The MSB Assembly had a “Special Meeting” up at the Talkeetna Library on Friday, January 12th, at 11 a.m.
The only item on the agenda was a “Financial Overview and Discussion of the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget.”
Note: This meeting was NOT necessary as the budget discussions do not really get underway until later in the Spring. The MSB Departments didn’t give their formal budget presentations until March 27, 2018, at the special annual budget meeting in Assembly chambers.
This Talkeetna meeting was ODD in several respects. There are no minutes for this meeting available and the meeting was not properly recorded. (I saw a notation somewhere that the recording was garbled. Hmmmm.)
Also, someone who attended the meeting told me that there may have been a vote on something but he did not catch it. This person told me – the MSB is sneaky. If they want to pull a fast one, the way they do it is to hold a special meeting outside of the main Dorothy Jones Borough building in Palmer and NOT record it properly. Also, if it is a daytime meeting in an outlying location in the middle of winter, not many members of the public are likely to attend.
My source tells me this meeting was packed with MSB staff and barely any members of the public. Why did so many staffers need to travel up to Talkeetna for such a meeting?
In any case, the public paid the bill for the MSB Assembly members and staffers to have a very nice lunch at the Denali Brew Pub after the meeting. The cost was $684.28. Plus, we paid for all the gas for everyone affiliated with the MSB to drive up there. (Only certain employees – Directors – can use the MSB credit cards. So, for example, the MSB clerk’s gas charge of almost $60 for this Talkeetna field trip is listed, but other employees need to put in for reimbursements, so their gas charges won’t show up on these credit card statements. Also, only the MSB Mayor has his own credit card; other Assembly members also just get reimbursements later.)