The Kenai City Council enacted an ordinance formally adopting the FY2023 City of Kenai Budget. The annual budget, salary schedule and employee classification plan for the fiscal year commencing July 1, 2022, and ending June 30, 2023, including committing $4,032,601 of general fund, fund balance for future capital improvements, received unanimous approval, but not without amendments.
One amendment was made to change Section 3 of the ordinance committing $4,032,601 to reflect previously approved amendments, which also amended the Total All Funds in Section 2 of the ordinance to $36,075,427. Two other amendments that were adopted include reducing the General Fund expenditures by $50,000 because of additional funding pledged by the Kenai Senior Connection, Inc. for the Senior Center operations in this upcoming fiscal year and providing funding to increase the accountant position in the Finance Department to a Controller position by increasing General Fund expenditures by $18,436.
One proposed amendment that was not adopted would have added one additional street operator position, citing the extra workload due to the amount of snowfall the Kenai Peninsula received this past winter.
In response to the proposal, Scott Curtin, Director of Public Works said:
“You’re looking at a budget that we put forth and it was put forth with my approval. I did ask for some stuff and fully acknowledging that we had some shortcomings last fall, primarily that was adding some overtime to the budget, which this budget does have. It included the additional purchase of a second belly blade. As your Public Works Director, those are the things that I asked for that I thought were reasonable to do better, based on what we had. I did not, I am not asking for a sixth individual. If you’re comment to me is that I failed miserably last year that, yeah, that hurts a little (laughing). I’m not going to lie, that hurts a little. Again, I fall back to, we genuinely do the best with the tools that we’re given within our means.”
NOTE: click here for the hyperlink to Ordinance 3289-2022 if the PDF doesn’t load below, which provides complete details of the aforementioned budget.
FY23KenaiBudget
