CSP, Featured, Vision Fairbanks

City creates budget reserve for the Community Service Patrol

The Fairbanks City Council voted unanimously to create a budget reserve to support the operations of the Community Service Patrol.  The CSP improves the business climate downtown while looking after the welfare of chronically inebriated people who may also be homeless and suffer mental disorders. Terms of the money’s use have yet to be determined by the Council.

The City has long supported the Community Service Patrol, but it is unusual for the Council to fund the CSP’s operations directly.  Gaining direct support has been a priority for the Downtown Association the past year – after realizing in February that once again the program was under-funded, and that municipalities elsewhere typically fund such programs to relieve police and emergency services.

Initial efforts to fund the CSP revolved around the City’s general funds. In a tough budget year, however, the City Council considered that the only funds available for this unique program were hotel/motel monies.  The reserve was created by re-allocating hotel/motel tax revenues that would have otherwise funded budgets of the Fairbanks Economic Development Corporation and the Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau, not from the discretionary monies granted to Fairbanks non-profits.