Jenny Neyman

General Manager

Jenny Neyman has been the general manager of KDLL since 2017. Before that she was a reporter and the Morning Edition host at KDLL.
She also worked in print journalism for 15 years, including 7.5 years as owner, publisher and editor of the Redoubt Reporter community newspaper in the central Kenai Peninsula.
She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, and grew up listening to KSTK public radio in Wrangell, AK.

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Fishermen cast to hook Board of Fish attention

By • Feb 10, 2020
Redoubt Reporter

The Alaska Board of Fisheries heard two days of public comments over the weekend, weighing in on the 171 Upper Cook Inlet fisheries proposals it is considering this week and next in Anchorage.

As usual, it’s a tug-of-war over fish allocation, not only between commercial, sport and personal-use fisheries, but between regions, as well. The Matanuska-Susitna area is making a concerted effort to convince the board to regulate for more fish to get past mid-inlet commercial fisheries to upper-inlet streams.

Peter Matisse, of the Susitna Valley Fish and Game Advisory Committee, advocated for a conservation corridor, which would keep commercial drift-net fishing closer to shore, the thought being that this would allow passage of salmon heading to northern streams.

“Biologists are just beginning to understand that many of these fish travel through these corridors to great harvesting press and struggle to make it to the last destination, of the Su,” Matisse sai

Triumvirate Theatre celebrates 15 years

By • Feb 7, 2020
Debbie Boyle

Fifteen years ago, Joe and Paulene Rizzo and Chris and Carla Jenness toured a vacant room in the Peninsula Center Mall in Soldotna, hoping they could turn it into the new home of their nonprofit community theater organization, Triumvirate Theatre.  

“Because that’s where you go to put a theater, you go to the mal," said Joe Rizzo, speaking at a 15th-anniversary celebration held June 30.

The space was big but not promising. There was stuff hanging from the ceiling. Garbage was piled on the floor. There were no internal walls or anything useful, really. But the price was right, in that it was cheap, though not cheap enough that they could pay the rent just with admissions from shows.

They decided to turn half the space into a used bookstore. And who better to run a bookstore than someone with the last name Reeder. They recruited Rosie Reeder for the job.

“And I said, ‘I don’t know how.’ And they said, ‘We don’t, either, that’s why we’re asking you,’” Reeder said.


Econ 919: Bond would fix backlog of school projects

By • Feb 7, 2020

This is Econ 919, your weekly look at how the Kenai Peninsula works. I’m Jenny Neyman.

As Alaska’s economy worsened and state and local governments ratcheted back spending, one of the first things to go by the wayside was money for facility replacements and improvements. Deferred maintenance has been the order of the day, but that day is catching up to the Kenai Peninsula Borough and school district.

The borough assembly and school board met in a joint session Tuesday to talk about a $30 million bond proposal they plan to put to voters this fall. 

“As you well know, the days of sending in our top 10 capital priorities request through our Legislature through Juneau is probably a thing of the past,” said Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce.


Kenai passes resolution to expand hate crimes statute

By • Feb 6, 2020

The Kenai City Council on Wednesday joined Soldotna in passing a resolution supporting House Bill 198, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes under the state's existing hate crimes statute.

Tammie Willis testified to the council. She was attacked at her home in Sterling on Dec. 9. Before that, she found a note on her truck full of gay slurs and threatening violence. She also had her windshield smashed by a rock that bore a gay slur. She says the Federal Bureau of Investigations has taken over the case under the federal hate crimes statute, since Alaska law lacks a provision to consider the three instances together as a hate crime.

“For the life of me, I don't know why every other class was included in the list of aggravators but sexual orientation and gender identity,” Willis said. “But we are the population of people that is facing the most violence and the most hate right now. It's grown tremendously over the last three years and it's being definitely felt here on the peninsula, as well. So this is an important piece of legislation. And your resolution means a lot to us in the LGBTQ community because it shows that this is a community that's not going to tolerate the hate."

Willis says two things would change if HB 198 were to become law. It would mean hate crime statistics could be tracked for Alaska. There's currently no good way to gather that data since Alaska doesn't consider crimes motivated by anti-LGBTQ sentiment as hate crimes.

"Consequently, when a hate crime occurs towards someone in the LGBTQ community, whether the troopers or the Soldotna police or anybody actually looks into it and considers it a hate crime, it's not being reported to the FBI, so it's not included in the FBI statistics, so we don't have any real numbers of what the hate crime rate is in Alaska against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity," she said.

Kenai Conversation: Growing a local food revolution

By • Feb 5, 2020

Dig into the local food scene with Eliza Eller, one of the founders of the Iona community in Kasilof and the Kenai Local Food Connection, Heidi Chay, district manager for the Kenai Soil and Water Conservation District, and Abby Ala, owner of Ridgeway Farms off Strawberry Road between Kenai and Soldotna.

More information on the events and topics discussed can be found at:

Ionia Alaska

Kenai Local Food Connection

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