Take the time to snuggle up and get comfortable with the budget because things are going to get interesting. By the end of the Assembly Finance Committee’s May 3 meeting, the pending list of proposed budget items now totals $6.1 million.
The committee heard a presentation from the Juneau Commission on Aging and put a funding request of $10,000 on the pending list. The funding would allow the advisory body to have staff support through the Juneau Economic Development Council.
The committee also heard a presentation on Best Starts for Juneau Kids, a pre-Kindergarten program for kids ages 0 to 5. Best Starts is requesting $2.18 million for a 2-year pilot program – about $790,000 for FY19 and $1.3 million for FY20. Both items were put on the pending list.
The Kinder Ready program for 4-year olds presented to the Finance Committee and requested $140,000 to add an additional Kinder Ready program within the school district. That got put on the pending list.
Aside from those, the committee added more on the pending list of proposed budget items: funding for two additional police officers ($300,000), increase police recruitment budget ($35,000), two civilian investigators ($180,000), net funding for a Community Service Officer ($90,000), Douglas Gravesite maintenance ($10,000), video camera grant ($50,000), and contract parking enforcement ($75,000). Note that a few of these items were originally on the Mayor’s Pending List, got moved off to be discussed, and are now officially on the pending list.
Aside from all the pending list stuff, the Finance Committee approved the City Manager’s Marine Passenger Fee Recommendations. Coming up on May 9, the Finance Committee is getting a memo on waste management/RecycleWorks and will start digging in on the pending list. Exciting!