Palmer amends Who Let the Girls Out grants

PALMER — The Palmer City Council denied a council community grant request and amended another submitted for the yearly spring fling local business celebration ‘Who Let the Girls Out’ that is scheduled for April 23 and 24.

The Palmer City Council has discussed at length the process for granting funds to community organizations in recent years, and that proved no different on Tuesday. Action Memorandum 21-025 was an application for a grant for $2,500 submitted by Josh Fryfogle for the WLTGO event in its 11th year of promoting local businesses in Palmer.The application states that WLTGO is “aimed to help support local, year round, brick and mortar businesses in Palmer.” The application submitted listed $63,000 in revenue including over $20,000 in cash and only $18,632 in expenditures. The application says that up to 3,000 attendees have participated in recent years and that all funding is received from locally owned businesses, participating businesses, community organizations or companies that sponsor the efforts. The council’s only approval this calendar year of Council Community grants prior to Tuesday was $5,000 for the Hatcher Pass Avalanche Center.

“Who let the girls out has been a very inspiring program that has looked to unite the community in a little retail therapy over the years, but I would be remiss if I did not ask to have this reduced because of this amount and as I have stated in my opinions over the years that I believe that we have portioned out too large of pieces to this economic stimulus and encouragement tool that we’ve tried to utilize,” said Councilman Richard Best.

Best immediately moved to reduce the amount of AM 21-025 from $2,500 to $2,000. Best’s motion was followed by a motion to postpone from Councilwoman Dr. Jill Valerius, which passed unanimously. City Manager John Moosey notified the council that he would collaborate with the organizers on what type of in-kind donations would be appropriate.

“I was pretty confused actually on the detailed budget that they show,” said Deputy Mayor Sabrena Combs. “Their income has $63,100 and their expenditures has $18,000 so, I even with cash, they have a lot more revenue than expenditures. I love this event but I’m not really sure why they’re asking for $2,500 when they appear to have it covered.”

Fryfogle submitted a second application for $2,000 for the Who let the runner’s out 5k and 1k run. Councilwoman Julie Berberich moved to amend the total from $2,000 to $1,000, which passed unanimously.

“This is another one of those great events within our town,” said Best. “It’s great to see them continue and I do appreciate if we could be a little more tight fisted with our small amount that we have. We could spread it out to other groups and have the opportunity to still encourage other groups to participate in our community council grant.”

Palmer set aside $12,000 in community council grants for the calendar year, and has now appropriated $6,000 in total to HPAC and WLTGO.

Manager Moosey said that city of Palmer facilities would be open to the public on May 3 and that residents would be able to pay utility bills online following the July 1 billing cycle.

“We think this is a big improvement,” said Moosey.

The council heard a presentation from Alaska Waste Operations Manager Ron Stevens on the curbside recycling program coming to the Valley. Stevens said that 34 percent of Anchorage customers are now curbside recycling with Alaska Waste and that they have partnered with Alaska Demolition for trucking. Last year through a recycling partnership with the Mat-Su Borough School District, Alaska Waste saved 564,000 lbs from entering the Borough landfill.

“We’ll be able to extend the longevity of our landfill here in the Valley, keep the prices down on that landfill because as it gets full it the prices do go up there, so we’ll be able to keep the prices down,” said Stevens. “People want to do the right thing. They want to be able to recycle ad we just want to make it as easy as possible for everybody to be able to recycle.”