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Candidate Profile: Linda Farnsworth Hutchings

Linda Hutchings has spent most of her life watching the Kenai Peninsula grow up. Now, she’s trying to take a bigger role in how that growth is managed by running for borough mayor.

 

Of all the three candidates for borough mayor, Linda Hutchings has accrued the most time spent here. Her parents homesteaded back in 1948, shortly before Linda was born. She says her parents gave her a sense of civic responsibility.

“My parents served on assemblies, school board, hospital board; very, very invested. As you know, politics can be extremely consuming. I chose a different way. I chose a different way. I chose to work on boards and commissions. That’s how I helped my borough grow. And now my children are grown and my grandchildren are grown and so it’s time for, what I feel, is the right step. We need management at the borough level.”

She says one of her goals is to keep and attract quality employees at the borough. In the past, Hutchings says she’s seen hires and appointments made on a more personal basis, and that doesn’t always work.

“I have worked for the (state of Alaska) worker’s compensation board for 11 years so I have seen that happen and it’s sad when you see good people replaced with people who really have no idea what that job entails. I think if you have good, qualified help, you don’t have this problem. And they understand that. They’re not there to be government or spend all the money, they’re there to do their job as well as can be expected.”

Knowing employees and what they’re working on will be a focus as Hutchings looks for some more efficiencies in the budget, which is in a deficit right now. As the chief financial officer for Hutchings Automotive Group, she’s spent some time crunching numbers. She says she wants to go through the borough budget line by line to see if there are any savings there, but she also isn’t opposed to new revenue streams.

 

She’s in favor of the ballot proposition that asks voters to approve raising the borough’s sales tax cap, which hasn’t happened since 1965. It’s estimated that alone would bring in enough money to bridge most of the budget gap.

“I would love to see it passed. As I said, my parents were very instrumental in developing this borough. And one of the things that they were all very cognizant of is that we have to fund our schools. So they developed the sales tax to directly fund the school district. It was not used for anything else. In 1965, to have a $500 cap seemed reasonable. It is time to raise it to $1,000. And if you look at all the other boroughs in the state of Alaska, we are the lowest.”

On the other ballot proposition getting all the attention, asking whether or not to ban cannabis business in the borough, Hutchings won’t have a vote as a resident of the city of Soldotna. But she wants people who will vote to think about who gets the benefit and who’s in charge of an industry that exists regardless of its legal status.

“You can leave it unregulated and have the criminal element in charge or you can have it controlled. I don’t smoke marijuana, I don’t smoke cigarettes, I don’t vape. But I have friends that do all three. I have friends that use cannabis for medical purposes. I think people really need to stop and think about who they want in control of cannabis.”

In addition to her time at the state worker’s compensation board, she’s also served on the Soldotna parks and recreation board and the city’s charter commission. Hutchings made her comments on this week’s episode of the Kenai Conversation.