Members of the Borough Assembly, Borough Manager Tim Rooney, and Borough Clerk Kim Flores will be spending time during the next few months engaged in an exhaustive review of the Wrangell Municipal Code.
Flores, who is working closely with the group on the code review, said the process will take nearly a year and is meant to bring Wrangell’s codebook into compliance with Alaska State law and Title 29, which covers the operation of municipal government.
The review committee, which is comprised of Flores, Rooney, and assembly members Don McConachie, Bill Privett and David Jack, plans on spending one day each month reviewing the codebook, beginning with Section 1 and running through Section 20, plus tables and the index.
“We’re going through the entire code and borough charter to see if there are any changes, upgrades or updates that need to be done,” Flores said. “We have determined that we would begin with chapters one and two, and anticipate each meeting we have lasting about an hour.”
Flores added that she wasn’t sure whether the committee, which began their work on June 6, would provide their input to the Borough Assembly as they go along, or whether they would wait to present any proposed changes after going through the complete process.
Assemblyman Jack said the process is necessary to bring Wrangell into compliance with state law – and to iron out differences between municipal and Alaska law, which takes precedence.
“A lot of the code is not in compliance with Title 29,” Jack said. “Just one example of that is, during our last special election, the borough ordinance said there could be no electioneering within 100 feet of the polling place. State statute specifies, though, that it be 200 feet. It is little things like that which need to be changed, things that have been found to be not quite proper.”
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