacated Nikiski Elementary School building into a community center.

And he’s tried to do away with sales taxes on nonprepared food twice, once in 2002 with an initiative to exempt groceries from sales taxes year-round, and in the October election with an initiative to exempt them seasonally so taxes would still be gathered in the summer.

Some measures did not garner enough voter support, like the first grocery tax initiative and a measure to restrict NSPRA to nothing but recreation activities. Others were successful. NSPRA’s spending was capped at $500,000 without a vote of service area members, and the borough’s spending cap was lowered from $1.5 million to $1 million with the requirement that 60 percent of voters must approve capital spending projects over that amount.

“We constantly assess our tactics, and what’s been successful and what’s failed. I think we’re creating better initiatives and cleaner, better ideas based on not just the Kenai Peninsula Borough, but other boroughs in the state of Alaska, and building on success we’ve had with many of our initiatives in the past,” Price said.

Then there are the initiatives that pass, yet don’t work out the way Price and fellow activists intend them to. Take term limits, for example. In 2007, voters approved instituting term limits on elected borough and school board officials. But in the same election, voters also re-elected assembly and school board members who had already served multiple terms. The re-elected members were reseated, and ACT filed suit to challenge the decision. A judge in August ruled that the school board was exempt from the term limits initiative, and the re-elected assembly members could keep their seats.

In 2006, Price and ACT followed their successful initiative to reduce and cap the borough sales tax rate in 2005 with an initiative that would rescind the entire revenue enhancement measure that the sales tax increase was part of. This time citizens voted no, which prompted the borough to reinstitute the sales tax increase, on the justification that the vote signaled citizens’ support of the entire piece of legislation, including the tax rate increase. ACT again filed suit.

Price’s current battle is over the grocery tax. The seasonal sales tax exemption garnered voter approval in October, but the borough assembly decided to grant cities the option of opting out of the exemption. As a result, Kenai and Soldotna will still collect sales taxes on groceries in the winter, and Homer is considering doing the same.

“It just gets awful. It’s almost like stepping in a tar pit and you start wiggling around and you’re just covered,” Price said. “When the borough accepts initiatives from the people and turns around and refuses to accept it once it’s voted on, that is just objectionable to the whole process.”

Price said the fight isn’t over. The group is hesitant to file another lawsuit without yet having the money to pay for it, but that is an option. More likely the group will address the issue with specific cities, and possibly do another initiative.

“I want for the people to get the benefit from the initiative that they passed, and want to see grocery taxes suspended in the borough,” Price said.

A long-term goal for Price is ACT’s ultimate aim — enacting a borough tax and spending cap. The measure would set a baseline borough budget, and restrict the amount of taxes it could gather and the amount it could spend based on population increases and inflation, as well as how much other revenue was coming in.

In the meantime, Price is heartened by borough Mayor Dave Carey’s willingness to meet and talk with ACT members.

“I really think the direction Mayor Carey is going could be real restorative to the balance in the borough. I think that’s very commendable,” Price said.

But that doesn’t mean he’s going to sit back and leave government to its own devices.

“The initiative process only works when representatives and officials are not doing what people want them to do. That’s why we have so much success, is because our assembly members still to this day are not doing what the people want them to do,” Price said. “If citizens were represented appropriately at the assembly level, there would not be a reason and there would be no initiatives to possibly do because what needed to be done would be done.”

First response — New mayor sets out to keep campaign promise of government that listens

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

The new Kenai Peninsula Borough mayor’s goal is to answer constituent and staff e-mail the same day it arrives.

That’s 60 to 100 missives Mayor Dave Carey reads and responds to between daybreak and day’s end.

“I live across the street from the borough offices, so it’s pretty easy to just walk to work and home each day,“ Carey said.

“My goal is to answer each and every e-mail the same day I receive it. Last night I spoke in Ninilchik at the American Legion Veteran’s Day dinner. I came back after 9 p.m., and answered e-mails until midnight.”

Carey took office one month ago, winning rule from past Mayor John Williams over 24,800 square miles of a landscape whose inhabitants range from oil refinery workers in Nikiski to commercial fishermen in Cook Inlet to the Alutiiq of Nanwalek. That’s a population of about 52,000. A third of his new province is covered in water, including the sensitive Kenai River and, across the bay, the controversial Chuitna coalfields. And he took office just in time to inherit the newly declared endangered species, the Cook Inlet beluga whale.

Carey, 55, has never married and doesn’t have children. “I’ve always been in public service, whether it was teaching or coaching, it has been my life,“ he said.

When he was campaigning, Carey could be heard saying “the borough mayor must believe in service above self.”

Carey’s stepfather and mother moved to Sterling in 1961. His father, a Navy pilot flying during Operation Deep Freeze in 1956, died when his plane crashed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. His mother remarried several years later, and with stepfather, Ed Onstott, the family moved to the Kenai Peninsula.

Carey graduated from Kenai Central High in 1970. At Gonzaga University, a Jesuit school in Spokane, Wash., he earned his political science and master’s degrees in educational counseling, then returned to the peninsula as a teacher and coach. He taught at Soldotna Middle and High schools, then retired after 34 years.

Even as Soldotna mayor, and now as borough mayor, Carey continues to teach twice-weekly political science classes at Kenai Peninsula College.

“At 21 students, this is the largest class I’ve ever had,” he said, speaking of his fall semester group. Half are high school students able to take his government class for high school credit.

Students seem to respect that a bona fide politician teaches them about government and politics.

“I’ve always required out-of-class political observation in the community,“ he said, including a long list of his own meetings, such as the Soldotna City Council meetings and now, borough assembly meetings.

“What’s nice is that in class we can then discuss what they observed,” he said.
As a professor, retired teacher and the winner of numerous scholarly fellowships, Carey has an academic political bent that influences his mayorship.

“It’s an interesting dynamic — you have to find a balance between theory and practice,” he said. “We ask ourselves at Friday staff meetings: Are we doing what we came here to do? Are we solving problems?”

Small, kinder government

It’s not always big things that get citizens worked up. One of the first problems Carey was able to solve as mayor involved garbage bins.

In those daily e-mails, “I hear about some of the small things that haven’t been done,” Carey said. “One example is that in Moose Pass, Crown Point and Ninilchik where we have solid waste sites, the containers can’t be used. At Moose Pass and Crown Point, it was because there’s no lids.”

Ravens, crows and eagles took over the Dumpsters and scattered trash about. Bears also make regular visits. A temporary solution involved transferring lidded Dumpsters not being used at Cooper Landing, with bear-proof ones on order for next summer.

“Then at Ninilchik, the (Dumpster) was so high off the ground that some people, and particularly, the elderly couldn’t reach it,“ Carey said. “Now we have it placed at arm level.”

Those outside tax assessment areas seldom have contact with the borough, except over “small projects like this,” Carey said.

His philosophy is: “Government is there to do things people can’t do for themselves. Most people want to trust government. But they want services provided fairly.”

New issues

Big issues were sitting on the doorstep the first day Carey took office Oct. 17. A projected $1.7 million in revenue shortfall came with the newly voted-in Prop. 1, removing nonprepared groceries from the borough’s list of sales taxed items on a seasonal basis.

Carey directed his legal staff to prepare an implementation plan. He also directed a review of the shortfall projection, contending he’s not sure that number is so high. Overall, the borough has a heathy revenue stream.

Currently, gross sales are high, Carey said, making him believe the borough can weather the revenue loss from grocery sales.

On his first day as mayor, Carey was also told the federal government agreed to list the Cook Inlet pod of about 345 beluga whale as endangered.

On Oct. 27, Carey attended a Beluga Whale Stakeholder meeting in Anchorage along with 50 other representatives of various groups.

“I was the only high-ranking elected official present, even though Anchorage and the Mat-Su boroughs could be greatly impacted,“ he wrote in a Nov. 1 report.

While Carey said he doesn’t question the science leading to the listing, he wants answers in terms of possible economic impacts: whether inlet drilling could be halted or restricted. Will it mean oil platforms could be restricted in how they receive supplies? How about salmon fishing on the Kenai and Kasilof rivers? Will Williamsport on the other side of Cook Inlet be closed as possible port for the proposed Pebble Mine project?

“We need to explore the questions. We need to also know what should the (beluga population) numbers be? We need to set a goal — what is that number of that population if the environment is appropriate?” Carey said. “We’ll be listening to all stakeholders, then will provide that information to the borough assembly in terms of policy or direction we should take.”

Carey talks tough about the prospect of stiffer environmental regulations emerging to protect the beluga at the cost of borough input and loss of economy.

“As Alaska is preparing to celebrate our 50th year of statehood, it would be unacceptable if the Kenai Peninsula Borough was treated as a colony or territory by the federal government and our sovereign rights of self-determination were lost … and our economy was intentionally sacrificed,” he wrote in one of his public reports.

Public challenges

When Carey assumed office, he remained on several boards, among them chairmanship of Homer Electric Association’s Board of Directors. He also was the Kenai Peninsula Special Management Area board president, a state-appointed group that Carey is resigning from as soon as he is replaced.

Recently, Carey was criticized for possible conflict of interest in being both borough mayor and head of the board that makes decisions about HEA contracts and other sensitive financial matters. His chief of staff, Hugh Chumley, also was on the board.
In response, Carey and Chumley announced their resignations Nov. 12. Carey said he consulted the borough attorney when he took office about whether the HEA post would create a conflict.

“My term would expire this coming year anyway, so the thought of remaining seemed reasonable,” Carey said Friday. “I also had an opinion from the HEA lawyer, who didn’t see a conflict.“

Yet, the borough attorney warned that right-of-way issues might arise. And soon, Carey found HEA meeting nights scheduled for November and December conflicting with borough assembly meeting dates.

“I found that, timewise, I want to focus everything I’m doing on being the borough mayor,” Carey said.