Priorities

State leadership has forced our schools into a cycle of stagnation and decline. We have seen chronic underfunding and flatlined Base Student Allocation (BSA) formulas that have caused an education crisis on the Kenai Peninsula. 

This structural stagnation is no longer an abstract political debate; it is causing visible, immediate damage to our local communities.  Amid dropping enrollment on the Peninsula and new costs required of the schools with new mandates, flat-funding is actually a major funding decrease.

While parents get creative looking for immediate solutions in home-school cohorts or new charter schools, teachers are fleeing in order to be able to support their own families.  Our schools, teachers, and parents cannot plan for the future when education is used as a political football every legislative session. 

It is time for permanent formula reform that embeds permanent changes directly into state law.  We need to prevent the State pushing the burden of school funding onto the Borough and, ultimately, property taxpayers.

Funding our schools doesn't require raising taxes on Kenai Peninsula families; rather, it requires the State to develop multiple diverse revenue streams.

This should include closing corporate tax loopholes so that outside companies pay their fair share to the state.

Alaska's recent budget debates posed a direct choice between subsidizing out-of-state corporate profits or funding local communities.  This is not a closed topic; we cannot just slash our budget in order to achieve prosperity.  Instead, we need to stabilize revenue. 

If we want to prove that Alaska is more than a failed petro-State, then it is time to embrace all available pathways for revenue.

I support developing Alaska energy.  Right now, Juneau is trying to fast-track massive, multi-decade property tax exemptions for a multi-billion dollar project in our backyard.  If a private developer like Glenfarne needs our tax codes rewritten to make their math work, the public deserves to see the exact numbers.  I won’t vote to give away billions of future Kenai Peninsula tax revenues until we have clear, proven, and specific data to convince us that this won’t leave Borough residents holding the bag.

We are facing a gas shortage in the Cook Inlet that could spike local utility bills, yet our politicians seem hyper-focused on how fast we can export our gas overseas.  I would demand a “Kenai First” financial perspective on this.  We need a transparent, legally binding guarantee that local power prices will drop.

We have heard so many times about this gasline.  I want assurance that this is not just a distraction from the structural budget deficits and failing public infrastructure – the Nikiski terminal should not be treated like a campaign prop by career politicians. If this project is economically viable, let it prove itself under a strict and open inspection without any rushed dealmaking behind closed doors.