Tuesday night’s City Council budget work session brought good news for Unalaska's non-profits. A $1,084,458 budget allocation for community support funding means there’s plenty to go around. That represents a 35 percent increase over last year and about $30,000 more than the combined total requested by non-profits.

City Council approved funding for an emergency mooring buoy on Friday during a special meeting. Mayor Shirley Marquardt explained during the meeting that the buoy is necessary to make Unalaska a true port of refuge for vessels transiting the Great Circle shipping route.

Currently, there’s nowhere for extremely large vessels in distress to tie up. Marquardt says that’s caused problems a number of times over the last few years, particularly with the disabled bulk carrier Golden Seas. The vessel’s deep draft made it impossible to bring it into the Port of Dutch Harbor or Captain’s Bay, so it ended up anchoring off of Hog Island in gale force winds and 25-foot seas. Although the Golden Seas’ anchor held, Marquardt pointed to it as an example of a potential disaster.

A grant from the Denali Commission will cover the cost of the $250,000 project. Marquardt says that’s a bargain compared to the initial cost estimate of $10 million. She says the city was able to bring down the price by enlisting the help of Shell Oil and its subcontractors. Harvey Gulf is shipping the buoy’s components from Louisiana for free and Shell is going to use its vessels and equipment to install the buoy. It’s slated to be deployed in Broad Bay this summer.

Unalaska is a designated ‘port of refuge’ for disabled vessels in the Aleutian Islands, but when it comes to the massive ships that pass by on the Great Circle route, that title doesn’t mean much. That’s because many of them are too big to tie up at the docks and there’s nowhere else for them to securely anchor.

That could change soon though. City Council is holding a special meeting Friday to decide whether to fund an emergency mooring buoy. City Manager Chris Hladick says the process is being rushed because the city is getting help from Shell Oil sub-contractor Harvey Gulf. The company has offered to transport the anchor, chain and buoy up from Louisiana for free, but only if it’s on the boats that are leaving for Alaska next week.

Emotions ran high at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting during a discussion of utilities at the city’s new eight unit housing complex. Some tenants of the building are upset over a shared utility charge they say was not part of their lease agreement. Full disclosure: the reporter is a non-lease-holding tenant of the building. 

The utility charge in dispute covers the cost of running the building’s boiler room, common area lighting, water and sewer. Heating is included in the rent. Tenant Roger Bacon said at the meeting that when he moved in, he understood the shared costs to be part of the rental rate.

Every year, Unalaska sends a delegation to the state capital to lobby for local projects. But what actually happens on these trips?

KUCB’s Alexandra Gutierrez traveled to Juneau to find out.

What seemed like a routine budget amendment at Tuesday night's City Council meeting ended up resulting in a lengthy discussion about scrap metal disposal.  The amendment proposed transferring $60,000 from the general fund into a scrap metal removal fund.  In a memorandum to Council, City Manager Chris Hladick explained that the money would be used to pay a contractor to remove scrap metal from the landfill and the rest of the island this summer.  

The City of Unalaska has agreed to settle a lawsuit with the Environmental Protection Agency over thousands of Clean Water Act violations by the City’s wastewater treatment plant. 

"This is one of those times that David actually beat Goliath,"  Unalaska Mayor Shirley Marquardt said at Tuesday night's City Council meeting.  The Council voted unanimously at the meeting to sign a $340,000 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.  That’s much less than the $150 million dollar fine the EPA had originally sought.

City Council will take up a variety of budgetary issues at tonight’s meeting.  The biggest money decision will be whether to accept a $4 million grant from the State of Alaska for construction of the new wastewater treatment plant.  On the expenditures side, Council will consider whether to grant construction contracts totaling a half a million dollars to a single firm and whether to fund a $50,000 power supply study. 

Unalaska’s non-profits may see bigger grants this year.

According to the city’s finance department, over a million dollars will be dedicated to community support program, a boost of about 35 percent over last year. That program provides grants to nine of the city’s non-profit groups. Organizations like Unalaskans Against Sexual Assault and Family Violence, the Museum of the Aleutians, Illiuliuk Family and Health Services, and Unalaska Community Broadcasting have all been top beneficiaries traditionally.