The Municipality of Skagway will help support year round businesses with a three-tiered grant program and awarded local nonprofits nearly $30,000 from the Community Grant Fund.
Skagway Businesses that plan to be open through this winter could now qualify for municipal aid. The assembly passed the SNOW Grant, Skagway Normal Operations for Wintertime, at its meeting last Thursday.
Mayor Andrew Cremata says it’s a bid for normality during what could be a tough winter season.
“One of the primary goals here is to make sure that businesses are open during the winter, are in businesses. So that people have a place to get food and you know, shop for some things that they need. Our fear was that you would see a number of businesses closed during the winter because they couldn’t afford to stay open,” he said.
The grant is designed to offset wintertime operational costs. The municipality set aside up to $300,000 of sales tax savings to give selected qualifying businesses a monthly stipend.
The grant is divided into three tiers: tier one for restaurants and grocery, tier two for retail storefronts, and tier three for newspapers, fuel services, and salons. Restaurants may receive up to 25,000 over the course of the season, storefront up to $6,500, and newspapers, fuel and salons up to $5,000.
The municipality has set the application deadline for this Friday, October 9th and plans to award the grants by October 15th. Three applications were in by Monday afternoon.
The assembly approved community grant funding for Catholic Community Services and North Words Writers’ Symposium. Catholic Community Services will receive the maximum award of $16,438.50 and North Words received the $12,500 it requested.
Amid all the spending, finance chair and assembly member Steve Burnham cautioned that the next budget cycle would be more restrained.
“We have around $15 million from now until our revenue stream increases, which optimistically could be nine or more months away. The upcoming budget sessions will be heartbreaking. And we will be making decisions that we don’t want to make,” he said.
The assembly awarded Hamilton Construction the boat harbor lift station bid for over a half a million dollars. That work will continue into fiscal year 2021 and the project is funded through municipal CPV tax account—that’s an $18 million dollar account that’s not included in Burnham’s $15 million dollar figure for spending.
The assembly postponed a project to replace the finish on the recreation center floor until a more stable economic time. It also directed Manager Brad Ryan to return to the negotiation table with ProHNS to see if the municipality can get a better deal on the Pullen Creek Stream Walk project.
