By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Assembly at its meeting Tuesday named city controller Melissa Haley to head the city finance department.
The vote was unanimous in support of Haley’s promotion to finance director. She has been the controller in the finance department since 2017.
City Administrator John Leach said Haley has been assuming more duties of the finance director over the past three years, in line with a transition plan in place for “pending retirement” of department head Jay Sweeney. Leach cited Sweeney’s “transition to establish a new fiscal compliance officer position in the city.” Haley will be paid a salary of $132,641.
“I’m very excited Melissa Haley will be ascending to the chief financial officer or finance director,” Assembly member Richard Wein said. He cited her credentials and said he looks forward to her ability to “help steer the city in a good financial way.”
Valorie Nelson said she was pleased to see Haley taking the position, but the expressed concern about the starting salary. But Wein said he believes Haley will “prove her worth in the short run ... and she will in the long run.”
Kevin Mosher agreed that Haley is the right person for the job, and has already proved her worth. “Thank you for being willing to serve,” he said.
Haley, who grew up in Sitka, is a graduate of Middlebury College and has a master’s of business administration degree from F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.
The vote on the promotion was 5-0, with Steven Eisenbeisz and Thor Christianson absent.
In another 5-0 vote, the Assembly hired Tony Rosas as the new manager of Harrigan Centennial Hall. He will replace Don Kluting, who has held the position since 1991, and started work in the building 1982 when he was still in high school.
Rosas is a former member of the Coast Guard and Marine Corps, and has been Centennial Hall Supervisor since 2016. He will be paid $72,217.60 per year.
CARES Act Funds
In an update on distributing CARES Act funds, the Assembly spent considerable time reviewing the funds allotted for businesses and nonprofits. Applications will close 5 p.m. Aug. 31.
From the outset, the CARES Act Working Group members said they didn’t know what the response would be in several of the categories, including for the $5 million for nonprofit and for-profit businesses.
“That was made very clear in all of our discussions with the Assembly,” Kevin Knox said today. “We weren’t sure how many applications we would be seeing and how to capture the full breadth of the business community.”
From the public, Marshall Albertson expressed frustration that he is allowed to seek a grant for only one of the three businesses he owns. He said he was looking into filing a lawsuit, but didn’t want to hold up the distribution of funds to others. He said he talked to others who had similar frustrations. He said all three of his businesses qualified as essential businesses, and all three qualified for the federal payroll protection plan funds.
Nelson said she has “a tendency to agree with” Albertson on his point.
“I don’t think we should make it more difficult for people,” she said.
Mayor Gary Paxton said the goal was to find a way to distribute the funds fairly to help businesses get through the year of hardship as best they could.
“It’s a complex process,” he said, but the Assembly and staff will have learned about the need from the first round of applications, in going forward.
“We were trying to be as fair as possible and keep people from gaming the system,” Mosher said at the meeting. “This was the best idea.”
He said he hasn’t considered every scenario. such as those with multiple sales tax accounts. “It was not anyone’s intention to cause any harm. We wanted to be as fair and as equitable as possible.”
Leach said the process has been ongoing for some time, with information released and accessible to the Assembly and public before the applications went out. He said the Assembly can now choose to start again with a new process and new rules; or allow the Aug. 31 deadline to pass, see what’s left over, and make the leftover funds available once again.
“You could do more targeted grants based on the impact to the economy or use an economic multiplier for how to do the most good,” he said.
Mosher, one of the representatives in the Working Group, said he favored letting this process go through and get the funds distributed in this first round. “I don’t want to slow down the dispersal of funds.”
Knox said he expects a more robust system for dispersing the next round of funds. “That will take more work and we didn’t want to hold up the money.”
There was general agreement to continue going forward with plans for distributing the funds for businesses and nonprofits.
Rob Allen, the CARES Act grant technician, told the Sentinel today he had processed 225 applications so far for nonprofits and businesses (including 19 nonprofits, 65 fishermen), for a total of $1,150,000. He has 150 currently left to process, with five days to go before the deadline.
“And they’re still coming in,” he said.
Leach also provided an update to the Assembly for “subrecipient agreements” with entities in the areas of areas of food security, transitional employment, and schools. He said some of the mitigation funds will go toward improvements in city buildings to prevent the spread of COVID, such as installing “touchless faucets” and purchasing PPE for first responders.
Other Business
In other business Tuesday the Assembly:
– honored Howie Pitts with a Service Award for his volunteer service of groundskeeping at the Animal Shelter.
– approved on first reading a few ordinances to move expenditures from fiscal year 2020 to 2021. Haley explained that at the end of a fiscal year on June 30 there are often open purchase orders for work that’s ongoing or a product ordered but not delivered. The ordinances will be up for final reading September 8.
– approved a $1.3 million appropriation for a contract for Phase 1 of the Green Lake hydro rehabilitation project. The city has already dedicated $2.3 million to the project. The additional $1.3 million will ensure that there is funding committed to award a key contract and keep the project on schedule, Haley said. The city is expecting a low-interest USDA loan to help fund the project, but she said low interest rates “have attracted many borrowers and as the coronavirus pandemic has impacted USDA’s normal processes the application process is going slower than hoped.”
The vote of approval on first reading was unanimous and the ordinance will be up for final reading September 8.
