The Skagway borough assembly is meeting on Thursday. We spoke with mayor Sam Bass about the meeting agenda.
There are a handful of items on the coming Skagway borough assembly meeting’s agenda.
The assembly will discuss certifying that Skagway is impacted by the fishing industry. This will allow the town to claim a part of the state’s fishery tax.
Bass: “This is our application, we have to put it in every year for those funds.”
Mayor Sam Bass says it’s not big money, but there is value in being in the program.
Bass: “It’s not a very significant number, I think it’s about $500. It’s not a huge item, still something we put in for, we want to make sure that, obviously the funds, but also tha twe do have some impact from commercial fishing, this also helps us record that.”
The assembly will also discuss streamlining its policy for travel. Until now the guidance was found in the personnel policy.
Bass: “We are moving it out of the personnel policy and we are putting it all under a comprehensive travel policy, which really outlines use of credit cards, per diem payments, how assembly members are going to travel, how reimbursement occurs, those types of issues, so it cleans up our personnel policy and really gives us a more dedicated travel policy.”
The assembly will discuss changing borough code to officially join the Alaska Remote Sales Tax Commission. Joining the group will allow Skagway to collect sales taxes from online purchases.
This group, I think there are about 40 communities that are involved in it, basically receives those funds, the tax funds from the sellers, and then distributes them out to municipalities, saving the municipalities on some of that internal work of trying to collect taxes. It’s a big lift for a small community, and this is an organization that does it all in a bigger picture.”
Bass says the tax would be around 5%. The commission’s website says it collects taxes from sellers who have more than $100K in sales, or more than 200 transactions statewide.
The assembly will discuss reactivating the Bidding Review Board.
Bass: “That comes into play whenever we have bids coming into the city for different projects, and if there is ever a protest for who gets awarded the bid, then this bidding review board will come in and make sure that our policies and procedures were followed correctly and then make an updated recommendation.”
The last few items relate to the work being conducted on the ore dock.
Bass: “There are small cost overruns. Certain things cost a little more than we expected them to when we did the original contract. Things like deck panels, dolphin capstones may have cost a little more, so that was in total about $26, $27K more. In general, the project is going along really well, we continue to drive the pilings, we are making good progress, the mild winter we’ve had has been good for us, we are all on schedule and on budget.”
The Skagway Assembly meeting will be in borough chambers, at 7pm.
