Community

The U.S. Forest Service plans to expand parking, extend a trail and improve an outhouse near the West Glacier trailhead.

The Alaska Department of Transportation recently awarded the Forest Service the $294,000 grant to pay for the improvements.

The Forest Service’s Ed Grossman, who manages recreation programs in Juneau, said the potential cost for the project could change, depending on contractors’ bids.

“It includes some additional parking, it includes about a four-tenths of a mile trail that’ll parallel the existing road and bike path,” he said.

The grant will help the final phase in a decade-long project to the fix the trail area.

“The road used to be dirt, and heavily potholed,” Grossman said, “and the parking was just pretty much willy-nilly, so all of that was improved in former phases.”

Over the past few years, numerous people have gotten lost on the trail—most recently Saturday, KINY reported Monday.

While the project will include signage, modifications won’t go beyond the trailhead, Grossman said.

“So there isn’t any additional work being done in this phase beyond the trailhead,” he said, “where it seems like more people are getting lost than they should.”

Construction could start as soon as this fall.

After almost two weeks, the boil water notice has been lifted from Bethel’s Trailer Court neighborhood. Last month a routine sample revealed E. coli present in the pipes of one home. Cliff Lindroth is the manager at the neighborhood’s water processing plant.

“We got the green light from the Department of Environmental Conservation. They came out here on Tuesday, we got the results back from the YK lab, all tests came back negative,” Lindroth said.

The tests confirm what Lindroth has said for the last week – the containment was isolated to one home and not a system wide problem.

“I apologize to people for the concern and inconvenience they’ve had during this period of reacting to what was kind of a false turd in the punch bowl,” said Lindroth.

Lindroth blames unorthodox piping systems inside the contaminated home for the scare.

“It’s not uncommon for somebody to just put a piece of hose in there and clamp it on with some hose clamps. And maybe that was the same hose that was lying out in the yard. The same hose that’s been lying in the bottom of somebody’s boat,” he said.

City workers volunteered their time to help identify the problem. The Trailer Court water system is independent from the city’s system.

Lindroth says that as a result of the scare, the plant will be doing more regular testing to make sure everything is normal moving forward.

Audiences have been enjoying the sweet sounds of the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra’s Summer Music Festival this week and last. It’s about to wrap up, with noon concerts Thursday and Friday, and gala concerts Friday and Saturday.

The annual two-week summer music festival in Homer and the central Kenai Peninsula includes free noon concerts at venues around town, as well as chamber orchestra and string quartet performances from local and guest musicians.

And there’s a first this year — the Navy Band Northwest is performing on the peninsula, as well as in the orchestra’s gala concerts Friday and Saturday.

“And it’s just such a pleasure to have them here,” said Maria Allison, accompanist for the orchestra. “They’ve added so much. A couple of them are playing with us in the orchestra. And, of course, Sterling Strickler, our local celebrity, who is a bassoonist in the Navy Winds and graduated from Kenai High School. It’s just so fun to have him back here.”

A wind trio and saxophone quartet performed Wednesday in Kenai, requiring extra chairs to be brought out to accommodate the growing audience. Among the crowd was guest conductor David Jacobs, director of orchestral studies at the University of Oregon, who will be leading two pieces in the gala orchestra concerts.

“I jumped at the chance to come to the Kenai Peninsula because it’s a beautiful place in the summer, and to work with the musicians of the community. They just carry such a passion for music with them. So I really treasure the opportunity to work with those people,” Jacobs said.

The gala concerts are taking a Russian turn this year.

Jacobs is conducting Alexander Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances” and Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev’s “Overture on Three Russian Themes.”

He says that both are 19th-century Russian nationalist composers.

“Since they’re Russian nationalists, essentially the music has a lot of roots in Russian folk music,” Jacobs said. “So there are tunes that maybe people know just from hearing Russian folk songs. The Borodin is very flashy and showy, and just a real kind of showstopper pieces. And the Balakirev is just a really nice, pleasant, little variations of Russian folk songs.”

After intermission, the orchestra, as well as community choirs from Homer and the central peninsula, will perform Sergei Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky.”

“Some of the movements are in Russian, some of them are in Latin,” Allison said. “And one of the movements is depicting the scene where the battle takes place on the ice of a lake. And the heavy armor of the German soldiers breaks the ice and they all go through the ice and are drowned. It’s extremely dramatic.”

Audiences might be familiar with some of these works, as some folk themes were used by more famous composers, such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. But even if not, they shouldn’t disappoint.

“I would just encourage anyone, whether they been to an orchestra concert ever before or not to come because it’s going to be really exciting music that anyone can enjoy,” Jacobs said.

The Kenai Peninsula Orchestra’s gala concerts will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Homer Mariner Theater at Homer High School, and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Renee C. Henderson Auditorium at Kenai Central High School, with a lecture 45 minutes before each concert.

The Ketchikan School Board discussed Wednesday about transgender policies for student athletes, and how such policies need to be uniform for state competitions.

Superintendent Robert Boyle gave an overview of the Alaska School Activities Association’s policy on transgender athletes:

“Whatever each school district has as their individual policies is allowable,” he said. “If a school district has no policy, then the policy is their birth certificate governs the sport that they should play in.”

Ketchikan’s policy on transgender students is inclusive, Boyle said, but other school districts are more restrictive. Because of that, he says, the ASAA policy is problematic.

“There are already multiple district policies, district approaches to this issue,” he said. “And that means that it very clearly will have districts in conflict with each other.”

Boyle asked the School Board for direction. He suggested that the district encourage ASAA to adjust its policy.

The board agreed with Boyle’s assessment of the problem.

“I think it’s a really weak move on behalf of ASAA,” board member Misty Archibald said. “I think it’s a sticky situation that they don’t really want to take a position on. Their job is to regulate activity so that there’s consistency statewide. It’s not going to work the way they’re doling this out. It’s not going to work across all the different communities in our state.”

The board directed Boyle to contact the Association of Alaska School Boards to discuss the issue.

Also Wednesday, the School Board voted to accept the resignation of Board President Michelle O’Brien, approved board goals for the coming school year and approved the purchase of $80,000 worth of Chromebook laptops for Schoenbar Middle School students.

The next Ketchikan School Board meeting is Aug. 24, which also is the first day of school for the fiscal year 2017 school year.

During a special meeting Tuesday, Aug. 10,  City and Borough of Sitka Assembly members debated the merits of 12 applicants for Sitka’s city attorney position and voted on their top picks for follow-up interviews.

The applicant pool includes a mix of local lawyers and attorneys outside Alaska, along with proposals to do the job through a private practice.

Mark Danielson, the city’s director of Human Resources, began by asking the Assembly to list their top choices.

Assembly members expressed an interest in hearing more from Cary R. Gagnon, who is current counsel for a BakerHostetler in Denver, Colorado.

Gagnon’s practice focuses on navigating local and state regulations, largely for the oil and gas industry. All seven Assembly members were interested in her application.

All seven also were interested in another set of names Sitka residents may recognize.

Brian Hanson, who was appointed the city’s interim attorney after the Assembly voted to terminate Robin Schmid in April. The city attorney position was advertised April 28 through June 18.

In his letter, Hanson was not interested in taking on the full-time position with benefits. Rather, he wanted to continue part time as an independent contractor. Hanson is receiving support from the city’s legal assistant Reuben Yerkes and Rachel (Dinardo) Jones, a contract attorney.

Deputy Mayor Matthew Hunter said the current situation seems to be working. “

I’ve heard wonderful things from staff and even some members of the public about our current situation about our interim municipal attorneys and how that’s working,” Hunter said.

Hanson’s proposal to continue part time intrigued with Assembly, but Guevin wanted to consult city staff to see if that arrangement would be tenable long term.

“It’s a big departure from what we’ve done in the past, so I think it requires more discussion than just going through the interview process, as we would for a normal applicant,” Guevin said.

Jones also applied for the position, but through a one-year contract with Williams, Kastner and Gibbs, a private firm based in Seattle.

The firm’s proposal is to hire Jones to provide legal services to the city, with oversight from another WKG attorney, Markos Scheer.

Based on the contract proposal, several Assembly members were uncomfortable hiring for the position through a firm.

“I don’t feel that I directly have an employee at that point,” Steven Eisenbeisz said. “That I have to go through a firm to get to my employee, as opposed to that person directly being with us.”

In the end, the Assembly expressed a desire to interview WKG to explore the contract further, but also asked Jones – who was sitting in the audience – if she’d consider applying for the position separately.

Aside from Gagnon, Hanson and Jones, the other top vote-getters were Eugene F. Hickey, who holds a private practice in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Kevin Carlisle, who serves on the legal affairs team for Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California.

As the meeting wrapped, Potrzuski complimented Danielson for his making the process a smooth one.

The Assembly plans to conduct the majority of these one-hour interviews on Saturday, Aug. 20, interviewing local attorneys in person and conducting out-of-town interviews through Skype.

The final candidates will have a second in-person interview, along with a community meet-and-greet.

The new attorney could start as early as October 1.

In its last meeting before the start of the 2016-2017 school year, the Ketchikan School Board will discuss goals on Wednesday, and will vote on the resignation of board president Michelle O’Brien.

O’Brien announced her resignation just before the last meeting, but it wasn’t an action item on that agenda.

If approved by the school board on Wednesday, her resignation will take effect Oct. 12, after a new board is seated following the Oct. 4 local election.

The board then will have 30 days to appoint someone to fill her spot.

The board also will talk Wednesday about goals for the superintendent and for the board itself.

In a memo to the board, Superintendent Robert Boyle suggested that his goals include increasing attendance rates, adopting policies to reduce the dropout rate and improving the administrative process through evaluations and training.

Board goals focus on technology improvements, vocational education, school safety and recognizing student achievement.

Boyle is seeking board direction on school policy for transgender athletes.

Among the action items Wednesday’s agenda is a motion to buy $80,000 worth of Chromebook laptops to replace Apple laptops used by students at Schoenbar Middle School.

The old Apple machines then would be used by school district staff.

Wednesday’s meeting begins 6 p.m. in Borough Assembly chambers in the White Cliff building. Public comment will be heard at the start and end of the meeting.