Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

On Tuesday, the Haines Borough Assembly passed a spending plan for $2.1 million in federal COVID-19 relief, the first of three installments the borough is scheduled to receive through the CARES Act.

The CARES Act requires the money be used exclusively to cover “necessary expenditures incurred due to…COVID-19” between March 1 and Dec. 30 of this year, but spending details are left up to individual communities.

The breakdown for the $2.1 million is $278,000 for a new ambulance and associated shipping costs, $100,000 to begin building a new morgue, $518,000 for the borough’s coronavirus-related expenses, $100,000 for food assistance including $10,000 for the Mosquito Lake Community Center and $58,000 to expand Haines Senior Center’s meal service, $300,000 for utility assistance and $850,000 for small business and nonprofit grants. The assembly came up with the distribution plan after considering borough staff recommendations at a series of committee meetings held in mid-May and the first part of June.

At Tuesday’s meeting, assembly members made a series of last-minute amendments to increase funding for the small business and nonprofit grant program. Before Tuesday, the assembly had tentatively allocated $500,000 for the grant program.

The increase was recommended by the assembly’s finance committee, which, the week before, heard testimony from business owners advocating for more program funding. Those who testifies suggested transferring funds from capital projects like the morgue and ambulance, borough expenses, and funds for individuals, which they said would become more critical after July when the federal boost to unemployment benefits goes away.

In the end, assembly members moved $100,000 from food assistance, $150,000 from borough expenses and $100,000 from the morgue to increase funding for the grant program.

The $850,000 funding level for the program is a somewhat arbitrary number.

Assembly member Gabe Thomas said he wished he could set aside more for the grant program, but this seemed like a reasonable starting place.

Assembly member Stephanie Scott initially proposed defunding the morgue entirely. She said it would be better to distribute these funds to businesses and nonprofits in the community.

Assembly member Brenda Josephson pushed back, saying the current morgue is unsafe and undignified. She amended Scott’s motion to leave $100,000 to begin work on the morgue. She said the borough needs to start work on the structure immediately in order to complete it by the end of the year.

Right now, the grant program proposes awards ranging from $500 to $10,000 for businesses, based on 2019 borough sales tax returns, or 990 forms for nonprofits.

July 10 is the current due date for applications. Assembly members could still tweak program funding the opportunity at their July 14 meeting, or grant amounts, based on the number of applications received.

According to assembly members, funds moved from the morgue, food assistance and borough expenses are likely to be replaced at a later date through the second and third rounds of CARES Act funding.

Between now and the end of the year, Haines is expected to receive a total of $4 million in CARES Act funds in three installments. The borough must spend 80% of the first, $2.1 million installment before it receives the second and third payments, each worth roughly $900,000.

Communities across Alaska are working on spending plans for CARES Act funds. In total, municipalities will receive $569 million through the CARES Act.

Alaska Municipal League executive director Nils Andreassen said many municipalities are still in the planning phase for the first round of CARES Act spending. The process tends to involve municipal managers and finance officers collecting ideas about how to spend funds and vetting them to make sure they are allowable. The ideas then go through the public process before a body like the assembly.

Andreassen estimates that, statewide, as much as half of the CARES Act funds directed toward municipalities will be redistributed as direct relief for individuals and businesses. The other half will go toward municipal costs like payroll, testing and personal protective equipment purchases. But he said the breakdown for individual communities will tend to vary based on factors including community size and the amount the community is expected to receive.

Some communities are looking at larger capital projects like sanitation projects and public facility improvements, Andreassen said. Although, these projects tend to be limited by what can be accomplished in the next six months. He said, to his knowledge, Haines is the only community in Alaska planning to use CARES Act funding to build a morgue, but he said he’s heard of cities in other parts of the country that are taking on similar projects.