Haines Senior Center. (Emily Files)

Haines Senior Center. (Emily Files)

The Chilkat Valley Preschool and the Haines Senior Center Board are in discussions to potentially work out a joint use agreement for the senior center building.

The Haines Borough took over management of the senior center recently because the board was not financially able to manage it without additional funding. The preschool has been searching for a new home for years, after being given a deadline to move out of their current, borough-owned building.

Public Facilities Director Brad Ryan said Thursday he has encouraged discussions between the preschool and senior center board.

“I talked to the Chilkat Valley Preschool board yesterday evening and presented the idea that it could be a joint facility and potentially they could manage it for the seniors and themselves or there could be joint management,” Ryan said.

He says there are some concerns about how space would be divided up between the two programs. Right now, it’s just a conversation. And that conversation will continue tomorrow, when Ryan says he will meet with representatives from the preschool and senior center to talk about possibilities.

“So I hope tomorrow we can sit down with both boards and see if there’s a mutually beneficial way to move forward on this so both groups can get what I think is a good community resource for their programs.”

KHNS will follow-up with that story as it progresses.

Non-profits like the preschool and senior center could be in for more borough funding soon. Borough Manager Dave Sosa says that’s because the Haines Animal Rescue Kennel formally declined $14,000 in borough funding.

The assembly voted to take that $14,000 out of the pool of money that is distributed among local non-profits that apply for funding. Sosa says he will recommend at the next assembly meeting that the non-profit funding board reconvene and look at how that money can be distributed to groups that did not receive 100 percent of their requested funding from the borough. Then, the assembly would vote on those allotments.

In other borough news, the personnel committee will meet at 10 a.m. Monday to discuss the borough manager search. Sosa put in his resignation recently, and his last day is December 7. Sosa says he will present options to the committee Monday for the manager transition. He says the borough has posted an advertisement for an interim manager.