Tiny Nikiski makes ambitious bid to become Alaska’s biggest

Tiny Nikiski makes ambitious bid to become Alaska’s biggest city

Amid frustrations with road maintenance and other services provided by the Kenai Peninsula Borough, residents in the tiny town of Nikiski want it to become Alaska's largest city, by many leaps and even more bounds.

More than 300 petitioners from the unincorporated town, an industrial base for the oil and gas industry in Cook Inlet, are asking the state for the chance to vote on whether Nikiski can become a home-rule city stretching 5,480 square miles — bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, which together have 96 incorporated towns and cities.

Nikiski's proposed city boundaries, announced by the state on Thursday, would stretch from the Alaska Range in the west to Anchorage in the east, with much of northern Cook Inlet slicing in between.

If the Local Boundary Commission approves the petition, residents in the area could decide the issue at the polls, perhaps late next year. Nikiski would still be part of the Kenai Borough but it would have its own taxation authority and service responsibilities in an area that includes valuable oil and gas properties in Cook Inlet and two unincorporated communities across the water — Tyonek and Beluga.

Read more: www.adn.com/politics/2016/12/30/tiny-nikiski-makes-ambitious-bid-to-become-alaskas-biggest-city/