The City of Soldotna will spend $1.05 million on major projects this budget year. That’s after city council members signed off on the spending plan earlier this month.
The council decides which projects it will fund at the beginning of each fiscal year, which start on July 1. This year, the city’s list includes five projects.
The most expensive item on the list is $450,000 for early-stage work toward improving the ice rink at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex. The money would pay for preliminary engineering and design documents for replacement of the rink’s refrigeration system.
Currently, the city uses freon to control the temperature of the ice. But the federal government outlawed manufacturing and importing that material effective 2020. Last year, the council OK’d $225,000 for a sort-of band-aid for the rink’s aging system.
Among other things, Public Works Director Kyle Kornelis says the work funded by the council will analyze the cost of upgrading the dasher boards and fully replacing the floor, including possibly making the rink smaller – from its traditional Olympic size to the size used by the National Hockey League. That’s a difference of about 220 square meters.
“At the conclusion of that, we'll actually have a more refined professional cost estimate for the actual cost to do the construction phase,” he said. “Right now, we've got a kind of a ROM – rough order of magnitude – estimate, which is not a number that we'd be prepared to move forward with in any confidence.”
Kornelis says the city consulted with the Fairbanks North Star Borough, which recently made similar upgrades to its Carlson Center. The consulting group that helped upgrade the Fairbanks rink said Soldotna should expect to spend between eight and nine million dollars upgrading the rink over the next three to five years.
But preliminary ice rink work isn’t the only project the council is funding this year.
The city will also spend $300,000 repairing a storm drain and making associated repairs near Soldotna High School. That’s on top of $90,000 for master planning for city-owned property along Kalifornsky Beach Road, $125,000 for development of a new strategic plan for the city, and $85,000 to expand the columbarium at Soldotna Community Memorial Park.
Kornelis says the K-Beach corridor – particularly near the city’s Centennial Park, Soldotna Field House and baseball fields is becoming increasingly busy.
“We want to deliberately develop that area, and to do so, we need to have a master plan and have a better understanding of what impacts there are to development there, and what type of responsible development should we be looking at?” he said.
The money approved by the council only covers spending through the end of June 2027. Council members also approved a five-year planning document for city projects, but it will fund each year individually as it comes up.
