Wasilla Council approves funding for adult hockey league

WASILLA — The Wasilla City Council at its Monday meeting voted unanimously to approve an additional $23,600 to rental revenue, and added another $6,085 to the Curtis Menard Memorial Sports Complex Fund to start a local advanced adult hockey league.

“Sometimes in life, all the stars are aligned for a league to form,” said Joan Klapperich, director of Recreation & Cultural Services Director.

Klapperich said when the lack of an advanced adult league was brought to her attention, she sought out the help of local youth coach Zach Lovelace.

“I said to him, ‘hey can we get a minimum of 40 players — and we’re not talking novices or intermediates, we’re talking advanced. He said, ‘I have 48 currently pre-registered for the first couple of weeks.’”

Funds for the establishing of a new hockey league wasn’t the only thing that passed unanimously on Monday night. The council also voted 6-0 to certify the results of the Oct. 3 election, which saw the re-election of Mayor Bert Cottle, as well as the re-election of council members Mike Dryden, Stu Graham and Glenda Ledford, who ran unopposed. The lone proposition, a one-percent sales tax to support expanding Wasilla Police Department facilities passed 57 percent to 42 percent.

On the consent agenda, the city council moved on agenda Ordinance 17-22, amending the budget to accept $13,200 from state and federal funds for the acquisition of automated external defibrillators.

Earlier in the meeting, Graham addressed managers of city departments on a number of issues. To Public Works Director Archie Giddings he inquired as to reports about vandalism of cash boxes at boat launches and other parks sites and whether the city’s boxes were protected with the best available materials.

Giddings said they were, and that the problem he’s been seeing has involved a different sort of vandalism.

“The vandalism occurring isn’t destruction so much as an attempt to insert a sticky material where the envelope does not go all the way down the box and then later they come back to get it,” Giddings said. “At this point we have done what we can, but unless there’s some other kind of monitoring with cameras, but on a further point, it’s not just Wasilla but the state that has had issues as well.”

Graham asked Chief of Police Gene Belden about the recent departure of two police dispatchers and whether that was indicative of a larger problem.

“One individual resigned because they couldn’t get security clearance and another individual due to family issues,” Belden responded. “Is it a revolving door? Yes it is, it’s a continuous recruit, recruit, recruit.”

Belden added that such turnover is common in dispatch departments everywhere. He said he doesn’t believe salaries are the issue.

“The money issue has never come up; and I believe we’re about middle of the road (pay-wise),” Belden said. “All dispatch centers have the same problem. A lot of them, once you get a good cadre (departures) seem to slow down because they’re settled in.”

The council was scheduled to go into executive session at the conclusion of Monday’s meeting to discuss the ongoing sale of the Meta Rose Square property, but Cottle said that matter would have to be put off until the next meeting on Oct. 23 because paperwork was not completed due to the illness of an individual involved with producing said paperwork.