Unalaska, AK – The Unalaska City Council meets tonight for its regular session at City Hall.

One of the items on the agenda is a budget request for emergency response equipment to prevent shipwrecks. Mayor Shirley Marquardt wants the city council to approve a $35,000 budget amendment for the next fiscal year. The plan is to purchase two emergency tow packages, which would be stored on land for use in the event of an incident like the near-shipwreck of the Salica Frigo tramper a month ago.

Several Dutch Harbor-based tugboat captains and pilots are in Seattle this week looking at equipment options for Unalaska. Marquardt said the budget request would cover the smaller of two packages the city wants to buy.

"This would be for a tow package that could handle the freighters and trampers we have locally, off our shores and in our port," she said. "It also fits with the tugboats we have here fulltime."

The city will look elsewhere for funding for a larger, more elaborate tow package, which would be stored in the state-owned hangar at the Unalaska Airport and could be airlifted onto a ship in distress by a Coast Guard helicopter.

Marquardt said that the Salica Frigo incident was a wakeup call to the city, which realizes it can no longer depend on other agencies to deal with shipping safety concerns in the Aleutians.

"I just really felt it was important for our own community to take that first step," she said.

The budget amendment gets a first reading at tonight's council meeting, which will be held at City Hall at 7 p.m.