The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly earlier this month unanimously adopted a resolution asking the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District to fund pools in Ninilchik and Seldovia this year.
The pools in Ninilchik and Seldovia were slated to be closed in all of the district’s draft budgets for this year, and the district’s finalized budget does pull their funding. The district’s other pools were funded in the current budget, though district leadership said that this school year will be the last that those pools see district funding and called on communities to take on management and funding of the facilities.
Communities have been working to maintain the Ninilchik and Seldovia pools. Ninilchik voters this fall will decide whether to levy additional property taxes to support recreational services including management of the pool, and Seldovia residents requested an increase in their property taxes to similarly support their pool.
Those efforts, amid legal and physical questions and challenges, need more time to be implemented — that’s why assembly members Willy Dunne and Brent Johnson sponsored a resolution adopted during the body’s Aug. 19 meeting “urging” the school district to use its funds to “provide an interim solution” and keep the two pools open this year.
Johnson’s district in the assembly includes Ninilchik; Dunne’s district includes Seldovia.
“There’s certainly a core group that is very interested in keeping these pools open,” Johnson said. “I’m going to bat for them. I would like a resolution, of some sort, next year that would find funding for all the pools separate from the school district. But these are the two that are on the chopping block right now.”
Dunne said the efforts of people looking to preserve the pools in the two communities are “valiant.”
The two assembly members earlier in the month introduced an ordinance that would have reallocated $200,000 in maintenance funding from the borough to the school district and directed that money to be used for school district operations to keep the pools open. That move was withdrawn and replaced with the resolution amid concerns around directing another body. Zen Kelly, the school board president, said on Aug. 5 that the move would be a “dangerous precedent to set.”
Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche said that the ordinance was “something I could not have supported, would not have supported.” Other members of the assembly said that they would not support that move, but ultimately the resolution was adopted by unanimous consent.
Discussions about the future of pools in Seldovia and Ninilchik, as well as in the borough at large, are underway, Micciche said during the Aug. 19 meeting. He cited meetings with Seldovia’s city manager, with school board president Kelly and with others to explore “possibilities.”
Kelly said that the resolution was “the best way to go concerning our pools,” but did not speak on whether he thought the board might reverse the cuts to the two facilities — which were defunded starting on July 1 but have been kept open temporarily by using other funds and community donations. The school board meets next on Sept. 8 in Seward.
A full recording of the meeting and the text of the resolution can be found at kpb.legistar.com.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
