{"id":30537,"date":"2016-12-20T09:01:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T17:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/soldotna-moves-forward-with-plans-for-annexation-proposal\/"},"modified":"2016-12-20T09:01:03","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T17:01:03","slug":"soldotna-moves-forward-with-plans-for-annexation-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/soldotna-moves-forward-with-plans-for-annexation-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Soldotna moves forward with plans for annexation proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>KENAI<\/strong> \u2014 The city of Soldotna has approved $50,000 to gather public input on the potential annexation of land surrounding the city.<\/p>\n<p>The Peninsula Clarion reported that the City Council voted Wednesday to appropriate the funds, which will go toward hiring a consultant who will speak with residents about their thoughts on the annexation proposal. The appropriation had been cut down from the initially proposed total of $100,000.<\/p>\n<p>The city is considering annexing any of nine identified areas outside the town.<\/p>\n<p>City Manager Mark Dixson said doing so will help get rid of Soldotna\u2019s property tax, which will attract more businesses to the city.<\/p>\n<p>He said the city is looking both to protect existing businesses and promote new ones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of issues with people, businesses wanting to move out of their current location because they\u2019re growing, but they can\u2019t find any place for them to move to,\u201d Dixson said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had developers who want to put in subdivisions but we really don\u2019t have the &#8230; existing land in order to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The areas identified for annexation were chosen by the city because they are the most fiscally feasible options, Dixson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese (nine) areas are &#8230; the maximum that we\u2019re ever going to look at, and these areas are slowly going to be whittled down to something that\u2019s extremely small,\u201d Dixson said. \u201cAt least that\u2019s my hope.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those opposed to the annexation plan include Kenai Peninsula Borough residents who own commercial property or homes just outside Soldotna and say they don\u2019t want to be part of the city. Some argue that city officials shouldn\u2019t hire a consultant and should instead handle the public comment process on their own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, you are our community, you\u2019re our neighbors, you\u2019re our family, you\u2019re our friends, and the idea that you have one of the best staffs for a city around here, because I know most of them,\u201d said business owner Brian Olson, an active opponent of annexation. \u201cThey\u2019re good at what they do. They can do this in-house with the right supervision and leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the city decides to move forward with the annexation process once the public engagement period wraps up, officials would need to send a petition to the Local Boundary Commission. The commission makes the final decision on whether a borough or city can annex additional land and carries out its own public input process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KENAI \u2014 The city of Soldotna has approved $50,000 to gather public input on the potential annexation of land surrounding the city. The Peninsula Clarion reported that the City Council voted Wednesday to appropriate the funds, which will go toward hiring a consultant who will speak with residents about their thoughts on the annexation proposal. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30537"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}