Along with approving a slew of budgets, the City Council also discussed a potential suit against Airport Pizza and debated the appropriate use of the XYZ Senior Center at their meeting this week.
But before getting to all that, two city council members took the oath of office. Stan Anderson, who narrowly avoided a runoff to maintain his seat, was sworn in alongside Lew Tobin, a newcomer to the council.
Following the ceremonious start, the City Council dove into budget approvals. All budgets presented for their final passage were approved.
It wasn’t until new business that the room tensed up. One issue on the table was a potential lawsuit against Bill Howell, owner of Airport Pizza. This year the city selected twenty-two random businesses to audit and all but one of them complied. City Manager Tom Moran explained that the city “exhausted every internal mechanism to get Airport Pizza to comply.”
While addressing the council, Howell explained that, at first, he simply wasn’t getting the notice of audit.
Howell called the city, who told him he was going to be audited and that they had called many times to inform him of that. “Believe it or not I don’t really check my voicemail,” Howell admitted.
When he finally got the message, Howell first scheduled his audit for midnight, rescheduled for 7am before canceling it completely. In front of the City Council, Howell said he just didn’t trust the auditors, calling them “hired guns,” and said he wanted his own accountant present, Mark Johnson.
After much back and forth, councilman Jerald Brown proposed an amendment to allow Howell until November 1 to comply with original order. The amendment passed, though not without some vented frustration by councilman Matt Culley.
“This is ridiculous that it’s run on this long. I mean, we have twenty-two companies and twenty-one complied, no big deal.” “But,” he added, “the whole midnight reservation and then saying he doesn’t trust us, that’s not fair and that’s a bad precedent to set for the rest of businesses.”
The council also debated allowing the Nome Emergency Shelter Team to utilize the showers and laundry facilities at the XYZ Senior Center. While NEST’s use of the shelter would be limited to between the hours of 5pm and 9pm on one designated night of the week, some council members expressed hesitation. Stan Anderson was among them, arguing that the original grant for the senior center says the facility is legally only supposed to be used for senior activities. But, as Moran argues, NEST’s after hours use wouldn’t disrupt any grant-specified activities.
“The programming that councilman Anderson is referring to that happens at XYZ is done by that time, so it’s a vacant, locked up building when these activities are taking place,” Moran explained. “They’re not disrupting those grant-required activities to provide services for a different population; they’re doing it when it’s closed.”
The issue was tabled until the next city council meeting on October 26.
