2024 Candidate Forum - Borough Assembly

Okay, and we're going to get started here. Welcome to the 2024 candidate forum live from the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly Chambers, sponsored by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce and KMXT. Next, we'll be hearing from the candidates running for two seats on the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly. The forum, the forum is being broadcast live on KMXT 100.1 FM and is livestreamed on the borough's YouTube channel as well. As with our previous forums, this one will be broken into 3 parts.

Candidates will have 1 minute to give an opening statement. Then we'll move into questions where each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. And then finally, there will be a 1-minute closing statement for each candidate. And as a reminder, candidates must stop speaking when the timer sounds And we ask that all candidates maintain a civil, courteous demeanor throughout the forum. We will begin with candidates' opening statements, starting by alphabetical order of last name.

So, uh, Dave Johnson, you're up first, please. Thank you. My name is Dave Johnson, and I'm running for the Borough Assembly because more than anything else, I want Kodiak to be a community my children want to live in as adults.

I fear the direction we are heading. Growing up in Seward, I watched the community allow tourism to become the dominant economic engine of the, of the city. It brings with it inflated home prices, low-paying and seasonal jobs. This is not the future we should wish for for our community. I'm running because I'm tired of watching teachers and first responders withdraw contracts to move here because they cannot find affordable housing.

Our population is decreasing and the Coast Guard presence is in Kodiak is the lowest it's been in over 20 years, yet our entry-level homes are pricing young families out of the community. Research shows the health of a rural community is best measured by the quality of the schools and healthcare available to its populace. I'm running because the borough assembly has a direct role in both. At the same time public safety funding is up over 50%, state funding in the schools has increased less than 1% since 2017. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Sandra Kotelnikoff. Lester. Lester, sorry.

Hello all. My name is Sandra Kotelnikoff Lester. I was born in Karluk to Fred Kotelnikoff Sr. and Sophie Kotelnikoff Shepherd in 1955. I was raised on this island. I left Kodiak for 25 years and returned in 2000.

Currently I work for and I am 50% owner-operator of Lester Brothers Incorporated, a local vending company.

My interests include sports fishing, salmon fishing, halibut, gardening, and reading. One of my greatest passions is helping people of Kodiak on a personal level. My only hobby is creating art through carving, painting, beading, and drawing. I'm a veteran member of the American Legion. I was president of the Pioneers of Alaska Kodiak Women's Igloo 17 for 3 years and I'm currently a 3-year trustee of the organization.

My experiences include working as a tribal court judge, protective services specialist, Ikwa, and counselor. My education includes an AA degree, certifications in social work, Clinical supervision counselor and national certifications as a counselor and more.

Thank you. And next we have Scott Smiley. Your opening statement, please. My name is Scott Smiley. I'm a retired university professor.

I was director of the UAF Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center from 1995 to 2006. I'm married. We have one son who went through the Kodiak school system and is now a software engineer living in Portland, Oregon. My wife, Carrie Irons, is a member of the Kodiak Island Borough School Board and a retired North Star Elementary School principal. We've lived in Kodiak for 29 years, moving here from Fairbanks where I was a professor at UAF.

I remain interested in keeping up with advances in both biological sciences, where my degree is, and in local fisheries issue. I'm running for my third term on the Borough Assembly, where I am currently the assembly's deputy presiding officer. I believe in government, and I stand for good government— government that is accountable, thoughtful, and responsible for its actions. For the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly, this means supporting educational excellence Thank you. Thank you.

And James Turner is also running but cannot be with us here tonight, so we will read his statement. Thank you for taking the time to vote. It has been a pleasure to sit on the assembly for the last 6 years. My, how time flies. I'm putting my name in again to continue serving the community of Kodiak to the best of my ability.

A lot of items have come before us during my time on the assembly. One of the issues is the bond debt for schools. I believe that the assembly as a whole has managed to find ways to fill the gaps in funding that we are missing from state portions. These next coming years, the assembly needs to look at lowering the mill rate.

And that's it for his statement. So moving on to questions, each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond, and we will rotate which candidate answers first. So the order won't be the same for every question. Ms. Kotelnikov-Lester, you'll go first with this one. What are your priorities for the borough's budget?

What programs and departments do you believe are over- or underfunded?

As you know, I'm a, um, a candidate, and I did come to the borough meeting to try to understand some of the dynamics that are going on in this community. And with the borough. Unfortunately, there is not a lot that I can give you in that information right now, and I would have to do more investigation, more conversations with the people that do know, and I would need time to develop correctly an answer to this question, but thank you for asking.

Okay, Mr. Smiley, you're up next. Would you repeat the question? What are your priorities for the borough's budget? What programs and departments do you believe are over or underfunded? I believe since the actions of the state in cutting revenue sharing and not funding fully increases to the basic student allocation, the BSA.

We've had to go deep into our pockets as a borough to support the school district. We also had to cover promised costs on the new high school when the state said it would pay for 75% of that, and we ended up having to pay a chunk of that when they refused. I don't think that we have any programs that are overfunded. I think we have a bunch of programs that are underfunded. I think that amongst the most important ones to deal with is maintenance and repair.

We have a number of buildings that— school buildings that we own and are responsible for. Although routine maintenance is under the school district's budget, major maintenance is something that the borough has to deal with. And we have sometimes cheated the funding for maintenance and used it for other things such as paying off the debt for the high school is one of them.

In addition to that, I think we have been cutting budgets since Ronald Reagan, really, and that's at all levels of government. I think we're way deep into the bone on those cuts. And we need to think of other alternatives at this point. Thank you. Thank you.

And Mr. Johnson, your response. Thank you. I think it is interesting to give a binary choice between over and underfunded. I think it goes so much deeper than that. I think Mr. Smiley is probably accurate in saying, you know, in general, the entire budget is probably underfunded to some extent.

We have tried to do as much or more with less across all of government on the I've lived on the island here for a really long time. I think one of the advantages I would bring to the assembly is the fact that I do work for the city. And so I have a really, I think, good understanding of what it's like to be an employee in the municipal government. And that comes with a lot of questions from the elected officials, and it comes with a lot of sometimes inaccurate perceptions from those officials and within the public on how funds are spent, where they come from, and how seriously folks in those positions take their jobs in being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar. One thing that I think I bring to— I would bring to the assembly is that I have a very strong tendency to look at things from different perspectives, from kind of unique ideas, and instead of looking at what do we need to cut or you know, how can we grow the budget, you know, taking what I've called in a previous career root cause analysis.

Which is, you know, to really boil down to the fundamental aspects of what the job is. What is it we have to do? What are we doing? Or is there a gap, or is there an excess? And when you do that type of analysis, I think it'll show that, you know, while we might not be overfunding anything, there might be opportunities where we could see better scale by partnering with the city or partnering with the school district to provide one service from the government instead of multiple governments trying to provide similar services.

Thank you. This next question will go to Mr. Smiley first. The state has not prioritized many of the Kodiak Island boroughs' capital improvement projects in recent years. Which projects do you think need funding the most and why? Hmm.

I think the top of our list the last time was the Tustimena, and we got that funded, I believe. I think the next one is the harbor, and that's something the city shared. I think there are a number of things that have to be done with the hospital. Uh, part of a big portion of the older parts of the hospital are not really built to earthquake standards. Those have to be fixed.

That's going to take a bunch of money. I'm not sure about some of the other issues.

I think that the villages have a whole bunch of issues that need to be funded. I don't think— and some of those end up on the CIP list, but not enough of them do. I was in a previous iteration of the Borough Assembly, I was assigned to be the assemblyperson who dealt with Larson Bay, and the number of problems there were— I mean, some of them were really big deals. The amount of water they were losing through their system from leaks was just unbelievable, 40% or something. There are a lot of problems in the villages that need money to fix.

Villages have other alternatives that we don't have as a borough in terms of grant funding, but still they should be on our CIP lists, all of those things. So I think that we just have to lobby harder to do it, and it's not just Juneau. We have to do it in Washington, D.C. as well. Thank you.

Mr. Johnson, you're up next. Thank you. I think, you know, the piece of the question there that's interesting to address is, you know, how well those projects have competed. You know, and you're accurate. You know, some of those projects haven't competed well, but is that a function of the projects not being worthy or is that the perhaps the function of a vindictive governor who doesn't support the efforts of our elected officials at the state level who have tried very hard to improve the quality of education through increased funding.

And I think the governor has shown a willingness to punish areas for the actions of their elected officials. So I don't personally think it's a function of bad projects or unworthy projects. I think Mr. Smiley hit the nail on the head. I've— you know, my Coast Guard career brought me all over the state in helicopters and small communities up and down the Aleutians, all the way up north. And we need to rebuild St. Herman Harbor urgently.

You know, I guess I'm fortunate in being the harbormaster, so I have a firsthand view of that every day. But he's correct. That's not necessarily a borough issue, but if we lose that harbor, I've been to Cold Bay, and that's what a community— a fishing community without a harbor looks like, and I certainly don't want to see that for ours. So the borough continuing to support efforts to fund the reconstruction of St. Herman Harbor, I think, is critical. I think, you know, our community is changing rapidly with the fisheries changing and leveraging ourselves to be a long-term gateway to the Arctic by aggressively lobbying our federal delegation for waterfront improvements to potentially someday host the newly constructed icebreakers and a dry dock that would be capable of lifting ferries and those icebreakers and Coast Guard vessels.

When we talk about year-round, good-paying jobs for our community, I think that's where we should be looking. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thank you. And Miss Katelnikoff Lester, your turn. Would you repeat the question, please? Yes, of course.

The state has not prioritized many of the Kodiak Island Borough's capital improvement projects in recent years. Which projects do you think need funding the most and why?

Well, I think a function of the borough is to reach out to all the communities to make sure that their capital improvement projects have a priority and that the borough seeks to meet those priorities as listed by that very community and not by what the borough wants. Um, it would be important for the entire Ireland to keep the marine highway system operating. And as just stated earlier, the harbor is one of the most important parts of our community.

Thank you.

And Mr. Johnson, you will be going up first for this next one. There's a shortage of housing in Kodiak. Residents have brought up concerns about a lack of available land, property assessments, and therefore taxes going up, and specific borough laws are restrictive for home builders and buyers. What should the borough assembly do to help alleviate the housing crisis? Thank you.

I would say that's probably the question I'm most looking forward to addressing tonight. As I said in my opening statement, you know, I've watched the district lose at least half a dozen teachers that have agreed to come here and then had to turn around turn around and resign those contracts because they could not find a place to live. Anybody who says that the housing crunch in Kodiak isn't real, I would say, is probably not well connected to reality. As I said, you know, the Coast Guard's population is the lowest it's been here in over 20 years. We know our overall population is decreasing as well, yet we've got this massive increase of house— entry-level especially— housing prices.

Now, some of that can obviously be attributed to inflation, but those houses are selling for incredibly high numbers, and that's what drives the assessments. So we can affect— the assessments have to be reflective of reality.

So what's changed? Well, when I moved here the first time in 2012, the short-term rental market was pretty much nonexistent. Last time I checked, there were 166 short-term rentals on the road system. I don't believe opening up land to sell immediately is the— is going to be the end-all be-all, because if it gets snatched up by more short-term rentals, that will continue to depress the market for hotel beds in our community. So I think the borough, being responsible for zoning, and needs to really take the lead on addressing the impact short-term rentals are having on our community.

Thank you. Ms. Kotelnikov-Lester, same question.

Repeat the question, please. Yes. Residents have brought up concerns about a lack of available land, property assessments, and therefore taxes are going up, and specific borough laws are restrictive for homebuilders and buyers. This all is contributing to a shortage of housing in Kodiak. What should the borough assembly do to help alleviate the housing crisis?

In my opinion, I think we need to take a look at the, the land use policy. We need to review those policies and codes and then revise them as necessary so that there is additional opportunity for either investors or home builders to come in and build long-term homes and short-term rentals.

I don't really know of anything else that the borough could do at this time other than sell land, and I don't think that's a great idea.

Thank you.

And Mr. Smiley, you're up next. Kodiak Housing Authority commissioned a report by the McKinley Research Foundation on housing in Kodiak and came up with a bunch of information that was really crucial. One of the issues was land, one of the issues was the cost of construction, and the other was— I forgot the third one. Um, I think there are, are huge problems in the United States of America about housing prices right now. Part of that is caused by having.

Corporations buy houses that are already built, build up the cost of that house by outbidding competing bidders. Zillow, for instance, recently a house was for sale, I think in North Carolina. The owner was asking for $239,000. The Zillow build bid it up to $430,000, and a month later sold— tried to sell it for $530,000. That kind of speculation in housing has occurred all across the country, and it's really ruined the values of houses, and we're waiting for a balloon to burst on that.

If the borough released land, which it has, for building, people aren't going to want just land. They want it to be with roads. Most people that are interested in working for the school district or the police, the two main occupations that have been talked about in this dialogue, will want to have water and sewer. Those cost a huge amount of money to put in and that— we don't do it, the borough doesn't do it. The city does do sewer and water, but the borough doesn't have that, at least in its past.

So limits of that sort are going to be difficult to overcome. In addition to that, it's going to— I'm not sure that we can build houses and have contractors sell them for a reasonable price because of the cost of building. Thank you, sir. For our next question, we'll go to Ms. Katelnikoff Lester first. Some village residents feel that their needs are not a priority for the Borough Assembly when compared to communities on the road system.

Do you believe the borough fairly represents other communities and acknowledges their issues? Why or why not?

For me, that's an easy question. And having been a member of the city council of Larsen Bay and on the tribal council in Larsen Bay, I don't believe that any of the communities outside the road system get adequate representation from the borough.

Their capital improvement projects, the issues that they face They rely on the borough to assist them with everything, with infrastructure, with finances, with the knowledge. They're still in the baby stages of growth, and so that hasn't changed in my time on this island. So I don't believe that they get the recognition that they need, and that is something that I would, I would like to work on.

Thank you.

Mr. Smiley, you're up next.

We hear a lot from the villages in terms of some of their needs. We do The Planning and Zoning Commission handles the CIP list at first and takes into account requests from the villages. Um, I don't believe I know of an instance where the borough has sent funding directly to a village. Uh, I— that's not the way it works, I don't think. And, uh, I know that we own the schools in the villages that have schools.

We gave the school in Larson Bay to the city of Larson Bay so they could use it when the population of students dropped below 10 and the school district no longer handled that school district. I think it's difficult. In the old days, I think there was a plan to have people in the villages come to the assembly to be members of the assembly and come to assembly meetings. The cost of that now for airfare is just ridiculous. And so communities can't afford it.

The borough doesn't have that much money because of all the cuts in taxes that we've done over the years. So I think it's gonna take a new way of looking at things before we change that.

Thank you. And Mr. Johnson, your response. Thank you. I think in broad terms, you know, there's always room for improvement. You know, are we doing— you know, are folks doing the best they can?

I'm sure they are. But are there people who feel like their needs aren't being met? I know for a fact there are because we just fielded a complaint from one of our outlying communities this week about the condition of the school. I can tell you that complaint has been taken very seriously and, you know, They're putting together a group to go address some of those issues, especially the ones that can be handled, you know, relatively quickly. So, you know, the intent is positive.

The results, you know, could probably improve. I think what's critical to that is establishing relationships. I was fortunate enough to visit several of our outlying communities this spring to confer degrees on some of the graduates. And being in Old Harbor and Nizhinky, Port Lyons, seeing these kids graduate in their communities was a really cool experience. And I think that building relationships by visiting those communities as assembly members is important.

You know, I've built relationships with a lot of the municipal representation at our outlying communities just through the harbor, making sure that, you know, we share equipment, we share expertise, and I think we can continue to do that at the borough government level as well.

Thank you. And Mr. Smiley, you'll be going up next. The non-white minority populations of the city of Kodiak make up nearly half of the island's demographic, yet our elected local officials remain predominantly white. How can we achieve more equitable representation in local government overall across race, sex and cultural lines?

I don't know, I'm an old white guy, so I'm not quite sure how to answer that one except to encourage the various ethnic groups in the community to work together amongst themselves to try to bring people up to this level in terms of understanding what it takes to run for office. I do think that some of these jobs, like Borough Assembly, is one that demands a fair amount of time. Sometimes, uh, many people are reluctant to invest that kind of time at an earlier stage in their career. Uh, it's easier for me because I'm retired, um, and I think that there's a wisdom with retirement too. That helps.

So maybe that's one way to approach it, to have retired people in the various communities in Kodiak. I do know that the diversity of the population in Kodiak is fun. And when you go to the grocery store, you're not limited to white bread. There's all kinds of stuff in there— peanut sauce and chili peppers and all kinds of good stuff. And I think the diversity in Kodiak makes for a healthier community.

Thank you.

And Ms. Katelnikoff Lester, you'll be going second.

Well, in regards to, to having people step up and become part of their community by being involved in, in their civic responsibility, I think that's something that realistically comes from the family and from the community. This has been an issue with the Native population forever, and I don't see it changing quickly. I think I'm one of the very few female Natives to ever attempt this.

It's not comfortable. It's a different culture. It's— I think people feel that it's out of their league or something that is just not really talked about as a possibility that It could happen if you try, but I hope that the communities will encourage their youth to become involved in, in young civic responsibilities and, and maybe come up here to the borough and be involved in the meetings and learn from a young age to, to become a borough member or a city council member or a senator or a representative or the President of the United States.

States, you know, but it starts from the home. So we need to have our people encourage our children.

Thank you.

And Mr. Johnson, your turn. Thank you. Well, I think, you know, the question, if I recall, is, you know, how do we increase representation, participation amongst different, I believe you said, race, sex, and cultural lines, correct? You didn't mention age. Um, and to me, and that's one of the main reasons I'm running, um, you know, for the last year I was the only member of the school board with a child still in schools.

That was brought up in the school board discussion tonight as well. Mr. Smiley accurately noted that, you know, participation in these bodies It's very time-consuming and it is hard for working-age families to participate. But I think our— the concerns of our working-age families are not always accurately captured by our elected bodies because some of them are very far removed from those concerns themselves. I would be interested in knowing how many of our elected officials know that there is no community-wide after-school childcare being offered this year in the community. To me, that's a travesty.

You know, we've got kids going home at 2:30, 3:30 in the afternoon, and if they don't have family, if both parents are working and they don't have other family, you know, that's lost time that they could be doing productive things that is probably spent in front of a screen so they're at least safe in the house. Other communities have tackled this issue, and you know, we both elected Both municipal governments give a lot of money to nonprofits in their budgeting process, and I'd really like to see a nonprofit formed that helped, you know, hire some of those schools' paraprofessionals to stay afterward and provide aftercare at each of our elementary locations so that working parents don't have that incredible stress every day of getting their kids coming out of school and then getting back to work or getting in trouble for missing work and I'll just close by saying, you know, when you talk about different representation— I guess I don't— don't get too close.

Thank you. We'll go back to you again, Mr. Johnson, here for this next question. As severe weather events and natural disasters have become more frequent and potentially more damaging across Alaska communities, how can the borough improve its emergency response and better prepare for these events? Such as landslides as an example?

Thank you. When the Kulik went to ground back in— what was that? New Year's Eve 2012, I was flown to Anchorage on New Year's Day to be the Director of Air Operations for that emergency response. And I saw tribal, state, and federal representation along with the folks at Shell and their subcontractors all come together to get the cullock off the beach in a safe and responsible manner. And that same incident command system is what we expect from our municipal governments to handle both man-made and natural disasters.

Increasing training opportunities for staff, adding some of that training or some of those qualifications to the job requirements for various positions, and then, as I alluded I alluded to earlier, working closer with the city and the Coast Guard, fire departments to make sure that we've got a good command in place for when those events inevitably occur will help in the response and then training. You know, Coast Guard's got tsunami drills going on, I believe, next week. And having some of our city and borough represent— employees there to learn and provide insight and, um, bring that back to their governments will only help us in the long term.

Thank you. And Mr. Smiley, you'll be up next. I think we had a test of this not long ago with COVID and we had an emergency response to that that was quite lengthy, um, and worked in most ways, but it was also a trial to see how it did work. And I know that since then, we have been involved in trying to develop new mechanisms for emergency response, both the borough and the city, with fire departments. And the, the head of the thing was in the COVID emergency was the fire chief, the city's fire chief, Milligan, and the manager for the city, Mike Twinge.

And I believe that in doing that, they've also tried to understand where new training had to occur, and I believe training is ongoing for the members that file into that. As I recall, the borough manager is involved, and I think that's the main part of the borough that's involved in this. Most of it is the city, and because they have the police authority and the borough does not. So I think it is being developed. I think it is being fine-tuned based upon the experience we had with COVID and all of the tsunami warnings that we've had.

I believe that KMXT was not— the borough's response was KVOK, but KMXT was doing such a terrific job with Pam Foreman that she became Miss Tsunami or something and was directing people to school parking lots at North Star and the high school and also to that parking lot up on the side of Pillar or the base of Pillar Mountain.

Thank you. And Ms. Katelnikoff-Lester, your answer please. I get so caught up in listening to their answers, I forget what the question is. That's okay, no worries. As severe weather events and natural disasters become more frequent and potentially more damaging across Alaska, how can the borough improve its emergency response and better prepare for these events, such as landslides, for example?

Well, I remember there have been landslides here, and I don't believe that the borough has really had much activity involving them. One of the more important things that I think about when it comes to emergencies is, like, food. When we had the pandemic, we— the, the store was empty. So I think about what, what can we do to encourage our local food growers and our meat processors so that we can encourage them in times of need to help provide for all the people of the community.

I think that we know what we know when it comes to the tsunamis and landslides and flooding areas, but I think what we need to work on is what we don't know. And at this point in time, I don't know if we are going to know how to get that food staple to the people of our community if we became separated from the rest of the world. And that's important to me. So I would encourage more local food growing. I would encourage more poultry products and meat products here on a local level.

Thank you.

And, uh, on our last question, we're going to start with Mr. Smiley. Fisheries are currently facing a major slump across species right now, and several processors have temporarily closed, and even Trident is selling its plant here in Kodiak. How should the borough react and adapt when facing economic downturns like this? Should other communities in the archipelago consider diversifying their economies?

I'm not sure what the cause of the downturn in harvesting— what the cause of that has been. It's multiple different species. The argument is that it's ocean warming. I'm not sure that that's been defined for all of the species involved. If it is global warming, I think we have a big problem.

We're not going to change that right away.

There are other species that like warmer water. We can try to deal with that. Unfortunately, there's a law in the state of Alaska that we can't We can't raise finfish. It's against the rules. I guess we can do ocean ranching like we do with salmon, but that's about it.

I think in Kodiak, if we have to diversify our economy, we're a three-horse town really. We're the Coast Guard fisheries, the Coast Guard, and tourism. So the only one left is tourism. And as much as I agree with Mr. Johnson about having an overreliance on tourism, making it kind of Disneyland on the shore.

It is something that we could improve, both with ecotourism and with, I think especially sports fishing, I think is something that could go. Not ocean sports fishing as much, but river and lake sports fishing doesn't seem to have that many adherents to it at this point. So I think that's one avenue. I think ecotourism is a possibility here. I think we have sufficient infrastructure in terms of a hospital and some roads to be able to help get people out into the environment effectively so that they can have a real taste of what Alaska is, meaning rain.

So—. [Speaker:Q] Thank you. Ms. Katelnikoff Lester, your answer please. And I can repeat the question. Please.

Yes, ma'am.

Fisheries are currently facing a major slump across species right now, and several processors have temporarily closed. And of course, even Trident is selling its plant in Kodiak. How should the borough react and adapt when facing economic downturns like this? And should other communities in the archipelago consider diversifying their economies?

Well, I don't know that it's the borough's responsibility to diversify anything. I think it's the people of the community who need to realize that, hey, this is not working in our community anymore. The fishermen are going away, the canneries are going away, so what are we as a community going to do to keep us going. What can the borough do?

I would have to do more research to answer that question, but as far as the other communities, they would also be in the same boat. They need to take a look at what's going on in their community and rely on on the mechanisms that they have in place and either try and enhance them or change them up so that they're encouraging some kind of growth or some kind of economic growth.

It's not an easy question, and there is no real easy answer to any of this, but I think by working together to find solutions to these situations, um, we'll all be better off for it.

Thank you.

And Mr. Johnson. Thank you, and I should probably thank you for the 2-minute timer because you hit one that I could ramble on for an hour if given the opportunity. So maybe the audience should thank you for the 2-minute timer. When I was doing my master's thesis, a lot of my research was about civic retrenchment.

I was reading a research paper about 16 different communities in the '80s who had massive bond problems, you know, if you recall the savings and loan and bond collapse at that time. And they went back and looked at those communities and how they reacted to their economic downturn. And the single biggest indicator of success was recognizing that that downturn was happening and doing something about it. When I was doing program management in Washington, D.C., my boss always liked to say that not making a decision is making a decision. And with that, a wait-and-see approach isn't going to benefit our community.

That's what allows outside influences to direct the future of our community instead of our own population. Our elected officials need to create a shared vision for the future of Kodiak and spread it far and wide throughout the borough. I think we're already seeing the results of that retrenchment. And it's a, you know, we're broadening our horizons. We've now got ocean plastics recovery opening up in Kodiak.

We've got some of the largest kelp farming operations in the state going on in Kodiak. And as I alluded to earlier, I think The future of our community lies in the opening Arctic. We're very well placed along the logistics route to be the logistics hub of the Arctic in ship repair, outfitting, and support. And I think the year-round, well-paying technical labor jobs that would come with that would greatly benefit the long-term health of our community. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Thank you.

That concludes the question segment of this forum. So now we'll move into closing statements. So each candidate will now have 1 minute to share your final thoughts, and we'll go in alphabetical order by last name as we started. So back to you, Mr. Johnson, 1 minute for your closing statement. Thank you.

I'll start by, uh, thanking our friends here at KMXT and the Chamber of Commerce for putting this on. And hosting this event, as they're critical. Our community has opportunities to learn what the candidates for office stand for, and a wonderful opportunity for them to learn a little more about us. I want to thank everyone in the audience and who listened this evening. I hope over the course of the discussion I've shown why I believe our elected officials must act with a bias for action and a sense of urgency.

We're facing a number of significant challenges, including funding our schools, uncertainty in our futures— in our fisheries, excuse me, and an out-of-control housing market. With that comes an opportunity to reimagine the island for the next generation. We have an opportunity to shape the future of the island for the better. We can and must do better. And that is why I'm asking for your vote on October 1st.

Thank you. Ms. Katelnikoff Lester, your closing statement, please. Yes, I am running to become a borough assembly member because I care about the safety, health and well-being of the people on our island and throughout the borough. When elected, I will have an open-door policy and will be available to discuss your issues at any time. One of my pet peeves is when I call a public employee and they do not call me back.

I hold myself to a higher standard, and your issues will not fall on deaf ears. I would like to encourage the communities on the island to continue to work hard with the borough, but when I say communities, I just don't mean the cities. The borough needs to realize that there is a huge difference between the City of Larsen Bay and the Larsen Bay Tribal Council, and the entities that I feel are not getting recognized by the borough are the tribes.

And Mr. Smiley, I'm running for my third term on the Borough Assembly. Um, I think the Borough Assembly's main functions are to support educational excellence. We were actually— the borough was created to help fund the school district. That was the reason that it started.

I think we have a job in developing and helping the economic prosperity of the community, the health of our population. We have health responsibilities that we have in addition to having built the hospital, and we also fund our local nonprofits, and those local nonprofits really enrich the lives of people in Kodiak. Many of them are involved in the health and safety of our population. I worry about drugs in the community and the damage that that has caused. The number of students requiring additional support has ballooned.

At any rate, thank you.

Thank you. And that concludes the Borough Assembly Candidate Forum. And thank you to you three for coming. That's everyone listening. That's Dave Johnson, Sandra Kitelnikoff Lester, and Scott Smiley.

We also want to thank the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce and KMXT, as well as the Kodiak Island Borough, for helping make tonight's forum possible. And thank you, of course, to our audience here in the room and listening online. And a reminder that municipal election day is Tuesday, October 1st. Get to know your candidates and the issues, and then please take a few minutes on October 1st to cast your vote or Early voting opens on September 16th, so you can go to your local polling place any point between then and October 1st. Once again, thank you for listening and have a good night.