Kuba Grzeda and Brett Rotermund seek FNSB Assembly seat B

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) - Kuba Grzeda and Brett Rotermund are running for seat B on the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly.

This seat is currently held by Frank Tomaszewski, who is not running for reelection to the seat.

Grzeda said he is running to help build the future for the community. “It’s a tough time for Alaska, for a lot of Alaskans, a lot of people in our borough, but I think a lot of our solutions we can find by looking forward not back. I think that means we need to invest in our community. We need to come together. We need to collaborate. We need to work with our school board. We need to work with our largest employers here in the region.”

Grzeda said he would, if elected, focus on education, economy and community services. “Those three things are all connected, so really looking at our workforce development, so looking at our education system, our school district, our community and technical education side of the university and trying to build stronger collaborations through the borough, between those institutions, to foster a stronger economy, and to really double down on community services and the things that make our borough a good place to live.”

He wants to see the borough create opportunities so that people who grow up in the borough choose to stay here. “I think we can tweak a couple things and really have Fairbanks and North Pole and Two Rivers and all the communities that make up our borough be good places for people to live,” Grzeda explained.

Rotermund, meanwhile, said he is running because he thinks more common-sense conservative voices are needed on the assembly. “We need people that can make good, honest decisions about what we need to do for the future here, to maintain our community and our economy.”

He said he’s concerned with the cost of living forcing people to move away from the borough. “I’m very concerned with property taxes. I very much support the tax cap, but I’m worried about the high level of taxation and energy costs. What we have to remember here in the Interior is it’s not just the cost of energy. It’s our consumption of energy, and just a handful of months ago, I don’t think any of us could have conceived that heating oil prices would go over 6 dollars a gallon.”

If elected to assembly, Rotermund said he would do nothing to increase the size and scope of government. “We’ve got a borough that is plenty big enough that we’re all having trouble paying for, but I think we need people to look at that honestly and say ‘What do we really need here? What do we need to pay for?’ I think we’re asking a lot of hard-working citizens here to pay a tremendous amount of money in taxes.”

Rotermund and Grzeda will both appear on the ballot in the municipal elections on October 4.

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