20 years ago
The Memorial Day weekend in Anchor Point got a little wild when several hundred people attended a beach party a few miles south of the beach access road. A 17-year-old boy got run over by a pickup truck he rode on when the drive tried to run it up a bluff and he fell off. Alaska State Troopers cited him for consuming alcohol. Later, an explosion rocked the beach when somebody set fire to the truck. Troopers also got complaints of rowdy campers in campgrounds.
“It was ugly in Anchor Point all weekend long,” said Trooper Sgt. Jim Hibpshman
— From the issue of May 30, 2002
30 years ago
Three canoeists went missing after they set out in a 13-foot canoe across Kachemak Bay. Melvin Mestre and Daniel Orbik, both of California, and Robert Gershbein, of Portland, Oregon, left the Spit about 1 p.m. May 31 to go fishing. Alaska State Trooper Lary Kuhns said the canoe was rated to carry passengers weighing about 300 pounds. The three men and gear were probably twice the legal limit of the canoe. Family of the men reported them overdue about 2:20 a.m. June 1, and the U.S. Coast Guard started a search at first light. A Coast Guard helicopter crew spotted the overturned canoe near Gull Island, but saw no sign of the men.
A skiff operator saw the men in the canoe off the Spit, and warned them of the danger of crossing Kachemak Bay in an open canoe, investigators said. The skiff operator offered to tow the men back to the harbor, but they declined.
— From the issue of June 4, 1992
50 years ago
Homer Mayor Hazel Heath made a pitch for a proposed 1% sales tax voters were to consider on June 13. The city proposed dropping the property tax mill rate from 13 mills to 12 mills. The sales tax was predicted to raise triple the amount a 1-mill property tax would raise — that is, it would be the equivalent of taxing property at 3 mills.
“Add up all the money you spend in Homer during the year,” she wrote. “Take 1% of that amount. Deduct that amount from the 3-mill figure above. You, personally, will be saving that difference!”
Heath wrote that Homer City Council supported the 1% sales tax because it “feels those people from outside Homer who trade within our City should help pay for some of the services they use when they come to Homer.”
— From the issue of June 1, 1972
