Kodiak Reentry seeks borough funds as nonprofit grant requests outstrip budget

When someone getting out of jail in Kodiak says they're ready for treatment, Kodiak Reentry tries to move before the window closes — buying the plane ticket to a treatment bed, the work clothes for a first job back, a month's rent for someone who came home with no housing, no ID and no phone. All of it, the group says, run on volunteer labor.

Now the nonprofit is asking the Kodiak Island Borough for help keeping its own doors open: $25,000 toward a long-term leased space, insurance and operating costs, plus a separate $20,000 from the borough's opioid-settlement funds for peer support, overdose response and naloxone training. Last year's borough grant, its report says, went straight to those airfares, work gear and rent — while it built 56 new case plans and kept serving nearly a third of the prior year's participants.

The ask lands in a year when the borough doesn't have enough to go around. Kodiak nonprofits requested far more than the $270,000 grant budget, with health and social services the most oversubscribed, Alaska News previously reported — and the opioid fund alone faces $84,000 in requests against a $66,000 balance.

The assembly reviews the nonprofit allocations at a work session Thursday, with the final split set for action Aug. 6, when the public can comment.