What do the Moose Pass Volunteer Fire Department, the Kachemak Ski Club and the Nikiski Senior Center all have in common? They’re all getting money from the Kenai Peninsula Borough this year as part of the annual Community Assistance Grant, or CAP, program.
The state-funded program gives boroughs money to distribute to unincorporated communities. Those are communities located in the borough, but outside of city limits. Every year, dozens of organizations on the Kenai Peninsula get money through the program. Depending on how many other organizations there are in a community, some groups get more than others.
This year, the borough got more than $400,000 from the state to distribute across 26 peninsula communities. That amount is comparable to recent years. After deducting a 2% administrative fee, that pencils out to almost $16,000 per community. The borough held a series of community meetings to determine areas’ priorities. Awardees vary in their purpose, membership and reach.
Leslie Rohr is the executive director of Love INC, one of this year’s recipients.
“We've been serving the Kenai Peninsula since 1987 and basically we have operated as a clearinghouse to connect people who are in need with the resources that are available within the community,” she said.
The organization mostly focuses on serving the Kenai Peninsula’s homeless populations. The organization operates an emergency shelter, distributes food boxes and runs a day center where people can get out of the cold.
Love INC got two CAP grants this year. The first is worth about $2,000 and will help with general operations at the organization headquarters on Kalifornsky Beach Road. The second is for about $3,000 for the group’s emergency shelter in Nikiski.
Rohr says CAP grants are unique because they can be spent on operating expenses, like utilities and salaries. She says most grants must be spent on specific projects. That means they don’t always know how they’re going to pay for day-to-day expenses.
“Every household has a budget, and people you know figure out their budget based on the income they know they have coming in with a nonprofit,” she said. “We don't know from month to month what's coming in. So it makes it really difficult to budget.”
That’s especially true at the Nikiski Shelter of Hope, which the nonprofit opened in 2021. Rohr says more than 219 adults, 60 children and more than 34 have passed through the shelter since that time. She estimates it costs roughly $35,000 per month to run the shelter. That includes about $5,000 in utilities and salaries for their three full-time employees.
“The CAP grant will help alleviate some of that,” she said.
Another one of this year’s awardees is the Kenai Peninsula’s chapter of BackCountry Horsemen of America. The cohort advocates for expanded access to horseback riding trails and maintains a trail network in Kasilof. This year, they’re getting $3,000 through the CAP program.
Kerry Nelson is the group’s public lands liaison.
She says the limited number of Kenai Peninsula horse trails prompted equestrians to create the group in 2015. There’s Resurrection Pass in Cooper Landing, the Caribou Hills and a smattering of trails throughout the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Deciding there weren’t enough year-round trails, they took matters into their own hands.
Nelson says the group’s come a long way. At first, they set their sights on a roughly 900-acre chunk of land owned by the Kenai Peninsula Borough located next to the wildlife refuge. Working with the borough’s land management department, they developed a trail network.
“In the eight years, we've pretty much crisscrossed that area,” she said. “We have 15 miles of actual trails, and if you do various loops and stuff, you could ride all day and barely ever cross your own tracks.”
Right now, Nelson says they’re finishing up work on a new gravel parking lot that will serve as an access point to the trails. She says the CAP money will go toward some of the organization’s goals for the near future.
“We're feeling like we have accomplished a lot, and the grant money is huge,” she said. “It pays to maintain those trails and also for signage.”
Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly members gave the final OK for this year’s CAP grant recipients Tuesday. The money covers the current fiscal year, meaning it can be used to reimburse groups for expenses they’ve incurred since July. Any money a community doesn’t spend within two fiscal years gets returned to the borough.
