Kenai Peninsula voters back school board term limits that won't bite until 2032

Kenai Peninsula Borough voters backed term limits for school board members by a wide margin in the Nov. 3 election, and the Borough Assembly is scheduled to certify the result Tuesday.

Proposition 1 has 11,915 votes in favor and 1,451 against, about 89%, in unofficial election-day results. Absentee and other ballots the borough's canvass board is reviewing aren't counted yet.

If certified, the measure limits school board members to two consecutive three-year terms. After that, a member can't be reelected until 180 days have passed. Time served by appointment, or finishing someone else's unexpired term, doesn't count.

Nobody will feel it for a while. The clock starts with the members elected this year, so the first election it can affect is in 2032. Those new members include Todd Brigham in Nikiski and Charlie Redfern in Central, who ran unopposed, and the winner of the Soldotna seat, where Jon Watson leads Laura Rhyner 655 to 578.

It's the second time borough voters have approved school board term limits. A citizen initiative passed in 2007, but a Superior Court judge struck it down the next year because state law didn't let boroughs set the limits. This year the Legislature changed that, and the Assembly sent the question to voters on a 9-0 vote in September.

The limits would apply to all nine school board seats, the same rule the borough mayor and Assembly members already live under.