John Diumenti, airport director, is named interim Palmer city manager

Palmer’s city council named John Diumenti, the city airport director, as interim city manager at a special meeting Tuesday, June 15. Diumenti replaces Steve Jellie, the former city manager, who resigned after a tense 60 days in the job.

"A search has now started for a permanent city manager," Mayor Steve Carrington said.

The council also received a first draft of a Fiscal Year 2025 budget for the city, which will be given a public review and likely changed, several council members said Tuesday night.

A budget is required to be submitted to the council by city administrators by Oct. 15.

The draft budget had been prepared earlier by Jellie. It includes a controversial proposal to maintain reduced staffing in the city’s police and emergency response dispatch center. The center normally employs six dispatchers and

a supervisor but three of the dispatchers has resigned recently to go to work for work at Wasilla’s emergency dispatch service.

With the departures, Jellie decided to leave the staffing at the lower level in the draft budget, although the council would make the ultimate decision. It is not known why the three dispatchers left but higher pay and the opportunity to join a collective bargaining unit were likely factors.

Jellie also wanted to explore merging the Palmer and Wasilla dispatch centers to achieve cost savings but the idea had not progressed far at the time of this resignation. Since then, Wasilla contacted Palmer to explore the idea further, Carrington said at the Oct. 15 meeting.

Palmer budget director Gina Davis told the council Tuesday that Palmer’s budget was stretched. Cost reductions were proposed in the draft budget to allow city funds to be reserved for the coming construction of a new public library, replacing one that was damaged by a roof cave-in. Any city funds going toward the library would reduce the amount to be borrowed with

general obligation bonds.