The City and Borough of Sitka Assembly held a special meeting on April 4, 2024, to discuss and make decisions on the FY2025 Administrator's Budget, focusing on the General Fund. The meeting also addressed scheduling interviews for municipal attorney candidates. The initial draft budget projected a $250,000 deficit, which changed after several motions. Key decisions included funding for the Performing Arts Center, taking over operations of Blatchley Swimming Pool, reducing fire department FTEs, eliminating a library FTE, and deferring a dump truck purchase. The meeting adjourned at 9:26 PM.
No action was taken on Items B (enterprise funds) or other capital items not specifically mentioned.
I'll call to order the special meeting of Thursday, April 4th, 2024. Please join me for a flag salute. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The Assembly of the City and Borough of Sitka would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional first people of Sheetka. With gratitude, we proceed on Clinkett Ani. Sarah Roll Call, please. Mayor Eisenbais. Present. Mr. Mosier. Here. Mr. Pike. Here. Mr. Yestad. Here. Mr. Christensen. Here. Ms. Carlson. Here. And Mr. Saline. Here. Thank you. That'll bring us to persons to be heard. This is public participation for any item off of tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual. Seeing none, we'll uh go on to new business. Uh so our first item tonight is a discussion direction decision of the fiscal year 25 administrators budget with the focus on the general fund at this point. Uh later in the evening, we will have that wrap-up item as well. Um, if you wanted to kick this one off for us, please. Very quickly. Yeah, thanks, Mayor. Um, as you remember, um, we got the direction from the assembly on uh inclusion of certain RPs into the general fund uh draft budget that was uh delivered to you all about a month ago. Um we've included everything that we received from that guidance and have put the numbers together. Um Melissa will go through it here in a minute, but um tried to get the checkbook balanced, but as drafted right now, it's about a 250,000 dollar deficit budget, um, which actually is not that bad in my opinion at this point. Um so tonight we'll be uh looking for further guidance on that draft if there are any changes uh as you're well aware. Um we'll need a motion and uh and a vote, and we can we can make those changes and present a final budget. So with that, we'll kick off the presentation to Melissa. Okay, so as with last year, now that we have a strategic plan, we're trying to really um tie our budget to that strategic plan. Um of the and certainly all of the resource proposals that have come forward have been tied to moving our goals forward. Um of the challenges that we're looking at for uh this upcoming fiscal year, continued concerns around the economy and inflation. It's definitely slowing, uh, but it's still higher than it was a few years ago. Uh cruise tourism, you'll probably get really tired of me saying this by the end of the presentation, but our primary source of revenue is sales tax, and it's volatile. Um, so you know, big changes to uh cruise tourism or tourism of any sort can really impact our revenue streams. Um our capacity to implement federal funding. We have a whole lot of federal funding coming our way.