Ketchikan City Council to consider water, electricity rate hikes Thursday
Posted by Eric Stone | Feb 17, 2021
Ketchikan’s city hall in 2020 (KRBD file photo by Maria Dudzak)
Ketchikan’s City Council is considering whether to hike city water and power rates. While officials say the increases will be necessary, some members of the council are wary of the timing.
City Manager Karl Amylon told the council earlier this month that the publicly-owned water utility has lost hundreds of thousands dollars each year for a decade.
“It’s basically because the council doesn’t want to raise rates to meet the cost of production of water,” Amylon said at the Feb. 4 council meeting.
Without cruise passengers, Ketchikan borough officials project $3.4 million budget shortfall
Posted by Eric Stone | Feb 12, 2021
Ketchikan’s borough offices are located in the White Cliff building. (Maria Dudzak/KRBD)
Faced with the prospect of another canceled cruise season, Ketchikan’s borough is projecting a multimillion-dollar deficit. But despite the estimated $3.4 million shortfall, officials say the borough won’t burn through all of its savings.
Ketchikan’s borough finance director, Cynna Gubatayao, told the Borough Assembly last month that she was expecting a vastly reduced cruise season to weigh on sales tax revenues. Those are the biggest source of the borough’s general revenue property taxes go towards funding the school district.
Posted by Eric Stone | Dec 18, 2020
Ketchikan’s borough offices are located in the White Cliff building. (Maria Dudzak/KRBD)
Health officials say it’ll be months before a COVID-19 vaccine is available to the general public. But in the meantime, Ketchikan’s elected officials have introduced two resolutions that cut to the heart of a debate over vaccines.
The first batch of COVID-19 vaccines is already here. So far a small group of pharmacists and nursing home residents have received the first dose of the Pfizer treatment.
Ketchikan Borough Mayor Rodney Dial says he’s concerned that people who choose not to be vaccinated could be publicly shunned.
Layoffs unlikely as Ketchikan City Council considers putting unspent federal aid toward first responder salaries
Posted by Eric Stone | Dec 16, 2020
Ketchikan’s city hall on June 11, 2020. (Maria Dudzak/KRBD)
Ketchikan city officials say they’re no longer looking at layoffs to fill a roughly $1.75 million budget shortfall. Mayor Bob Sivertsen says they’ll be able to make up the difference by cutting projects, leaving positions vacant and putting some of the city’s unspent federal aid towards paying first responders.
“We are not laying off anybody at this particular point in time,” Sivertsen said in a phone interview Wednesday.
He says city council members found other ways to fill the gap.