An ordinance authorizing the borough to enter into an agreement with the state Department of Transportation, allowing for the sale and exchange of certain public roads will be introduced at Tuesday’s Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting.
In an October letter from peninsula district superintendent for the state Department of Transportation, Carl High wrote borough roads director, Dil Uhlin, a proposal to trade ownership and maintenance of nine state-maintained roads for the borough-owned Escape Route, a dirt back road running between Nikiski and Kenai.
“In an attempt to find logical efficiencies that would benefit both the Kenai Peninsula Borough and that State of Alaska DOT, we would like to propose trading ownership and maintenance of the roads listed below,” the letter read.
State roads on the list for trade include sections of Secret Road, Longmere Way, Lakeshore Drive, Murray Lane, Marhenke Street, Dolores Drive, Cohoe Beach Road, Pollard Loop and Alta Loop. Total mileage for the state-maintained roads is 4.7 miles., while the Escape Route is about 4.6 miles in length. All of the roads are paved except Cohoe Beach Road, Pollard Loop Road and Alta Loop, according to the October letter.
If the agreement is approved, the borough would take over the maintenance, ownership and control of the state roads listed, giving up their responsibility for the Escape Route.
The state-maintained roads potentially being taken over by the borough are short segments of road contiguous to borough-maintained roads, according to a Feb. 7 memo from Uhlin to the assembly.
