Ninilchik voters may get the chance to create their own tax base to support community recreation. That’s after the community’s pool was left on the list of budget cuts approved by Kenai Peninsula school board members earlier this month.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has scrambled in recent months to make up a $17 million budget shortfall.
That’s why Debbie Cary decided to take matters into her own hands.
“First, I had to get the petition, which I had to get the voters, you know, 15% of the voters, which actually was like 27 signatures,” she said. “I had to get that, turn it into the clerk's office. The clerk had to certify it. Then the mayor had to look at it.”
Last month, the borough formally accepted the petition.
Cary is a former school board president and longtime Ninilchik resident. She says there’s been interest in starting a recreational service area in Ninilchik for years.
Service areas are a way for residents to have services the Kenai Peninsula Borough doesn’t provide. There are 14 scattered across the borough that provide fire protection, emergency services, flood planning and recreation. In Nikiski, the recreation service area runs a pool and community center using taxes paid by people who live in the service area boundaries.
Cary thinks that model could work for Ninilchik.
“I look at what the students no longer have, and I see how that impacts the community,” she said. “The community wants to support – they want to support each other. And I think that moving forward, this would be a way to do that.”
The annual cost of operating the pool will depend on how many people the service area wants to run it. Revenue will/would be collected through the property tax, or mill, rate. The mill rate is the amount in taxes a property owner pays per $100,000 of assessed value.
To pay for the service area, property owners within the proposed boundaries would pay more in taxes each year. During a meeting with community members in Ninilchik on Thursday, that proposal got mixed responses from attendees. Many say they support having the school pool for students and community members.
Ninilchik School alum Leslie McCombs and her daughter Lenny Wilson were in the audience. McCombs comes from a commercial fishing family and says knowing how to swim is an important skill. She says she hopes the question ends up on the October ballot.
“We’re paying taxes for things I probably care about much less,” she said. “So I think if this is the route it has to take, then so be it.”
Lenny, her daughter, is a Ninilchik School student. She gets to swim in the deep end of the pool now, and has a few favorite activities.
“Have free swim, play with the younger kids in the pool,” she listed.
But a pool paid with property taxes wouldn’t be used exclusively by students.
GenAnne Hill is retired and says she doesn’t like getting up early to get there before school starts. But she says she’d be interested in doing water aerobics or physical therapy if a service area is created. And she’d be willing to pay more in taxes to make that happen.
“I am more than happy to pay whatever tax I have to raise the next generation up,” she said.
But that isn’t the case for everybody. Tiffany Johansen is a Ninilchik School alum who says she took for granted programs and resources, like the pool, that are now under threat. But she says the burden of higher taxes would disproportionately burden property owners ineligible for borough tax relief programs.
“As a middle aged woman, raising a family here in Ninilchik I can say I would wholly oppose voting for additional taxes if it came October,” she said.
A ballot proposition for Ninilchik voters isn’t a done deal. Assembly members have to approve the ballot language first. The assembly already gave the language initial approval. But it will be up for a final vote at the assembly’s next meeting on Aug. 5 in Homer. Election Day is Oct. 7.
