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           Kodiak is known for rallying around locals who need a bit of help. And local residents are also known to put on some mighty good potlucks.
            So what’s better than a service that allows folks to divvy up meal making to help out a family in temporary need of some good meals?
            Kathy Blair, a member of the Coast Guard Spouses Association, recently organized a stretch of meals to help a Coast Guard family during a time of need.
            She says the website “Take Them a Meal” is an ideal free public service for scheduling and coordinating a group of temporary meal makers. Blair explained how it works to KMXT’s Maggie Wall.

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            You may have heard about this on NPR News this (Tuesday) morning.
            A Yale paleontologist from Kodiak has discovered a previously unidentified fossilized lizard that lived and died with the dinosaurs 65-million years ago. Monday, Nick Longrich published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the Chicxulub asteroid collision which killed all the dinosaurs, also had a devastating effect on snakes and lizards, including seven newly identified lizard species and two snakes.
            Longrich named one of those lizards “Obamadon gracilis," after the president. The suffix “odon” is Greek for tooth, and the lizard has tall, straight teeth, like President Obama. Longrich said he likely would have chosen a different name if the presidential election had turned out differently. He says Obamadon likely measured less than one foot in length and probably ate insects.
            Longrich said that there is no political significance to naming Obamadon after the president, adding he “was just having fun with taxonomy.”
            Obamadon is not the first extinct critter Longrich has named. He has discovered a handful of dinosaurs, including Albertonykus Borealis, Hesperonychus and two kinds of triceratops, one of which he named "Mojo-ceratop." He is also the paleontologist who discovered the presence of wings on the hind limbs of Archaeopteryx, a rather famous fossil which showed modern birds are the descendants of dinosaurs.

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            Expect a crowd tonight when the Kodiak City Council holds its work session in the cozy confines of the borough building conference room. On the agenda there’s one hot-button topic – the sludge composting project – as well as interviews with advisory board applicants, and a report about the need to find a new way to deal with snow plowed from city streets. And that’s all before the council reviews the agenda packet for Thursday night’s regular meeting.
            Generally there is no opportunity for public comment during reports, though there is a period for that at the beginning of the meeting.
            City Manager Aimee Kniaziowski will be giving an update on the controversial topic of composting the sludge left over from waste water treatment. She has included a timeline of the project in the packet. Saturday is the deadline when the city can no longer take the sludge to the borough landfill.
            There will also be a discussion about the state’s frowning upon dumping snow off the pier at the spit, as the city has for decades. As we reported earlier, the city will have to find land to stockpile the snow in the future, at a potentially much higher cost.
            There are also a dozen people applying for 15 city advisory board seats, and the city’s seat on the borough’s planning and zoning commission. They include the building code board of appeals, parks and recreation, personnel board and the ports and harbor advisory board.
            The city council work session is at 7:30 tonight in the conference room, downstairs in the borough building.

Snow dumped from a dedicated pier on the spit may be ending. KMXT file photo

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            The City of Kodiak has long disposed of snow in the streets by dumping it off a short pier at the end of the spit, but that practice will be changing in the future and may cost the city substantially more money.
           Public Works Director Mark Kozak will be briefing the city council tonight (Tuesday) on the future of snow disposal in Kodiak. In his memo to the city manager, Kozak says someone complained to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation about the city’s practices. He was contacted by the agency and urged to re-examine the state regulations.
           In 2006, the DEC completed a study showing road salt, sand and grit, and some pollutants get dumped into the waters along with the snow. In response, they made snow dumping allowed only by permit. The alternative is stockpiling the snow in giant piles on land, which Kozak says might be hard here on the island.