Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan is scheduled to deliver a presentation about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at tonight’s Petersburg Borough Assembly meeting. Sullivan will present over Zoom early in the meeting, and assembly members can ask him questions directly, according to the borough clerk. The borough sent Sullivan’s office a list of questions from assembly members in advance.
The assembly was expected to make an appointment to fill the open seat on Petersburg’s school board tonight. However, that item will be removed from the agenda. Assembly members were slated to consider appointing John Havrilek to the position, but under state law, that appointment is determined by the school board, not the assembly. Havrilek indicated he’d resign from his seat on the Public Safety Advisory Board to pursue the school board seat, according to the borough clerk. That’s because borough code restricts people from holding two positions in local office at once. The terms are temporary, lasting a year until the next local election. The school board has an interview process before making the appointment.
Also at the borough assembly meeting tonight, there will be public hearings for two ordinances. One ordinance makes a handful of changes to the borough’s current budget. The changes deal with capital projects and wastewater system repairs. The other aims to rezone property that local developer Skylark Park LLC is buying from the borough, located between Skylark Way and Severson Subdivision. Both the rezoning and the final sale contract are contingent on each other to be finalized. The assembly approved the sale of the property to Skylark for a “public benefit purpose” last month. The company plans to develop the property with utilities in order to build housing that is more affordable in Petersburg. The rezoning ordinance passed the assembly unanimously in its first reading earlier this month. One of the lots would be rezoned from Open Space Recreational to Single-Family Mobile Home for the planned development, while the other lots would be rezoned from Single-Family Residential and Public Use to Open Space Recreational to have that open space next to the development.
There’s a new ordinance on the assembly agenda tonight as well. It would change the borough’s code to update the process for submitting bids. When there’s a project in the borough, contractors submit a bid that says how much their services would cost for doing it. But the borough’s code currently requires those proposals to be submitted in a physical paper copy, either delivered to the borough in-person, by mail, or faxing it over. Approving this change would allow the borough to accept bid proposals electronically.
Also at the assembly meeting tonight, resident Tristan Enriquez will swear-in as the Petersburg Police Department’s newest officer. He started working as a dispatcher at the department last year and recently graduated from the police academy.
The Petersburg Borough Assembly meets tonight at 6 o’clock in the Assembly Chambers. KFSK will broadcast that meeting live. You can find the unamended agenda here.
