The Petersburg Borough Assembly approved a handful of changes to the borough’s budget earlier this month, including spending $11,000 to repair damage at the town’s ball field.
An intense wind storm in September caused one dugout to completely collapse and the adjacent structure covering the bleachers to lean significantly.
At the Dec. 1 Borough Assembly meeting, Little League President Becky Turland said the ball field is important to many in the community.
“Little League uses the ball fields. The school uses the ball fields for playing ball. They also go up there and do a lot of different activities up there. Youth serving organizations do it. We have our community softball league that goes up there. So it is used really heavily by our community throughout the year,” said Turland.
Little League maintains the facility. However, Turland said its insurance won’t cover repairs because the damage was caused by a storm, not by Little League.
The borough owns the facility but doesn’t insure it. When Assembly Member James Valentine asked why, Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht said the borough doesn’t insure facilities without much “intrinsic value.”
“Long time ago, we made a decision to not insure those because we end up paying more in insurance than we would actually get back,” Giesbrecht said. “This is the first time in 15 years I’ve been here that we’ve had actually, you know, something like this happen at the ball field.”
But Giesbrecht noted the borough will get a quote to see if the repair expense is actually less than what insuring the facility would’ve cost.
“This may be one of those things [where] we just got unlucky, and $11,000 is likely a lot less of a cost than if we would have been paying insurance on it for the last 15 years,” he continued. “We don’t know that yet. We’ll get a quote.”
Other adjustments to the borough’s overall budget shift funds, account for additional revenue, and increase the budget for capital projects and wastewater system repairs.
The largest change to the budget adds $195,000 in expenses to replace street lights downtown; cash for the project is already reserved, according to the borough.
In October, the Assembly accepted $78,000 from Petersburg Indian Association to help fund the borough’s project to replace deteriorated breakwaters at Banana Point, on the southern tip of Mitkof Island. One of the budget adjustments accounts for that revenue increase.
A wastewater outfall pipe in Frederick Sound needs to be repaired. The diffuser fell off sometime in the past two decades, according to department officials. The borough is budgeting $66,000 for engineering expenses. During the Assembly’s initial reading of the budget ordinance last month, Giesbrecht said that would give the borough an estimate for how much the repairs will cost.
The wastewater budget also increased by $25,000 to replace part of a pump station and fix the failed part to have as a backup.
Finally, $16,000 left over from the Electric Auto Meter Reading Capital Project will be transferred to a different electric project, the Electric Grid Resiliency Project.
The Borough Assembly approved the overall budget changes unanimously.
Find a copy of the approved ordinance here.
