Valdez budget would add $205,000 for events, a hatchery group and workforce contracts

The Valdez City Council on Thursday, Oct. 22, will review a proposed 2027 budget that would add about $205,000 to the city's economic development spending, with most of the new money going to community events, the Valdez Fisheries Development Association and workforce development contracts.

The proposal would bring the Economic Development Department to $905,974, up 29% from the $700,906 the council adopted for 2026, according to the city's work session presentation. That comparison starts from a small base. The department spent between $1.24 million and $1.49 million a year from 2023 through 2025, and it estimates it will spend about $1.31 million this year, nearly twice what the council adopted.

Where the new money would go

Requests from city-sponsored events total $185,128, up 44% from $128,998 this year. Two requests account for nearly all of the increase. Gold Rush Days is asking for $25,000, up from $10,000. The Chugach Mountain Institute Foundation is asking for $40,128 for a new event, the Heart of the Chugach Wilderness Experience, the largest single request on the list, just ahead of the Valdez Fly-in & Air Show's $40,000.

Events the city runs itself, including New Year's, the Fourth of July and Coast Guard welcome events, total $52,500, up from $49,000.

The fisheries association's annual request would return to what the presentation calls its standard amount, $136,277, about $63,000 more than this year. A restructuring of workforce development contracts adds $62,500.

The bigger asks

Two larger items sit outside those numbers. The association has asked the city for $5 million for capital investment, which the presentation says was discussed at a city project night Oct. 15. The presentation doesn't say what the money would pay for.

The city is also holding $590,000 in public accommodations tax money in a council contingency fund for Discover Valdez, formerly the Valdez Convention & Visitors Bureau, until the organization "is active and formally organizes a budget request," the presentation says. The group's 2026 budget narrative projected about $1.24 million in income, including $510,500 from special events such as Snow Fest, the Black Bear Festival and Oktoberfest.

The hatchery

The association runs hatchery programs supporting commercial and sport fishing in Valdez and Prince William Sound. Before its first coho returned in the mid-1980s, fewer than 10,000 coho came back to the eastern part of Prince William Sound each year, and returns now often top 100,000, according to a memo McKinley Research Group prepared for the association and submitted to the state Board of Fisheries. Most salmon caught in the town's salmon derbies, the oldest of which dates to 1952, come from the hatchery, the memo says.

The memo says the city funded the hatchery's coho feed program with an annual grant of $120,000 to $160,000 from 2023 to 2025.