Kenai Peninsula Borough

The field trip was meant to teach students about how their local government works.

The borough is spending more than $20,000 to remind taxpayers of the Feb. 15 deadline with mailers.

A large outage Thursday night left almost 15,000 Homer Electric Association members without power.

As passed earlier this month, the ordinance capped senior property tax exemptions at $375,000.

The new members won’t take their seats on the dais until the next assembly meeting later this month.

The stretch of road is one of only two ways to get between the two communities and has a higher car crash rate than the statewide average. It also has the second-highest rate of moose collisions in the state.

Currently, eligible property owners can exempt the first $50,000 of their property’s assessed value from borough taxes. If the ballot proposition passes, that exemption would increase to $75,000.

Kelli Parker says her complaints to the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s Human Resources Department went unaddressed for months.

Proponents of the change say it would boost voter turnout in local elections, which consistently trails behind turnout in state and federal elections. But some city officials say the logistics of running elections concurrently would be challenging and expensive.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough already uses paper ballots. But it uses electronic tabulators to tally results. The borough added electronic voting machines to its fleet a few years ago for voters with special needs.