The Sitka Assembly is unlikely to cut the city’s Parks and Recreation budget, now that it’s anticipating a budget surplus.
At its final budget meeting on Wednesday (3-12-25) City Finance Director Melissa Haley said residential properties went up more in value than expected, meaning the city is likely to bring in more tax revenue next year.
“So the first thing that kind of makes this whole conversation a little easier is that our property tax evaluations were finalized earlier this week, and we get to add $400,000 into our property tax revenue based on those new taxable values,” Haley said.
“Okay, I think we’re done here,” Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz responded, jokingly.
Laughter filled the room full of city department heads, signaling some relief after a tense budget meeting in late February when the assembly, then looking at a projected general fund deficit of over 700K, asked staff to look for places where the budget could be trimmed.
One of the programs the assembly was eyeing was Parks and Recreation, a relatively new department with a budget that’s grown over the last three years as community participation has increased. At the February meeting, Parks and Rec director Kevin Knox told the assembly that there was little he could cut without impacting services. At Wednesday’s meeting, Haley presented a more detailed breakdown of Knox’s budget, which, with a deeper dive, projected an additional $75,000 in revenue from programming at the Blatchley Middle School Pool.
Mayor Eisenbeisz said he was a major proponent of cutting Parks and Rec at the last meeting because he didn’t understand why its budget had grown so much, but for now he’d changed his tune.
“I was actually thinking after our last one that almost needed a work session with Parks and Rec to fully understand how that program has grown, because it’s gone astronomically huge in a very, very short amount of time,” Eisenbeisz said. “So I think a lot of it came from us just a lack of understanding of what the department currently provides and offers. So this definitely helps quite a bit.”
While the assembly decided against cutting any funding for Parks and Rec, it did approve several other cuts and increases to balance the general fund budget, including raising rates for renting a room at Harrigan Centennial Hall, by 20 percent. The rates at the venue that hosts most of Sitka’s meetings and conferences haven’t increased since the building was remodeled 10 years ago, and
Municipal Administrator John Leach said the city needs to be more consistent with how the rates are applied.
“We can set those rates internally, but an increase is big for people, and we have found that, you know nothing against nonprofits at all. We already have a reduced rate for nonprofit usage, and I think that will stay in effect, but it’s been very, I would say, loosely applied,” Leach said. “Some are getting charged with nonprofit fees. Others aren’t.”
Adding up the cuts from the past two meetings, and the unexpected increase in the city’s property tax revenue, the assembly ended its budget season anticipating a $200,000 surplus in its general fund.
