The Soldotna City Council hosted a work session Wednesday night to familiarize members with the five non-departmental organizations that are typically included in the budget.
CARTS, Tsalteshi Trails Association, Boys & Girls Club of the Kenai Peninsula, Soldotna Area Senior Citizens, and Soldotna Historical Society & Museum each had 15 minutes to present.
Soldotna Mayor Pete Sprague…
Mayor Sprague: “The intent yesterday was to have the non-departmentals that we’ve funded in our budget in the past come before council, make a presentation about what they do overall, and how they intend to spend the money that has been budgeted and is in the draft budget for Fiscal Year 2017.”
The City’s funding request for those five non-departmental organizations in the Fiscal Year 2017 budget totals $75,120, with the biggest cut of $35,000 going to the Boys and Girls Club of the Kenai Peninsula.
We asked him if there will be cuts to the funding of the non-departmentals since the City of Soldotna is mulling a mill rate increase from 0.5 to 2.0. Sprague said that issue was not addressed yesterday.
Mayor Sprague: “Every year each of them sends a letter to the administration through the Finance Department with the request [for funding]. Then the decision is made through the administration how much to bring forward to council but it is a very valid question, how do we address this. I think it was timely to do this [non-departmental work session] this year and we had decided at the work session we had a couple weeks ago that we did need to do this. But now council will have to decide if and how much.”
No decisions were made at the work session, the mayor says he believes the funding of the non-departmental organizations may come up during Council’s discussion on the budget at their June 8 meeting.
