Skagway businesses are bracing to take a hit this summer. The municipality has few residents and a healthy municipal savings account, so officials are considering direct aid to affected households. Some of those could be approved by the assembly as early as this week.
Spring is usually the time of year when Skagway residents who work seasonal jobs start making an income again. But the threat of COVID-19 has frozen the cruise ship industry in its tracks. When and if the season may start is unclear.
Assemblyman and finance committee chair Steve Burnham Jr said many residents are stuck waiting.
“The money you’re living off of is either unemployment or saved up funds that you earned the summer before. You’re kind of waiting to go back to work. And now, we’re mostly still all laid off, or some people maybe went back to work and got laid off,” he said.
Burnham Jr. is part of the effort to use municipal funds to help residents whose jobs are on hold. He himself was laid off from a seasonal job since there are no cruise ships on the horizon.
But he said the municipality has money set aside for emergencies like this one.
“We’re fiscally sound. I don’t know if other municipalities can do the same. I mean, I’m not saying that we’re able to pay every resident’s last salary and things like that, but we’re okay trying to put our resources to use to make that blow that everyone’s feeling a lot less. And we’re trying to do that as quick as we can,” said Burnham Jr.
The municipality has a couple of years worth of operational costs saved up and is working on a series of local relief measures to buoy the economy. Skagway has the rare combination of a robust tourist economy and a small local population. Burnham said that makes direct aid to individuals possible.
There are three main ideas before the finance committee.
One is an emergency assistance resolution that would provide a one-time payment to qualifying residents. As currently written the resolution would provide $400 to those who cannot find employment because the summer tourism season is delayed until July at the earliest. Successful applicants would also receive $200 additional dollars for a spouse and any dependents.
The other resolution would allow the municipality to reimburse residents for medevac insurance purchased between March 1st and June 30th this year. Burnham Jr said that’s to prevent anyone from being bankrupted by an emergency health issue.
Both resolutions are scheduled to come before the Assembly at the Thursday meeting.
The third idea is not yet in resolution form.
“It’s a laundry list of economic stimulus ideas that administration put forward to finance,” Burnham said.
They’re calling it the Skagway Deal. The name is a riff on the New Deal, a series of programs and reforms enacted by the federal government during the Depression. The goal of this local deal is similar. Ideas range from property tax forgiveness and power subsidies to grants and capital projects.
Burnham Jr. said anything is on the table and it’s the finance committee’s job to decide what’s doable.
“My goal as finance chair is to try to get the committee to analyze the list and provide direction to [the] administration so that we can ask them, you know, please bring us back a manageable product that the assembly can consider,” he said.
He said the plan is to prioritize items the assembly can approve quickly. He said the plan is still in early stages, but should move fast–budget talks for fiscal year 2021 are about to start.
