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Assembly representative urges injection well for landfill, seeks fixes to school-funding rules
Summary
An assembly representative told the Soldotna City Council that the borough is seeking federal support for a Class I injection well to address landfill leachate and is asking the state to modify school-funding statutes to reduce disincentives for consolidations and to pause property-value recalculations for three years.
An assembly representative briefed the Soldotna City Council on recent borough business and legislative priorities, saying the assembly had passed a resolution to request a federal legislative priority for a Class I underground injection well at the Central Peninsula Landfill and two resolutions aimed at school-funding changes.
The speaker described Resolution 2026-015 as “authorizing fiscal year 2027 federal legislative priority project for construction of a class 1 underground injection well to address leachate volume at Central Peninsula Landfill.” He said the injection well could reduce natural gas use tied to current leachate-handling methods and “eliminate the need for continued landfill expansion and off-site hauling.”
On schools, the assembly representative said Resolution 2026-016 asks the state to amend Alaska Statute section 14.17.0410 to reduce statutory disincentives for school closures and consolidations by shortening a 7-year reopening restriction to four years. He framed the change as aligning the reopening restriction with the state’s four-year hold-harmless funding provision and easing long-term planning for districts that consolidate buildings.
The speaker also described Resolution 2026-017, which requests the state to hold the determination of full-and-true property value at the fiscal-year-2026 level for three years to avoid an immediate local revenue shock tied to recent valuation changes. The speaker said this pause was intended to preserve recently received base-student-allocation gains while the borough and state work collaboratively on broader school-funding solutions.
Council members asked clarifying questions about how state funding and local choices interact. Council member Autry asked whether failing to “fund to the cap” reduces state support; the assembly representative replied that the state’s base-student-allocation is calculated per student and that the specific local funding decision affects the local schools’ funding levels rather than reducing the statewide BSA program.
There was no council action taken on the borough resolutions that evening; the items were presented as reports and legislative priorities.
