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

Last minute amendments to the Haines Borough’s $13 million operating and capital budget for next fiscal year (FY22) included funding for the Haines Avalanche Center and Becky’s Place, a fish net recycling program, and a 25% increase in police department overtime and standby hours. The amended budget passed unanimously on Tuesday.

Police budget increases had been under consideration during budget talks this spring. Police chief Heath Scott requested the assembly fund an additional officer or increase overtime hours from 600, the funding level in the current budget, to 2,600, and standby from 4,400 to 8,000.

At Tuesday’s meeting, assembly members unanimously settled on a 25% increase, roughly $20,000, to standby and overtime, calling it a compromise. They said they wanted to avoid putting the department in a situation where it’d need to request budget amendments.

“Yes, we can always go back and adjust the budget, but I think there’s a perception from some in the community when the police department comes back for budget amendments that they don’t know how to follow a budget,” Mayor Douglas Olerud said. “Knowing that they’re going over their overtime and standby consistently, year after year, I think it’s prudent for us to adjust that to some extent to give them a little more leeway on that.”

In May, the assembly approved a $30,000 budget amendment for the department for the current fiscal year, FY21. The amendment offsets a $35,000 budget cut approved by the former assembly at the final budget meeting in 2020.

Assembly members Tuesday acknowledged that the current fiscal year has been abnormal in terms of demands on the department’s time, referencing the Dec. 2 natural disaster and the spike in human-bear interactions last summer.

Some assembly members expressed concern with the year-over-year police budget growth.

“How do we get them to help curb some of this (spending)?” assembly member Gabe Thomas said. “You’ve got to be able to do something to help corral the budget a little bit and not just keep asking for money.”

Four years ago, when Scott first began serving as chief, the Haines Borough Police Department received less funding, in terms of gross wages, than departments in similarly-sized communities in Southeast. Since then, the department’s budget has grown almost every year. Overtime hours have doubled and standby hours have increased fivefold. In 2019, standby hours more than doubled in an effort to compensate for the assembly’s directive that officers respond to urgent calls outside the townsite.

Interim manager Alekka Fullerton said part of the increase in hours has to do with changing requirements for police departments.

“There are many changes that are happening in the public safety arena, a lot of increased training requirements, a lot of things that have happened in terms of response that require two police officers to respond to individual things,” she said, adding that future changes will likely place increased demands on the department.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the assembly also added funding for several public safety-oriented nonprofits. The Haines Avalanche Center received $24,000, a significant increase from past years in which the center received appropriations between $0 and $5,000.

Assembly members who supported avalanche center funding cited the organization’s public safety contributions.

“I don’t want to go to another funeral of our young people because they didn’t have adequate avalanche training,” assembly member Cheryl Stickler said, referencing the deaths of two 21-year-olds in the Haines Pass in late 2019. “It’s part of providing opportunities for our public to stay safe.”

Haines Avalanche Center executive director Erik Stevens said borough funding will likely go toward staffing and weather station equipment needs. He said the funds will allow for more field data gathering to inform the center’s avalanche forecasts.

“We’ve been so limited in the number of days out in the field and days providing forecasts because we haven’t had staff to do that. (With the borough funding) we’ll be able to have more staff out in the field gathering data more regularly, and can publish more forecasts per week and do it with more accuracy,” Stevens said.

The funding proposal submitted to the assembly says the center will aim to publish two to five forecasts per week. The forecasts are used by locals and visitors to inform winter backcountry recreation plans.

The amendment was approved 5-1 with Thomas the sole “no” vote. Thomas said he voted down the amendment to give the assembly more flexibility with nonprofit funding later in the year.

Assembly members unanimously approved $12,000 for the domestic violence shelter Becky’s Place, recognizing it as an essential service. They also set aside $4,000 to fund fish net recycling. A $2,000 amendment offered by assembly member Carol Tuynman that would have funded public outreach efforts by the Solid Waste Working Group died without a second.

This year’s draft budget anticipates somewhat increased revenue, compared to last year, but it’s still down compared to FY19, the last full fiscal year before the pandemic. This year’s budget anticipates a 35% decrease in sales tax revenue compared to FY19, 50% of traditional school bond debt reimbursement from the state, the lowest fisheries business tax in at least three decades and a drop in property tax due to Dec. 2 storm damage.

Revenue increases include $490,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this year and a $450,000 voter-approved transfer from the principal of the borough’s permanent fund to reimburse spending accounts for unanticipated school bond debt payments from the past two years.

Unlike last year’s budget, the FY22 budget includes seven-days-per-week funding for the library, an extra month of pool operations funding, $20,000 for the Haines Economic Development Corporation, funding for a borough planner and increased funding for the public works department. After much discussion, the budget includes money to support a bare-bones staffing plan at the Haines Sheldon Museum.

The new fiscal year begins July 1.