City Council Talks Budget, Grants, and Jackson Park Meeting

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

At its Thursday night regular meeting, the Kodiak City Council heard the ordinance to adopt the city’s fiscal year 2016 budget and move it along to the second reading.

City Manager Aimée Kniaziowski read from the budget packet memo. It says, when compared with the fiscal year 2015 budget, the coming year’s budget has the same decrease for combined revenues as it does for costs related to city funds.

“Expenses for all city funds excluding capital projects is expected to also be $38,034,750," says Kniaziowski. "Which again is an overall decrease of 8 percent from 2015. Fewer transfers in capital equipments account for the largest decrease in expenses for the combined all departments, all funds.”

The City Council announced that the second reading will take place at its next regular meeting on June 11.

The Council also passed a resolution to raise the minimum annual increase of grant awards for nonprofits, which Kniaziowski says it had discussed at a previous work session.

“They were restricted to no more than 10 percent more each year despite their needs and as the program opened up, we saw that there were inequities in it, and your decision was to go ahead and remove that requirement that only 10 percent increase would be available," says Kniaziowski.

Furthermore, Mayor Pat Branson updated those present on discussions going on behind the scenes in the borough and city governments regarding Jackson Trailer Park.

“I met with the borough manager and the community development director this week and I think we’re all pretty concerned. I know we’re all pretty concerned about the situation and I know that the manager is bringing up tonight to the Assembly about how fast they want to track this with relaxing some codes. And they’ve made some other progress as well," says Branson.

Branson says the city council hopes to discuss the issue at a joint work session with the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly. She says they can look at possible dates after the Assembly’s meeting with the P&Z Commission regarding the matter, which she says will take place on June 11.