Borough Fee Schedule Approval Postponed

Jay Barrett/KMXT
The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly last night decided the revised fee and fine schedule needed more work. Instead of passing it, they postponed the resolution until the next meeting, and asked that fees be brought up at their next work session.
Before that vote, Borough Manager Bud Cassidy gave a brief overview of the changes this year, including an increase in the cost of throwing away your garbage:
“This there’s probably two major changes you’ll see in the fee schedule. One is, that we’re pulling a number of the fees out of the fee schedule and we’re going to be adding to what’s called a schedule of fines. And it’s for things like fireworks, animal control; we’ll be talking to you more about that later on,” Cassidy said. “The other big thing is there is an increase in garbage fees. Everything from roll carts to dumpsters to medical waste, those kinds of things. And that’s due to our discussions we had during the borough budgeting process and the increase cost due to the cost of the constructing the lateral expansion and waste water treatment plant.”
Assemblyman Tuck Bonney singled out the borough’s disposal fees for cars.
“At $475 for cars, we’re basically getting so dog gone expensive people are just going to leave them on the side of the road or shoot them up and put them down at Pillar Creed or something,” Bonney said. “And if get to a place where it’s so expensive we’re just hurting ourselves and hurting the community because people won’t use the borough and won’t get rid of their cars. So I think there’s some things we need to talk about.”
Mayor Jerrol Friend pointed out that the car disposal fee was not increased this year, but Bonney said it was still too high. Cassidy added that most cars are taken to Nick’s Auto Wrecking and not the borough landfill.
Bonney also said the fees the borough charges for copies were too high.
Assemblyman Mel Stephens agreed that they should be looked at.
“The copying fees haven’t changed, and therefore I didn’t think about them. I do think that our copying charges should be designed to simply recover the cost of them – and that does include the cost of staff making the copies and so forth. Maybe 25-cents a copy does that, maybe not,” Stephens said. “I noticed that gee, we only charge 5-cents a copy for government and non-profit. I don’t know if that’s appropriate. I think maybe we don’t have to wait a full year, but the staff might think about whether their copying charges are appropriate.”
The assembly will take a look at the revised fee schedule next Thursday at its scheduled work session.