Borough, cities again ask State Board of Fisheries for local meeting

Kenai Peninsula governments are once again asking the State Board of Fisheries to hold its Cook Inlet regulatory meetings on the Kenai Peninsula.

In late August and early September, a joint resolution was adopted by the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly and the city councils of Homer, Kachemak, Kenai, Seward, Seldovia and Soldotna in support of a request by the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District that the 2026 Lower and 2027 Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meetings be held in Soldotna before then rotating between the three “primary affected boroughs.”

Cassidi Cameron, the executive director of KPEDD, told the Soldotna City Council on Aug. 28 that “a whole generation of community members” have missed the opportunity to participate directly in the board process. She told the council that the board “has not met as a regulatory body on the peninsula since 1999,” which is true of the Upper Cook Inlet meetings, though the board has met in Seward and in Homer in recent years for Lower Cook Inlet meetings.

Making the case

Since the last locally held Upper Cook Inlet meeting of the Board of Fisheries, which ran from late February 1999 into early March of that year in the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex, every UCI meeting has been held in Anchorage. Because those meetings stretch sometimes over multiple weeks, local fishers have said it is time and cost prohibitive for them to travel, stay in Anchorage and ensure their testimony is heard on local issues. The board’s Upper Cook Inlet meetings repeatedly center on Kenai River sport fishing and the local commercial setnet and driftnet fisheries — the board’s meeting earlier this year was dominated by conversations surrounding the creation of the Kenai River late-run king salmon stock of management concern action plan, as well as opportunity for the east side setnet fishery.

Soldotna unanimously adopted the resolution on Aug. 28. The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly adopted the resolution via their consent agenda on Sept. 3. The Kenai City Council adopted the resolution on Sept. 4. Homer, Seward and Seldovia all adopted the resolution via consent agenda on Sept. 9. Kachemak adopted the resolution on Sept. 11.

Though the joint resolution was adopted by each of the government bodies, several members said they’ve made this request to the board “repeatedly.” Last year, the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Kenaitze Indian Tribe, Kenai Peninsula Fishermen’s Association and City of Kenai all wrote letters asking for the board to hold its 2024 meeting on the central peninsula. The board said the available space on the peninsula was insufficient.

Jordan Chilson, of Soldotna’s council, said during the Aug. 28 meeting that Kenai Peninsula residents deserve to have their voices heard before the board, but lamented that each of their previous requests had “fallen on deaf ears.”

During a Sept. 4 meeting of the Kenai City Council, Mayor Brian Gabriel, an east side setnetter himself, said the city has “quite a lengthy history of encouraging the Board of Fisheries to meet down in the central peninsula.”

It “seems odd,” he said, that the board hasn’t met here in so long when the majority of the Upper Cook Inlet proposals center on and come from the Kenai Peninsula.

The board regularly travels to other affected communities for other regulatory meetings, including to Fairbanks, Kodiak, Sitka, Dillingham, Cordova, Petersburg, Naknek and Ketchikan since they last came to the central peninsula, per their calendar. In that time, the board has made six visits to the central peninsula for different work sessions and hearings, but never held a full regulatory meeting.

Cameron told Soldotna’s council that this year’s request will be more persuasive in part because of the soon-to-be completed Soldotna Field House. An 11-page proposal document prepared by KPEDD and sponsored by the borough, Kenai, Soldotna, and the Kenai and Soldotna Chambers of Commerce says that the 40,500-square-foot facility has meeting spaces, audio and visual equipment, a commercial kitchen and “high speed Wi-Fi.” The proposal further describes nearby lodging and dining options in Soldotna and Kenai.

The board’s continued meeting in Anchorage, the proposal says, leads to “disproportionate representation of special-interest groups that have the resources to attend the meetings and underrepresentation of individual residents of the Kenai Peninsula.”

Speaking to the Soldotna City Council, Cameron said that the facilities and the combined pressure of local governments will make a stronger case than previous efforts.

“We’re better together,” she said. “We have some unity and some momentum behind us to make a compelling argument and a compelling case for the board of fish to reconsider their past decisions and bring this back to the stakeholders that they’re managing.”

Cameron and KPEDD did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Board of Fisheries Executive Director Art Nelson said Thursday that the board generally sets their schedule two years out during their October work session. The board is scheduled to meet to discuss their next schedule on Oct. 29 and 30. Each year, he and the other board support staff prepare information on each of the possible venues and the board has repeatedly decided to set the UCI meeting in Anchorage.

While the decision of venue falls to the board members, Nelson said that the KPEDD proposal does seem to address some of the concerns raised in the past about meeting in Soldotna. Those concerns, he said, include meeting space, lodging and food options. He said that when the Board of Game met at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex in 2023, they reported that the venue was “cramped.” The new field house seems a better fit. Soldotna will be among the possible venues considered by the board in October.

Soldotna City Council member Dave Carey suggested that the city consider waiving building use fees for the board to use the field house for their meeting, though no action was taken during the Aug. 28 meeting.

Carey said he attended the meeting in Soldotna in 1999, and he said he was offended by the board’s questioning — “spoken many times” — of whether it was safe for the board to meet on the peninsula.

“There’s no question people down here very strongly are concerned about regulations,” he said. “It is their livelihood. It is their kids and their grandkids future. They speak very strongly and certainly sometimes loudly. I am still offended that members of the board of fish and others associated with it have said that it is an issue of whether or not people are safe down here. That is absolutely repugnant.”

A contentious history

A story in the March 17, 1998, edition of the Peninsula Clarion says that the board, “citing security concerns,” was preparing to move the 1999 Soldotna meeting to another location. Dr. John White, then-chair of the board, said that “there has been a clear message from some board members that there is a security risk and they want to look for a more neutral meeting site.”

White “wouldn’t elaborate” as to what the nature of the threat was or who had been threatened. Despite that announcement, the board did meet in Soldotna in 1999, and a story in the Feb. 17, 1999, edition of the Clarion says that White’s concerns were assuaged by then Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Mike Navarre, and the meeting went forward without any “out of the ordinary security” when it opened on Feb. 16.

White declined to comment on the security concerns to Clarion sports editor Jeff Helminiak at the sports complex during the meeting in 1999.

That meeting, per Clarion coverage of each day of the event, stretched from Feb. 16 to March 2, 1999, and centered on allocation of salmon between the Cook Inlet commercial fishers and the Kenai River sport fishers. That meeting led to the creation of two separate management plans, for early-run and late-run king salmon, and created a unique-at-the-time “abundance-based sockeye management plan.”

The late-run king plan said specifically that king salmon “should be managed primarily for sport fishers.”

To ensure those fish could make it to the Kenai River, setnetters and driftnetters lost openings and space. Theo Matthews, then-former executive director of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, said on March 1, 1999, that those restrictions — totaling three days of fishing lost — would push some driftnetters “over the edge of viability.”

Sport fishing guides, at the same time, were limited to four clients per boat through July and barred from the river on Mondays — when fishers could only use unpowered boats.

Board members said at the time the meeting was among the longest and most difficult meetings ever held by the board, also the most attended. A story in the Feb. 21, 1999, edition of the Clarion about the end of the public testimony period says that as people were moving between the board meeting and the state high school hockey championships, both in the complex, they said “the hockey game was louder, but more civilized.”

“This is the conclusion of probably the toughest meeting this board has ever had and probably ever will have,” then-vice chair Dan Coffey said in closing statements on March 2. “I know there are a lot of people who think we went too far and others who don’t think we went far enough.”

The board hasn’t chosen to come to Soldotna since, though Nelson said he doesn’t consider potential or perceived threats of violence as a factor in those decisions.

Repeated requests

In 2014, a similar joint resolution was considered by the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly and cities of Kenai, Soldotna, Homer, Seldovia and Seward requesting the board to hold the 2017 Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting on the Kenai Peninsula. A story published by the Clarion on Aug. 27, 2014, includes perspective from a retired biologist of the State Department of Fish and Game who said that the reputation of the 1999 meeting was blown out of proportion.

“The bottom line is the participation from the public ‘Joe fisherman’ would be better represented, but the board doesn’t want to confront them,” he said. “The argument that Anchorage is a central location is bogus. Wasilla is an hour drive, while Kenai is three hours away in the middle of winter.”

That request was considered at a work session in October 2014, when the board decided to move forward with a meeting in Anchorage, per the meeting notes.

In 2018, another joint resolution was considered by the assembly, Kenai and Soldotna, asking, again, for the board to hold the 2020 Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting locally. That resolution was different, however, because it came in response to a proposal by then-board member Alan Cain, who sought to have the board rotate its Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meetings between Kenai-Soldotna, Palmer-Wasilla and Anchorage.

“The Alaska Board of Fisheries notes that one of the most divisive issues it faces almost every year is not a regulatory subject, but rather where to hold the Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting,” Cain wrote in his policy proposal.

That effort was successful. The board in March 2018 approved by a 4-2 vote to hold the meeting in Kenai or Soldotna in 2020, followed by Wasilla or Palmer in 2023 before returning to Anchorage in 2026.

Before the meeting could happen, in January 2019, the board voted again and on a 4-3 margin moved the 2020 Upper Cook Inlet meeting back to Anchorage. In meeting audio from Jan. 18, 2019, Chair Reed Morisky said that the issue is coming back up, and that the board has decided to reconsider their decision.

Member John Jensen, who motioned for the change, said the board needed to pull the meeting back to Anchorage because it’s centrally located between the Kenai Peninsula and the Matanuska-Susitna Region. Member Israel Payton said political pressure from “the previous administration” was the “only reason” why the board reconsidered their decision to continue holding their meetings in Anchorage. Gov. Mike Dunleavy had been sworn into office only around a month prior, replacing Gov. Bill Walker.

Member Fritz Johnson pushed back on that characterization, saying his vote wasn’t motivated by political pressure, rather that he wanted to see meetings held in the communities being affected “at least periodically.” He said, at that point, the UCI meeting hadn’t been held on the peninsula in over 20 years.

Robert Ruffner, who now serves as Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Director but then was a member of the board, said at the time that the reconsideration of the meeting location would violate the open meetings act because there wasn’t enough public notice of the decision.

“To me, this is unfair. My community has been asking for this meeting for over a decade,” Ruffner said. “People have gone from diapers to college and not been able to weigh in in their community.”

During the meeting, the board asked the State Department of Law whether they could legally make the move, and the department said they could if they had provided “reasonable notice.”

The board determined that they had, but a Sept. 3, 2019, report by the State Ombudsman Kate Burkhart found that the board had indeed violated the open meetings act. She wrote that while the board had indicated that they planned to discuss the issue during the January Arctic/Yukon/Kuskokwim Finfish meeting, they had later told Kenai stakeholders, including Kenai City Manager Paul Ostrander, that the topic wouldn’t be discussed. She said they left the meeting on that advice.

So, the board held a second vote in October 2019, which fell on the same 4-3 margin.

“The board considers Kenai as an option, Anchorage as an option and Palmer as an option, even though it’s been decided on in Anchorage these past 20 years or what have you,” Payton said during that October work session. “That’s the wisdom of the board at the time that that’s the best place to hold the meeting. It may not be fair to stakeholders in the Mat Su. It may not be fair to stakeholders on the Kenai Peninsula, but it’s what the board decided at the time that was just for all stakeholders.”

The text of the newly adopted joint resolution and other supporting documents can be found at kpb.legistar.com in the packet for the assembly’s Sept. 3 meeting. Meeting notes and audio of the Board of Fisheries can be found at adfg.alaska.gov.

This story was updated Thursday, Sept. 26 with comment from Board of Fisheries Executive Director Art Nelson.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.