Although two of its six members were absent Tuesday, the Haines Borough Assembly passed the municipality’s roughly $12 million spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year.

Assembly members George Campbell, Diana Lapham, Dave Berry and Mike Case voted in favor of the budget ordinance. Assembly members Joanne Waterman and Ron Jackson were absent.

The budget includes $45,000 for a Juneau lobbyist, as well as a cut in hours for staff at the library, museum and police department dispatch center. It also will leave a police officer position unfilled.

It includes an areawide mill rate increase of .23 mills. That translates to a 23-cent increase on every $1,000 of a property’s value. (For a home and property valued at $200,000, the owner’s property tax bill would increase by $46.)

With his vote required for passage of the budget, assembly member Campbell was able to strong-arm the group into modifying a Finance Committee recommendation to use savings from the townsite service area’s fund balance to restore the Haines Animal Rescue Kennel’s contract funding from $16,200 to $45,250.

(At least four votes are required to pass a motion, even when there are only four assembly members present.)

Instead of taking the $29,050 difference from the $1.3 million townsite fund balance as the committee recommended, Campbell made a motion to take only $14,525 from the savings and $14,525 from the “community chest” that is used to fund various nonprofits during a competitive application process later in the year.

The community chest, originally set at $32,500 by manager David Sosa, dwindled to $17,975 under the motion, which passed unanimously.

“There are four of us sitting here. We all have to vote the same to get anything passed tonight. We all understand that, right?” Campbell said. “Our discussion before was to pull the money out of the (community chest) to help fund HARK and now you are pulling it out of the budget reserves. I am not comfortable pulling that much out of budget reserves. I am going to tell you right now, I’m not going to vote to pull another $30,000 or something out of budget reserves for HARK.”

Assembly member Berry said yes, he floated the idea of pulling the money out of the community chest at a committee-of-the-whole meeting, but that course of action didn’t seem to gain traction.

“The Finance Committee went through a lot of time and effort, and if there is money in the fund balance, it’s not doing the people in this borough any good if it is in the fund balance,” Berry said.

The $1.3 million fund balance represents 119 percent of the townsite’s operating budget, or about a 14-month reserve.

Assembly member Lapham emphasized use of the fund balance for restoring the HARK funding would be a “one-time draw,” and that public input on the issue led her and the finance committee to believe using the savings was the best course of action. “We’ve got the money in the fund balance to do this,” Lapham said.

However, a motion to restore funding using only the townsite fund balance failed. Campbell’s subsequent funding motion passed unanimously.

Aside from the HARK discussion, the budget received almost no discussion Tuesday before members approved it.

Two members of the public spoke at Tuesday’s meeting on behalf of retaining some Title III forest receipt funds for forest-related educational afterschool programs in the budget.

Takshanuk Watershed Council executive director Meredith Pochardt and resident Courtney Culbeck asked the assembly to keep some Title III forest receipts money in the budget instead of using the entire $272,272 for a bridge in Excursion Inlet.

Pochardt said the Haines School will be having early release on Thursdays next year, and the school has reached out to organizations in the community to offer programming during that afternoon time slot that otherwise would have been filled by school.

“I think if some of (the Title III money) could be reserved and distributed through the nonprofit funding (process), it would allow organizations to offer this programming without having to compete through the community chest funding,” Pochardt said.

In addition to testifying in support of retaining Title III funding for educational programming, Culbeck also read a letter from resident Scott Doddridge, who couldn’t attend the meeting.

The assembly didn’t address Pochardt or Culbeck’s comments.

The assembly amended the budget to reflect $120,000 in revenue from the federal government’s Secure Rural Schools program. One-third, or $40,000, will go to the Haines Borough School District.

The fiscal year 2016 budget goes into effect July 1.

Assembly member Jackson was unable to attend the meeting because of a planned medical procedure. Assembly member Waterman did not return a message Wednesday asking why she missed the meeting.

The assembly could have opted to hold a third public hearing on the budget, which must be adopted by June 15.

That option wasn’t mentioned by members or staff present.