Petersburg’s borough assembly tonight will be taking the first of three votes on changes to this year’s borough budget. Those changes include some of the funding for the proposed renovation of the police station and municipal building.
The budget ordinance would transfer over one point six million dollars from the borough’s E-911 fund, property development fund and general fund to the police station and borough office building project. That’s not the total amount needed to do the renovation. The borough also plans to sell land to finance the work, and may borrow money from the electrical department as well, although those two pieces of the funding puzzle are not included in this budget change. The budget ordinance requires three readings and the first vote on that is tonight.
Another proposed change for the budget would be spending over a half million dollars for paving local streets. About 364,000 dollars of that would come from Secure Rural Schools funding that the borough receives for road projects, along with 167,000 dollars that was to be used to design a permanent replacement to the Rasmus Enge Bridge on Sing Lee Alley. Public works director Karl Hagerman writes that the bridge replacement has become lower priority because of major renovation work already completed. Hagerman is also asking the assembly to waive the public bidding process and award the paving work to Secon, the company that will be back in town to complete paving on state roads. There’s a long list of roads that could be paved by the borough, including portions of Eighth, Aaslaug, Gauffin, Excel, Fram, Gjoa, Surf, Charles W, Odin, Lumber and Third streets. Other areas could get some pavement patching during the work.
In other decisions, the assembly will vote on going forward with construction of a bulkhead near the borough’s new drive down dock. That work is expected to cost between 1.3 million and one point six 1.6 million dollars. The borough has 1.2 million dollars in remaining state grant money to do the construction.
Assembly members will also discuss an application by Goldbelt, Juneau’s Native Corporation, for a long-term state tidelands lease and construction of a new dock in Hobart Bay. The corporation brings cruise ship passengers to its land there, which is in the Petersburg borough.
There’s also the third reading of a rezoning of a parcel on South Third Street along with a discussion on drafting a local marijuana ordinance.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. in borough assembly chambers. KFSK will broadcast the meeting live. Also we’ll be talking with borough assembly members during Borough Business, our live call in show, today at 12:30 just after the news at noon.