The Haines Borough Assembly Tuesday approved a new advisory board to the Mosquito Lake School Community Center, but didn’t follow recommendations by the borough’s government affairs and services committee to renovate the building’s air-handling system and to agree to not sell the facility for at least three years.
It costs around $29,000 to keep the community center heated and maintained and staff had originally thought installing fin tubes would reduce the electric bill by around $1,000 a month during the winter.
In his manager’s report, Ryan said upon gaining remote access to the system, staff determined savings to be much less – between $2,000-$4,000 annually – and there was no need to spend money on the building now.
The assembly then discussed removing language that would “take the sale of the facility off the table for at least three years.”
Assembly member Ron Jackson made a motion to strike the language.
“The motion to create the advisory board kind of says we’re not thinking of selling so I think that part of the motion could go away and it would still have the intent of creating an advisory board and it’s going to be a community center for the foreseeable future.”
Assembly member Heather Lende said keeping the language would guarantee the Mosquito Lake residents time to develop plans on how to best utilize the building.
Assembly member Margaret Friedenauer said taking the sale off the table could give people false hope.
“I’m not trying to mislead anybody, but you can’t say you’re not going to do something because we can’t guarantee what the next assembly would do,” Friedenauer said.
The assembly voted 4-1 to strike the language from the motion with Lende voting against it.
Although the assembly unanimously voted to create the advisory committee, Friedenauer said she was concerned about the absence of a long-term plan for the building.
“(Because of) the amount of resources that have to go into the facility and continue to go into the facility, I think we have to look very closely at how many people benefit within the borough and if those collaborations can’t be done maybe with a facility already in existence. So I’ll vote for it, I just wanted to express my concerns.”
Lende said the residents in the area pay sales tax, collect tax from their business, take property taxes and contribute to the larger community.
“This is about the only thing that we do out there for them and I think it doesn’t seem like an exorbitant request considering that,” Lende said.