Kodiak's health center is getting its own heating unit, off the hospital's

Kodiak Community Health Center sees more than 4,500 primary care patients, on an island you can only reach by plane or boat. Its heat and ventilation come from an air handling system built for the hospital next door, before the clinic expanded into the space it occupies now. The system is aging, and if it goes down, both buildings go with it.

A $300,000 federal grant will buy the clinic a rooftop unit of its own. The money went to the Kodiak Island Health Care Foundation this month through the federal health resources agency, as congressionally directed spending rather than a competitive award, with no local match. Design, permitting, fabrication and installation are expected to take nine months to a year.

Who designs it has already been an argument. The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly decided against filing a notice of federal interest tied to the health center's project. Sean Williams told the Assembly that doing so would leave Providence in charge of designing the health center's rooftop unit, would spend borough renewal and replacement money on an entity that does not pay into that fund, and would cut the health center out of designing its own equipment.

The hospital has its own aging equipment problem. The borough is separately seeking to accept $3,850,279 to replace the chiller.