After hours of meetings and weeks of research, the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly unanimously approved next year’s budget at Monday night’s meeting.
The meeting sped through a number of topics, and the section on the budget took just five minutes. Only one member of the public spoke during the segment, and there was no objection from the Assembly members.
The budget, amounting to upwards of $335 million, was passed through the CBJ Finance Committee after six meetings since early April. The city initially estimated a $1.9 million shortfall for the budget, and the committee ended up needing to take $800,000 out of its reserves to balance the budget. The remainder comes from revenues from money set aside from tobacco tax, hotel tax and property tax (amounting to $750,000) and reductions and corrections from other parts of the budget (amounting to about $350,000).
While many local organizations, such as the Juneau-Douglas City Museum and the Olson-Jensen Arboretum, were briefly on the chopping block as the committee considered eliminating them in order to balance the budget, all of those services remained intact.
[City Museum survives budget cuts]
In the end, the cuts were fairly minimal to the city’s services. Two vacant positions will not be refilled, including a planning job at the Community Development Department and a Community Service Officer (CSO) at the Juneau Police Department. These positions were both recently vacated, and cutting them didn’t cost anybody his or her job.
The one concern brought up at Monday’s meeting was that the CSO position serves an important purpose. Stephanie Sell, an Area Biologist with the Department of Fish and Game, said her department works closely with the CSOs in enforcing bear policies that include monitoring trash to make sure that people aren’t attracting bears.
[Douglas homeowner shoots 725-pound brown bear]
Sell mentioned that bear attractant enforcement might be reduced as a result of this position being eliminated and asked the Assembly to reconsider.
“I just fear the loss of this position will have a significant impact on the community,” Sell said. “We’ve worked proactively and collaboratively with these CSOs to ensure that we address these attractants issues and prevent these bear problems from occurring and I would like to strongly urge you to reconsider funding for this fifth CSO position.”
Assembly member Debbie White then proposed the adoption of the budget, with the caveat that the Assembly takes a look at supplying a supplemental addition to the budget to refill the open CSO position.
“After meeting with the police chief, I think that’s something we should do,” White said, “but we don’t really have time before our next Assembly meeting, since we have to adopt this by June 15, but I think we should at least discuss that in the future.”
The Assembly unanimously approved White’s motion, finalizing the budget. The budget deals with the 2018 Fiscal Year, which begins July 1 and runs through the following June 30.
The Juneau School District’s budget is the only possible wild card remaining. The budget is finalized, but if the state chooses to cut funding for schools, JSD will be facing a budget deficit. For now, however, the city is done worrying about next year’s budget, and can get back to other business.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com or 523-2271.
