The Sitka City and Borough Assembly held a special meeting on February 27, 2025, to discuss and provide direction on the FY2026 draft Administrator's Budget, with a primary focus on the General Fund. Municipal Administrator John Leach and Finance Director Melissa Haley presented the budget, which initially projected a $743,000 deficit. The presentation reviewed revenue sources (sales tax, property tax, transfers, etc.), expenditure trends, capital appropriations, and resource proposals. The assembly heard from department heads, debated specific line items, and passed several motions to reduce the deficit.
Welcome everybody. We'll call to order the special meeting of Thursday, February 27th, 2025. Please join me for a flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands. 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 Klinketani. Sarah, roll call, please. Just gotta push buttons a couple times. It just takes a couple times. Mayor Eisenbais. Present. Ms. Carlson. Here. Mr. Yestad. Here. Mr. Christensen. Mr. Mosher? Here. And Assemblymembers Pike and Celine are absent this evening. Great. Thank you. That'll bring us to persons to be heard. This is public participation for any item not on tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual. Seeing none, we'll roll right into new business. So tonight we're here to talk about the 26th budget with a focus on the general fund. We do have a presentation tonight that we'll go through, and then uh then it'll be uh kind of a free-for-all for the assembly. Um I think John and Melissa are looking for a little bit of a guidance tonight, so we'll turn it over to them and uh see where this takes us. Uh thank you, Mayor. Um just a quick introduction before Melissa starts her presentation. Um the draft general fund budget was delivered to you the 18th. I think that was the day we said it, maybe sounds right. Um hopefully you've had some time to review it. Um what you've seen is a uh a deficit budget proposed right now. I shouldn't say proposed, presented, um, and uh hopefully we get some guidance tonight on areas that we need to um maybe look at again uh and for potential cuts uh and other ideas that can help us put a put a final budget together. Um so there's some decision points throughout the uh presentation that we'll be looking for some guidance on tonight. With that, Melissa. All right, and just a reminder that now that the draft budget has been published, um any changes to this piece will require a motion. Um so uh what's in here goes forward unless there's um a vote to change it. Um so generally um some of the challenges that we're facing um for the general fund, um which you know general fund can be a little bit different than what we're looking at with with the enterprise funds, but we certainly have concerns around the economy, um both local as well as national, and then continued concerns is inflation uh around inflation. It's it's slowed, um, but with tariffs and kind of some unknowns looking forward, um you know that slowing may not continue. Um we also have um cruise tourism with the ballot proposition out there for this budget that would be impacting the spring, so that April to June period in 2026. Uh there's also concerns around federal funding. Um we've already uh had a you know lovely morning where we come into work and hear that all of our federal funding is frozen, so that's pretty scary. And and if that were to continue, that would certainly be a huge challenge for the city. Um school funding, um, you know, both trying to offset and make sure our schools have funding while the state doesn't fund, but then at the same time, there are challenges to our budget if there was a substantial um increase to the BSA, because then um you know there's more funding that could be asked for from the city, and so trying to figure that out.