The three candidates vying for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly’s Sterling and Funny River seat met last week to discuss their approaches to taxation, budgeting and more as part of a candidate forum moderated by the Peninsula Clarion and KDLL 91.9 FM.

The forum, hosted in partnership with the Central Peninsula League of Women Voters and KSRM Radio Group at the Soldotna Public Library, is part of a series of forums set throughout the coming months. Ashlyn O’Hara, senior reporter at KDLL, and Jake Dye, senior reporter at the Clarion, moderated. More forums will be held throughout this month in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 7 municipal election.

Candidates vie for one-year seat

Incumbent Leslie Morton, who was appointed to the seat in February after the resignation of Bill Elam, is facing challengers Dale Eicher and Sadie Friedman in a contest for the seat that will be decided during the Oct. 7 election. Whoever is elected will serve only a single year, the remainder of Elam’s term, before the seat is back up for election next year.

Friedman introduced herself as a longtime Sterling resident and a former student of Sterling Elementary School who’s a “big believer in community.” Friedman also said she’s worked in the tourism industry and wants to promote the Kenai Peninsula and draw more visitors to the area.

“I want to promote us,” she said. “The people here, I think, are really special — the kind who will pull over and jump start a stranger’s car.”

Eicher described himself as a husband, father, conservative and business owner. He said he wants a small government, low taxes and strong schools. He said he has the experience and skill set to consider “the big picture.”

“If you’re not able to step back and look, how will this vote affect us in six months, a year, five years, 10 years, you may vote differently than what you should,” he said.

Morton opened by pointing to her appointment to the role earlier this year — “there were eight people that applied and it was determined that I was the most qualified.” She also cited the work of the assembly this year to pass a balanced budget that increased less than the inflation rate while supporting schools and services.

“I’ve found that, here on the Kenai Peninsula, we can really have it all,” she said. “We can have the things that we want and we need, but we don’t have to overpay for them.”

Finding a balance on taxes

Eicher and Morton both said they’d like to see new methods for reducing the tax burden on property owners — both citing specifically a move discussed earlier this year that would have asked the state to allow the borough to cap annual increases in property valuations. Beyond such moves, both candidates said they’d like to see efforts made to reduce borough spending.

While the borough should work to keep its spending down, Morton said there’s little room to make changes because the borough is already lean.

“I have the budget here, if anybody wants to try to find the fat in it,” she said. “I’ve gone through it multiple times, there is not really a lot of fat in it.”

Friedman said that the borough needs tax revenue to maintain the services residents expect. She pointed to tax changes discussed earlier this year like a bed tax or a seasonal sales tax to generate more revenue from visitors.

Though Friedman pointed to the seasonal sales tax as a possibility, she joined the other two candidates in saying that she likely wouldn’t support a proposal recently considered by the assembly that would increase borough sales tax in summer months and lower it in winter months. Friedman said the move might “unfairly push taxes” onto seasonal businesses or have other unintended consequences.

Eicher said that, “instead of tinkering with new taxes,” he’d rather see the borough keep its spending under control. He said that, as a business owner, the seasonal sales tax would be “one more thing for me to keep track of.”

Morton said she was more “neutral” on the idea — recognizing that it might have impacts and implications for certain industries but also that “capturing” extra revenue from tourists might reduce burden on residents. Ultimately, she said, she’d like to see the decision made by voters during a borough election.

Funding the schools

Morton and Friedman both said they support providing funding to schools at the maximum allowable amount when appropriate. Friedman said “now is a pretty volatile time,” and that she would approve of such a request this year while looking for a way to reduce spending in the future. Morton said the state is failing to keep up with inflationary pressures and that a single instance of increasing funding to the cap this year was warranted — though she said the borough cannot afford that every year.

“I don’t see anything wrong with giving our kids the best that we can afford to give them,” Morton said.

Eicher differed somewhat, citing data shared by Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche this year that says the Kenai Peninsula Borough is spending significantly more on schools than other comparable boroughs in the state and that the borough cannot afford to continue to fund to the cap. Still, though, Eicher said “it comes down to what do the schools need.” He said he would consider what teachers need, what classrooms need, and whether taxpayers are seeing “a correlation between the amount of money that we’re spending and the value that their students are seeing.”

Living and working on the peninsula

All three candidates said that they were generally supportive of residents who are interested in creating recreation service areas to levy new property taxes for the purpose of funding management and operations of local pools that the school district has said it will soon stop supporting. All three said that support hinges on community support voiced in an election. Eicher said he would be interested in seeing those decisions revisited at different intervals — giving communities a chance to explore whether they want to continue levying the tax for the service they’re receiving.

Both Morton and Friedman said that the school district and borough should consider whether every currently existing pool needs to be maintained — pointing to multiple options on the central peninsula compared to fewer facilities in the southern and eastern peninsula.

To bring young families to the Kenai Peninsula, Morton said she’d like to start a youth working group to explore the needs of borough residents 18 to 30 years of age. She said specifically she’d like to explore what the borough needs to encourage them to make their lives in the area rather than moving away. Among the challenges, she said, is the high cost of housing.

Friedman, to the same end, said she wants to see more done to preserve the beauty of the natural environment on the Kenai Peninsula and more done to support small businesses.

Eicher echoed points from both of the other candidates. He said that the challenges facing young people include a lack of job opportunities exacerbated by a lack of affordable housing.

“If you can’t afford to find a house to rent or to live in while you’re living here, it does no good to come here, even it’s a decent job,” he said.

Friedman said that, as a young person on the peninsula, she sees lots of job openings, but few “long-term jobs” that could become a person’s career. She said she’d like to see the borough do more to promote job training in vocations or trades like welding, plumbing and construction — “that’s an incentive to stay here and live out those careers in our communities.”

Morton said the borough needs to explore diversification of its economy, which in turn may draw more people to the area — though she noted “it’s not as easy as it sounds.” Where the borough has been quick to support tourism and resource extraction, Morton said she wants to see more done to imagine other futures like the possibility of hosting data centers.

All three candidates said they opposed an initiative set to be considered by borough voters this election that would require hand counting all ballots in future borough elections. They cited the possibility for errors in hand counting, the increased logistical demand of having enough poll workers to do the counting, and the lack of any credible concerns that the borough’s election infrastructure has been compromised.

Election Day is Oct. 7. The deadline to register to vote is Sept. 7. Absentee and early voting begins on Sept. 22.

A full recording of the forum can be streamed on the Clarion’s Facebook page or on KDLL’s website at kdll.org. The forum will also be available on podcast services as an episode of “Kenai Conversation.”

A forum with candidates for Kenai City Council and Kenai mayor will be held Thursday, Sept. 4 at the Kenai Community Library. There will be two forums held next week, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, with candidates for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly’s Soldotna seat at the Soldotna Public Library and on Thursday, Sept. 11, with candidates for Seward mayor at the Seward Community Library. All forums are held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

This story was corrected on Tuesday, Sept. 2. A previous version mischaracterized a quote by Dale Eicher about the performance of KPBSD schools.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.

Sadie Friedman, Dale Eicher and Leslie Morton, candidates for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly’s Sterling and Funny River seat, participate in a candidate forum at the Soldotna Public Library on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Dale Eicher, one of the candidates for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly’s Sterling and Funny River seat, speaks during a candidate forum at the Soldotna Public Library on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)

Leslie Morton, one of the candidates for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly’s Sterling and Funny River seat, speaks during a candidate forum at the Soldotna Public Library on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)