Kodiak Assembly weighs new revenue and unlocks unused savings

In a single Thursday meeting, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly worked both ends of its ledger — weighing a tax on the nonresidents who take most of the island's fish and game, and switching on a cost-saving purchasing account it had held for years but never used.

Roughly three out of four deer shot in the Kodiak Island Borough are taken by hunters who don't live there. To Assembly Member Jeff Woods, that number from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is an argument: the island's fish and game are being hauled off by outsiders, and the borough gets nothing to maintain what's left. "I don't like a system where we take, take, take without a dedicated way to repair, replace, or replenish," he said.

His proposed tax on nonresident resource extraction was one of two ways the assembly spent Thursday trying to firm up its finances — one by raising new money, the other by spending less of what it has. The idea, still in its earliest form, borrows from Sitka and Gustavus, which charge a "fish box fee" on the coolers of fish that visiting anglers ship home. Mayor Jared Griffin framed it, alongside a separate draft marijuana tax, as a way of "diversifying... our financial foundation." Retired charter operators testified in support — one arguing Kodiak was "behind the curve" for not already having such a fee, another saying the money should go to harbors and fisheries.

But the concept ran straight into hard questions. Could the borough legally spare its own residents? Assembly Member Scott Smiley noted that resident-versus-nonresident distinctions in fishing fees have drawn legal scrutiny before, and Assembly Member Jeremiah Gardner pressed for language protecting locals. How would the borough even collect it — stationing someone at the airport and the shippers? And should it go to voters at all? Assembly Member Bo Whiteside, who called enforcement the biggest hurdle, said he could support the measure only if it went to a public vote. That concern was sharpened by Valerie Erson of Apognak Native Corporation, who testified on behalf of shareholders with charter businesses that a tax "being discussed with the specific goal of bypassing a public vote" should instead be put before the families it would affect. Woods had hoped to reach the October ballot; the assembly concluded the questions were nowhere near settled enough for that.