The composition of the Haines Borough Assembly will change at its next meeting when election results are certified, and assembly member Richard Clement makes way for newly elected Eben Sargent.
Chilkat Valley News reporter Will Steinfeld joined KHNS’ Melinda Munson to discuss what else is on the agenda for Tuesday’s borough Assembly meeting.
Will Steinfeld: There are a number of things on the agenda that people might want to weigh in on. One of the big changes is at the fire department, potentially. The borough has been looking into billing for ambulance services for a few months now, ever since an outside audit of the volunteer fire department. That was one of the things the audit recommended as just a way to recoup costs for the borough. That’s something (ambulance services) that the borough has previously provided to residents for free.
There aren’t many details included yet, but the program would be called zero balance billing, which essentially means that users of the ambulance would not be charged beyond what’s covered by their insurer … And on the assembly agenda for this week is a proposal to enter into a contract with an outside consultant to basically run that program, provide the logistics, the software, the billing know-how, to get that off the ground and operate it once it is running.”
Melinda Munson: There are several sales tax amendments on the agenda for Tuesday. Where do you want to start with that, Will?
There definitely are a number. The first one is, there’s a construction material exemption change. The way it stands right now, construction material purchases after the first $5,000 are exempt. And what this proposed legislation would do is raise that threshold to $20,000. So someone would have to purchase $20,000 of construction materials before they start being sales tax exempt. So that would be more of a cost on Haines consumers, but it would bring in more revenue to the borough. That’s something Jila Stuart, the borough’s finance director, has said — the staff feels like it is time. It’s been a while since that threshold has been updated, and they feel like it needs to rise to match inflation.
Another interesting topic is possible taxes on cruise ship sales inside of the borough. Skagway currently does this, Haines does not. Can you tell me more about that?
What that would be is the borough asking cruise ship companies, requiring cruise ship companies, to collect sales tax on any purchases happening inside the borough’s boundaries. And then giving that tax, passing it back to the borough. That would be on anything from food to drinks, anything where people are spending money, even on the boat and before they get off in town proper.
The third possible change is some added language to the existing nonprofit exemptions. So as it stands right now, nonprofits in town are largely exempt from collecting sales tax. So something like the Friday burger feed – currently people are not charged sales tax on those burger purchases. There’s new language being proposed here that would require nonprofits to charge sales tax on sales where they’re competing with other businesses in town.
And the thinking there is these nonprofit organizations shouldn’t be able to provide the same service or the same goods as small businesses, and have that competitive advantage of not having to collect sales tax. And so the language in here is just taken straight from the Skagway port code. And it says, “no exemption shall be allowed where such organizations are also engaged in any business competing with other persons or businesses engaged in the same or similar business for profit.”
And Will, do you have an inkling if this particular section is going to be controversial?
Assembly members … discussed it at the recent commerce committee meeting. And they were saying that it has come up in the past, and it has been a little controversial. But there seemed to be some support for it among assembly members, just in the sense that maybe this is a way the borough assembly can support small businesses. But also, it could be a cost on nonprofits as well, which people definitely support.
It’s also worth noting that all these sales tax amendments are just being possibly introduced for consideration. If they are introduced on Tuesday night, then they’ll be scheduled for public hearings following that. So there will be plenty of time for the public to weigh in.
Something else that is going to be addressed at Tuesday’s meeting is school board compensation.
Manager Alekka Fullerton in her manager’s report basically said that it’s been an oversight, and according to borough code, the assembly may, by resolution, provide compensation for school board members. And they’re hoping to pay $100 per meeting. And so they’ll be voting on that.