Central Kenai Peninsula residents gathered Sunday afternoon to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The event focused on remembering the victims, their families and the first responders who survived, with a bell rung before a moment of silence for each of the hijacked planes. The bell was also rung in a special pattern 3-4-3 pattern to honor the 343 firefighters who died as a result of the attacks.

Last December, Tee Serrano gave birth to a baby boy. Now she’s laboring alongside a volunteer crew at the North Kenai home where she plans to raise him.

“I want him to have what I didn’t have,” she said. She hopes that all his memories will be in this house on 2nd Street, near Redoubt Avenue.

Someday, she wants him to come home from college and remember the corner where he bumped his head, the other memories of a childhood spent in one bedroom, one yard.

“I want to raise a good young man,” she said.

Homer Electric Association announced a natural gas purchase agreement to fuel the utility’s Independent Light project.

Pending regulatory approval, HEA would begin purchasing between 4.0 and 4.5 billion cubic feet of gas in January 2014, which is when the utility is expected to start producing its own power rather than purchasing it from Chugach Electric Association. The contract would last through March 2016, with the possibility of two one-year extensions.

Electric rates could go up Oct. 1 by just under a penny per kilowatt hour if local utility Homer Electric Association receives approval from the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to raise the Wholesale Power Cost Rate Adjustment.

The increase is passed along by power producer Chugach Electric Association.

“Right now our WPCRA is tied to the gas contracts of our wholesale power provider, Chugach Electric,” said HEA representative Joe Gallagher. “When they see an increase, it is passed on to HEA and we have to adjust our WPCRA.”