The Dillingham City Council passed its FY2018 budget last night. They also discussed a foreclosed property and addressed a citizen concern regarding the denied services list.
The Dillingham City Council met last night. After offering an opportunity for public discussion, they voted to pass an amended version of the FY2018 budget. The new version included reinstating positions at the library and police department.
Dillingham Mayor Alice Ruby says the 12 million dollar budget will allow the city to continue services.
“With changes or cuts to everything generally, but still we’re able to continue pretty much everything that we’ve done in the past couple of years.”
Ruby says she fears the impact of cuts to training programs for city employees. However, she appreciates the citizen input that went into the budget.
“We had public participation. In this process we had a few citizens that were able to attend a lot of the budget preparation meetings and some citizens that participated in other ways and I think the council finds that really helpful and we really appreciate it.”
Also at the meeting, Interim City Manager Don Moore gave a staff report to update the council on ongoing city business, including a foreclosed property in Dillingham.
“The property we call the Bingman foreclosure has… quite a chaos over there. There’s all kinds of stuff scattered around, a lot of metal and lumber and everything imaginable. But I’m particularly concerned about, there’s about 20 55-gallon drums that we don’t really know what’s in them.” Moore said.
Moore hopes to partner with BBNA to apply for a federal Brownfield grant. The Brownfield program helps communities to essentially recycle land to be used for a new purpose. Moore also addressed complaints that some security cameras around town which are live-streamed online are not working. He is in the process of applying for funds to fix the cameras but emphasized the cameras are primarily for law enforcement purposes.
Later in the meeting during a period of public comment, Michael Bennet expressed his concerns over the city denied services list.
“I have seen people who are on the denied city services list using city services such as the city dock and the boat harbor.”
Bennet went on to ask what the consequences for such a violation are and what consequences might be for city employees who fail to enforce the list.
Don Moore responded, saying:
“The denying services list means what is says: that those services, including the dock, you’re not allowed to use them. Now if somebody winds up down there for whatever reason and is involved in using the facility we run them off. They’re not allowed to do that.”
Moore went on to add that eventually the list could be enforced by the police department. Citizens are placed on the list as a penalty for not paying taxes. The council assured Bennet they would look into the issue.
In her comment period Mayor Alice Ruby held a moment of silence for citizens of Dillingham who have passed away since the last meeting.