The Haines Borough Assembly soon will vote on whether to return to an application process for allocating funds to nonprofits.

The assembly used an application system before the pandemic but for the last two years has distributed funding to nonprofits as part of the spring budget cycle and through pandemic relief funds.

The Government Affairs and Services (GAS) Committee on Monday finalized an application form for nonprofits that want to receive borough funding. The form would be due July 30. The GAS Committee and the assembly would determine how much money to distribute to each organization once it has received applications.

In the manager’s draft 2023 budget, two nonprofits — Haines Economic Development Corporation and Becky’s Place — are listed as budget items, with $25,000 going to HEDC and $24,000 for Becky’s Place. Those funds would come, respectively, from the borough’s economic development and tourism funds and from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The borough also has a contract with Haines Animal Rescue Kennel.

Any other nonprofits that want borough funding in the next fiscal year would need to go through the proposed application process.

Manager Annette Kreitzer said the total amount of funding for the pool of applicants will be contingent on labor negotiations and the organizations that the assembly decides to fund. It also will depend on how the assembly decides to act on other budget questions.

Once it receives applications, the assembly will need to adopt an amendment to incorporate nonprofit funding into the budget.

The draft application form proposed by the GAS Committee will be subject to two public hearings at the assembly level before a vote.

The GAS Committee at Monday’s meeting reviewed two draft applications, each with a slightly different scoring rubric. The major difference was that one struck out three criteria — “contributes to economic development,” “serves vulnerable Haines residents” and “addresses public safety” — each worth five points out of 55 total.

Ultimately the committee decided to keep the criteria on the rubric but to change “public safety” to “health and safety.”

Committee member Debra Schnabel said she worried that a focus on public safety would invite applications from groups that serve only the townsite, not areawide, because police services are limited to the townsite, except for emergencies.

Other committee members said public safety, or “health and safety,” would include initiatives to keep children safe while biking to school or to provide life jackets at the borough’s boat launch sites.

In fiscal year 2021, the assembly requested applications from nonprofits and small businesses for CARES Act funding. Last year, nonprofits submitted requests for borough funding during the spring budget cycle.

The GAS Committee rejected a proposal last summer to include individual nonprofits as perennial budget line items, citing a projected loss of revenue during the pandemic, but the assembly approved funding a handful of organizations.

Schnabel at a May 5 Committee of the Whole meeting about the budget suggested not to include Becky’s Place as a line item if other nonprofits have to go through the application process.

Other assembly members said they would like to keep Becky’s Place as a line item because they view it as providing an “essential service” in aiding victims of domestic violence. (Schnabel didn’t say she was opposed to funding Becky’s Place, only to setting the precedent of including it as a line item when other nonprofits have to go through an application process.)

In a letter to the borough assembly, Erik Stevens, director of the Haines Avalanche Center, requested funding the center as its own budget item.

“I fear that lumping us in with the rest of the nonprofits and forcing us to compete for a limited pool of nonprofit grant money will leave us with crucially little funding to provide this essential service in Haines,” he wrote, adding that most other avalanche centers are not nonprofits and rely on public funds.

At the GAS Committee meeting, Schnabel withdrew a suggestion to allocate a pool of money to the Chilkat Valley Community Foundation (CVCF) and let them distribute the funds.

In March, Schnabel said going through CVCF would relieve borough staff of administrative time and costs because CVCF already administers funding to a range of local nonprofits, but other committee members raised concerns about relying on a private institution to distribute public funds.

Schnabel on Monday dropped the idea saying she didn’t think it was a battle she would win.