If Haines Borough Mayor Jan Hill and assembly members Diana Lapham and Mike Case get their way, $14,000 slated for this year’s local nonprofit funding will instead be banked in the borough’s general fund and remain undistributed.
The nonprofit funding committee reconvened to decide what to do with about $14,000 that the Haines Animal Rescue Kennel refused to accept.
HARK representatives had told former manager David Sosa during contract negotiations that they were not interested in using the $14,000 from the “community chest,” but Sosa failed to pass on that message when the assembly was deciding how to divvy up the funds it set aside for nonprofits.
When HARK submitted a formal letter denying the funds after hearing they were given the $14,000 anyway, the assembly sent the issue back to the nonprofit funding committee to decide how to distribute the money among the other nonprofits that had applied.
On Tuesday, Hill said the committee had decided to keep the money.
“Our ultimate decision was that we were not going to make any further distributions this year, but that this should be a topic for serious discussion when we start working on our budget, to determine how we’re going to do this in the future,” she said.
At the committee level, Hill cited a statement she attributed to former interim manager Bob Ward. “One of the things that he stated was that the borough should not tax its citizens and then give that money to nonprofits. If the citizens want to donate money, they should do it directly to the ones that they care about the most,” she said.
Before Hill could move on, assembly member Margaret Friedenauer asked if the committee was allowed to unilaterally make that decision or if the assembly needed to approve it. Hill said she didn’t know, but clerk Julie Cozzi clarified that the committee only could recommend to the full assembly that the borough keep the money.
Friedenauer then asked the matter be put on the agenda for the Feb. 9 meeting, so the entire assembly could discuss the recommendation.
HARK director Tracy Mikowski this week said she was “very disappointed” the money might be rolled back into the general fund.
“The HARK board declined the use of the community chest funds for our animal control contract because we felt that it was not what those dollars were intended for. We wanted that money to be distributed to local nonprofits, as it has been in the past,” Mikowski said.