The Mosquito Lake Community Center will likely receive another year of funding, thanks in part to a rental agreement with Raw TV, the London-based production company responsible for filming “Gold Rush,” a reality show about miners in Alaska and the Yukon aired on the Discovery Channel.
At an April 27 meeting, assembly members unanimously authorized borough clerk and interim manager Alekka Fullerton to finalize a contract with the company. Fullerton said Monday that the contract is a work in progress.
“They’ll use the kitchen (Monday through Saturday) during specific hours, the pantry and the janitor room and storage,” she said.
The rental will run from May 9 through Oct. 15. In exchange, the borough will receive roughly $7,000, which will go toward facility operating expenses.
Raw TV executives said the decision to seek a rental agreement was prompted by COVID-19 considerations.
“We felt that using the community center kitchen with running water and electricity would be a lot more practical and hygienic than a field-based kitchen and would also pose less risk of bear conflict than cooking in the field,” Gold Rush White Water executive producer Tim Dalby said.
Borough officials see it as a way of funding a facility that is routinely on the chopping block during annual budget talks. For the current fiscal year, community center funding was left out of the budget until a last-minute amendment allocated $10,000 of CARES Act funds and $10,000 of borough funds for the facility to serve as a food security hub in the Chilkat Valley.
“I think that it’s a win-win, providing needed funding for the facility and providing something that (Raw TV) needs as well,” Fullerton said.
Although borough officials have expressed unanimous support for the rental, the Friends of Mosquito Lake School Community Center (FMLSCC) board has mixed feelings. At the April 27 meeting, Erika Merklin, a key organizer for the facility’s food hub operations, urged members to solicit feedback from the board.
“Before agreeing to this, it would be really important for the borough assembly to come to the open house on May 2 from eleven to three to discuss these matters with board members, to see what we have going on out there,” Merklin said.
FMLSCC chair Dawn Drotos said when the rental offer first came to the board’s attention, members were enthusiastic.
“But then, when they started thinking about the implications, they grew a little concerned,” she said. “It will take some administration from volunteers, dealing with any problems that come up as Raw TV is operating there. And there needs to be a balance between rental income and community center functions. It shouldn’t displace community center activities.”
Drotos said as long as that balance is maintained, she thinks the rental has the potential to be good for the facility’s long-term survival.
In the current draft of the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, funding for the center comes from a mix of rental revenue and borough funding. At an April 29 budget Committee of the Whole meeting, assembly member Jerry Lapp suggested using some of the borough’s leftover CARES Act funds to cover facility costs.
The assembly’s next budget meeting is scheduled for May 6.