Assembly - Regular Meeting

Okay, it's six p.m. I'd like to call the December 12th, 2023 regular meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly to order. This meeting is also being conducted through the Zoom meeting platform and can also be heard on KDLL FM 91.9, KBBI AM 890. and KIBH FM 97.1. And I will be the presiding officer for this meeting as President Johnson, Mr. Elam, and Mr. Tupper will all be participating remotely. Now, if we could stand for the pledge. Now it will be time for the invocation. We will now receive an invocation offered by Iris Fontana. You may either remain standing or be seated. No one is required to participate. Ms. Fontana.

Is this thing on? Okay, great. Let us stand now unbound and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things.

true.

Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is done. Hail Satan. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll?

President Johnson?

Here.

Vice President Cox?

Here.

Miss Cooper? Here. Miss Eglund? Here. Mr. Elam?

Here.

Mr. Hibbert?

Here.

Mr. Ribbons?

Here.

Mr. Tunseth?

Here.

Mr. Tupper?

Here.

You have a quorum, Vice President.

Thank you. Now we will go to committee reports. First on the docket is Finance, Mr. Ribbons.

Thank you. The finance committee met at 1500 today and we went through the following ordinances for public hearing. Ordinance 2023-19-25, accepting and appropriating funding from the state of Alaska in the amount of $394,725 and approving projects to be completed for community purposes under the 2023-2024 Community Assistance Program and that was brought to us by the mayor. Also under public hearings for tonight, Ordinance 2023-19-26, redirecting $15,000 in U.S. Treasury, state, and local fiscal recovery funds from the bridge infrastructure project to the cybersecurity and broadband program project and expanding the scope of road service area locally funded bridge project brought to us by the mayor. There was a bit of conversation about that, and our understanding is there will be a request for proposals at the beginning of next calendar year. Then there's Ordinance 2023-19-27, accepting and appropriating $36,000 from the State of Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to upgrade the security gate motor brought to us by the mayor. That's a security gate motor over at the OEM facility in Soldotna. Number four, ordinance 2023-19-28 appropriating commercial passenger vessel tax proceeds received from the state of Alaska in the amount of $304,177.50 and allocating $303,825 to the city of Seward and $352.50 to the city of Homer brought to us by the mayor. And When I move to add that to the consent agenda, I also will have an amendment for that, which I will read at that time. Under new business, we talked about resolution 2023-081, adopting an alternate allocation method for the FY24 shared fisheries and business tax program and certifying that this allocation method fairly represents the distribution of significant effects of fisheries business activity in the Cook Inlet fisheries management area brought to us by the mayor. And then ordinances for introduction, ordinance 2023-26, confirming the assessment role for the Oxford Avenue Utility Special Assessment District and establishing the method for terminating assessments and making refunds to property owners brought to us by the mayor. And the hearing on that will be the 2nd of January of 2024. Ordinance 2023-27, confirming the assessment role for the South Bend Bluff Estates Road Improvement Assessment District brought to us by the mayor. The hearing on that will also be on the 2nd of January 2024. Ordinance 2023-19-29, Deobligating Bond Proceeds in the Central Emergency Service Area Capital Project Fund and Appropriating the Remaining Bond Proceeds in Interest Earned to Fund the Annual Debt Service for the Central Emergency Service Area General Obligation Bonds brought to us by the Mayor. The hearing will be on the same date as the previous ones. Ordinance 2023-19-30, redirecting previously appropriated bond proceeds and interest from the 2014 general obligation school bonds. and authorizing distribution of previously appropriated state and local fiscal recovery funds to the Hope School replacement project brought to us by the mayor. The hearing also will be on the 2nd of January. We had a bit of discussion about that one, and that roof replacement project is more than just the scan to keep the snow and rain off. It also is going to take a look at the structural aspect of it and hopefully be doing some thermal efficiencies in the roof as well. And then finally, KPB 5668 requesting formal assembly protest to the renewal of a marijuana product manufacturing facility license due to unpaid taxes for Green Star Incorporated doing business as Gold Star Concentrates. License number 23692. It's our understanding that those unpaid taxes have been satisfied and I will be requesting removing that from our contract. agenda for this evening and we concluded this committee meeting at 3 28 and that's the report that i have thank you thank you mr ribbons um next will be our lands committee and the report will be from miss eklund

Thank you, Vice Chair Cox. We started our lands committee meeting at 345. We have a public hearing on ordinance discussion. Ordinance 2023-25, approving Anchors Way North Subdivision Single Family Residential R1 Local Option Zoning District and amending KPB 21.46.040 brought to us by the Mayor. The process for local option zoning is outlined in the Borough Code Chapter 2144. There are Several different types of zoning that you can have anywhere from single family, residential, mixed use, small lot. And this R1 allows... Single family dwelling units are the principal use. They can have parks, playgrounds, open space, schools, community centers, libraries, churches, and home occupations. What is prohibited is selling the lot for a non-allowed use, having two or more travel trailers or motorhomes, and no more than two of either inoperable or unregistered vehicles. There are allowed uses and prohibited uses on all of these different zoning districts. This one is coming to us as a raw land and they have asked for a local option zoning prior to selling to residents. New business, we had two items, KPB 5661, a petition to vacate a portion of Park Road and Sarah Jane Street right-of-way of Rappi Park Subdivision, the Kiske area, Platt KN 87-105, KPB File 2023-114V, brought to us by Mayor Machicki. At its regularly scheduled meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Commission on November 13, 2023, the proposed vacation was approved by unanimous consent. The requirement for this vacation is that the landowner provide an equal or better alternate lake access, and this petitioner has met that requirement. The second item is KPB-5660, Petition to Vacate a Portion of Polk Avenue Right-of-Way and Associated Utility Easements of Jax Estate Subdivision Salmon Nest Addition, California Area, Plat KM78-4, KPB File 2023-115B, brought to us by Mayor Machicki. And at its regularly scheduled meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Commission on November 13, 2023, the proposed vacation was approved by unanimous consent. This petition is to move a partial cul-de-sac away from the shoreline to a more appropriate location on the petitioner's property. And that is the end of the Land Committee Report.

Thank you, Ms. Eklund. And one note, Ordinance 2023-25 is not eligible for consent. Next would be two of our committees, the Policies and Procedures and Legislative Committee, were both brought to us by Ms. Cooper. Ms. Cooper, when you're ready.

Thank you, Mr. Cox. The Policies and Procedures Committee met at 4, and we went into executive session to discuss two legal items, legal matters, and the mayor will be giving his report here shortly. For new business, we have a... confirming appointments, which would be Brent Johnson to the Kenai Peninsula College Council, that term expires 2026, and Mike Tepper to Kachemak Bay Research Reserve Community Council, and that term expires with his office. And then we have some additional advisory planning or advisory members that the mayor will be discussing in his report. We have an ordinance that will be introduced. It's a lay down and I will be asking for this to go on the consent agenda. It's ordinance 2023-28 adopting a new borough logo and amending KPB 1.04.050 regarding the borough logo and this is brought to us by the mayor with a hearing on 116-24. There are copies of this new logo at the back, and it will be posted on our website. The ordinance also allows us to change that by resolution going forward. With most things being paperless now, that expense of changing that logo out isn't ridiculous. It will actually be more affordable because there's not as many colors on that. So we'll have a public hearing on that next month. And... That's all we have for policies and procedures. Legislative Committee met at 4.45, and we have a resolution 2023.08.2, and that will also be on the consent agenda, and that's expressing support for the Seward Community Health Center building, a new clinic building at 431 to 501 First Avenue in Seward. This is a resolution asking us to support their work. They are not asking for any funds from the borough. They have received some funds already, and we'll be watching that progress as they move along. And that's the end of my report.

Thank you, Ms. Cooper. Next, if we could get a motion to approve the agenda and consent agenda for Mr. Ribbons.

I move to approve the agenda and the consent agenda

Thank you. Do we have any amendments to the agenda and the consent agenda? Madam Clerk.

Ordinances 2023-1926 and 2023-25 were updated to include advisory board recommendations pursuant to KPB 2240-050F. Thank you.

Are there any other amendments to the agenda or consent agenda? Mr. Ribbons.

I move to add ordinance 2023-19-25, which was the one for accepting and appropriating funding from the state of Alaska and approving projects to be completed for community purposes brought to us by the mayor. And I ask for unanimous.

Is there any opposition?

Seeing none, we'll move that forward. I would also like to request that we add to the consent agenda ordinance 2023-19-26, and this is the one for redirecting $500,000 from the U.S. Treasury and local fiscal recovery funds from the bridge infrastructure project to the cybersecurity broadband project, and expanding the scope of road service area locally funded bridge project. And I ask for unanimous.

Is there any opposition to adding that to the consent agenda? Seeing none, ordinance 2023-19-26 is added.

And I would like to request that we add to the consent agenda ordinance 2023-19-27. This was the one for accepting and appropriating $36,000 from the State of Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to upgrade the security gate motor. And I would ask for unanimous.

Is there any opposition? Seeing none, we will add ordinance 2023-19-27 to the consent agenda.

Thank you. I would also like to add to the consent agenda and request that we add Ordinance 2023-19-28, appropriating commercial passenger vessel tax proceeds received from the State of Alaska in the amount of $304,177.50 and allocating the monies at $303,825 to the City of Seward and $352.50 to the City of Homer, and I would ask for unanimous. Is there any opposition?

Seeing none, Ordinance 2023-19-28 is added to the consent agenda.

And furthermore, I would like to request that we amend that, hold on a second here, let me see if I can get my ducks in a row here, that we amend Ordinance 2023-19-28 as follows to Section 4. It will say this ordinance shall be effective retroactively to July 1, 2023, and I would ask for unanimous.

Is there any opposition? Seeing none, ordinance 2023-19-28 is on consent agenda as amended.

And one more, and that is KPB 5668, and that is the request for formal assembly protest to the renewal of a marijuana product manufacturing facility license due to unpaid taxes for Green Star Incorporated doing business as Gold Star Concentrates, license number 23692. I would request that we remove this from the agenda, and I ask for unanimous.

Does that have to be unanimous or is it just if it's requested?

It's just requested.

Okay. And there can't be opposition or does it matter? Okay. So that is removed. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Yep. No problem. Ms. Cooper.

Thank you very much. I would like to add Ordinance 2023-28 to the agenda, and I'm also asking to put on consent agenda in this motion, and that is adopting a new borough logo and amending KPB 1.04.050 regarding the borough logo, and I would ask for unanimous.

Is there any opposition? Seeing none, we will add ordinance 2023-28 as amended to the consent agenda. And are there any other items? Yes, please.

So I'd like to remove resolution 2023-082 from the consent agenda. That's the support on the Seward Community Health Center.

Okay, and that will be removed. Okay, in a moment, the clerk will read the titles of the items on the consent agenda. After she reads each of them, you'll have an opportunity to testify about them. All items that stay on the consent agenda will be approved or set for public hearings, whichever is the case, when the assembly approves the agenda and consent agenda. Madam Clerk, please read the consent agenda items.

November 7th, 2023, regular assembly meeting minutes. KPB 5662, a resolution commending the Seward High School girls cross country team as the Division II Alaska State cross country champions for the year 2023, sponsored by the mayor. KPB 5663, a resolution commending the Seward High School nine-man football team as the Alaska State champions for the year 2023. KPB 5664, a resolution commending the Kenai Central High School football team as the 2023 Division III Alaska State Champions, sponsored by the mayor. Ordinance 2023-1925, accepting and appropriating funding from the state of Alaska in the amount of $394,725 and approving projects to be completed for the community purposes under the 2023-2024 Community Assistance Program sponsored by the Mayor. Ordinance 2023-1926, redirecting $500,000 in U.S. Treasury, state, and local fiduciary recovery funds from the bridge infrastructure project to the cybersecurity and broadband project, and expanding the scope of road service area locally funded bridge project, sponsored by the mayor. Ordinance 2023-1927, accepting and appropriating $36,000 from the State of Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to upgrade a security gate motor. Ordinance 2023-1928, as amended, appropriating commercial passenger vessel tax proceeds received from the State of Alaska in the amount of $304,177.50 and allocating $303,825 to the City of Seward and $352.50 to the City of Homer. Sponsored by the Mayor. Resolution 2023-081, adopting an alternate allocation method for the FY24 Shared Fisheries Business Tax Program and certifying that this allocation method fairly represents the distribution of significant effects of fishery business activity in the Cook Inlet Fisheries Management Area. Sponsored by the Mayor. Resolution 2023-080, confirming appointments of assembly members to non-borough boards, sponsored by President Johnson. Ordinance 2023-26, confirming the assessment role for the Oxford Avenue Utility Special Assessment District and establishing the method for terminating assessments and making refunds to property owners, sponsored by the mayor, hearing on January 2nd. Ordinance 2023-27, confirming the assessment role for the South Bend Bluff Estates Road Improvement Assessment District, sponsored by the Mayor, hearing on January 2nd. Ordinance 2023-1929, Deobligating Bond Proceeds in the Central Emergency Service Area Capital Project Fund and Appropriating the Remaining Bond Proceeds and Interest Earned to Fund the Annual Debt Service for Central Emergency Service Area General Obligation Bonds. Sponsored by the Mayor. Hearing on January 2nd. Ordinance 2023-1930, redirecting previously appropriated bond proceeds and interest from the 2014 general obligation school bonds and authorizing distribution of previously appropriated state and local fiscal recovery funds to the Hope School Roof Replacement Project, sponsored by the Mayor, hearing on January 2nd. Ordinance 2023-28, adopting a new borough logo and amending KPB 1.04.050 regarding the borough logo. Sponsored by the mayor, hearing on January 16th. KPB 5661, petition to vacate a portion of Park Road and Sarah Jane Street right of way of Rapi Park subdivision, Nikiski area. Plot KN87105, KPB file 2023-114V. KPB 5660, petition to vacate a portion of Polk Avenue right-of-way and associated utility easements of Jackson State Subdivision, Salmon Nest Addition, Kalifornski Area, Plaque KN784. KPB File 2023-115V. KPB 5658, confirming appointments to the Anchor Point Advisory Planning Commission, Jeff Kirchner, Seat G, term to expire September 30, 2024. Nikitsky Advisory Planning Commission, Sukovic, Seat C, term expires September 30, 2024. KPP 5659, confirming an appointment to the Eastern Highway Emergency Service Area, Jessica Hogan, Seat E, term expires October 2026. That is the consent agenda.

Thank you. And we would now like to hear a request for approval of the agenda and consent agenda. Mr. Ribbons.

Mr. Vice President, we need to go out to public comment, please.

That is correct. So with that, if there's anyone that would like to testify on any item that is listed on that list of the consent agenda, you'll now have three minutes. Do we have anybody written down?

Excuse me, Mr. President, I do see President Johnson has his hand raised on Zoom before we proceed.

Yes, please. Mr. President. I'll give him a second, and maybe that was an accident.

Oh, I'm sorry, Vice President Cox. I found my mute button. I didn't mean to put my hand up yet. I wanted to do it right after public comment to note that I have a possible conflict of interest on the money that goes out to the 25 communities.

Okay. If you would please do that again so we'll remember to take that up. I would much appreciate it, and it's nice to hear from you. If there's anyone in the public who would like to testify on any of the items that were read on the consent agenda, now would be the time. Ms. Clerk, is there anybody on a list or on online? No? Is there anybody in the public who would like to speak to any item on the consent agenda? Please come forward and state your name and your area you live.

There we go. My name is Nick Connor. Can I talk about the gate for the OEM building? Is that okay to talk about? Is that on the agenda?

It's not on the agenda right now, so that would be in our next section on any items not appearing on the agenda. Okay, I'll come back. Okay, thanks. Pardon? It is on the agenda, so it's on the regular. Oh, it is on the consent agenda. It is on the consent agenda, so go right ahead. Okay.

So the OEM building, I've been working with Peter Michicki. There's some big problems over there, and my concern is that we're going to reward bad behavior with more security instead of addressing the problems over there. The gate, like I said, has been broken for, I'm guessing, like 13 years. I don't know if anybody knows how long it's been broken. It's been broken for a pretty long time. The gate's always open. The gate is in the back of the building. I don't know if the gate is there because the moose are a problem. There is a keypad there. The gate, the area is very secure already. It's right next to the police department, right next to the fire station. The OEM building, as far as I understand it, is now closed to the public. So there'd be no reason to have to secure the gate because if anybody is there, slot in the police department could be there in just a couple seconds. I believe that the gate is going to be an expense that we don't need to have because those gates, I'm familiar with the lift master and the different kinds of brands of gates out there. They get covered in snow, they get frozen, and then dispatchers won't be able to get to work or be able to leave work. because the gate will not function correctly. They have batteries in them. You'd have to have training on how do people to actually access the gate to be able to push the button. It just, to me, it seems like it was brought up because the OEM building does not want to have the public go to that facility. Um, the building, I believe it was somewhere around 13Million dollars to build. Um, it should be open to the public. It is not open to the public. Um, I have been told that there's been public meetings there since its inception. And all of the public meetings have been moved now to different areas. Because the Brenda Albrecht, who is in charge of the building, does not want the public there. So that's my whole point is that the gate would solidify the bad behavior by the administration over there that has decided to keep public in the community access to the things that they do there. The emergency management building should not be closed to the public. And I hope any questions you guys have.

Are there any clarifying questions? Yes, Mayor.

I don't have a question. I just have a statement. I just wanted to remind Nick and I know Nick knows this. I made the decision to close the building and the reason I made the decision to close the building is we're going to be consistent with all borough residents. So we've made the decision to close the building to the public. If that should change at some point in the future, then that'll be a future discussion point, but for now it's closed. And the gate, closing the gate has multiple reasons. One of them, you brought up the moose thing, you brought up the fact that the building is secure, but the bottom line is, if there were an issue, the ability to close that gate, in my view, is a positive security step. So I think it's an appropriate expenditure. I'm also kind of a guy that likes to fix things that are broken. We installed it for a reason, and we have some things around the burrow that are in ill repair, and that's going to change. I think it's important that if it's there and it was designed into the operation of that building, that it should function. So I think there's a couple reasons for that. But you and I have talked about some of this, and I always appreciate you being willing to step forward. And in this case, I do support the replacement of the gate operator.

Thank you for the clarification, Mayor Michicki. Ms. Eklund.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. I just wanted to make a comment. I've worked in several emergency operations centers during storms, avalanches, hurricanes, and I would not want public access into the building during those times. So I think it is imperative that we have a gate that closes. So that's my input. Thank you.

So can I get to comment on those? Thank you for your comment. Not at this time. We did three minutes. If you would like to comment on, make comments at the next speaking time, you're more than welcome to.

Okay. Because I thought that it was questions and then I get to reply.

If there was a question. There wasn't a question.

Okay. All right. That's how you guys want to do it.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. If there are any other folks who would like to speak for three minutes on anything that's on the consent agenda... Yes, please. Please state your name and area in which you live.

Jodi is Simacopolis. I live in Sultana. I just wanted to clarify on the KPB 5660, the petition. I just wanted to... Explain that it's Jake Estates, not Jack Estates. I don't know if that matters that much. All the plats and everything say Jake Estates, but this is saying Jack Estates. I don't know if it matters that much.

I will ask the clerk, but I believe that's probably a clerical error.

Thank you.

No problem. Is there anyone else that would like to speak to any item on the consent agenda? Seeing none, we will bring it back to the assembly. What are the assembly's wishes?

Vice-Chancellor, I would request unanimous approval to approve the agenda and the consent agenda as amended.

Unanimous has been asked. Is there any opposition? Seeing none, we have an agenda and consent agenda. And we will move on to the next item. Yes, ma'am.

I believe President Johnson had... You are correct.

Thank you for reminding me. President Johnson.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. Yeah, now I was trying to raise my hand. I just want to note a possible conflict of interest for Ordinance 2023-1925. Some of the money goes to Kasilov Regional Historical Association. I'm the president of that group, and so I have a potential conflict of interest. Thank you.

And I would like to ask the advice of our borough attorney, Mr. Kelly. Do you believe that that kind of item would constitute a conflict?

Thank you. Through the chair, Mr. Cox, I do not believe Mr. Johnson would be receiving a direct or indirect financial benefit from voting on that action, but I

accuse himself from the vote on that item okay then we will ask for that and um i need to look at that i'm that's on which item was on that again mr johnson 25 23 25 23 19 25 okay and since that's a consent agenda item we will just note that in the notes as the clerk will put that in thank you Now we are on to the next item on our agenda, which is commending resolutions and proclamations. I was made aware that Mayor Michicki had some to read tonight. So as you will with all three, if you would like.

Thank you, Mr. President. I don't know if any students are present here tonight for any of the three teams, and if not, we were going to present them at the local chambers, the two sewer teams. It's tough to get over here for a resolution, but I will read them. Just for the public's information, we had to spread these out. We had so many championship teams this year on the Kenai that we're spreading them over three meetings. So, congratulations to the amazing students and athletes of the Kenai Peninsula. This resolution commends the Seward High School Girls Cross Country Team as the Division II Alaska State Cross Country Champions for the year 2023. Whereas the Division II Alaska State Championships were held on Saturday, October 7th at Palmer High School in Palmer, Alaska. And whereas under the direction of head coach Rachel Dow and assistant coach Ron Hemstock, the team won its second straight Division II state title. And whereas the Seahawks were dominant as they defended their title with an amazingly low score, 38, across countries like golf. And six runners in the top 12 and whereas Seward scored 34 points While Grace Christian was second with 57 Sitka was third with 57 And whereas the girls team now has eight state titles. And whereas the members of the winning team are Lacey Bamford, Marin Bickling, Selah Bruckner, Stella Dow, Maddie Haas, Juniper Ingles, Haley Ingles, Leslie Indigo, and Catherine Van Buskirk. And whereas the team's excellent performance is a testament to their determination, commitment, and love of the sport and a credit to their parents, school, and community. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Assembly of the Kenai Peninsula Borough that the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly commends the Seward High School cross-country team, girls cross-country team, for their performance in winning the Division II Alaska State Championship, Section 2, that a special certificate of achievement shall be presented to each member of the winning team. So... Big hand for the Seward High School girls cross country team. And I believe we may have a co-sponsor for both of the Seward and perhaps one of the Kenai teams. We'll see in the future.

Yes, thank you. I'd like to co-sponsor the cross-country, the girls cross-country one, and the nine-man football team one as well.

Go ahead, please. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Cox. Yeah, I'd like to be co-sponsor on the Kenai Central High School football team 2023 Alaska State Championship as well. Thank you.

Ms. Turner, has that been noted? Thank

Yes, thank you. The second resolution commends the Seward High School nine-man football team as the Alaska State champions for the year 2023, whereas the nine-man state championship was held on Saturday, October 7th at Colony High School in Palmer, and whereas the Seahawks 7-0 completed their first undefeated season by overwhelming their greatest rival, And whereas under the director of head coach Tyler Mallory and assistant coaches Cody Gilmore, Cole Peterson, and Nick Woodard, the team defeated Nikitsky 42-0, sorry, Mr. Ribbons, to win the first football state title in school history and the first nine-man state title in Alaska's history. And whereas team members were Kapuno Albino, Amos Ballard, Ronan Bickland, Noah Bird, Judah Bruckner, Micah Bruckner, Emerson Cross, Hunter Forshee Kurtz, Grayson Gardner, Brett Gilmore, William LaRue, Sean McClain, Hunter Price, Noah Price, Gideon Schrock, Derek Senecal, Dustin Shoup, Kaylee Shoup, Cameron Smith, John Van Buskirk, Zachariah Woodard, and Melanie Woodard. And whereas special recognitions were given to Capuno Albino, Offensive Player of the Year, Gideon Schrock, Co-Defensive Player of the Year, and John Van Buskirk, Lineman of the Year. And whereas the team's roster has grown from 13 players in 2020, 21 players in 2023. And whereas the team's excellent performance is a testament to their hard work, dedication, perseverance, and teamwork, and a credit to their parents, school, and community. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Assembly of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. That the nine-man Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly commends the Seward High School nine-man football team for their performance in winning the state championship. Section 2. That a special certificate of achievement shall be presented to each member of the winning team. Section 3. That a copy of this resolution be given to head coach Tyler Mallory. Section 4. That this resolution takes effect immediately upon its adoption. Adopted by the Assembly of the Kenai Peninsula Borough this 12th day of December 2023. Big hand to the Seward High School nine-man football team. This is more reading than I've done in a long time. The third resolution in the final for tonight commends the Kenai Central High School football team as the 2023 Division III Alaska State Champs, whereas the Division III football state championship was held on October 14, 2023 at Service High School in Anchorage, Alaska, whereas the Cardinals, 8-2 overall, won their seventh state championship and their first since 2011. And whereas the coaching team of head coach Jake Brand, offensive coordinator Blake Taplin, line coach Mark Woodhead, assistants Terry Lindeman and Cody McKenna, and managers Zach Armstrong, Ryan Johnson, and Austin Thompson led the Cardinals to victory through the skill, inspiration, leadership, and time they dedicated to the team. And whereas members of the winning team are Daniel Bettis II, Dellen Bird, Mason Capanella, Kempinella, Andrew Cole, Luke Cole, Elliot Hackinson, Rowan Hanson, Robert Hayes, Hayden Hughes, Zane James, Makai Johansson, Cole Langham, Spencer Maugh, Garrett McKenna, Rowan Mosquito, Logan Myers, Antonio Perez, Isaac Potten, Keegan Rommel, Owen Smith, Keona Taylor, Tyler VanSky, Sawyer Vann, William Wilson, Ryan Yeager, and Ezekiel Urege. And whereas special recognitions were awarded to Andrew Cole, Team Lineman of the Year and Player of the Game, Elliot Hackinson, Oh, and Andrew Cole was Team Lineman of the Year and Player of the Game. Elliot Hackinson, Team Defensive Player of the Year and Player of the Game. Robert Hayes, D3 Offensive Player of the Year. Logan Myers, Player of the Game. William Wilson, Team Offensive Player of the Year and Player of the Game. And Ezekiel Urege, Team MVP and Game MVP. And whereas the team's exemplary performance is a testament to their hard work, dedication, and teamwork, and a credit to their parents, school, and community. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Assembly of the Kenai Peninsula Borough that the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly commends the Kenai Central High School Division III football team for their performance in winning the Division III state championship. Section 2, that a special certificate of achievement shall be presented to each member of the winning team. Section 3, that a copy of this resolution be given to Head Coach Jake Bernstein. immediately upon its adoption adopted by the assembly of the kenai peninsula borough this 12th day of december 2023 congratulations kenai cards thank you mr mayor i'll look forward to uh some more in the next couple meetings

Next, we have presentations of prior notice. The first one will be Central Peninsula Hospital quarterly report given by Sean Keefe, CEO. Mr. Keefe.

Yes, thank you. Mayor McChickey, Vice President Cox, assembly members, appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and give you our quarterly report, which will be through the end of October, or the end of September. So this is the July, August, and September financials and information from that time for the hospital. Let's start the slides. Okay, so we're going to go through our first quarter of our fiscal year, and again, that is July, August, and September. The presentation is going to concentrate on the financials between that time period. We're going to talk a little bit about the community benefits and bad debt during the fiscal year. year 24. Talk a little bit about the PREF and give you an update. Go through some statistical reviews over the first four months of the fiscal year. I actually took that through October. Talk about what's happening at the hospital a little bit. Go through our community needs assessment progress. We did complete that a year ago, and so we're going to talk a little bit about the year, and then present a member of our administration and a few members of our medical staff. So looking at the gross patient revenue, these are charges. And so this fiscal year during the first quarter, we had $162 million in gross patient revenue. When we compare that to last year, $145 million. That's a $16.9 million increase, or 12%. Next slide. Net patient revenue, now this is after we've taken all of our contractual adjustments. We've taken deductions from the insurance companies, the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Our net patient revenue for the first quarter is $64.5 million. That's compared to $57.1 million in the prior year. That's a 13% increase, $7.4 million increase as well. Looking at our net income, now this is the bottom line. This is the very bottom line of our financials. During the first quarter, we have an $8.1 million bottom line comparable to the 6.8 in the prior year. And compensated care, when we talk about the community benefits program, the charity care program, we've really been pushing this out in the public. We have radio ads. We have it on our website. We're going to continue to push this. During the first three months, we wrote off $1.8 million in community benefits. These are individuals that have applied for assistance and have been granted assistance. That's compared to $1.4 million in the prior year. As well as the community benefits program, we do have uncompensated care and bad debt. And in the first quarter, we saw 6.3 million compared to 2.9 million in the prior year. When you add those totals together, during the first quarter, we had uncompensated care of 5.4 million compared to 4.3 million in the prior year. So year-to-date, that $5.4 million, when we look at that and compare that to all of last year, all of last year we had $19 million that we had in uncompensated care. If you annualize the first quarter that we have this year, then it comes up to just right around $21 million in total is what we're... expecting that we'll have an uncompensated care this year. A little bit of an increase but as we go to the next slide you'll see that it's right in line with the gross patient revenue so when we compare our charges we're right in line at 3.4% which has been pretty comparable since 2020. So we have 5.5 million in uncompensated care. We always like to advertise our community benefits brochure at the website on the screen here. We also have ads that are running on the radio and welcome anyone that is looking for assistance in any other financial matters as far as the medical assistance goes. Please contact the hospital. Ask to speak with a financial counselor. If you can't get anywhere, just call me personally and I'll guide them in the right direction. So cash and cash equivalents, when we look at the end of September, we had $59.7 million for our cash and cash equivalents. That's down $3 million from our fiscal year ending. However, as you see in the slide there, we transferred $7.4 million into our PREF fund between that time frame. Our transfer to the plant replacement fund, the plant replacement fund as of the end of September had $73.6 million in it. We were 3.24 days over our 90 days cash on hand at the end of September. And so in October, we transferred $1.9 million into the PREF fund. And that is coupled with another transfer that we had, which was in September of that $7.9 million. I wanted to present some statistics that we have. Now, this goes, we've been talking about the first quarter, which is the July, August, September. This goes all the way through October, the end of October. And what we've got up here is a column that has our actuals and then what we budgeted, the next column, and then the prior year is just to the right of that column. So just a few items to note on here. We had 125 births during the first four months of the fiscal year, 63,000 overall total hospital outpatient visits. When you look at the emergency room, just under 6,000, which is very comparable to where we were last year. And then I always like to point out the primary cares, which some of that is in family practice, just over 4,000 visits. And then our specialty clinics, which includes all of our clinics, also including internal medicine, which we consider that a primary care, 12,500. When we compare ourselves to the previous year, which was really a statistically record-breaking year last year as far as stats go, we only see ourselves down from last year in a couple of areas here. Urgent care was just slightly down. As you can see, this fiscal year we had, during the first four months, 2,428 visits. Last year, 2,488. I consider that fairly flat. as a whole. We did see our emergency room visits down just a tad bit, just a little bit under 6,000, where last year at this time it was 6,083. The surgical cases coming from our specialty clinics right at 1,204 compared to 1,218 cases. Last year during the first four months, I consider that flat as well. The only one that you see is a little bit bigger of a difference is the lab total bill procedures that 101,000 compared to the 103,000. A lot of that was due to COVID testing that was. But other than that, we are seeing our statistics go up even from where they were last year. So we're seeing a lot more of the public utilizing the facility as a whole. Talk a little bit about what's going on at the hospital right now. We've answered the call to our community health needs assessment as we'll go over that in a few slides after this. But part of that includes opening up the diabetes clinic, opened up the mental wellness clinic. And so that's a space that we haven't traditionally been as strong in. having a psychiatrist and psych nurse practitioners. And so we've opened that clinic up to meet that need of the public's. We've also increased access through several other areas or are looking to increase access. We have a pediatrician starting in January who will be focusing on the clinic over in Kenai. And so Kenai Family Practice will be gaining a pediatrician as of January 3rd. We have two neurologists joining our organization, a psych nurse practitioner as well, three internal medicine physicians. We've really been trying to concentrate the last year on primary care so that we can increase access for the public. And so we have an internal medicine physician coming in January. June and then next September. We've already secured a family practice physician who will be here next September as well. We did lose Dr. Mullins over the summer. He was very instrumental in helping build our oncology program. It was sad to see him go in June. We have secured two hematologists oncologists to add to that practice and so that really beefs up our service a little bit we had one medical oncologist at that time with Dr. Mullins now we've increased it to two hematologists oncologists and these hematologists oncologists are dual board certified in hematology and oncology so that really helps our service line It also allows us to send those physicians down to Homer, which Dr. Mullins was very instrumental in starting as well, and so be able to reach down to our friends to the south. We have a gastroenterologist that's coming on full-time in January as well, and so that'll be a huge addition to the services we provide at the hospital. And then future recruitment efforts, family practice, we're going to continue to look for family medicine physicians and then psychiatry. Looking at our community health needs assessment last year, we are required to do this every three years, and we completed it last fall. We got the results back in December, so about a year ago we got these results back. There were seven major items that the community reached out and said, hey, we need help in these areas. The top one there, mental health and substance abuse, where we've opened up the mental wellness clinic. We've also increased care transitions, the detox center from a seven bed to a 10 bed. So we've increased some of those services. These are just items that we've done up to the first year. We've still got two years to go and we've got a lot on the plate and a lot on the agenda. We're hoping to get these items off of the next community health needs assessment and address other issues as we move forward. In the area of nutrition, obesity, diabetes, tobacco use, we opened up the diabetes clinic. And so that clinic sees patients of all ages, which is great for the community. We started a walk with a doc program. So we have a physician that walks with the community every month and one day a month, one morning a month. And they put on a program during that walk, and they answer questions. We have restarted our health fairs that were closed down during COVID, and so those have started back up. So that's some of the efforts that we've made in this area. As far as the injury and violence, which is really addressed in some of that mental health and lifestyle changes, the mental health wellness is part of addressing that. The heart disease and stroke item that was listed on our community health needs assessment was a big area of concentration. We are a participating site, and this is as of just recently, with the Rapid AI, and this is a rapid Alaska stroke care initiative with the Alaska Stroke Coalition. And then we're bringing on two neurologists to add to the neurologists that we have now so that we can really beef up those services to assist with those strokes.

Looking at our next slide, access to primary care was on there.

I've already pointed out that we're bringing on three internal medicine physicians. We also have the residency program for internal medicine starting in 2000. We'll have those individuals, those residents here the summer of 2025. And so that's something that has started. We'll bring the pediatrician on in January, two family medicine physicians that will be starting later, or a family medicine physician later this next year in September. We have two physician extenders. So these are APPs, nurse practitioners, that have coupled with the physicians to help increase access. And then we... are looking to recruit three additional family practice physicians as far as the disability and chronic pain we've added two interventional pain physicians to our facility to concentrate on chronic pain and then as far as cancer care as we talked about we've increased our capacity bringing on two hematologists on oncologists on board to assist with that Looking at some additions, we have when I stepped in my position, Rick Davis stepped back into the COO spot and then retired. About eight months later, Karen Scoggins stepped in the COO spot, which left the CNO position open. We have hired a CNO. Denise Plano has come on board and we're very glad we finally got a full administrative suite. Denise, as you can see there, has a master's in nursing administration from State University of New York, a master's in healthcare administration from St. Joseph's College in Maine, a doctorate in nurse practice from the University of New Hampshire, and then a post-degree certification in nursing education from the University of Alaska in Anchorage. So a well-rounded individual and a big addition to our team. Then the next slide, I just want to give you pictures and names of the two hematologists, oncologists that we have. Dr. Goxel started on November 7th and Dr. Eilander, we're hoping we'll get on board this month in December. Welcome. Any questions that you might have?

Thank you, Sean. Are there any questions from the assembly? Are there any online? Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, thank you. Sean, I just have a question on the Uncompensated care. Thank you for the separation. It's perfect the way you presented it. I'm just looking at the trends here, and I see as a percentage of gross revenue how it kind of normalizes that. But what are the reasons for 15 and then 23 being that far out of the ordinary? Is there something you can attribute that to?

So 2015, when we took 2015 to 16, that was what we saw during that time frame was the insurance exchange really kicking in and so there was a decrease in the trend that we saw there when we look at 13 that really is it is a result of our gross patient revenue popping up 2013 was our best fiscal financial year and statistical year and so as a percentage of gross patient revenue we would expect that to to if it goes above last year we finished the year off with a bottom line of 23.5 million which was about a million more than we did the prior year so increased in that just a tad bit just a clarification you said 13 was that 15 and 23 oh yeah 15 and 23 okay yeah sorry sorry about that off slide here was missing okay perfect thank you for that are there any other questions mr ribbons

I heard an interesting statistic from a health care provider a week or so ago, and I'm going to probably slaughter exactly what it was that he said, but you'll do your best with it. So this is more a comment, but I suspect you might have a response to it, and depending on what you have to say, Ms. Henning, you might have something to say to it as well. And that had to do with people who receive mental health care and follow through it that are more likely to have positive outcomes if they do it Anything that rings a bell with you? And I'm just kind of curious if your facility, making things open and easy for people to come in for other sorts of things, if that has an offshoot on mental health care.

So just to clarify, those individuals, you mean getting primary care services and then being referred to mental health services? The article was basically saying that they have a higher rate of success. I believe that to be true, to be honest with you. I think that in our overall future goal would be to have not internal medicine, family practice, peds, but be able to have primary care, which incorporates and integrates the care so that you have a pediatrician physician in that same clinic, family practice, internal medicine, and that you also have a mental health provider in there. There's a reason behind the success of that and the success of that is have in their primary care providers. And when there's a warm handoff, what we talk about as a warm handoff is I go see my primary care provider and they say, let me have you meet someone real quick. And then they bring mental health in. Then that's what we call a warm handoff. And it's much easier to build a relationship in that way. versus just getting a referral to mental health and being told you need to go to see someone in mental health at a different clinic across town. And so what we find is sometimes those patients don't wind up there. They'll take that referral, but they won't go see that individual. So I do think that there is some truth in that. Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

I have one question.

When you were on the community health needs assessment slide, you had one on there that talked about the detox centers and going from 7 to 10 beds. My assumption is that's because we could use the 10 beds. So my ask is, is that enough or could we use more?

Well, I think that, first of all, that's the capacity that we have in that facility. I do believe that there are needs as we move and progress through our action plans for the community health needs assessment. There might be a need for additional beds. I do know that as we get in master planning and we look into the future and we're addressing those site issues, We're going to see an increase in probably the need for inpatient psych at some point, which we don't have. And those inpatient psychs being either full inpatient or kind of a cool-off or a psych hold to help people get over some of the issues that they're going through so that we can help them transition back to home.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions from the assembly here or anyone online? Or any assembly members online? No? Thank you, Mr. Keefe.

Appreciate it. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

So next will be our second presentation of the night from South Peninsula Hospital for their quarterly report. We have Angela Hinnigan, the COO. And I hope I said that correctly.

You did great. Thanks, Vice President Cox. Thanks to Mayor McChickey and assembly members for letting me be here in Ryan's stead. He is on a much deserved vacation, very happy for him, and I expect a lot of pictures when he returns. Madam Clerk, when you're ready, if you could bring up our slides. I'm going to blaze through the financial slides because I have some really amazing wins at the end that I'd like to spend a little more time talking about. So we'll skip there to slide number two, which is our governance structure. Just pausing here for a moment, we've had a lot of movement in our governance structure, particularly our board of directors. On the next slide, you'll see that we've had four members outgoing on our board and three members coming in. So I just want to honor them really quickly here. Thank them for their service. Julie Woodworth served five terms on our board of directors. Very, very grateful for her longevity, historical perspective. Carrie Ann Baker served two terms with us. Very, very grateful for her professionalism and insights. Kelly Cooper, I want to thank her for all that she's given to our board. She was elected to this assembly, and we're happy to see her serving here. She resigned from our board in October to take this seat. And then Todd Bowling, a general surgeon, has retired from his practice and as such retired from our board in November. We did hold elections in our last meeting. And so we have three oncoming board members right now. Preston Simmons, the former CEO of Providence and Anchorage. Jared Baker, who's a business owner in Homer. And also Matthew Bullard, another business owner and manager in Homer. So we're excited to see them join our board in January. You'll notice four leaving and three coming. Our bylaws allow us actually to have between nine and 11 board members. So we don't have to have exactly 11. So we'll have 10 board members at the end of this year. So moving to our next slide. So the financials I'm gonna breeze through. 57.6 million, that's our total gross revenue for the first quarter of FY24. It's a 15.6% increase over last year, same period. For our next slide, you'll see our operating income. This is our net patient revenue minus our operating expenses, our operating income. Some significant increases here I wanted to chat about. 2.7 million is where we landed at the end of September. We've seen a 26% increase year over year in our surgical volume, an 11% increase in our clinic visits, and a 5% increase in our ER volumes. That's what's driving most of this increase in operating income. Our next slide is net income. This is our bottom line after our non-operating revenue and expenses have been included, which includes our property tax mill levy. So we're at $5.8 million at the end of September, and that's a 110% increase year over year. Our charity and bad debt, we've got them together in one slide. We have a 59% increase in our charity care year over year. That's $1.2 million just in the first three months of the year that we've given in charity care. And a 14% increase in bad debt. So those are bad debt write-offs year over year from last year. Here's a 10-year projection. Our salaries, wages, and benefits increasing. This 2024 number is based on our expectations. It's based on our budget for FY24, and we're expecting a 10% increase. Part of that is salary increases. Another part is just a huge amount of growth in our full-time equivalents. Our change in net position, again, these are budgeted numbers for FY24, but we do expect to end the year right around $5.6 million in total net income. That's after our operating income and expenses and our non-operating, which includes our property taxes. And then our cash and cash equivalents and our long-term bond payments. You can see a steady increase in our cash and cash equivalents. This is the number for our end of September, so end of quarter number. We did have 92.4 days of cash on hand. So we transferred in October about $711,000 into our plant replacement and expansion fund. At the end of this year, we will see our long-term debt payments, those are our bonds, drop down to 6.6 million. So a steady decline in our long-term debt. However, what it does also speak to is we've not had a major capital investment in our hospital in about 17 years. These are our projects in progress right now. We just completed a front door replacement project, so you'll no longer see swinging doors when you come to our main entrance. So it's made that entrance a lot more easy to access and no worries of being trapped behind a swinging door. They now slide very nicely. So come and check out our new front door entrance. We've also completed, actually, when I'd written these slides, we nearly completed this project, but we moved individuals into the 414 Lake Street building today after renovating it. If you were familiar with Scott's Pharmacy, that is their former space in Homer on the Lake Street and Pioneer. So they moved in today. That's our employee education and our training room, and I hear it's quite beautiful. I'm going to head over there tomorrow and check it out. Other items in progress, we're working on a long-term care HVAC system. We have started it with some initial controls, but we're going to continue that in spring when we can work on the roof. Generator upgrades. This is a regulatory project, and it's to replace an enunciator panel to meet regulations. We've started it. but we won't be able to complete that until the spring. We do have a CON project in right now. It's in state review. It's finished the public comment period, and that is to add nuclear medicine to upgrade our pharmacy and to expand and co-locate our infusion center at the hospital. So we're just waiting now for the state review process to be completed and the commissioner to issue a final ruling on that. And then we have an infrastructure repair and replacement project for the hospital going on right now. And we'll hear their preliminary findings next week. Let's now get to the fun slides. A little bit of bragging on your community hospital down in Homer, five-star patient survey satisfaction. This is on the Medicare Care Compare website. So this is publicly reported data. Out of 25 hospitals in the state of Alaska, South Peninsula Hospital was the only one to receive five stars. So we're really excited to be number one out of 25 right now. I think that's a huge accomplishment. And thank all of you for trusting us to run this small hospital on your behalf. Another huge accomplishment we applied for back in March, April timeframe, an innovation grant that came out through Thread and it was to improve access to childcare. And this is one of our major concerns that our staff have brought forth to us. And so we thought, let's take a chance at this because it could help us get something like this off the ground to benefit our staff members. And we were awarded that grant. The check arrived about two weeks ago. For $1.3 million, it's an operating grant to help us start a hospital daycare. So the items we've performed so far is we've hired a child care administrator. So his picture is right there, Kyle Suttles. He's been a school teacher in the state of Alaska Bush communities for about 10 years. He came to Alaska several years ago from Detroit. Very accomplished and exciting school teacher. He's going to be our administrator and he's helping us get this off the ground. We're also starting an employee-led child care advisory committee that can help us make the policies, processes, and procedures for the daycare. And we have already completed a needs assessment survey with our staff. And in fact, that survey revealed that we have over 105 children of staff members that are in need of childcare. So the need is even greater than we thought it was back in March and April when we wrote this grant. And we're going to do the best that we can with the space that we've got. It's a building that you allowed us to purchase at 203 West Pioneer about two years ago, I believe. And we are going to turn that into our new childcare facility. We hope to have it open by May when children get out for the summer. Other wins on the top there, that's our child care grant. Below that is FEMA. For any of you who have been involved in FEMA grants, they're very difficult. So we've been working for about two years on seven distinct projects related to COVID-19. to submit expenses that were not reimbursed through any other funding from CARES Act or ARPA or any other way. So these are simply costs of the hospital board to try to do the right thing for our community. So we have over a million dollars that we've submitted. We received about half of it just here in December. So we're really excited that all of our efforts are finally paying off. We expect the other half, almost half a million dollars, is going to come in in the next couple of months. So we're really, really grateful for that. We also received a $51,000 grant to help support our community health education. And we received a $150,000 grant to improve our physical security in our buildings and also cyber security for our hospital. Letters of intent. So we have a number of... Clinicians that are going to be coming to join our team, not listed here are those we've actually signed a contract with. So we have a pediatrician coming in January to join our Homer Medical Center, and we have a certified nurse midwife that's coming in May. But upcoming, so this is far into the future, we have Ian Weiskarver, a reconstructive and plastic surgeon, coming in July of 24th. Dr. Jenna Aird, a medical dermatologist, is going to be coming the following spring in March of 25. Her husband, Gregory Aird, is a diagnostic radiologist, and he's going to be coming a few months after her in about August of 25. We've signed a contract, a letter of intent with Jeremy Serain. He's an emergency room physician up at J-Bear, and he's going to come to us after he discharges. And then Dr. Kurt Mentzer, an orthopedic surgeon, will be joining us in March. I have just done another slide or two, if you want me to continue. Please continue. Okay. Huge win. Thank you for supporting this in October. We received our Stryker Mako robotic surgical unit, and it's already revolutionized our surgery department. We knew that we would see some efficiencies in our surgery times. We knew that we'd receive more precise cuts. We knew that we'd have a quicker ambulation for our patients and shorter recovery times. We did not expect it to happen so quickly. So we've had it for about a month and a half. We got it shortly after you approved our resolution. We've already done nine total knee surgeries on it, and we've already reduced our surgical OR times and our throughput in our OR. Previously, we could do about two total knees and an OR in a day. Now we can do two total knees and three more surgeries in the same OR in a day, and that's after only a month and a half. So we're extremely excited. So the nine total needs that we've already performed in a month and a half compared to 34 that we performed in all of last year. So I think that the business plan that we put together for this is more than going to come true. And we expect great things. It's already been approved for other surgeries. So we're hoping we can use it for surgeries. It can be used for hips and spines in the future. So we're really excited about having this robotic surgical unit. So thank you. And then I think I have just one more slide. Our Rotary Health Fair, we held that in October and November, and we helped over 785 individuals on the southern Kenai Peninsula with discounted blood draws be able to take control of their health. And it culminated in a large fair at the Homer High School where we had a number of booths and tables giving out community health data. And so we're just very grateful for our community supporting us and for all of our staff members who sponsored that River Health Fair alongside of us. So that's all I have slides for. I did get a quick text message right before I came up here from Jaretha Ferraro to please let everyone know that on January 30th, that's a Tuesday, the hospital's going to be sponsoring a Homeless Connect It'll be an anchor point at the VFW and also the Spark Building in Homer. We'll have over 20 vendors there to help people who are either homeless or in fear of becoming homeless, to help them with health needs, health screening, winter clothing, food, and employment. And that's all that I have.

Thank you, Angela. Are there any questions? Ms. Cooper.

Thank you, I would like to take a quick moment to thank both hospitals for how will you work together i'm grateful that we aren't having so much healthcare migrate off the peninsula. And it's just wonderful to be able to receive our care, either in Homer or in the central peninsula. And that only happens when the two administrations work so well together. So thank you both for that. I just have two quick questions. When we talk about charity care or bad debt, do you think part of that increase is due to folks not qualifying for Medicaid anymore? because they were so delayed and backlogged, and then people find out that they no longer qualify. Do you think that's part of it?

It's a really good question, Kelly. And anecdotally, I'd say that you're probably right, but I don't have true numbers to put to that.

But I'd be happy to get that for you. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. And I'm probably always going to call the Mako robotic unit Mako robotic unit because of our past assembly member. But we had, when we talked about this last month, we had a gentleman from the community come and talk about the monogram orthopedics unit as, in his opinion, a better fit or a better product or better value for us as compared to the micro-robotic unit. Can you explain to me how the hospital came to the conclusion that this would have been a better product?

It's a good question, Kelly. Thank you for asking it. And I apologize that Ryan and I weren't able to be here at the last meeting to address that. Nevertheless, we did hear about it, and we did research that monogram orthopedic unit. It's actually experimental technology right now. It has not been FDA approved. So they're a couple years out. We believe it's a new market entrant, so someone who's trying to be a competitor to the leaders, which are Zimmer. There's a ROSI unit at Central and Stryker. They've been in the market for a long time. They have tried and true implants that have been tested through the FDA, and through many years, they know that that is a product that, because it's going to be in someone's body for a long time, you need a long runway to be able to make sure that those are high-quality products. And so, you know, while I can't attest to any of the items that are online on Monogram's website, what I can say is that At this time, it's just not a technology that we'd be able to adopt in a small critical access hospital that's not FDA approved yet, perhaps one day. But there is a long, it's difficult to enter the market, I can say that, and they do have their own proprietary implants. And so that's another concern as well. So implants that are, again, proprietary to one untried piece of equipment, it's a risky game for a small critical access hospital to even entertain. And quite frankly, we weren't even aware of who Monogram was. That's how new this technology is and it has not been tried out yet. I hope that helps.

I've got a very quick question for you. Congratulations on your patient survey rating, and this is much more serious than the last question, but how many times was Ryan allowed to vote in that survey?

Those surveys are actually, they're Prescani surveys. They're actually sent out randomly, but I imagine if he had a chance to vote, he 100% did. Mr. Tunseth?

Thank you, Vice President Cox. Ms. Hennigan, thank you for your presentation. I appreciate it. In relation to the Thread Grant that you guys got, the first question, I guess, would be what is the age that it's limited to for the child care? And then the second question would be is it limited just to employees or is there options for additional people in the community that might need it to utilize it?

That's a good question. I'll start with the second one first. So it is going to be a hospital daycare. So it will be for dependents of hospital employees. However, by allowing those hospital employees to have their children cared for at our daycare, it's going to free up additional rooms, room in other daycares and home daycares in the community. So by adding capacity to the overall childcare in Homer, it's going to add capacity for everyone. Your second question was related to age. So part of our assessment, our survey that we gave out to employees was to try to determine the ages of the children that are in need of childcare. What we did find out is that it's It's pretty well evenly split between newborns all the way up to school age. There is a huge demand for after-school care and a huge demand for infants, and those are the areas that aren't well covered in our community. So what we're going to do with the space that we have available to us is maximize the space to take care of as many kids as we can, but we will be limited by some of the state ratios in terms of square footage, internal and external, for each child, and also ratios of staffing by age for each child. So we've already selected our building. It's a 203 West Pioneer, and we have an architectural drafter right now working on drawings to figure out how big the classrooms can be, and that will determine how many kids we can actually have in our program. But what I would also say is this, we're so committed to meeting the needs of our employees that I expect that if we can successfully get this licensed daycare off the ground, that our next focus, if we can't take care of all the school-age children, would be some kind of after-school program. But again, we've got to do this first and make it successful, and then I think we can open it up and try to do more after that. You're welcome.

Are there any other questions? Yes? Whose question?

I see President Johnson's hand raised.

President Johnson.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. Angela. Thank you for the presentation. I was following along as you were turning pages and listening, and I'm not sure, it might've been page six that you said the word property tax and that jumped out at me. And so I was curious, that can't be the home or hospital paying property tax. It must've been funding that's generated from property tax. Go back to that property tax thing, or do you remember it?

Yeah, thank you, President Cox. And I apologize if I bumbled up my words on that one, but you're right. We were talking about the net income slide, I believe. And so net income is inclusive of our property tax mill levy, as opposed to the slide just before it, which was operating income, which excludes property taxes, because that is considered a non-operating source of income for our hospital. Hopefully that makes better sense.

Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And just for the listeners, we talk about the benefits of going to our local hospitals, which is fabulous. But also, I'd like to point out the benefits of a local student like Angela, who graduated from Skyview and now has got a fabulous job there in Homer.

Thank you, President Johnson. Are there any other questions? Any others online? No? I'm not seeing any. Angela, thank you. And I personally will look forward to, into the summer, hearing more about how the daycare is coming along. So thank you.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is public comments on items not appearing on the agenda. This is three minutes per person for an aggregate of 20 minutes. Is there anyone signed up? There's no one signed up. So, sir, if you'd like to come forward, please state your name and area you're from.

I'm Barrett Fletcher. I live in McNeil Canyon, east of Homer. I'm also the pastor of the First Lower Peninsula Congregation of Pastafarians. I'm sorry I failed to show up last month to testify against Resolution 75, the change in the manner of selecting the person to give the invocation. It just didn't occur to me that it could possibly have passed. I interject some humor into my protest. and try to keep it light, but I am deadly serious about my defense of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. I'll be listening very closely to the chaplains that will be giving the invocation from now on. And if I happen to hear them invoke any specific deity while failing to acknowledge the true creator of the universe, Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, I'll be suing. I understand that the Freedom From Religion Foundation is already on notice of what's going on here. I assume the ACLU would also pick this up and possibly the Satanic Temple, although they're more into religion. statues and such more than talk. I looked back at the testimony on the limited testimony on the resolution and noticed that the founder of the great Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson, wrote in and testified on the record. I didn't tell him about it. I don't know how he found out. But I do know that this assembly is internationally notorious. And so I assume that the powers that be saw the situation and are already paying attention. The only proper way to get rid of the proselytizing and preaching that you so discourage is to just drop the invocation like every other municipality has in the United States. So that's what I wanted to say. Are there any questions?

Thank you for your comments. Are there any questions? Thank you, sir. Next person, please. Come up and state your name and the area you're from. Thank you. Can we push the button on there?

Hi, my name is Kate Bay. I'm from So I'm here to talk about vapes and how it's affecting kids. I am giving you, I want you to make a copy of this. I want you all to read this, if you could. On the back I've written some, More data that you can look into. But we have a nationwide problem with kids getting a hold of vapes. And in 2011, we had only 2% of high schoolers vaping, and by 2019, it rose to 28%. So Big Tobacco is targeting these children. Excuse me. I'm nervous. They pair sweet flavors to high doses of nicotine and a lot of the parents can't, they don't know what it looks like because it looks like highlighters or whatever. So by the time the kid is addicted, by the time the parent finds the child in the vapes, the child is addicted, it's very hard to break that addiction. Kids are more likely to become addicted because their brains are developing Okay, so I'm going to ask you to do four things for me. I want you to don't let our schools go on their own because this is a very serious problem. A lot of the parents, they don't know the harmful effects of vapes, and so the kids are getting them from their parents. them online. They're not supposed to. It's, I don't think that, um, I don't want to outlive vaping industry for adults, but for kids, yes. Okay. Second thing, um, watch, um, Big Vape on Netflix. Um, Look at all the information I gave you. Look at it. Learn everything you can about this subject. A third is post no vaping signs on all your government buildings. Try to get this tobacco habit out. Just push it out. And then the other thing is if you could look at your landfill policy and see if it matches federal rules, Sorry, legislation, regulations. In 2023, there was an article written on the back here. It says that under federal law, e-cigarettes containing nicotine and lithium can't go into the trash. So in New York City, or New York, they're actually sending their own vapings to Arkansas. their vaping devices to Arkansas to dispense of them. New York City officials had to spend 85 cents each for the vape disposals. They changed the federal policy and need to see if it matches the landfill. Okay, I'm out of time. Thank you. I'm giving you this paperwork, please.

Thank you, Ms. May. Hang on a second. We'll see if there's any questions. Are there any questions?

I just wanted to thank you for coming forward. It's a huge issue. What's funny is when you try to change some of these things, particularly when you deal with the ordinance or statutory structure like in Juneau, it takes years. And it takes years because the lobbyists that support the ordinance I'll say the nicotine industry because tobacco isn't necessary anymore. You're really selling addiction to nicotine. And it's painful to watch. I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. I... Certainly, I'm happy to work with the schools on seeing how we can support the issue. Dropping off and picking up my kids, I'm amazed. I guess maybe when we were freshmen and we looked like we were eight years old and were smoking cigarettes, we looked as ridiculous. But it's clearly occurring at the schools. So I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. I think it's really important. I think when addiction starts that early, it... grows away for that particular substance to others and it's God only knows what kind of damage they're doing to their lungs in the meantime. So thanks for coming forward with it. I should have brought that up with our mayor's working group because I don't know that that's something that we really think about if you're not witnessing it on a regular basis. Thank you.

Please spread the word. And I need to give this to

We do have other questions for you. Ms. Cooper.

I just wanted to say thank you for bringing that forward. I did watch that big vape documentary on Netflix, and it is eye-opening, to say the least. I also think that it's interesting for us to come up with a solution, because we don't want those going in our landfill with the lithium, and the cost of shipping those out is I think given all of the points that you brought up, every person in the community should be able to come on board and help support getting that out of here. And I look forward to reading that. So if you would leave that, I'd like to get a copy of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Faye. Also, I was going to add that SOHI has, early this fall, SOHI did a presentation on vaping, and I do know that their vice principal of confidence-stated vapes has a five-gallon bucket started that's fairly full, and she does bring those out. and they look like a lot of other things kids have. And so that's just one way for the school to make at least teachers more aware. And it was open to the public. I do want to let everyone know that I believe that's on SOHI's Facebook page as a video. So it is something you can go and watch that full presentation. So are there any other questions? We don't have any other questions, but we have speakers. So if you'd like to give those things to the clerk, that would be great. And we do have a speaker online.

Yes, sir. I have two. The first being Zen Kelly.

Mr. Kelly.

Thank you, members of the Assembly and Mayor McChickey. My name is Zen Kelly. I'm a resident of Palmer and also current president of the Board of Education. and the newly designated assembly liaison. So I am happy to be your point of contact between the school board and the assembly. Any information that you need, please feel free to reach out to me and I'm happy to provide it. If I could provide just a few updates, the Board of Education recently wrapped up its fourth and final budget 101 series. And that was four separate work sessions covering aspects of our budget process. things like the foundation formula, in-kind borough funding, fund balance, and our chart of accounts. If you did not make those meetings on Zoom, we do have them recorded and posted to our finance department's webpage for viewing. So I think they're going to be great assets as we move forward in this legislative session and the budget process. to educate the public. And so we want the public to know how the process works, and this is kind of the inner workings crash course of it. We also just recently had a great meeting with some of the members of the Peninsula legislative delegation, and we were able to discuss the need for stable and reliable funding, as well as how we can determine accountability in education. And then finally, as you probably saw in the press, we have created a four-day school week ad hoc committee. And this is comprised of members of the board and our administration. And their task is to look at what a four-day school week would look like and gather information, both pros and cons. And they will do that process throughout this year and make a presentation to the board on that aspect. in July of 2024. So I want to remind everybody we're doing fantastic things in our schools and I invite you to be a part of that either as a volunteer in the classroom or if you would like to visit any school you can reach out to any of the school board members or touch base with us and we're happy to set up a visit where we can go through the schools with you and you can see the great things that we're doing.

Thank you Mr. Kelly. We do have some questions. Ms. Cooper.

Thank you President Kelly for giving us a great report. I have two questions. What can the Assembly do to assist with the legislative session regarding funding for education this year? And did you receive the kind of response that they understand the funding and what we're faced with throughout the state?

Well, to the second part of your question, I do believe that our delegation understands at least the members in attendance at this session. They do really understand all the different aspects of it. We have some great proponents of education sitting in our legislative delegation, and I appreciate their hard work. We're still tasked with the same thing that we have been for pretty much the last decade. And so, you know, it's all really comes down to differing priorities and whether our schools are truly accountable for the funds that they that they receive. So I've always appreciated the assembly's support of the school district. I know that you guys constantly come through for us when times of need. And I I appreciate that and I would just say if you can continue that it would be fantastic. As far as what you can do to help us just talk about how great our schools are. We really have fantastic schools on the Kenai Peninsula. We should be proud and we should really state the fact that our schools are some of the best in the state. And so I appreciate your support.

For sure.

Thank you, Zen. Did you hear the last speaker about her concerns with vaping? And is the school district have a formal approach on how they're dealing with vaping? and educating parents at home. For example, when Vice President Cox talked about the bucket so teachers could see what they look like, how are we getting that message home to parents because parents aren't always aware or online, et cetera? How is the district addressing that problem this year, district-wide?

Yeah, thanks. That's a great question. You know, we dealt with a vaping policy actually several years back. We were trying to get ahead of this. And right now, targeting in our junior highs and our high school, we definitely have education on basically the dangers of vaping. And we're trying to get that word out. And basically through our programs, principals in that school were disseminating the information that hopefully parents are hearing. It is a struggle because it is so prevalent in the youth today. And they're very easy to get. And so we're trying to also strengthen the need for law enforcement to not allow stores to sell to minors. So we're kind of trying to target it from all different aspects. And we need the community's help in tackling this scourge right now of vaping.

Thank you. Another question from Mr. Hibbert.

Mr. Kelly headlines today says high school students voice their support for pools and theaters. My question is, is the school district going to try to balance the school budget by closing pools and theaters again this year as they have in the past?

Thank you, Mr. Hibbard. Also a good question and My desire is to keep all of our facilities open for the public. Our pools, our theaters are incredibly important. So are all of our extracurricular and co-curricular sports. So I'm not going to try to balance the budget on the backs of any particular program in general. But I, as you well know, don't hold the purse strings. And so we're given an allotment of money in order to educate children. And that becomes a discussion bringing in the public to talk about what we can do with the amount of money that we're given. So it is not my intent. In fact, it's just the opposite. I would love to see our pools and our theaters and our extracurricular, co-curricular activities flourish. They add a lot to the educational experience of all of the youth on the peninsula. So I would say, no, I don't want to close anything. I don't want to balance the budget on the back of any particular group. I just have to make it work with the money that we receive in the district.

Can I follow up? Yes, please. So with that being said, then do you have some ideas on how to balance the budget?

Well, it comes down to revenue. So that's the first step in the process. And we will continue to advocate with the legislature for stable and reliable funding. When we get our revenue forecast, when we know from the legislature how much revenue we have coming in, then become the decisions of what we can do with that. So the first step is advocating for sustainable funding. I can't tell you exactly what's gonna happen, but I do know that the legislature responded last year with something that would have been adequate, and then half of it was vetoed by our governor. So we were able to get through last year with the amount of money we had left in ESER funding, which was a federal funding mechanism through the COVID pandemic. But that ESER funding totaled almost $6.5 million. We do not have that to put forward this year to help balance our budget. Depending on what we see in revenues and depending on whether the governor vetoes that or not, we will start a very serious discussion in the coming months on what fiscal year 25 is going to look like.

Thank you, Mr. Kelly. One other question is that I've been on the assembly for darn near eight years now, and It's the same, this is the same story that I hear every year, year after year after year, is the state's not giving us enough money to do this. And so I'm wondering when the district may, at one time, because this assembly, most of the years that I've been on it, has fully funded the schools. I think there was a couple years that we didn't there. But when is the district going to maybe take the hard, and make some different decisions rather than making the headlines that says we are going to cut. We're gonna balance this budget on the backs of sports and pools and theaters. So that's my question is when is the district gonna maybe take the hard road instead of blaming it on the state and the borough because that's the phone calls that we get. As soon as you run a headline like this, we start getting phone calls. So that's all I have.

Well, I appreciate the question, Mr. Hibbert. You know, I would say that the question that's out there is what is the best process forward to to meet our our responsibility of educating children with the amount of money we get? And we are trying to make this a very open and public process. And so we value input of everyone. But when the rubber meets the road, We have to provide an education within the classroom. So I welcome your input. And if you have ideas of the district stepping up and making the hard decisions, I'm open to hearing what those hard decisions could be in order to balance our budget.

Thank you. Ms. Eklund.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. Through the chair, Mr. Kelly, have you discussed with the borough on how to obtain some efficiencies in your buildings. I know that there's quite a bit of money that gets spent on transporting fuel oil to the across the water schools, some of the smaller schools. Has there been any discussion on cutting some of those expenses and trying some heat exchangers and electricity is cheaper than the fuel oil and some of the Eastside Peninsula schools that are still, you know, depending on fuel oil. I just want to know where you're at in those discussions.

Well, great question. I am not acutely aware of the specifics of discussions, but I do know our facilities department, Mr. Kevin Lyon works very closely with the borough. And I do believe that it is their intent to be as efficient as possible. it is very costly uh to heat and the utilities aspect of some of our across the the water schools or off the road system schools at the head of the bay um it is it's extremely costly um i could follow up uh with mr lyon um and also the facilities department of the borough and get back to you ms ecklund and see what they're doing to uh to address and make things more efficient or Possibly the mayor would have a better answer than I would on that.

Thank you.

Mayor McChickey.

We have a lot of work to do, so I don't know if we're going to do this every meeting because this could go on for a while. Mr. Kelly, I appreciate your report, but Mr. Hibbert brings up a very good point. So in politics, I'm not talking down to you, I'm not being patronizing. But in politics, we try to build a coalition And eventually the weight of that coalition gets its way. It seems like you're internally conquering and dividing yourselves, which I fundamentally don't understand. When we started with the pool and theater thing, and then we do it year after year after year, what you don't understand is how many families, the pool is their football. It's their football program. The theater is their football program. No one's talking about cutting football programs. But you're slowly eroding away your own support base. My suggestion is not to have that discussion. Either put everything on the table or don't start where you think is the weakest because I will tell you it's not. It is a very strong coalition of people that can make or break the support you get not only here but statewide. And Of the $13 million deficit we have, 7.7 of it is walking out the door every day. I really suggest we get serious about the homeschool issue. It is the number one impact on this budget until the legislature is responsible enough to recognize that $2013 don't last forever at that rate. So I will be a partner of yours on hitting up the legislature. I have a little experience with that body. But we have some things at home to do as well that can get us where we need to be without threatening what excites the hearts, a pretty significant proportion of the students in this district. And they go through that heartbreak every year. I've kind of had it. So... I hate to speak that strongly, but we have some things to do at home, and I'll be by your side when we not only get funding passed through the legislature, but we also hold the tall man to limit the ink in that pen to at least one line in that budget this year.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate your comments. You know just as well as I do that I don't write headlines. And so the recent headline concerning our pools and theaters was referencing a finance committee meeting that I called to do a deep dive within that aspect of the budget. And I started that meeting by saying, this is not a cut list. That's not what we're doing here. What we're doing is we're educating the public on what we spend money on in our school district. So I didn't write the headline. And if you read deeper into that story, you would see that that's what the finance committee did. I don't want to continue to target a certain group or aspect of the programs that we offer. It's not my intent. And I hear you and I appreciate your support. I know that you will help us and be an advocate within the legislature. You know what we need. And I know that we will work together. Again, it's not my intent to continue to target a certain group or shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again. I look forward to working with you as the legislature convenes and we can be a unified voice in that aspect.

Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

Yes, and I was going to just say too, thanks, Zen. I've This will be the fifth year going through budget with you guys. And I've watched several of them. And what I've seen that it becomes is that it's been stated many times that the school board is required to give us a balanced budget. And with that balanced budget, there are, at least in recent years, been several cuts. And that has to happen to balance that budget. Then we go through our legislative session, get some one-time funding. those items generally come back in whole. And then it's like rinse and repeat. And we've been doing that for year after year after year. And I truly do believe that the answer is a BSA increase. And so I will be in touch because I do want to write another BSA resolution to the legislature asking them again to please raise that so that we as an assembly and you guys as a school board can know what our funding is at least to a better number Than what we have right now, because right now, if we only go off those numbers, it is not sufficient to fund our schools. If you look even at educate well, you know, if you look at the wages that we have for teachers and their packages and things like that, we're barely covering that with the BSA that we have. And then that only allows us as an assembly to, um, to go to a certain amount. because of how those numbers work together to say what we can then spend. And so we're really handcuffed on what we can do to help. And I see that as one of the only ways to do that. And these one-time fundings are just a way for our legislature to kick the can down the road for another year. And they've been doing that for several years. And I agree with you. I think we need to stop doing that. So anyways, I appreciate what you guys are doing.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. I appreciate the sentiment and I would agree with you. It's been year after year that I have done this as well where it's rinse and repeat. And we start over again and have to go through this exercise. And sometimes we don't get the word of what our funding is going to be until April or even May. I mean, it has been that late. Well, We are renewing contracts in April so that we can secure and retain the top quality talent in this district that we have. And so I'm hopeful that the legislature will come out with something early in this session and it can move forward and

uh hopefully we have a number earlier and we do not have to continue this i'm just as tired of it as you are so appreciate it thank you and with that we will go to our next person it is online person um and what is the person's name marie mcconnell marie mcconnell you have three minutes

Hi. Yes, I'm very thankful for this opportunity to participate by Zoom, so I wasn't there in person. I have three things I wanted to talk about. They were the working group, mental health issues, and kayak canoe property taxes. So first off, I wanted to say I was very, very, very impressed with the working group. I came as an observer on Wednesday, and I'll say that that group is excellent. I'm very thankful for the three Sterling members. I'm a Sterling member. I'm And I'm just really impressed with that group altogether. I think that the ideas they came up with are really good. I was happy to see that housing was talked about, services and things for dementia care for seniors was talked about, and also type of education like welding, pipe fitting, plumbing, stuff like that, CET type jobs. I think that working group is going to be great with every three to five categories they pick for subcommittees. Excellent, excellent thing. I wanted to let you know that I talked to you guys before about mental health. I'm still a mental health advocate and I'm hoping that when the borough has some type of first responders that maybe I could be some type of advisor for free. I'd like to offer that to save our borough money because I've been experiencing mental health since 2007 and I think I am doing well and I'd like to be able to help others with that. Finally, I have a kayak that I bought around 2000 that I pay property taxes for ever since I registered with the Coast Guard. And I pay $50 a year on that kayak. I think that Mir Machiki might have made some changes to that, but I'm not sure. So I wanted to know, did we make any type of new laws for kayak and canoes that are being charged for property tax of $50 a year? Because I've now paid the borough more in property tax than I paid when I paid $800 for that kayak the place in Prince William Sound Kayak in Whittier. And that was my question.

Mayor McChickey, it looks like you have a response.

Yes, we did clear up your case, if I'm not mistaken, Marie. And I think that was, it's a very rare occasion because most people don't register their kayaks with DMV. It's a DMV record that gets picked up, but we have our eye on it. I don't believe you're going to see any more kayak tacks, which sounds almost too funny to be true, but it is. It was in your case, and I appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

Thank you. Yeah, and I think there was eight or so many other people that had the same thing on either canoes or kayaks that are over 20 feet long.

Thank you. And Marie, thank you. Are there any other questions?

Seeing none, I appreciate you calling in today. Thank you.

Anyone else online? Is there anyone else in the audience? Yes, please come forward.

Nick Connor again. First, I'd like to thank you guys. I've been coming to these meetings pretty regularly. The reason why is kind of the elephant in the room. I think a lot of you guys know the reason why, but my grandfather was told in the 60s that you could not get up to the bench of Testamina. So he went, and there's a horse trail named after him. I was told by Sean Kelly not to come to the borough. That's why I'm here. I have made a point to come here to every meeting since, except when I was in Vegas. What I'd like to bring to your attention real quick is I want to read the end of this email that I got. I have talked with Peter Machicki. Him and his staff have been so professional. We are very lucky to have him. This is the end of the email. This is from Brenda Elberg earlier this week. It says, in closing, please note, this will be the last email correspondence I will have with you. I will not engage in diatribe that creates an ineffective work environment for me or my staff. I believe that future engagements between you and any KPB staff should go through Mayor McChickey's office to ensure that all parties can engage in a factual conversation. Merry Christmas, B. I started doing windshields for the borough in 2001. I have done windshields at maintenance yards. I have done work at fire departments. I have done work for the pool. I have done work for many of the staff that works for the Cadet Peninsula Borough. I have recently decided that I will not do work on any borough property for the borough until the issues that I'm dealing with are getting resolved. And that's causing a problem with the borough maintenance departments because they're contacting me. Even today, I got a call. They're begging me to come and help them buy tools because they don't have anybody to help them do windshields. I don't have any power with the borough other than my services. This borough hands out plaques to members of the community that worked for the borough for five years, 10 years, whatever. I've been doing this for the borough for 23 years and the staff of the OEM building is completely out of control. I think it should be looked into and I think that if I was smarter and I had more time, this would open the door to litigation for somebody acting as a borough employee through the emergency management building. This should be the person that we should all go to when something horrible happens. She's the one acting out of control. And I think that it would open the door for litigation if this kind of stuff continues. I'm not sure if Brenda has qualified immunity. I don't know if somebody could sue her civilly. But to tell somebody who has a reputation in this town that I should not talk to any KPB staff member is, to me, is preposterous. That's all.

Thank you, Nick. Mayor Michicki.

Thank you. Nick, I'm sorry that I have been busy since I saw that email, but I want to make it perfectly clear that you are welcome to talk to anybody in this borough anytime you want to. That all 60,000 of our constituents are going to be treated exactly the same, unless one of them breaks the law. And the way they're treated will be very different. But at this point, you have not. And you're welcome to talk to anyone you want to know. They can individually choose not to talk to you. I'll be damned if they're going to tell our constituents they can't talk to someone else. Thank you. So you're welcome here. You're welcome to talk to anyone that you need information from. You're always welcome to come to me when you have a problem with someone or someone has a problem with you, just like any other constituent, and I will do my best to help you handle that. But I don't want you to feel unwelcome, and I don't want to lose your skills with – windshield replacement that we count on a regular basis. I wouldn't let that hit your business. Don't let it impact your business. And you're giving in to some folks that just don't want you around. And there's going to be folks that don't want some people around. That's just the bottom line. The way I explained it to my staff, We have an org chart. At the very top of the org chart is 60,000 residents of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Then there's me. Then there's all of them. My job is to protect the rights of the 60,000 people and make sure the people below me have the tools they need to be successful while observing those rights. So when that's a problem, I want to know about it. But don't let it hit you personally. It's that doesn't make sense. Just try to work it through the system. And when there's an individual problem, you let us know and we'll deal with it. Stay kind. Stay cool. Which you've been doing a really good job at, by the way. And I appreciate that. That's all I have to say. You're one of those 60,000. And a subset of that 60,000 are going to be people that are a little tougher to understand for some folks. You might be in that subset. That's okay. It doesn't change your rights as a resident of this borough. So let's keep working together and ironing out those wrinkles and make sure that everyone here understands that going forward.

Thank you. I really appreciate the time you've spent with me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Nick. Ms. Turner, do we have time for one more person?

One more person, if anyone would like to speak on an item not appearing on the agenda.

And it looks like we're good. Let's take a break until 8.10. If the assembly can make it back to their seats, we'll get started again. All right, we will continue on. Are you ready? All right, Ms. Turner's ready. So we will go to the mayor's report. I imagine there'll be a few things since we didn't hear from it earlier today. Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, it's 8-12, so I'll just kind of cover some priority things here. You've seen the agreements and contracts as well as one thing I want to point out is the grant reports. We will be bringing a new distribution system for the senior center grants, so that might be something worth reviewing. If you remember, we did a hold harmless last year because of the sort of sloppiness of what happens after a census, and we believe that it should go on actual daily usage versus a number that doesn't actually represent who senior centers serve. I've just done some outstanding items. I think this is important, but we have a new Employee of the Month program. If you care about details, let us know. It seemed to be sort of this building-centric before. Now we want to equally recognize employees from all over the borough. So we have a new system for that. I judged the Soldotna sport event with the vice president, which was pretty excellent. Really hard choices. The winner was the Alaska Big Sipper. Does anyone know what the Alaska Big Sipper is? It's in Soldotna here. It's a restaurant that is the brainchild of a 12-year-old that is doing very well. Some healthy comfort foods and some dirty sodas and things like that. But Also quite cost-effective for larger families, and we believe that it's a niche. The judges believe that it's a niche that needed to be filled. She won, and most of the presentation was by a 12-year-old. 12-year-old. Which was kind of confusing, because you're looking at a 12-year-old, but you're hearing the business plan of, like, a 47-year-old. So it was kind of cool.

Anyway...

I'm not going to cover all of the meetings here. I'll cover some of the key ones. We have been having budget meetings with commissioners, hoping to have a beginning better outcome. We've all talked about in the governor's budget, which we will see soon enough. What doesn't make it in there, we still prioritize and keep it at the top of our list. Hopefully we're more successful than we've been, certainly last year, and we have been some years in the past. Just a special person I want to point out is Margaret Phelps at the Soldotna Senior Center. We went there for lunch one day for her to show off some of her paintings. This is a senior that's painted with her right hand, suffered from a pretty severe stroke, stopped painting, was encouraged to paint in any way that she possibly could. She started using her left hand. If you come into my office, she thanked me for my encouragement to paint no matter what with the first painting she did. which won her, I think, half dozen Blue Ribbon Awards, some salmon and a bear and a stream. Anyway, she's back to painting. She's better than ever. Just sometimes it makes a difference when a community encourages someone as they get older to keep charging ahead on what they love to do. We have a compliance order by consent with the Department of Environmental Conservation on our leachate issues. I think it's easy to meet. I think we have a good agreement, a solid agreement. We'll meet all of the objectives and be fine. Hopefully, once the installation is completed, we catch up on our leachate management, and this is a thing we don't talk about anymore, but the agency was leaning on us for... some tighter deliverables and I don't think we'll have a problem with it. I just wanted to keep you informed. And anything I bring up like this, of course, just come to me with if you want additional details. We had a meeting on outstanding compliance cases and violation codes on Monday the 27th with Samantha Lopez, Ruffner, Ogren, and Aaron Hughes. We had some decisions to make about how we're going to handle these are primarily over-the-line platting issues and different related compliance cases like that. I think we have a good plan on prioritizing how we're going to handle them. A lot were on hold because we hadn't come together on a clear direction on how we handle minor versus major and what that's going to look like in the future, and I think we have a clear path now. If anyone ever has questions about that, I'm always happy to flip through a few cases with you because it's pretty interesting through the years. And it's time for us to clear those compliance issues and deal with them efficiently and effectively in a way that doesn't take years. We've had some meetings on, Mr. Hedges and I have had some meetings on dealing with helping SPH that was here this evening, securing a campus for future growth. And I think we may be heading in a successful direction. It's been very difficult. They're backed up to a hill with a stream nearby and right next to that is kind of a prize playground park. So we'll keep you posted if we're successful moving forward. But I think it's imperative. You heard about the growth at SPH. Campus is very important. If you remember, that's one of the reasons CPH was successful. They were able to expand their campus right in that 250-yard area, which is very important in Homer as well. Saturday the 2nd was Christmas in the Park. Did anybody go? It's pretty cool, probably. I don't know, 1,500, 1,700 people there. It was full. Santa was there, not just any old Santa. It was the real Santa and a couple of reindeer performances. It was very cool. On the 5th, I went to the Alaska Conference of Mayors in Anchorage. I'm not really a club guy, but we'll give it a shot. AML is really important to many of the professionals in our administration. They do an okay job. In Juneau, I'm really counting on beefing up the Alaska Conference of Mayors. There's an untapped resource there that, in my view, is completely untapped. If you think about it, particularly the borough mayors, just to come into office, have a much larger district than the typical legislator. if we can actually become organized on a few key issues, one being an adjustment to the BSA and an inflational adjustment over time, I think we can get somewhere. Those are folks from every town everywhere in Alaska that would speak a unified voice. We'll see if that's possible, but anyway, that's my goal with that group. And then we had the working group meeting on the 12th. We're have issues the key issues were housing cost of housing availability of housing worst force development CTE and education and economy transportation the next steps are we are sending out an email tomorrow to the working group great turnout we had a full 25 here and a couple of alternates that A couple of alternates took the places of a couple of missing primary members, and then we still had a couple of spare alternates. We're going to email out those choices for them selecting their priority for a committee to work offline until we can come back together. It's a quarterly meeting. But great ideas. Some folks that are very plugged into the community. A lot of energy. I'm looking for good things. So we have a long meeting. I want to close out with today's meeting. We have formed a South Central Mayors Energy Coalition meeting. With Mayor Bronson, DeVries, Ledford, Carrington, Whitney, Gabriel, Kastner, McClure, Dickinson, and Cole. I have not spoken to the Ketchum Act City Mayor yet. I will. This was a Bronson administration original formulation, but we're missing a few folks. Anyway, we did a press release today. Here's... A little mission statement. There's four of you. I'll just pass this down for you to take a look at. Kelly, if you don't mind. Our goal is to work with the utilities, the agencies, and the industry on short-term, mid-term, and a long-term solution to the energy issue facing South Central. Well, I'll just say the Rail Belt of Alaska. are a couple of years away from impacts that are pretty negative. We're three or four years away from potentially having significant impacts. And our job collectively is to avoid those impacts. The lack of energy and the cost of energy in this state is clearly an obstacle to economic development. But when it gets to that point, we'd be spending more in every school, not just schools that are heated with heating oil and offline. Every school, everything we do would cost more money. It's something we need to get ahead of. So we kicked that off today. And following that natural gas rail belt security meeting with the mayors, I attended the Hillcorp Kenai and Cook Inlet Natural Gas Operations meeting. That was interesting. Most legislators were there, from what I can count. A very high proportion of the agency folks. They just pointed out some of their limitations, and I think there are going to be some efforts coming forward. I have a few ideas. I know others do as well. The key to Alaska's success is reducing the cost of energy in rural Alaska, not increasing the cost of energy in urban Alaska. I'll just leave it at that. I don't know if you have any questions, but I'm here if you do.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are there any questions for the mayor? Not seeing any of that. Oh, here, Mr. Ribbons.

Thank you, Mayor. I also attended the AML conference last week, although I think you and I attended different meetings most of the time. I did attend one group where they were talking about asset management at municipalities, and you and I both come from an oil field background where asset management is, you know, you don't run to failure because it just doesn't work that way. I'm just curious what your thoughts are about how the borough does asset management and whether you think there are some efficiencies to be gleaned in there.

Well, that's a great question, because although there's an asset management team, our efforts are in their infancy, and it is a gap. And it is a gap we intend to fill. And I'm not sure how we've made it for, let's see, 64, 23, 60 years. 59 years. I'm not sure how we've made it this far, but I can give you a lot of examples of where it's failing. We've got some really talented folks here in projects. Pretty talented. We've got some really talented folks in finance. We haven't really put the pieces together on active asset management. There's not a list of real property, buildings on real property that I can hand you and say, yep, here you go. These are the buildings that are owned by the Kenai Peninsula Borough. So it's a key issue that we must solve in the very near future. When you talk about things like energy efficiency, we're just trying to keep the doors open. We're way behind. There's a lot of work to do. So it's a great question. I hope that answer is satisfactory, but you'll be hearing a lot more. And if you have an interest in participating, I always open that up to assembly members with some background that may help some helpful hints. But as that group develops a little further, we are going to have to assign that responsibility to a team and do the initial, as you and I know, in the private sector, we've been past that point for literally decades with key inventories and service lives and the kinds of things we don't have here. So we have a lot of work to do.

Thank you. And the answer is yes.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are there any other questions for the mayor? Any online? No, so we will move on to the next item. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Oh, we do. President Johnson.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. Yeah, Mayor McChickey, I had a phone call from Willie Dunn in Homer today. He was asking about the ongoing opioid settlement money. His group, Kachemak Bay I can't remember exactly, but they help people with addiction and that sort of thing. Anyway, he was asking if there was gonna be ongoing funding that group was interested in.

Simple question is yes, and I certainly hope that his group will apply.

Fabulous, I'm sure they will. Thank you.

All right, Ms. Cooper.

Thank you, Mr. Cox. We all received calls from Mr. Dunn and their president of that organization, Jacqueline Rainwater, had called me. And I spoke to Brenda today when I came in. And the ordinance last year appropriated the money into the account for year two. And she's expecting those grant funds or those grant applications to go out with the ordinance to the assembly in January. It appears that they do have that on their calendar. That they do have it on their calendar to bring it to the assembly.

Yeah, very good. Just to be perfectly, so the reason why I said yes is it will be an option. We have addiction all over the Kenai Peninsula, not just in Homer. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I will ask one more time if there's any other questions. Not seeing any, we'll move to the next item. We do not have any items not completed from the prior agenda, so we will go to public hearings on ordinances. The first one we have is Ordinance 2023-25, approving Anchors Away North Subdivision Single Family Residential R1 Local Option Zoning District and amending KPB 21.46.040. This was brought to us by their mayor and referred to the lands committee. And we would, I would like to ask for Ms. Eklund to please move to enact and give us a committee report. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. I move to enact Ordinance 23-25, which you just read. And the report is that the Department of Natural Resources has a raw piece of land down on the Sterling Highway towards Homer that they have applied for a local option zoning district, a single family residential district. And this is the best way to go forward with this zoning request. And they had no objections. There were some calls from local property owners in the area, but no objections from any public. And I would move for unanimous.

Thank you. We now have public hearings on ordinance 2023-25. Is there anyone online or anyone signed up? No. Is there anyone in the public who would like to speak to ordinance 23-25? Seeing none, we will bring it back to the assembly for your wishes.

I move for unanimous.

Unanimous consent has been asked. Is there any objection? Is there any objection online? Seeing no objection, ordinance 2023-25 passes. Next, we have no unfinished business. And then in new business, we do have a resolution. that was brought off of the consent agenda. It is resolution 2023-082, expressing support for Seward Community Health Center building, a new health center building, a new building at 431-501 First Avenue, Seward, Alaska. This was referred to the legislative committee and that would be Ms. Cooper.

Sorry about that, I was reading the memo. So they brought forth, let me catch myself up here. They brought forth a resolution asking us to support the work that they are doing for the New Seward Community Health Center, they have received some initial funding and will be applying for additional grants, both statewide and federally, and are asking the borough assembly to support them in this resolution.

And do we have a motion?

I move to approve resolution 2023-08-2.

Thank you. We will then go to public comments. Are there any public comments on Resolution 2023-082? Is there anyone signed up or anyone online? There is not. Is there anyone in the public who would like to speak to Resolution 2023-082? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the assembly. And I think I'll bring it to Mr. Hibbert, who was the one who asked to pull that off the consent agenda.

Yes. Thank you, Vice President Cox. By the way, you're doing a great job tonight. So the reason I pulled this off the consent agenda is because I just didn't, I don't know that during committee that I got enough information on this. And so when I put the numbers together and was, and I'm sorry, I forget the gentleman's name that was there tonight. or today telling us about this. But when we put these numbers together and looking at the 2025 forecast, open six days a week, 312 days, the total number of visits is 6,468. It comes to 20.7 visits a day. But when you read down into this a little bit farther, total patients per year is 2,587. That's a year. Comes out to 8.3 patients a day. And so when you're looking at this building, the footprint of this building and the expenses and the gross revenue and the $20 million, nine exam rooms, And I'm thinking, okay, well, what does 20,000 square feet look like? And so I got on our handy map here and I looked it up. Walgreens here in town is 17,000 square feet. The Aspen Hotel, the new Aspen is 33,000. This building is 42,000. The best Western hotel down the street is 20,700. So huge building. And when I'm trying to put this, I don't not want to support this. I just have questions about what's such a big building? Why nine exam rooms when you're only going to have eight patients a day and 20,000 square feet? Them are my questions. I don't know that I could support that unless I had a better understanding of it.

Thanks. I am online to speak if that's okay.

Mr. Ambrosio.

Would that be okay, or did you want to speak first, Ms. Eklund?

Well, I just want to throw out a couple of things. Looking at the Kenai Peninsula Borough Comprehensive Plan, and there's quite a few items under the health objectives and strategies. And objective C, support the health care industry as an important economic sector and service provider to the community. And in the near term, work cooperatively with CPH and SPH to ensure both facilities to continue to provide high-quality care while remaining financially sustainable, as well as working with Providence Seward Medical and Care Center and the other health providers to improve the continuum of care. And this is looking out in the future. And that's what this plan is for, is for the future. And I'm not sure that that number is as good of a table as what SPH or CPH... provide they're pretty adept at giving their quarterly reports they've been doing it for a long time being this is not a government uh owned building or or covered by mill rate they they aren't required to do those quarterly reports but i i think that we could get the same kind of information and and i think mr ambrosiani the ceo of the sewer community health center has some answers to mr hibbert's question thank you

Ms. Cooper, would you like to speak first?

I would just like to give a comment, and I look forward to hearing from Mr. Ambrose, but I agree that the health care system is not going to work the way it is designed now. The community health centers are focusing, we're trying to get across that bridge on focusing on wellness rather than illness. And when you look at the floor plan, they've got some teaching facilities. Only half of it will be built out. We also have to remember that Seward no longer has an airport. The Providence portion of the health care in Seward continues to reduce, not providing the care that is needed for the residents of Seward. And if someone needs urgent care, they will have to be sent by road to Providence in Anchorage. So I agree with Mr. Hibbert's concerns on the number of patients a day not being something that would work. But I took some time to read through the plan, and they're also looking at leasing out some of those facilities, sharing some of that or leasing some of that space back to Providence, and only having half of it finished at the beginning. So while I agree that a facility this size doesn't make sense for that number of patients per day, I appreciate that they're looking at how they can help share some of those expenses with other partners in the community, as well as focusing more on wellness as opposed to throwing more money at just illness.

Thank you. Next, I will go to Assemblymember Tupper online, and then I will go to Mr. Ambrosiani after Mr. Tupper. Mr. Tupper, please.

Thank you very much. So I did want to offer that, like I said earlier, this is kind of a passion of mine. And one of the big shifts in moving our health care system forward towards quality is a reduction in the focus on quantity. And it's so a big part of moving health care into a more wellness focus or what this model would be looking at. is that you would have less visits than you would in the current system, because the current system is built around having people come and get sick care. So health care looks different. Health care looks like keeping people at home and not coming to the doctor. There's a lot of activity that can happen in a doctor's office that isn't an appointment that a patient has. So there's a lot of chronic care management. There's a lot of chronic disease education that can happen. There's a lot of different models of ways that you can get information to patients or care to them in a way that doesn't require that they get sick first and then come to see you. And so as we continue to look at healthcare into the future, if we keep looking at, well, how many doctor's visits do we get out of it? I feel like that's the wrong metric. We're looking at the wrong thing. We should be looking at how does a population fare as far as their health? And I think that that's a better measure of the success of a health system than how many times somebody comes to see the doctor. And I get the concern over the size of the facility, but I would say that the visit volume is probably less important in a model that is being put forward than in our standard fee-for-service model that we use now.

Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Tupper. Mr. Ambrizani, hopefully I'm saying that correct. If you are online, please, if you have any answers to the questions that were asked or just have some information you'd like to share, we would love to hear it.

Okay, thank you, Vice President Cox. Can you hear me okay? We sure can. Great. To answer Mr. Hibbert's questions about nine exam rooms, We typically have three providers, three days a week. And then on Saturdays, we only have one provider, which we just started in the last, we just started this past summer doing that full time. But for a provider, you need three exam rooms to be efficient. One exam room, the patient is being roomed. The second exam room, the provider is seeing the patient. And the third exam room is being cleaned for the next patient. We typically have two and sometimes one exam room per provider, which makes our appointment processing very slow. So we can increase our volumes by having the standard industry standard of three exam rooms per provider. And you can see we have in the drawings, we have nine main exam rooms. We have one exam room that is a special room off to the side. that is accessed from the outside for COVID use or any other kind of pandemic so that we can do drive-through testing and drive-through administration of vaccinations or whatever. And then we have two procedure rooms so that we can bring in outside specialists to do certain procedure days at our clinic. Also, we can convert. If we grow enough to need four providers, then we can have three exam rooms for four providers. So that explains what we have there. The other thing is behavioral health. I mean, we have one behavioral health office right now. We have doubled our behavioral health visits in the past year. Our medical visits have increased 32% in the past year. So we're using the model of doing preventive care, primary care, wound care, other things, behavioral health care. And we're also identifying social determinants of health in the community, helping homeless folks, sending cabs to go get people. We do a lot of things that other clinics don't do. And we integrate our care. We have internal medicine. We have behavioral health. And we have medical. We do pediatrics. And we do care across the whole continuum. We even go out to people's houses when necessary and deliver care at home. Besides the clinic, the last gentleman that talked, and I forgot your name, I think it was Talbot, you hit it right on the head. We are trying to work with folks and improve their health and not have them come in just when they're sick. We want them to come in when they're well so we can help them, teach them how to be healthier So that's why we have a demonstration kitchen on the second floor, so we can teach folks how to cook better, how to prepare food better, how to raise their kids with appropriate meals. And then we have other space that's been talked about as far as education for our community, educational things such as nutritional education, digital equity, youth resource center, and even teaching kids about vaping. I mean, I know we do it in the schools, but I don't think it hurts to do it in your medical clinic either. So really, as I brought up in the legislative meeting, I honestly believe that our healthcare system is broken. A lot of good people are working hard, but community health centers, we're a patient-centered medical home, and I think we're positioned in Seward to do a lot more for our community then just take care of folks when they're sick. And I'm hoping that answered Mr. Hippert's questions.

Thank you, Mr. Ambrosiani. Mr. Tunset, did you still have a question or comment?

Yeah, thank you, Vice President Cox. I'll try to be brief. I think in general, I tend to agree with Mr. Hibbert's comments, and the cost seems quite high, and the space requested also seems very high. It's $1,000 a square foot, 20,000 square feet, $20 million project cost, so I'm, I guess, always a little leery about just supporting something through, um. Ordinance or resolution that doesn't really commit the bro to any money. Um, it's just saying that we support this because I feel like it sort of opens you up at some point that they come back and say, hey, we've got a shortfall and we need we need help. And you guys believe in this now that said, um. It's really difficult to just sort of sit up here and knowing all of the other effort that went into this at the community level, all of the people that you've engaged with. And I don't disagree with your comments, Mr. Ambrioziani, or Mr. Tupper's about the direction of health care and how to make that appropriate. I'm cautious. It seems like a very large amount of money and a large building that you're going to have to figure out how to operate and make work. But that said, I don't think I'm smarter than a lot of the people that worked very hard on this, obviously, and put this together for the need. So I'll support it cautiously.

Thank you, Mr. Tunset. I believe we have President Johnson online.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. I'm going to support Resolution 2023-082 as well. What I see out in Seward especially is a lack of options for people that live there. Going to Anchorage doesn't seem like much of an option to me. for more minor needs. And I think that people, or myself for sure, I'd love to go to Kenai or Sultana or wherever, I've got jillions of doctors, but the first thing they do is put an IV in my wallet. And the rates are so ridiculous. I'm positive I've got some things wrong with me. I'll be darned if I'll go spend that kind of money to find out. I'll stay home until I get real sick and then I'll have to go. So I just want to have people have more cost effective, reasonable medical rates. And so I think this is a step in that direction. And so I'm going to support it. And I hope that they don't intend to come back and ask the borough for money because we probably don't have it to help if they go sideways on this. Thank you.

Thank you, President Johnson. Mr. Ribbons, you had your hand up.

Yeah, I think I'm largely philosophically aligned along with Mr. Tonseth and Mr. Hibbert on this one. I will support this resolution with some reservations. And part of it for me is the borough seems to throw resolutions around like they're just paper that we're printing in front of us now. And I sometimes wonder about what the meaning is, or for that matter, why a community, if they're behind something, feels a need to come to the borough and ask for us to support it as well. But that being said, I will support this.

Thank you. Mayor McChiggy.

I have a couple comments. They're sort of directed at this resolution. First of all, they're $5 million into a $20 million project, so we're going to be talking about this for a long time. And it's a good future effort. I think the only concern—I don't have a concern. It's a resolution, right? That's what we say in general. It's just a resolution. But the bottom line is we don't have a Kenai Peninsula Borough health care system. And I hate to see us adding another piece to a system that is not working together toward a bottom end result. And that's nothing against this effort. This is more like a PCHS effort, which has been a very important organization to have here on the Kenai. That is kind of the gap that President Johnson is talking about. I hope he doesn't wait too long. It doesn't get cheaper. But it is a gap in our community. We have world-class healthcare in this tiny little community, but we're competing against one another without really sitting down and solving the problem for the long term. Where are the gaps? How can we best work together? Which facilities should offer which services so that we're not duplicating efforts? As I've said recently, I can buy a magic bus to go from one facility to the other for a lot cheaper than I can a wing. And we're building lots of wings. We're competing against ourselves. But if there's a gap in sewer, there's a resolution. It's a long-term effort. I support a Kenai Peninsula borough-wide health care system that functions more effectively than what we have today. don't get to vote it's up to all of you of course but if this is a pchs like facility pchs has has solved a lot of problems here in our community and it may be a positive thing and a piece of the puzzle that is yet to be assembled mr hammer yes thank you um so

My concern with this was, and I want this city of Seward and the residents of Seward to have healthcare, is that what happens down the, down the line that if you can't support this or if Seward can't support this and then where's, where's the money come from with, and when I'm looking at the numbers there, I just, that concerns me a little bit. I'm going to, I'll, I'll support this, but with reservations and I hope, I hope that it works well and in the best of luck we've all, This whole assembly has pushed for health care, mental health care, behavioral health care, and we're happy to see that there in Seward also. But anyway, I am in that. So best of luck. And like I said, I'll support this with reservations.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor Michicki, did you have another comment?

I do. I think it's important to make the statement to the record. I added the words non-borough funding in Section 1. We can't fund it. I want to make that clear. I think all assembly members should review the powers of the borough. Unless they chose to create a service area in the future, it's not something that we can fund. They would have to create a hospital service area or a health care service area for that region, and it would have to be approved by the voters. So I want to make that clear. Mr. Attorney, if I'm not stating that correctly, it would... Love a correction, but that is my understanding of our powers. So we are not at risk unless the people in the Seward area chose to fund something of that nature in the future.

Thank you for the clarification. Can I? Sure can.

So one other thing that I just remembered here that I wanted to speak about is that I remember when Seward did have a hospital and they had health care there. And then Providence came in and bought them out. And now they got a first aid center. And that was sad. And that's what I'm worried about is that Seward not having health care again. And so that was my other comment. Thanks.

Ms. Eklund.

Thank you, President Cox. This kind of reminds me of the lack of the familiarity with the East Peninsula that I often hear. And I... had one of the last children born at the Seward General Hospital, yes, and then Providence came in and they had a clinic and they had a four-bed hospital, and they did not have enough room to meet the demands of the residents and the visitors. And without a good clinic, we would probably use some of the economic base that the cruise ships bring in. We do not have an airport that can haul people to Anchorage. It's a two-hour drive in good weather to any other hospital. And this Seward Community Health Center is one of the federal programs that came about a couple years ago, and they are concerned with health. I have my general practitioner there. I go to my annual physicals. I have her text. I can text her. I mean, it's great care. It's not that we don't have health care in Seward. This is a long-term goal of the community that is expanding. The request for a resolution of support is not as stated in Mayor's addition that it's not borough funding that they're asking for. This is just one of the things that when you're asking for state and federal funding, if you have local support by another government entity, the borough assembly, the communities of Moose Pass, Cooper Landing and Hope, that need this place to be able to get to in less than two hours. Well, Hope could probably get to Anchorage. But I just wanted to make it clear that this is just asking for an additional document to go forward with the request for state and federal funding. Thanks.

Thank you.

And I'd like to ask for unanimous consent.

In just a minute, because we have Mr. Tupper online would like to make one more statement.

just one more thing, which is to say that I feel like this is my wheelhouse, right? Like this is where I've been working for the last decade plus. And when I look at the proposal that's being put forward and what they're asking for support on to accomplish, it looks like the future of healthcare. It looks like what we should be aiming for. So me, from my perspective, as having that career and that background, I'm gonna say yes to this resolution from a philosophical standpoint. And I get that there's concerns about the execution. And there's concerns. And I have my own. Like the mayor said, we don't have a borough wide healthcare system, wouldn't it be nice if we were to try and look for something like that. But I still feel like philosophically, this is the type of system that we should be moving towards. And so I'll be supporting the resolution for that. And since I interrupted Cindy, I wouldn't mind asking for unanimous.

UNANIMOUS has been asked, is there any opposition in the room or online? Seeing none, resolution 2023-082 passes unanimously nine to zero. Next, we will move on to public comments and public presentations, is there anyone signed up? There is no one signed up, so does anyone in the public have a comment or a presentation they would like to present? And for the record, please state your name and area that you live in.

I thought last meeting of the year, as we close out, I thought I might come in and share something as we head into the holidays. And actually to pray a benediction over you all is a gift to all of us in these chambers. I've had the privilege of praying with and for you over the last 23 years since getting Alaska. And I thought, my goodness, at the end of this year, maybe tonight we could do that together. So if you'd bow with me. So Lord, it's the end of business for tonight and for 2023. And you'll walk with this dedicated group of women and men through hundreds of decisions and issues. And they've led with purpose and integrity, making all decisions in the light of what is best for our community. And our community stands with our volunteer assembly in giving thanks to their sacrifice, Lord. Honor their work and service as they leave here tonight and celebrate the birth of our Savior in just a few weeks. Lord, I want to thank you for many of my friends here, for Kelly and Brent and Tyson, Jason, and President Brent, Ryan, Peter, Cindy, Mike, and Mayor Peter. We are fortunate, Lord, for these servants. And so tonight, Lord, we leave this place excited to enter into the holiday season, into a new year. We pray together for a borough that peace and safety and prosperity would come our way as we seek you, Lord, in these chambers from this day forward. And we pray together in the name of Jesus, the one whose birthday makes all the difference in our lives. Amen. And Merry Christmas.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Seeing none, we are on to assembly comments. I would like to go to those online first, so if President Johnson has any comments, please.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. My compliments on a well-run meeting. I am proud of you. Nice job. I have, so tomorrow Western Emergency Services holds their monthly board meeting. And of course I'll attend by a Zoom. One of the things that I've been meditating and thinking about this group is experiencing quite a bit of burnout. They are putting in a lot of overtime. They need an increase in staff or a decrease in workload. Pretty hard to decrease the workload. What are you gonna do? Ignore the phone? You've got a couple of guys out running an ambulance and the phone rings. Do you ignore the next phone? So, you know, it's a problem that I'll be talking to Mayor Michiki on. He's a genius and no doubt he'll think of something. But in my opinion, doing nothing isn't going to be an option. So I'm just open and toying around ideas. So I just wanted to let the... Constituents in district 7 know about that and the folks down in the anchor point area. I think that it's a area that goes beyond Western emergency services is probably something that goes out to catch you back and other places as well. Other than that, gosh, it's fun serving with all of you. And I wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and looking forward to the festivities. So thank you and good night.

Thank you, President Johnson. Next, Mr. Tupper, if you have any comments.

No, I think that's it for me tonight. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. And then Mr. Elam, if you have any comments. He's not online anymore. And so then we will go to our front row. Mr. Ribbons.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. And I'm going to echo what President Johnson said. Nice job filling in. A couple of things that deal with Nikiski. One, the Nikiski Community Council, and I'm going to be reading directly from what Mr. Ross sent me here. On December 16th from 10 to 4 on Hedberg Lake on the Community Council property is the Dave Jones Youth Ice Fishing Tournament. Dave Jones was an avid ice fisherman, and he was the superintendent of the school district. Parents and friends can fish, and there will be prizes for the youth. And he says the ice is 8 to 10 inches thick. On a slightly different note, there are two industrial facilities, two buildings out in the Kiske. One of them is fairly close to the school and they collapsed from snow load over the last year or so. I have been able to make some communication with the owner on it and I've gotten some optimistic signs that they are working with a contractor to do some demolition work on that. So we're excited about that. As many of you know, excuse me, PFAS was detected in some water out in Nakiski. I did get the drinking water results from the DEC for the school and the good news there is those are below the EPA's proposed standards for all of the constituents there. That's great news. And also I have been speaking with the utility system operator, and he's working with the DEC revolving loan program, I believe it is, for some longer-term options on that. And stay tuned in the next few months. Hopefully we'll get some traction on that. And finally, just as a comment, another thing that I learned when I was up at the AML meeting is, if I understand correctly, Alaska is the only state in the United States that still has an equalization law in the book for school funding. And I'm just curious whether that still makes sense for us or whether it's better to leave something like that go away and we should work on the legislation on that. So just something to think about. And that's all I got. Bye.

Thank you, Mr. Ribbons. Mr. Hibbert.

Thank you, Vice President Cox. Happy birthday, Mr. Ribbons. Anyways, hey, I want to give a shout out to all of our rural employees that are out there working and keeping in the contractors that are keeping our roads in shape and keeping us going up and down them. And that, you know, I don't think they get thanks enough for the things that they do. And, you know, and the staff in the building here, every time you come in here, they're They're happy, they're smiling, and they're working hard. And with that, have a Merry Christmas, and we'll see you next year.

Thank you, Mr. Hibbert. Mr. Tunset.

Thank you, Mr. Cox. Okay, a couple things. Yeah, echo what everybody said. You did a fantastic job today running the meeting. Good job.

I attended AML.

That was really cool. Just wanted to thank the borough for sending me there. I learned a lot, especially at the kind of newly elected piece on open meetings and Title 29 and all that stuff. It was a really good networking experience. So I was really happy to go and echo what Mr. Hibbert said in thanking the staff. Certainly the clerk, you know, getting all the logistics done for me and your staff. I appreciate it. And just all you guys hanging in here with us tonight. Legal. Ms. Harbaugh, appreciate you guys. I was going to say happy birthday to Mr. Ribbons as well, but. Brent beat me to it, but happy birthday. More than one person can say it. Mr. President, I'm wishing you a speedy recovery. It sounds like you're doing well and sounding well on the Zoom line, so it's great to see you and hope you're doing well. Just a couple announcements from Kenai. You probably heard, but Allie Ostrander from Kenai was nominated to the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame, so that was pretty cool. Congratulations to Allie, and certainly congratulations If you've lived around here for any amount of time, you've heard her name in the running community. She's a superstar with a humongous resume. So I was really proud to see that. On a sadder note, Kenai lost a really, really cool dude, Don Weller. He was a PE teacher of mine. Guy taught me how to juggle. he taught a lot of kids in our school system. I went to Sears elementary and, um, I, I've ran into so many people that knew him and interacted with him in one way or another that taught basic life skills. You know, he taught every one of us how to juggle, how to shoot a basketball, how to catch a football. Like he was, you know, at that level. And so I was really sad to hear of his passing and that bold on and the moose nuggets will have played their last song. Um, Yeah, just wanted to recognize him and the impact that he certainly made on my life. Grew up in Woodland subdivision. He was just blocks away from my house. Really good dude. Kenai City Council meets next on the 20th. That's their last meeting of the year. Appreciate you guys, everything you do to kind of help me along in this endeavor of trying to be a good assembly person and do good government, so I appreciate all your guys' help. That's all. Hope everybody has happy holidays.

Thank you, Mr. Tensap. Ms. Cooper.

Thank you, and I too would like to echo the nice job tonight by Chair Cox. Kept the meeting running smoothly. Wishing President Johnson, Mr. Tupper, and Mr. Elam all feeling better this time of year. It's kind of tough to stay away from all those bugs. I also would like to express my gratitude to all the borough staff, all of the folks that work emergency services. seem to have had a higher than normal number of incidents on the borough this year and it's heartbreaking and they get up and do it over and over again so thanks to all of the emergency service folks borough staff you're amazing i hope i remember to tell you that every time i see you i sure appreciate you and i also uh have noticed since coming back from the assembly that the uh morale in this big family of public employees and borough personnel has improved. So I wanted to say thank you to Machiki, Mayor Machiki, for heading that up. It sure makes for less turnover and us being able to do what we do. So thanks to everyone and Merry Christmas.

Thank you, Ms. Cooper. Mr. Mayor, did you have anything you'd like to add?

Yes, as we close out the year, I just want to tell you how thankful I am for a great group working with all of you. I can go on and on about the employees every day, and the team is working well together. It is feeling somewhat family-like. I mean, things are improving to the point that we even have the borough attorney wearing appropriate clothing to meetings now. He dressed up for all of you tonight.

But I mean it about all of you. It's a smart group. You're thoughtful.

We don't have a lot of grandstanding. We don't have a lot of populism. Just work together on good policy. And I know that'll continue. And I really appreciate it. I've worked in bodies where that's not always the case. In fact, I've worked in bodies where that's not often the case. And I really appreciate the fact that that's of all you and for you new folks. I know you'll be the same kind of operators.

Kelly's not new, but Ryan, who I've known since he was born or something like that.

Anyway, I want to wish you all happy holidays, whichever holidays you celebrate. I, like the good Pastor Hamilton, I have a tendency to celebrate the birth of Christ as well, but I know people have a collection of things that they celebrate this time of year, respect all of that, but looking forward to a little bit of time off with the family, and I hope all of you are going to do so as well. So we'll see you the first week of January unless we see each other over the next couple weeks. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ms. Eklund?

Thank you, amazing Vice President Cox on your running of the meeting tonight. And thank you, Mrs. Ribbons, for providing us with birthday treats for Mr. Ribbons. They were enjoyable. The drive over was interesting, was behind a plow with a couple other cars, 40 miles an hour for many miles and lots of blowing snow. So please turn your lights on all the way. If you put just your parking lights on, your tail lights aren't on. And when there's blowing snow, I cannot see somebody without their tail lights on. And we have holiday travel. We have winter school sports on the road. So have your headlights on all the way so your tail lights are also on. Don't drive on the roads right now without your lights on all day long, please. Please, I'm on the road a lot. And yes, thank you, staff. Sean, you can go in business casual by me, okay? Alaska business casual. Your vests are just fine. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Hanukkah and any other holiday you support between now and our next meeting on January 2nd. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Eklund. And just so everybody heard that is turn on your lights or Ms. Eklund might hit you. but a couple of things. I was also going to say happy birthday to Mr. Ribbons, but for sure say thank you to Mrs. Ribbons for the fabulous cupcakes. Cause they were definitely good. I also wanted to remind everyone this Thursday at K-PED, there is an open house from one to six. This is for Tim Dillon's retirement and also for, so it's for saying goodbye to Tim and saying hello to Cassidy who will be then taking charge on the first of the year. And so that will be on Thursday, 1 to 6.

Yes. I hate to take a second bite at the apple, but the word bite is appropriate here. The cameras were on, so whoever borrowed my cupcake from Mrs. Ribbons, you have an opportunity to... Mr. Rizzo.

That would be your staff. So with that, the only other things I was gonna share is just a little bit about, I'm sure other people have family coming back. My son just came back from Montana in his second year. And my other son is going to be driving from Fairbanks this next weekend. And so I'm very much learning to appreciate my kids coming home from school. They're telling me they're doing good in school. We will find out probably pretty shortly if that's true or not. But otherwise, I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and just have a happy and safe holiday with family. With that, our next meeting will be January 2nd at 6 p.m. right here at the Betty J. Glick Assembly Chambers. And with that, we adjourn at 9.12.