City and Borough Assembly - Regular Meeting

All right, again, welcome everybody. Thank you for coming. It's always good to see a full house and people engaged on our service up here. So I'll go ahead and call to order the regularly scheduled meeting of Tuesday, August 11th, 2026. Please join me for a flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, The Assembly of the City and Borough of Sitka would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional first people of Sitka. With gratitude, we proceed on Tlingit Ani. Sarah, roll call, please.

Mayor Eisenbeis?

Present.

Mr. Yestad?

Here.

Ms. Carlson? Here. Ms. Riley? Here. Mr. Christensen? Here. Mr. Moser? Here. And Mr. Selene?

Here. Thank you. Chris, I will do my best to call on you when I see you. I frequently don't see the people there, so feel free to jump in if I'm passing you up. I don't find it to be rude. I want to make sure we include you in the conversation tonight. Any correspondence or agenda changes this evening? Seeing none, special reports. We do have some scheduled special reports this evening. We will start with our tourism manager Judson is gonna give an overview of the cruise port profile. So Judson, please.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and assembly members. My name is Judson Rusk. I'm the tourism manager here for the city. I want to take a few minutes today to kind of walk through the cruise port profile that was completed for Sitka by Tourism Economics, which is part of Oxford Economics. The study was commissioned by Cruise Lines International Association, or CLIA. It was part of a larger project launched in 2024, and it looked at 10 different cruise ports, five in Europe and then five in the Pacific Northwest. The goal was to create a consistent framework for understanding cruise activity at the individual port level and then ultimately what that activity means economically for that destination. Quick note kind of before I jump into everything here. It is a pretty substantial report. You have it in your packet in its entirety. It's about 40 slides long. I was told I do not have the time to go over it all today. Oh man, I don't think anyone wants me up here for that long. So there is quite a bit of information in the report that I'm not gonna touch on right now, and I'm happy to answer questions about it if there are any after this, but I am going to specifically kind of dig into the economic impact analysis of the report for my time up here today. So if anyone is following along, that's gonna start on slide 23, kinda goes from slide 23 to 28 in the report, so. Jumping into it, the report breaks down economic impact into like three measures. First is direct impact, which is money directly associated with the cruise activity. So this is passengers coming off the ship and buying things in town, paying for a meal, paying for a tour, that sort of things. The second is indirect impact. That is when the businesses then purchase goods and services to then help their operations. So this is effectively supply chain impacts. And then finally is induced impact. And this is what happens when those businesses pay wages to their employees, and then those employees then go spend those wages back at different parts in our economy. So there's direct, indirect, and induced. So a visitor spends money at a business, that business spends money with suppliers and pays their employees, those employees spend some of their earnings elsewhere.

In 2024,

There was $105 million in cruise-related direct spending here in Sitka. 25 million of that was from the cruise lines themselves purchasing operational necessities, so that's the cruise lines that are here in town and they say they're refueling. That would be a cruise line-related direct spend. 81 million of that number came from the passengers that came off the ship and spent money here in town. What that means is that every passenger that came off the ship and into town ended up spending an average of $136 per person during their visit. 43% of that was spent on tours and other excursions, retail and shopping made up 34%, and food and beverage accounted for 15%. Those three categories alone represent more than 90% of the direct passenger spending, while entertainment, transportation, and accommodation sort of round out the rest of that list. If you go through the reports in a chronological order, it goes on to elaborate on that direct spending number, and then it measures that number into four different economic outputs. So the first one, excuse me, economic outcomes, the first one is outputs. which is essentially the total value of economic activity generated. So it is that initial $105 million number in direct spending that then produces additional activity through indirect and induced effects, bringing the total economic output of Sitka's Cruise Tourism in 2024 to $156 million. The second measure is GDP. This is similar but different from output in the sense that it measures the value added to the economy after accounting for production costs. So Sitka associated cruise activity in 2024 contributed 85 million in GDP to the Alaska economy overall, and that included 55 million directly here in town with another 30 million through indirect and induced effects. Third category that they use in this report is employment. Sika Crew's activity directly supported 569 jobs and then indirectly supported an additional 185 jobs for a total of 754 jobs supported across Alaska. Fourth and final category is wages. those jobs generated approximately $46 million in wages. So that included 31 million direct wages here, and then 15 million through indirect and induced activity. So in short, to sum up that part of the report, the cruise industry in Sitka in 2024 resulted in $105 million in direct spending, supported $156 million in economic output, $85 million added to the GDP, excuse me, 754 jobs and $46 million in wages across the Alaskan economy. There is one last thing that I want to talk about. It's not economic spend related. It's in the report, but I just think it's very important to note that this report tells us that the demand for the Alaska market, cruise market grew 40% between 2019 and 2024, which is more than double the global demand increase during that same period, which was 17%. which everyone living here, I think, felt the effects of that demand increase. However, the report projects that number to decrease, be closer to 9% between now and 2030. This is worth noting because it shows that Alaska holds a very strong position as being a premium and in-demand cruise market, but that there is also reasonable and sustainable projected stability in the foreseeable future, which I think is a very good news for a committee like ours. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Like you said, it's a much larger report than what you went over, but it's good to have this report. So thank you for forwarding it to the community of Sitka. I appreciate that. Any questions for Judson?

Yeah, I have a question. Thanks so much. This is a really interesting report. A couple of times, just like while I heard you speak and also reading the report, it kind of seems to conflate economic impact on Sitka with economic impact on Alaska. And I just want to make sure I have this correct. the 156 million in economic output on page eight, it says that this is the total economic impact of 156 million in the Alaskan economy. But then right below that, it has an image that says total output from cruise related spending in Sitka. So is it Alaska wide or is it in Sitka? Or are they somehow the same number?

It's not the same number. Both numbers are represented throughout the report on multiple pages. So if I can kind of break down the answer to your question, the direct spend, which I think is on page 21 of this report, shows that we had $105 million of direct spend here in Sitka, and then through the indirect and induced impacts, that is where you get the $156 million number, which is, that's expanded to all of the Alaskan economy. But that $105 million is then also broken down between cruise lines and passengers. So $81 million from passengers, $25 million from cruise lines spent right here in town.

Right here in town. And then the indirect and induced spending goes throughout the state of Alaska, is that correct?

Correct.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

I got one for you. Is there anything in there on dissatisfaction with spending the money? Like is there anything in there that says that Sitka cabs are ripping people off or that people are dissatisfied with tours?

No, not particularly. There is a pretty substantial business survey that's in here that I didn't touch on. It says, in short, that a lot of our tours and operators and excursions are highly regarded within the like overall region. Transportation, specifically to your question, there was, I think it was only 3% spent, direct spend on transportation here, so there's very little information on it and there wasn't a lot of questions asked about it. It is implied that there's not a lot of money spent on transportation because most of the information is coming from the cruise terminal and they have the shuttle services that come into town.

Thank you, Judson. Of that $105 million spent on tourist services things in Sitka, was there a breakdown about how much of that was purchased on the boat? I believe some of their ShoreX tours have 100%, 200% markup, and I don't believe we're able to collect sales tax at this time on that value. So is that truly we're getting our 6% sales tax on all of that $105 million, or is there kind of something in between that we don't quite know about?

In this report, it does not break down. There's nothing in the report that sort of classifies it that way.

Okay, because that's helpful, because I would love to see a direct impact of $6 million in sales tax revenues from this, but we just can't truly understand that at this point with this information. Thank you.

Katie, one more for Judson.

Yeah, I recall that one of the most popular activities it seemed like for tourists was exploring, walking around, and specifically the area of Lincoln Street was mentioned. Can we use this report to strengthen our use of funds as we talked about at the last meeting, the funds that we're planning to put towards Lincoln Street. Can this information be used to help us leverage other funding to contribute to the large infrastructure project that we are considering for downtown Sitka? Or what do you anticipate this report can be used for?

I think I'm in dangerous territory saying anything affirmative on that question, but I would, in my professional role, absolutely use this information as leverage to get that across the line, yeah. Can I say it's gonna be 100% approved? I'm not gonna sit at this table and say that, but I do think this shows a lot of promise in that direction, yes.

And then I was just curious, there was this positive businesses are confident that cruise industry is gonna grow, that it's a very important economic impact for our town, but then it also says that only 47% of respondents were satisfied with the cruise industry's current impact on Sitka. And I was wondering if you could lend any more insight into that. I find it interesting that less than 50% of the businesses surveyed were positively perceiving the industry's impact.

Yeah, in the slides in that business survey portion of the reports, they have quite a few graphs showing different questions that they ask to different business owners. And to your question specifically, there is a graph in there, and I don't have the number memorized off the top of my head, and I apologize, but it shows that there is sort of a want from the downtown business owners of different mediation techniques of how to, like, sort of lighten the burden of the cruise ship industry. The top three recommendations that are made in this report are things that we have already addressed as a city through various other surveys, community outreach, the MOU with the doc, and a lot of those are already in place. We have to kind of take into consideration that this was a report done in 2024 and our local industry here in town has sort of adapted and grown since then. So some of that is just somewhat outdated, but only for the fact that it, the satisfaction of the cruise industry like they go on to say that they would like the timing to be different from the ships which we've worked on since then and dispersion of passengers through different excursions which we've worked on since 2024 so that is in there and i would not put as much stock in that one just because we have worked on it since this data has been collected

Well, thank you for that. And it just sounds like there should be and is a desire for continued improvement and collaboration between the cruise industry and the community of Sitka to keep those beneficial perceptions and outcomes. Thanks for this report.

Quick question. The $136 a person, looking at this, They're not real clear how they come up with that. It's like, I guess, surveys maybe. But it'd be interesting to compare to our sales tax returns during that time to see roughly if they match up. But I realize it's almost impossible to say exactly how much they spend.

Thank you, Jefferson.

Thank you, Judson. Definitely a good report that I'm sure we will continue to dig through. Appreciate your time this evening. Moving on tonight in our scheduled special reports, we have our department quarterly reports. We will start with Harbors.

Good evening. Brandon Calhoun, city of Harbormaster. So far this summer, we've had less transient traffic than usual. We're seeing kind of a shift in vessel sizes, have less 40 to 50-foot boats coming in and some more 32-foot boats. I included a list of some of our reservations, which include our lighting facilities and GPIP port wall. In total, we have over 2,000 reservations this year on all of our facilities. And then our hot berths, which is what we do for out-of-town fishing vessels and out-of-town transients when we have vacant stalls during the summer, we'll let a vessel stay in that stall temporarily. And to date, we've done 525 hot berths. And that was as of last week. Obviously the whole fishing fleet's in town at the moment, so things have been pretty busy. And then we're back up to full staff, which is nice. So we're kind of catching up on our to-do list.

That's what I got. Appreciate it. Any questions for our harbor master? Thank you, Brandon. Our next scheduled special report this evening is Public and Government Relations. Melissa.

Good evening. Melissa Lunas, Public and Government Relations Director, here to give your quarterly report for May through July. So the biggest update this quarter is the communications plan. It's complete. It's been a substantial effort looking at not just how we communicate with the public, but also how information moves within the organization and across departments. We gathered input from staff and community, looked at our existing communication tools and practices, and used that information to develop a more coordinated approach going forward. The plan is designed to be used, of course. It gives us strategies, specific actions, and a playbook with tools and templates that we can actually use day to day. One thing I want to emphasize is that this finished plan isn't the finish line. It's really the beginning of implementation. So the next step is rolling it out internally and beginning to work through the priorities identified in the plan. A big part of that, we will be getting, A big part of that will be getting the communications liaison network together. Really it's about staying connected with what departments are working on, helping them communicate well, and making sure we're all on the same page when information needs to go out. The plan gives us a roadmap, and the work now is making good communication part of how we operate every day. So update number three of the current strategic plan is complete and departments are continuing to work on the priorities and action plans identified through that process. Thank you for all being a part of that. We're now looking at ahead to update number four, which is going to be a little different because it'll lead us into the development of the next five year strategic plan. So from 27 to 32. more substantial work will begin after the october election so look forward to that for the fy27 congressional directed spending requests we're continuing to monitor the federal appropriations process senator mccoskey as you know submitted the 5 million dollar request for the marine service center repairs and upgrades upgrades but which more so focuses on the seawall that's through the the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations Bill, and it advanced through the House process in June, though the Senate actions remain pending. And there's been a little movement since I wrote my report. The Senate has now passed a continuing resolution that would temporarily keep the federal government funded through December 11th. So the house still needs to act on the Senate version, which could push the final action of the FY 27 appropriations bill and our $5 million requests further out. So it's sort of like a still largely stay tuned item for FY 26 this quarter, we've transitioned from securing the funding to doing the work necessary to actually receive it. Congress has secured $10 million for the wastewater effluent disinfection treatment system, but unfortunately that doesn't mean it just shows up in our account as much as Brooke would appreciate that. We've had contact and met with EPA, assembled our grant team, which will largely fall on Public Works and finance and we also participated in required EPA training. We're now working through the application, budget, federal requirements, and implementation guidance. So there's quite a bit of work happening behind the scenes to actually get that $10 million in place so that we can use it. And then a new one on my report is the administrative policies and procedures inventory. This project I kind of stumbled into began when I had a question about an administrative policy. Went looking for the answer and realized while we have a central location for these documents, it hasn't really been consistently been kept up with so. I've completed an initial inventory and now I'm working with departments to validate it. So that means identifying what's current, what's outdated or duplicated and what might be missing and then who owns each document. I'll ultimately hand it off to the asset manager. And so the goal is to make sure that when staff go to the central location for me, they can trust that they're like finding what is current and accurate. and that we have a process in place to keep it that way. And then finally, not included in my report, but I wanted to speak a little bit, and John, Kevin, and Katie might bring this up later too in their reports, but I wanted to mention the Child Care Summit last week. It was hosted by the Chamber and with support from the members of the Early Childhood Coalition. It was really well attended and brought local, tribal, and statewide perspectives on child care And then we broke into these groups focused on municipal funding, career pathways, and continuing education, employer-funded childcare, and provider and facility stabilization. Then we brainstormed ideas for what should or could happen in the next one to three years, and then everybody left with a puzzle piece representing a commitment or role that we would play moving forward. It was a really great process.

Thank you. Any further, JJ and then Katie?

In this communication plan, please send us the template for that signature line. Can't wait to get it employed on my communications. Thank you.

Yeah, I have some questions about the communications plan. Here it says that the project, the plan is completed, but there is $46,285 left budgeted for it and a work timeline extension and process. What is the timeline extension for and what did the $20,000 expense go towards exactly?

Oh, sure. So the The extension is through. I put it through the end of the year, but it's not likely to continue through the end of the year. I just wanted to be safe to make sure I didn't have to go through the paperwork to do another one. It just took a little bit longer than we thought in pulling things together and getting feedback. So that's what the extension is about. There's no monetary change at all. Timeline extension we kind of had thought we were gonna be done with it by the end of last fiscal year and we weren't so here We're moving forward We're gonna pull together Moving forward that communications liaison network and so get that up and running and then the 20,000 went towards Travel for them to come here and also the engagement process and as well as putting together the plan and lots of feedback So a lot of back and forth with the community with staff And that's what that was for.

What did that back and forth look like beyond the surveys that the city put out online?

We did some outreach with stakeholders. And so we identified some individuals trying to cross like all sectors of the community and, um, had one-on-one interviews with some or small group interviews. And then we also did, um, an outreach. Like I just went to a coffee shop and did outreach there, but the consultants were supposed to be, be here helping with that and their flight didn't make it in until later. So, That was me doing that, but that was their materials that they had pulled together for that.

And do you expect any more of that $46,000 to be expended? Yes.

Yeah. There's already an invoice that's probably 1500 right now. And then, um, We have $60,000 expended for it, so that's encumbered in a PO right now. So we have up to that amount. I don't foresee us spending that much money. I imagine we're going to be working for a couple more months with our consultants, and then we'll be off and running.

I'm asking about this expenditure of funds because, frankly, the document that we received does not reflect in my mind appropriate stewardship of public money. I would like to see something of a much higher quality to guide communications. I think there's things in there that say, that are duplicative of efforts in town that I assume were learned about by the consultants that were hired for this, such as there should be a monthly, or there should be a calendar of activities, but on the first page, newspaper and radio are named as some of the most important information sources for our community. Both of those have a daily calendar that they publish that everybody uploads their events to. You know, can you explain to me like what is in this document that is revelatory for the city that we're not already doing. There's already a monthly newsletter or a quarterly, I'm not sure, but it seems like there's a lot of duplicate efforts and I'm wondering what did we pay consultants, appropriate $60,000 for this document that frankly doesn't have an audience named, it doesn't say who it was made by, it doesn't have a prepared for. I'm just a little confused about the quality of this.

Okay, the calendar is in reference to a city calendar So we're creating a SharePoint page so that everybody has a one-stop shop to go to and Yeah, I'm not really sure. What was your other questions to answer?

Well, I just, it's funny because in the communications plan, nobody says I go to the city website to find important information about what's happening at the city, right? They name these other sources that they go to for information. why are we reinventing the wheel and why are we paying to be told to reinvent the wheel? Having consultants come in, my understanding of your job as the communications director, public information director for Sitka is to provide this local perspective on how the city can best communicate and you've been doing this work, like you know what's reaching people or what's not resonating. It doesn't look like any of that local knowledge is reflected in this document. there's also um instructions in here for how the assembly should communicate right and i i was not told about those like was this something that was supposed to be worked on by us is this something that it's just hope we read it and then follow those you know um why why didn't this come before us is this a draft is this the final document uh Just, I'm really wondering about, yeah, the quality of that. I mean, for the email signature, it's like, great, that looks great. You know, is that something that can be sent to us? Was there intent to follow up on this? Just the rollout of how our perspective as well as people who were elected to be representatives of community members and have those communications with them. Like, I was never asked, you know, how do you communicate with your constituents? I DON'T KNOW IF ANY OF YOU WERE, BUT THAT SEEMS LIKE AN IMPORTANT QUESTION FOR THE PEOPLE WHO WERE ELECTED TO REPRESENT THEIR CONSTITUENTS, RIGHT? SO I'M JUST WONDERING, YOU KNOW, WHAT ROLE, LIKE, DID YOU PLAY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS PLAN? WHY DID WE NEED TO HIRE CONSULTANTS FOR THIS? HOW IS THIS GOING TO BE ADDING VALUE TO WHAT WE ALREADY DO?

Sure. So I feel like it's really beneficial to get everybody on the same page. The city is so fast. There's so many different outlets and departments and various, you know, communication channels and styles. And so the idea is to pull something together to have everybody on one page, all rowing in the same direction so that we're, as transparent as we can be and that the community receives that. All different departments, there was a group that was together and consulted and emailed and meetings so that everybody had an input and they were stakeholders in it as well throughout the city. So the rollout is, of course, like just getting started. And that's what this communications liaison network is going to work through all of the priorities and strategies and trying to tick off like the small ones that we can do that are don't require funding. And then this liaison network will also make

Decision on how to go forward and see if there's other things that we need to put in the budget in order to you know get other strategies completed I Am really uncomfortable with the prospect of budgeting more money for communications if this is the work product that comes in front of us I'll just say that but I look forward to hearing more. It looks like there's, like I said, instructions in here for how the assembly members can better communicate and play a role within this plan. So I assume that we are part of that liaison network in some way, shape or form, or some roll out of this plan. And I'll look forward to hearing from you what that looks like.

Anything else for Melissa? Thank you for your report, Melissa, appreciate it. That wraps up our scheduled special reports this evening. Do we have anyone else here under special reports for government to government, municipal boards, commissions, committees, municipal departments, or school district? All right, that'll bring us to persons to be heard this evening. This is public participation for any item off of tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual.

Good evening, Assembly. Rachel Roy from the Sitka Chamber. I want to kind of echo Melissa's sharing about the childcare summit that happened last week. We had a excellent turnout of over 50 people, solid. We filled the room every chair that we had put out there. The representation was very intentionally covered our community and the different perspectives. And sometimes it's interesting to hear a different perspective right in front of you. And so being uncomfortable happened in different moments, which I think is, it's part of what a collaborative process looks like. And I want to really just thank the Early Childhood Coalition helped to make that happen. Rasmussen reached out to Sitka Chamber and Sitka to say Sitka is a place where this conversation is happening. and they wanted to fund the collaboration that we had and putting that together. So we're really fortunate, I think, that we were able to do that. And I want to thank both Kevin Mosher and Katie Riley for hosting one of our breakouts, which is pretty brave. But it also gave an opportunity for them to interface with community members who were interested and dialed in. and to listen and I think that we came through with some really good ideas and possibly some champions to help see them forward. We gathered all of that and ultimately we will have a report that we'll bring back. We'd like to share our grant report with all of you but in the process we'll keep updating you. Really appreciated the support and attention that Melissa has been serving on our ECC, but also Josh and Kevin Knox and Judson for attending the full summit and others that stopped in for the breakouts. I think the city as one of our large employers in our community is a really important piece of this. looking at funding but also looking at supporting your employees and so having that thought in all of the minds as well. We will have further conversations and we've kind of been looking at when do we get back together on this topic. So we will be reaching out and just appreciate everyone who participated in this really great, fun, successful event, thank you.

Good evening, I'm Carol Voisin, I live in Sitco. I live in an R1 zone in a community that's 20 years old, a neighborhood. I know that R1 is designated to protect neighborhood character and property values. It creates communities that resonate with the needs of their residents. One of the owners of property on Nancy Court asked for a variance, not for building a home, but to build a 130-foot cell tower. The Planning Commission said no, unanimously. The landowner appealed to the decision, resulting in a state judge hearing the case, and he said no. As a result of this, neighbors asked the Assembly. to have staff develop a code for cell towers in Sitka, especially in R1 zones. We asked for this a year ago. We've seen nothing in the development of this code. My ask is that the Assembly make a new code for cell towers, especially in R1 zones, a priority for staff. In the meantime, I'm asking the Assembly to consider a moratorium on sill tower construction in R1 zones or adopt interim rules until the formal code can be processed and approved. Here's the urgency, folks. The landowner on Nancy Court is trying to build at least one and probably more 35-foot towers without permits. Having a 35-foot tower as a neighbor really isn't even in the spirit of R1 zoning. The R1 zone is nationally recognized as a contract between local government and property owners. As a representative of our neighborhood, I'm asking you to uphold your part of that contract. And to protect our neighborhood character and property values, we need a new code now, not tomorrow. And I wanna thank you assembly members for your service in these chaotic and sometimes confusing times. Thank you for your time and your energy. We appreciate that.

Anyone else this evening under persons to be heard? Any item not on tonight's agenda? We do have one telephonic person to call this evening.

Sarah, if you would please.

Hi. If you record your name and reason for calling, I'll see if this person is available.

This is Kelly.

Kelly it's Sarah calling from the assembly meeting. If you'll state your first and last name for the record and then your three minutes will begin.

Thank you so much. My name is Kelly Sweeney. And I thank you all for this opportunity to address each of you. I know that you're very very busy and there are a lot of cats that you're juggling etc. But I would like to follow up on a few points that Carol Voisin made. And one is that we were under the misunderstanding that something was going to happen with respect to enacting some sort of an ordinance to protect the general welfare of the public and our city and borough. I would note that there are so many different things that we could immediately adopt from the Juneau Code, such as they have of their Initial things, minimize the impacts of wireless communication facilities by establishing standards for sighting, design, and screening, and by requiring consistency. Encourage co-location. Maintain the natural surroundings and character of the city and borough. Preserve neighborhood harmony and scenic view sheds and corridors. And then they get to accommodate the growing need for demand for wireless communication. And I really feel that the way that Juneau has adopted that and looks at it is something that resonates loudly and I believe would be adequate, more than adequate and appropriate. It's never too late to do the right thing. We need to make this a priority to get it done for the sake, not just of us in Nancy Court, but all of Sitka's neighborhoods, and also to prevent the need for citizens to force this issue. in a referendum ballot measure. But I'd like to put a little finer point on some of the things that Carol noted about what was happening on Nancy Court. The owners of Nancy Court started clearing both roadway sides of trees, bushes, and brush without any sort of driveway or building permit. This is incredibly disruptive. Looking at their plans, there are issues there, but I'm not going to go into that. But there should be something that is happening to make sure that we are promptly addressing the deficits in the current outdated rules and ordinance that fail to provide meaningful protection to our R1 neighborhoods in SICA. And I would like to offer to you, I'm out of town for almost two weeks, but when I return, I would like to offer to you my services to go through all of the SITCA things with what how that could be applied in or how the genome ordinances could be applied in SITCA and highlight that and note it and I would represent to you all that I have worked under multiple administrations both Republican and Democratic I believe even though I obviously have a vested interest thank you Kelly thank you Kelly that is your time this evening

I appreciate your comments.

Okay, I saw 43. Sorry, bye-bye.

All right, one last call for persons to be heard. There's a button on the very bottom. The microphone will turn red. There you go.

Hello. How you doing? My name is Henry Moore. Most people know me as Hank. I'm kind of twisted up about this new thing about the taxis.

Taxis are on the agenda a little bit later. This is unfortunately a time for things off of the agenda.

Oh, okay. I'll be back.

Yeah, we'll have a great opportunity for you there as well. I'll make sure you're included.

Okay.

Okay, moving on in our agenda this evening, we'll hit consent agenda please.

I move to approve the consent agenda consisting of items A and B.

That's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda. Is there any public comment? Sarah?

And then I would just like to read what those two items were or are. Item A is approving the minutes of the July 28 assembly meeting, and then item B is approving retail marijuana store license renewals for the joint at 327 Seward Street, and then Weed Dudes at 1321 Sawmill Creek Road. All right, on the motion to approve the consent agenda, Mayor Eisenbeiss? Yes. Mr. Christensen? Yes. Ms. Riley? Yes. Mr. Mosier? Yes. Mr. Selene? Yes. Ms. Carlson? Yes. And Mr. Yesdad? Yes. Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. Item C, a commission appointment, reappointment.

I move to reappoint Daryl Windsor to a three-year term on the Planning Commission. Second.

That's been moved and seconded to reappoint Daryl Windsor to the Planning Commission. Is there any public comment?

Hi, Rachel Roy from the Sitka Chamber. I wanted to come today to talk about communication and I think it's appropriate that we were talking about communication earlier. The appointment that you're considering right now is for an unexpired term on the Planning Commission and there's absolutely nothing against Mr. Windsor in my comments. but I went and did a little bit of research because I've been trying to watch when commissions have openings, helping to share the word, helping to engage because there's so many. It looks like there was an advertisement on August 7th, which is Friday, that said that there was Parks and Rec, Library Commission, Police and Fire, Health Needs and Human Services, and the Investment Committee, but this committee assignment doesn't, expire until next in two weeks from now so it didn't make this advertisement and that means that there's been no like chance for anyone outside of mr. Windsor to put his but their name forward and I think it's it's not It's not unlikely that this is happening among other commissions. It just caught me because I've been trying to pay closer attention and trying to help communicate. And so basically, it's a procedural thing to ask someone that's on a commission whether or not they want to put their name in again, but I think it should also fall in like good public process to also give an opportunity to let other people know that this commission seat is coming up and that they would have needed to put in their application by last Wednesday to be included into this packet and like following all of that. So I basically missed the chance to know because I didn't know that I needed to know two weeks ago, a month ago, or to flag that there was an opening coming up. So I know that filling seats on commission is a ton of effort and work, but also I feel like there shouldn't be commissions that don't get advertised or that don't get an opportunity for people to fill. Mr. Windsor's been filling this seat for a very long time and is the current, and so he's likely a great candidate, but I don't think you have another person in your packet because it hasn't been advertised or known and I think this is just one place where I think there is a breakdown of communication and maybe it's staff procedure, maybe it's a tweak here or there but it caught me and I was coming today and it bothered me that it never made the docket for a very important seat on a very, very important commission.

Any other public comment on the appointment of Daryl Windsor to the Planning Commission? Assembly deliberation?

Kevin? I was just planning on approving it, but there was a comment from the public about advertising. I was wondering if, sir, you could help us understand what's going on.

I'm actually going to defer to Holly because she's the expert and handles this and I'll let her speak to it.

Okay. So for procedure wise for the clerk's office, when we advertise for vacancies and boards and commissions, so I keep a spreadsheet of all the members who are filling seats, reach out to them two months prior to ask them if they would like to consider reapplying or if they're not going to reapply. And what we've done in the past, which we continue doing, is the meeting before their seat is up, if they would like to reapply. So we avoid having a lag and having an open seat. Because for some boards and commissions, if you don't have one person there, then you don't have a quorum. But we do try to fill that, the meeting before their seat, their term is up. So that's been our procedures in the past. So for Mr. Windsor, his seat, he would not be able to attend the next meeting if he, or be a current member of that unless we were reappointed now. But we did not advertise for the seat, because it's technically not expired today, but it will be after this meeting.

And Holly also, can you confirm that the assembly has also in past practices received applications as soon as they come in that we don't hold onto them for any extended length of time because we've also heard comments that we are holding applications to wait for better applicants in which we might like more than the one who put their name in?

right if we receive applications we'll we'll put those forward whenever that that seat is open for consideration thank you katie is it possible for people to apply for a seat that isn't advertised and isn't technically open yet like anyone could put forward an application at any time yeah i'm seeing a head nod thank you um

We don't find that happens a lot, but we have held on to applications in our office and we let folks know when there's going to be a seat expiring.

Thank you for some clarification on that to our clerks. Tor?

I'm just gonna address working with Daryl, which until this year, somebody took my liaison spot. I enjoyed working with him, and I always felt that he had a well-grounded perspective on things, and so I think we could do a lot worse than have him back in the job.

I concur.

Sara?

all right on the motion to reappoint daryl windsor to a three-year term on the planning commission ms riley yes mayor eisenbeiss yes miss carlson yes mr mosher yes mr yestad yes mr christensen yes and mr selene yes the motion passes 7-0 on item c uh thank you item d please unfinished business

I move to approve ordinance 2026-19 on second and final reading, making supplemental appropriations for fiscal year 2027 Harrigan Centennial Hall fee waiver.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve ordinance 26-19. Is there any public comment? Assembly deliberation.

Well, I just wanted to share something that Judson shared with me after the last meeting. If that's okay, can you want to come up and tell them about the Alaska Airlines deal, if that's okay? It's kind of exciting. It goes along with this. It's a little bit tangential, but it's pretty cool.

Appreciate it. Judson Ruskin, the tourism manager again. Yeah, after the last meeting we talked about this, I started talking to sort of who I consider to be stakeholders and just kind of pitching the idea of this fee waiver, how this could potentially be expanded into general economic development for Sitka, and specifically to what Mr. Christensen is saying is I reached out to Alaska Airlines who, Alaska Airlines frequently will give discount codes to events and conventions. It's usually a 7% discount code in general. Specifically regarding this waiver, I talked to them. I made it pretty clear that if you're, are qualified for this waiver you are effectively guaranteeing at least 100 people on alaska airlines because there's very little other ways to get here especially in the off season and that is an economic boom for them as well so they are interested in being able to offer a higher rate potentially 10 or even higher specifically for events that qualify for this waiver which would kind of reduce the barrier to entry of just the cost of getting here in the off season. And they're interested in kind of keeping that dialogue open and then after a three year trial period, if we can prove that we've been moving the needle because of this, then potentially even negotiating for a higher rate than that.

Thank you. So like I said, it's a little bit tangential, but fits the same idea. But I know we talked about this at length before. I think that this conceivably could produce some real economic activity in a time when there's not a whole lot of activity going on. And I fully expect us to play with it a little bit if it goes. We talked about possibly doing partial for smaller ones and things like that. But I really think we need to get it up and running first before we start playing with it. But it excites me a lot that we're getting some help from Alaska Airlines. And I know Judson talked about some other ideas he had. So we can hopefully get some more business going on here in the off season.

Kevin? No, just ditto. That's awesome. That's really exciting news.

Thank you. Anything else for Judson? I want to excuse him if... Okay. Thank you, Judson. Unless you want to sit there. I mean, it's a good seat and all. JJ?

So this supplement appropriation also comes with kind of that policy piece of looking at the kind of winter six months. So not April, May, June, July, August, September, but those kind of extended shoulder seasons through the winter and a kind of full discount for a large conventions to utilize Centennial Hall as an economic stimulus. So if anyone's out there in Sitka or wherever this transmits to in Southeast, please consider Sitka for your winter activities. We have opportunities, expanding opportunities and even with airfare potentially now to host your events. So we're looking to do that and this is a great way. So thank you sponsors for bringing this forward and utilizing that bed tax money, the independent traveler money for this. We're gonna look at it again in five years and see if it was successful and determine at that point if it's a program that's gonna move forward. So thank you for all your work on this and being kind of creative with how we encourage year-round travel to Sitka.

Judy?

um yeah thanks uh tor for your comment there about you know getting it off the ground and messing around with it later i assume that means that we can come in you know even before review in a year or whatever and if we choose to stagger that uh rate i mean i'd like to hear about what kind of administrative burden it is to do you know 50 reduction for half of the attendees or something like that. But I think that starting it with 100 and seeing how it goes and hopefully we can get Tony up here after to talk about that if that is part of the plan, it sounds like.

Yeah, good thing he has a quarterly report. Fantastic, thanks. John, not saying, just saying. Anything else on this item? Sarah?

All right. On the motion to approve ordinance 2026-19 on second and final reading, Mr. Christensen? Yeah. Ms. Carlson? Yes. Mr. Saleen? Yes. Mr. Yesdad? Yes. Ms. Riley? Yes. Mr. Mosher? Yes. And Mayor Eisenbeiss? Yes. Motion passes 7-0 on item D.

Thank you, as we are at the top of the hour, the assembly will take a recess and then we will move on to new business this evening, thank you. The assembly is seated so we will get on with our business this evening. The item that it appears most of us are here to talk about this evening. Again, thank you for coming in order to further our perspective on our work here at the table. So with that, item E please.

I move to approve Ordinance 2026-20 on first reading, making amending Title VI, Business Licenses and Regulations of the Sitka General Code by repealing Chapter 6.30, Taxi Cabs, and replacing with Chapter 6.30, Commercial Passenger Vehicles, and amending Title XI, Vehicles and Traffic, Chapter 11.45, Stopping Standing and Parking, Section 11.45.140, stopping, standing, and parking of buses and taxicabs.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve ordinance 26-20. John, you have an introduction for this item?

I will. It's a lot going on, so it's gonna seem like a long introduction, but I'm trying to cover as much as I can. So thank you, Mayor and the Assembly. This ordinance is intended to repeal SICA General Code Chapter 6.30 titled Taxi Cab and replaces it with a new chapter titled Commercial Passenger Vehicles. The chapter in place has remained largely unchanged since the late 1990s. The existing chapter regulates only taxis. It does not account for tours, shuttles, limousines, human-powered vehicles such as pedicabs, all of which operate in Sitka today. The proposed chapter establishes three service classes. Class A covers taxis, which provide on-demand service at a published regulated fare. Class B covers tours, shuttles, and limousines, which operate on defined routes and pricing. Class C covers human-powered vehicles, putting all commercial passenger transport under one chapter. It gives every operator a clear licensing path and gives the city a consistent basis for enforcement. The ordinance addresses several specific problems. First, permitting. Drivers described the existing process of permitting as a barrier to entry, and the ordinance removes local requirements that duplicate state licensing and inspection. Where the state already inspects a vehicle or licenses a driver, the city does not repeat that step in this ordinance. Second is fares. Under the current chapter, there's an outdated fare structure. So charges differ between operators, and passengers don't know the cost of a trip before it begins. Taxi meters, we researched this with the state. There really is no certified taxi meter program in the state of Alaska, so a meter-based structure is not available to us. The ordinance instead authorizes a zone-based flat fare schedule published as Appendix A to the regulations and it would be posted in each taxi. A passenger will be able to look at the placard, find the origin and destination zones, and then know the fare. Related to fares is a point about what a customer is actually buying. Under the current chapter, a person who believes they're hiring a taxi at a regulated rate can find that the trip is billed as a tour or a sightseeing service at a rate the city does not regulate. That's a hard position for a passenger who has no way to know the difference, and it's not fair to the operators who do charge the published rate. Separating the classes fixes this. Class A taxi charges the published zoned fare or the published charter rate. A Class B tour, shuttle, or limousine operates under its own endorsement with its own disclosed pricing. Class A is not combined with any other endorsements so the customer knows at the point of hire which service they are purchasing and what it will cost. Third is enforcement. The current chapter treats violations as misdemeanors, which is disproportionate to most of the conduct at issue and has meant limited enforcement in practice. The ordinance converts most violations to civil infractions under a published fine schedule in Appendix B of the regulations and allows a correction order for non-safety violations so an operator has the chance to fix the problem before a fine is assessed. Safety critical violations still result in immediate removal from service and misdemeanor classification is kept only for operating without required insurance. And the new appeal process would run from the chief of police to the municipal administrator and then the superior court. Finally, the regulations provide a 10% reduction in the Class A endorsement fee and a waiver of vehicle registration fees for wheelchair accessible vehicles. On the public process, this effort began as early as May of 2022. The subject was taken up at no fewer than two Police and Fire Commission meetings. A town hall on commercial transportation was held on July 18th of 2023 here at Harrigan Hall, facilitated by Assemblymember Pike, where drivers, operators, and residents identified the driver shortage, service gaps, fare inconsistency, and permitting burdens this ordinance responds to. The draft ordinance, the regulations, and both appendices have been posted publicly since mid-July and remain available at City Hall and on the City website and in the back of the room. Staff also sent the drafts directly to individuals and businesses currently providing commercial passenger service in Sitka so they could review and comment before an adduction. The drafts posted in July and sent directly to the providers are not exactly identical to what is in the packet, so I want to explain that very quickly. That's the public comment period working. I got some feedback over email, so there are some minor changes in there, and that is what went out in the packet, and that was noticed to the public. but mainly the changes that were from the one in mid-July to now is instead of making the Class C, the pedicabs, a seasonal operation, we allowed for a year-round operation. We aligned all the application periods to be the same, and then also specified that vehicles operated on like a fixed route public transit, vehicles operated for a federally recognized tribe, so things like the ride share and the ride, now that's in the code instead of an administrative regulation. So yeah, you may hear that the one before you is not the one they reviewed last month, and that's correct, but like I said, that's the comment period doing its job. The last thing I'd like to address is that under the existing code, The existing chapter says that no satellite business may be operated under a taxi license. That's in 6.30.070D. Administration read that to mean what it says. When a taxi licensee was also running a tour operation off the same license, charging rates other than the published rates, we treated that as a separate business under a taxi license since they weren't operating as a taxi at that point. The same principle would apply if you were selling pizzas out of the cab. It's a different business and a taxi license doesn't authorize it. Now, that interpretation was challenged in litigation. We all know that. And the claim was that me, administration, did not have the authority to interpret our own code. We disagreed then, and we disagree now. That case was settled, and the settlement did not change our view on that question. While that litigation was pending, it would not have been appropriate to create a new ordinance to clarify the stance, which is the main reason this took as long as it did to reach you. The dispute was about the clarity of the existing language and who may construe it. It was not about the ordinance in front of you tonight. What we took from it is that the current chapter leaves too much interpretation. This ordinance puts the classes, the endorsements, and the pricing rules on the face of the code. That's my introduction.

Thank you, John. At this point, I'd like to open it up to public comment. It is three minutes per individual that would like to speak directly to ordinance 26-20 this evening. And please, anyone who would like. There's a button on the very bottom, and you'll just have to state your name for the record.

There you go. My name is Elias Carroll. I work for Title Taxi and Tours LLC. The taxi demand has been significantly decreased since the last 2023 meeting. All hotels, fishing lodges, cruise terminals, Sitka, our fine arts camp, and dispensaries now provide shuttle service. The absence of Delta was a hit, too. This has greatly decreased our point of contact with potential taxi customers, walk-ups at an undesignated city approval location, calls from Raptor Center for limited mobility individuals, and a few local $8 fares a day cannot maintain the cost of running a taxi business or for our drivers who rely on the two to three tours a week to sustain summertime income. As regulations on taxis increase, drivers will soon not be able to survive in Sitka's high costs of living. Uber and Lyft may end up trying to fill the spot, but I don't see that becoming likely because just as taxi drivers, a large amount of income comes from cruise ships. And with Uber and Lyft's large fees on their drivers, they will walk away as well as public transportation will completely cease to exist, which I don't think anybody really wants. And if Uber and Lyft do stay, I've seen them charge as high as $130 for a ride from downtown to the cruise ship terminal. How much control and fairness will we have if we let those giants take over? Sitka is unique and fares that work for the public and drivers evenly is complicated, but more regulations is not the answer. I think all taxi drivers care about their reputation and do the best to please their customers, especially if their business is subject to ratings online such as ours. The online star rating system such as Google and Yelp is very effective in making sure taxi drivers are fair to the public. I would also strongly encourage to designate a taxi spot downtown, the spot across the street from Starry North near the public bathroom side. next to the tsunami sign would be perfect, or at the very least, a permit that allows a small sign that simply just states taxi. It's only two vehicle space, and this will reduce visitor frustration with the other transportation is not available, and especially help congestion in the already very busy downtown roadway as the taxis have been pushed out of all other realistic spots in that area, such as Harrigan and Crescent parking lots. Thank you.

I am the owner of Bayside Taxi Tours and Shuttle. And as you can see.

If you could state your name for the record, please.

Oh, yes. My name is Nalani James. So we all work in conjunction together, as you can see, with me sitting here with Tidal Taxi. We also have a very good working relationship. amongst all of the drivers. I like to set that for the record. So as far as the communication goes, we're a little bit thrown off by an ordinance put in play and there was no communication with any of the drivers, with any of the local business owners that operate their businesses as independent contractors. When folks are traveling, I don't know what's going on with this microphone. When folks are traveling, one thing is for sure, you do have to compensate for transportation, but it's not a fee per se that people want to pay for. So you will get people uncomfortable, unwilling to pay for transportation. It's the least fun part of your trip. So when we get customers, we don't just have a mom and a dad and a son and a daughter to where it's cookie cutter to where we just pick up a nice family of four from Maine and they have no baggage and they're right on time and we're picking them up. We have a slew of waiting, we have baggage, we have sometimes emotional issues that we are in play with that play into our wait time. We have other waypoints of picking up multiple passengers along the way, multiple drop points along the way. And we need to be compensated for that. So for us to find this fair to where we're compensated $1 per person for transportation, when you have exorbitant cost for transportation, when you pay for parking, and this is comparable, Sitka's pretty much comparable as far as the cost of living for JFK. JFK airport parking is $56 to $80 per day if you pre-book. If you drive up the same day for parking, you're paying $80 to park at JFK. Your airline, you're charging for your carry-on, your check bag, depending on which airline, taxes included in your ticket quote, reservation charges, your hotel fees, occupancy exceeds over two, early check-in fees, taxes and service fees. If someone can give me your extra three minutes, that would be great.

I understand three minutes goes by fast.

Hello, I'm Laura Rogers. I think some of you know me as a principal of Sitka High School. I also am one of the owners of the Cool Bus. My concern is not for the fact that there's interest in regulating this. I did not receive any of the drafts, maybe because I'm not a licensed taxi member, but I did go through the taxi licensing process because we were told that we needed to do that at the time. We spent $800 on physicals, background checks, fingerprints, et cetera, for four people who were all working for the school district. If we had had a felony on our record at the time, we would have been in much bigger trouble than not being able to get a taxi license. The bottom line is I see the need for clear communication. My concern is the fact that some of the language in this ordinance, especially as it regulates shuttles and defines shuttles, would really limit the flexibility of people to provide the services that Sitka needs. The school district, just full disclosure, is not one of our clients. I drive for free for the district on a regular basis because we park our vehicles there. So in exchange for having the bus and the transit, we utilize them to move kids around when we need to. The other thing that we do at a discounted rate, which doesn't seem to be allowable if we have to have one standard fare, is when we're moving 4-H kids, for example, from downtown in the bus because they have a lot of gear to Herring Cove so they can then kayak back, we charge five bucks a kid. That's a pretty reduced rate when you consider the overall cost of moving a bus all the way out the dirt road, coming back empty, and then potentially going back and picking up the kids who can't kayak back. We can't do that under the current ordinance because we would have to have Herring Cove on our list as a designated stop, and it isn't. Last Thursday night at 11 o'clock, I picked up 19 Cub Scouts and their scout leaders, and again, we did it for a discounted rate. Our rates are on our brochures. We always charge visitors the same price. It's $40 to ride all day if you're an adult. It's $30 if you're a kid. We don't change it. We don't bargain. We don't negotiate. But for nonprofits in town like the Sitka Sound Science Center or a Cub Scout who's coming here to volunteer with their Scoutmasters or the 4-H kids who want to go kayaking out to Herring Cove, need to have the latitude to do that and the other piece that we do is we've been hired for weddings by some of the people in this room whose folks knew who knew that there would be people who were celebrating with them and should not be driving home and we're one of the few organizations that has the opportunity to move 20 to 25 people some of who have been imbibing and celebrating who should not be on the road all at the same time so while I I'm not concerned on a personal basis because I think you know the cool bus is for sale. I am concerned about the lack of clarity in the language.

Thank you for your time this evening.

No worries.

Hello, my name is Henry Moore. More people know me as Hank. I'll just kind of be short and simple, is why do we have to make this time a year? Why do this have to be done right now and why we can't have another town hall? You know, I heard a lot about the last town hall and I was, I felt kind of bad because I wasn't more involved. But at the same time, you know, I think about, you know, there's a lot of people in this town I'm connected with and I just hope we just don't turn this into a little battle of who win the victory over what agenda we want to push. And I don't have much more to say. Thanks.

Good evening, Bethany Lawrence with High Output Tours. First, I wanna thank John for your hard work in this ordinance. I have five concerns with the proposed Class C regulations. First, the sunrise to sunset restriction would significantly affect our local business. Our Petal Pub has become increasingly popular with SICA residents, many of whom work during the day and can only participate in the evening. As daylight decreases in the fall and winter, this would eliminate many local opportunities we have planned, including Alaska Day pub crawls, Christmas caroling rides, private events and other community activities. Our bike has headlights, taillights, brake lights, turn signals and is far more visible than a standard bicycle. I would ask that the city regulate lighting and safe road conditions instead of prohibiting operation after sunset. Second, I'm concerned about the restricting Class C vehicles to the CBD. We currently operate through CBD general commercial and public land areas. for local tours, parades, special events, scenic rides, and karaoke rides. A zoning boundary is not necessarily a safety boundary. I would prefer an improved route system based on actual roadway conditions such as speed, width, grade, and traffic volume. Third, the two-hour inspection requirement could interrupt a paid tour or an entire day of scheduled departures even when there is no indication that the vehicle is unsafe. If there's an immediate safety hazard, absolutely require immediate inspection. Otherwise, I would ask that operators be allowed to complete their scheduled programs and report by the end of the operating day. Fourth, Class C is required to carry $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate in liability coverage, while the stated minimums for motorized Class A and Class B vehicles are substantially lower. I'd like to understand the risk or actuarial basis for this disparity would ask that the requirements be made more proportionate. And finally, Class C driver permits would create a staffing issue for us. I have more than 30 employees that regularly move between tours. Some employees may operate the Pedal Pub only once or twice in a season. Requiring every possible backup operator to maintain a separate city permit reduces flexibility, especially when there's no guaranteed processing timeline for a new permit. I would ask the city to recognize a valid driver's license with documented employer training or create a streamlined temporary permit process with clear turnaround time. I support reasonable safety regulation. I am simply asking that these rules address actual safety risks without unnecessarily restricting existing local businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sigurd Rutter, I've been a taxi operator here in Sitka for 16 years. Throughout the entire time, I've sold taxi tour and shuttle services. I believe it's completely inappropriate for the assembly or chief of police the administrator to try to force us to choose whether we're gonna be a taxi tour or a shuttle. This would be the only municipality in the world where a tourist cannot take a tour in a taxi. I'm entitled to continue doing business the way I have for the last 16 years. The proposed rules are totally unworkable. Formerly, Our rates increased incrementally out the road, four, five, six different taxis zones. Now they're turned into two taxis zones out HPR, two taxis zones out Sawmill Creek, Even going to Tongass Credit Union from downtown is jumping from a $6 fare to an $18 fare. And the boundary for that district starts at the roundabout, goes up Earler Street. So Paxton Manor low-income housing will also be an $18 fare. uh... lakeside grossly will be an eighteen dollar fair anything past sea mark will be a thirty dollar fair and the same thing goes on the other side of the road out sawmill creek these rates are completely inappropriate and unworkable As a taxi operator, I serve the working poor, and I question the need to triple the cab fares in Sitka. It's going to be punitive and harmful. Nobody can afford to pay $36 or $60 a day in transportation to go to and from work. There's absolutely no basis for separating taxis, tours and shuttles. And it's nothing new. They've been working to throw taxis out of Centennial Hall complex here since 2018. I'm not even allowed as a taxi to drop people off or pick people up at the library. I'm not allowed to be in the outer row of the parking lot here. to pick people up, to drop people off. I have handicapped people I pick up at the airport, and they wanna go to Centennial Hall, I should be able to access the building without making them walk in from Harbor Drive or Lincoln Street. This proposal put forth by Mr. Leach is completely unworkable, ill-advised, and one of my drivers submitted a letter a petition he circulated this weekend. In only two days, he got 100 signatures from taxicab patrons. I believe it's a fair assessment to assume that nearly 100% of the taxicab patrons in this community are vehemently opposed to Mr. Leach and his proposed rules.

Hi, Rachel at the chamber, Rachel Roy. I am reminded as I sit in the seat for the third time of our doctor that I miss dearly, even though sometimes it made meetings very long. I am here unfortunately feeling pretty frustrated about communication because absolutely the process that John described absolutely happened, but it was three years ago and business has changed in the last three years. We have new businesses operating, we have businesses and taxi companies that have closed since then. I have asked personally to say where is this in the process and I kept hearing it's held up in legal and it was kind of blaming your former attorney for not putting it forward but I hear now in that report that that's why is because it was under legal review and up for a civil legal issue. I think the people in the taxi, tour, shuttle businesses are all forward-facing, customer-focused people, and they are very willing to come together and help with this. But we were all kind of caught off guard. There is an issue. by the fact that we weren't asked to take a look other than, I mean, I caught it, I got a text that it was out there. And so the chamber didn't get included in this outreach that happened to let people know that there was a taxi code ordinance coming before all of us on August 11th. It is the busiest day. Some people started at 7 a.m. when the ship came in today. Other things I'd like to say is just the tourism commission exists. You guys could have buffered yourselves. It's so disappointing that this didn't get to go in front of the group of people that that commission was designed for. Did it get asked for the commission to look at it and they said, no, send it to assembly. We don't want to have the business community that is the serving, people serving. look at it before it gets over to the assembly table to save you all from this exact thing from happening. I think that I would love to have a round table on this. I didn't have time to host it. And I think also, I think we need to think about the impacts on the cost of living and that it would have on our workforce that use the taxi companies to get to and from work. If we raise this thinking that it's a visitor that's going to pay for it, we're completely missing the boat because this is a year-round service that these businesses provide.

Thank you, ma'am, but you have had your three minute opportunity. No, there's only one opportunity, unfortunately. There is an assembly email that you can submit written comments. This is only the first reading, so there will have to be a second reading. That will be another opportunity for in-person public comment. Anyone else this evening on Ordinance 26-20? We'll bring it back to the assembly for deliberation. Tor?

Yeah, I was listening to this and I was reading, when I read through my packet and I was writing notes to myself and listening tonight and I had a number of things I wasn't entirely sure why they were in there, and I'm sure there's good ones. But one of the things that struck home with me tonight in the testimony was with Hank, when he said that we probably shouldn't be doing this in the middle of the season. I mean, I guess I'm not 100% sure why a business couldn't do both tours and taxi. I don't think you could have a day of taxi or tour and a pedal bike, that'd be hard. But you could probably, but, and whether or not they could change placards or something. And I had a number of other things, but it strikes me that, We should probably be doing this in the fall, honestly, when people aren't working. And I don't see this as particularly time sensitive. Obviously, it took a few years to get here. And so I'm not gonna go into the other issues that I was talking about, why they can't discount and stuff. But I think going into the fall and before then, At the very least, I don't know if we wanna have another town meeting or possibly just a listening session, but I think that allowing some of this input that I would ask if we do do that, that we talk about specific, Alternatives like if you don't like think that we should be able to we should have the zone system. What should we have? You know rather than just saying I don't like it. I'd like to hear specific alternatives So that we can do that so I'm not gonna I hope that in my mind a perfect world we push this off until Probably mid to late October somewhere in there but just so that we can give it time for everybody to read it, do about it, and to put something like that together.

I make a motion to go right where Thor's going. You back me up and we'll kick this down the road so people can organize and I'm just afraid we're gonna end up with like a haul out that can't haul out boats and we're gonna end up with cabs that can't pick people up.

So Scotty, if you wanna make a motion to postpone, we need a date to postpone it to.

No, it can be a date. It doesn't need to be the next meeting. That code amendment changed that. About the first meeting after Alaska Day. I think it's October 27th.

Is that it?

So the motion on the floor is to postpone until the first meeting after Alaska Day. Our clerks will figure out which one that is.

It's October 27th.

Until October 27th. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded to postpone this until October 27th. Is there any public comment on the postponement of this until October 27th? Assembly deliberation?

Yeah, I mean, I am in favor of postponing this. I don't necessarily know that October 27th is the right amount of time unless you two are interested in working on that. But basically, what I'm hearing tonight is that there's a desire for updated public participation and digestion of these regulations. Folks want to come participate. And I think that having a curated forum for that to happen in rather than a listening session, I think one of those happened. I've heard some reflections on how that went. I think it's important to be able to offer some ideas of what is being put out here, what other communities do, and then also inviting input on those ideas. But I think some thought needs to go into how that session happens to ensure that everyone is coming with a solutions-based mindset and not just a forum to express concerns, we have that here as well. And so in order for that to happen past the length of the tourism season, which just ends in early October, I would suggest like a November meeting or something. But basically I think, I mean, a motion has been made for a specific day and so, it sometimes is beneficial to to talk about what that date could be before the motions made is all but um that is is amendment that could be made and like would be interested in hearing that but looks like john has some comments as well john thanks mayor um listen to the conversation and i i want to thank the public on all the their very civil comments um and i i just want to throw this out there and then make a request so

I've been here nearly seven years, and I brought this ordinance forward because I was asked to. We receive lots of complaints from people with inconsistent fares, and I hear from taxi drivers that the rates aren't high enough for them to make a living, but then if they raise the rates, then it's too high for citizens to do it. It's the... lack of clarity between what kind of service they're operating. There's a lot to work on. That's what we were trying to resolve for the past at least six years. And unfortunately that turned into a subject of litigation and also unfortunately personal criticism directed at me. And I think that I'm not necessarily prepared in my, literally I have weeks left here, to keep absorbing almost what I'll call an unsolvable problem. So given that there's a lot of work, it sounds like, that needs to go into this, I would like to withdraw my recommendation on this ordinance. It still exists and I would just respectfully ask the assembly to consider tabling it indefinitely until a different path and maybe some other sponsors would want to take the issue up.

So we do have a motion on the floor. We do have a motion on the floor to postpone it till October 28th. That is the motion that we need to deal with at this current time. Kevin, on the postponement.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I kind of wish you hadn't made that motion right away. I kind of wanted to ask some questions about the picture at large, but I do understand and recognize that there are some concerns and I do think that there needs to be some public outreach. I guess my comment specifically about this, and by the way, I do want to say thank, acknowledge John Lee trying to get this across the finish line. He's only got a few weeks. He was trying to get something done that needs to get done and it does need to get done. And it is a very difficult issue because there's, you know, There were some really good comments, and thank you, everyone, for your comments. I appreciate it. It was very informative. And then I hear Mr. Leach share a couple things. So this needs a lot of work. My only concern is who's going to do it. John is basically done for the most part. I don't think he's going to have time to take this on. Are we going to give this to staff? Are a couple of assembly members going to do it? Are we going to hire a consultant to take it on? This is not, in my mind, necessarily a very simple thing. If it was, it would have been passed already. So I just wanted to make those comments. I do think there needs to be work done, and I just want it known, I don't know who's gonna do it, but I'm in favor of postponing it.

Mayor, if I could just add a comment, I let Scott know that if it's the will of Scott and the tour, if they want to withdraw the motion to postpone to October 27th, that that can be done.

Could we also do a friendly amendment to change the date? Yes. Okay. So if I can speak to the lane in general, although I think the date might be. So first of all, I want to echo what Kevin was saying about John. This is a Sisyphean task to come up with this. And I think we have a good start. Now we have things to talk about, whereas before we really didn't. And so first you have to have things to talk about, and now we do. I don't think we're as far from the finish line as we seem to feel. I think that there, I think, honestly, I think of a town hall and I could hear my wife saying, don't do it, don't do it. I will do that. Yeah, thank you. And honestly, this can't be any worse than dealing with the shelter. But because we look at things like how do we have a fair rate structure? And we set up the sheets and we go through that because we have a framework to work with now. and then we can get legal involved and find out some things. I don't think we're as far from this as, obviously everybody's not gonna be happy with whatever we do, but I think we can get at least people less unhappy and reach some sort of consensus. That said, I think, You're right, it's probably pretty ambitious to try and do October. So Scotty, if you wanted to do a friendly amendment to the second meeting in November, I don't know, I don't have a strong feelings.

I'm gonna withdraw my motion and go with Katie's after, make another motion with Katie's thing after later. So like in November sometime.

Okay, so you wanna postpone it until November? No, we can do a friendly amendment. So what Tor has indicated now is just changing the date of the motion that is on the floor. So it would accomplish the same thing without a withdrawal.

Okay.

Very good. If you're okay with the, as the motion maker and the seconder for the second meeting in November, that's how we'll proceed. Yes, I'm good with the second meeting in November. Sarah, for my purposes, can you let me know what meeting that is?

It's November 24th.

November 24th, understood. So the motion on the floor is to postpone this until the November 24th meeting. JJ?

I'd like to talk about the main motion before we postpone, because I'd like to have a plan for what happens after we postpone it. otherwise there's nothing here. So I'm gonna need to say no because I don't know what's gonna be happening between now and November 24th if it's not discussed in advance.

Yeah, I think I was kind of there with you. I appreciate, like if we're not gonna handle it tonight, I appreciate the speed and efficiency of getting us to a point where we're going to deal with it down the road. I had had some thoughts that I think could have added to the conversation, but we didn't go down that road. So I don't necessarily disagree either. But it does sound like there are a couple people who want to take it up. And I mean, the motion on the floor is the motion we have to deal with at the moment.

If I may, I might be able to address that. I'm sorry, is that OK?

Katie?

I would say that if the sponsors wanted to withdraw their motion so that we might bring those voices into this conversation, I think that the motion to postpone it would be more successful after that. However, it could still pass without that. I mean, I am in favor of postponing it. I do want to talk about a plan. I have some ideas there as well. So just the way that the motion is on the table right now, the only thing that we can talk about is postponing it and what date we wanna postpone it until, not the other things that we wanna see like, having this go in front of tourism and police and fire again or having a town hall or what that should include so if we if the sponsors want to have a discussion about what the rest of the assembly wants to consider um i would recommend withdrawing the motion and then we can make it again in a little bit but that is up to you guys if you want to just handle it and run with it i'll support you full-heartedly as well

Yeah, I'll be voting in favor of postponement at this point because that's where it seems like we're at and it seems like we have a couple people who want to jump and run with it.

If I may, what I envisioned was essentially asking the rest of the assembly to put their thoughts in writing.

I would hate to have a serial meeting.

Well, no, or maybe, I guess I would say, or we like to say that we could withdraw it. But essentially, having a public meeting moderated where we try and reach somewhat consensus in the end. Then, of course, send it to the tourism commission and place some fire. So we would have to move. I don't have any problem withdrawing. If you guys want to talk more now, But I guess I would ask that we're not going to solve it tonight. So it's more a case of what do you want to see answered, if that makes any sense.

Your Honor. I'm looking at this as like discovery, you know, and instead of talking about everything now, they got a plan that they can have counter things that come back. John doesn't want to do it anymore. There's still merit in everything that he has, so people can differentiate what they don't like, like with Sigurd coming up saying this fair and that double and all that. That could be brought up.

Well, I want to make sure that we keep our comments on the postponement as well.

Well, it's just about, you want to open it back up to talk about stuff. We're not going to get nothing done. I want to get out of the next thing cause it's going to be coming up again, right down the pike. That's where I'm at. I didn't mean to cut anybody off on what their idea is, but where I'm going with this is, uh, when Ronald Reagan dropped transport. This has to do with it. JJ, listen to me for a second. Now, when they dropped the air traffic controllers and transportation, Sitka had a limited entry deal with three permits for cabs. That went away. One guy in town acquired all three of those permits, and then that was yanked out trying to control cabs with all the fares. nothing was done with the assembly when that was taken away by federal mandate. So it was just laid to go like it is now. So this is just another kick in the can down the road. Now we have three more years since the town hall meetings where everything is compounded with lift and Uber. And I want to know who charged 130 bucks to go out to the ferry terminal. That should be out on chatters or something. It shouldn't people. Anyway, uh, I want to postpone it. If you want to talk about it again, now we need other people here who want to talk about it too. So that's all where I'm saying about catch it up, catch up with it in November.

Tracking. Anything else on the postponement? Kevin? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I would second, not officially second, but agree with Katie's recommendation that you temporarily withdraw that. I feel like, I know you're eager to put it off, but it kind of cut off some of the free-flowing conversation we could have had, and I'd like to have that. I would respectfully request that you do that so we can talk, and then you can do the motion.

Well, and if we vote it down, we vote it down as well, so... Chris.

Yeah, I'm kind of under the same thought with Kevin. I mean, I'm not against postponing it maybe later, but I feel like we're missing some discussion that we could have some tonight. I mean, obviously we don't need to like really drill it down hard, but you know, I think if we had a little bit of discussion tonight, that could be something that goes into the town hall or whatever comes next. Because right now, we're not able to throw our ideas out on the table or voice our concerns that we have with what is before us. So right now, I'm a no.

I have no problem withdrawing the motion for now.

Anything else on the postponement? John?

I don't know if you have to say it.

I'm withdrawing whatever it is so we can get going.

so we're back to the original motion unamended john i was going to make a comment on the on the postponement just give people an idea of what's going on in everybody's offices before we set any hard dates but since we're back to the main motion i'll just offer that i am willing and able and ready to answer any clarifying questions that anybody has right now on this original motion

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Two things. I'd like to hear from John, because I know you were writing some of these down, your comments. And overall, I do agree that we're going to need to probably postpone this. I think that's a good idea. But in the meantime, I'd like to hear John's comments on some of the issues that were brought up. And then Katie mentioned she has some ideas. I'd like to hear those after that.

I can just go through things, or do you have specific questions?

No, just as you wrote down, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, since you are the person who crafted this.

Yeah, so just going comment by comment, we heard some things about the It's not a typical one size fit all type transportation. There's waiting, there's baggage, there's extra passengers, there's multiple stops. Those things were all taken into consideration. And yes, the rates can be adjusted if they're not right. There's a reason why we separated regulations from the ordinance. The ordinance says that it adopts, we need to adopt regulations. And the regulations, this was a first attempt at what the rates would look like. As rates are adjusted, it calls for basically a public hearing with the which is what has been done in the past. That was the process to get the rates reconsidered. So that can happen through that process. It's in the regulations. So passing the ordinance doesn't lock in those regulations long term. It just means we don't have to go back and do an ordinance change every time we wanna make a structure of the ordinance. We're not touching that. It really comes down to the rates and the regulations. I heard loud and clear on some people that did not receive a draft. I own that one. The way we decided who it gets sent to, it was registered businesses that we had with these licenses and beyond the social media, the website, media spots, those direct mailings were what we had on record at the city and sent it out to those. So if there was an oversight, I apologize there. I hear you on the town hall, and I would appreciate another attempt at it. I will just say the previous ones, they're not fun. But if we can come to a town hall and have a solutions-based discussion, I think that can be very helpful. I think you'll see in my memo, I summarized directly from the sheets we had hanging on the wall all the points that came up and in my memo every single section of the code that was written to address point by point that came up in those multiple town halls um on the uh on the class c the sun's right sunrise to sunset restriction to the central business district those are all things that can be um considered and again that's in the regulations not in the ordinance those things can be revisited through that uh through that um public hearing that would be held by the chief of police. Um, you know, I think the main issue with all of this is that, um, and this isn't abnormal from most places in the United States, the, the passenger needs to know what they're getting. Um, and in sickness specifically, What complaints we field is that taxis are not available, and taxi rides come second to tourists. Because the tours, if we're being honest, it brings in more money. The tours, the shuttles, the limousines, those sort of things, we don't regulate any of those fares. And they're really not even built into our code anywhere. Our code is just taxis only. So this is trying to address that. Nobody's telling the shuttle services, These are the routes you have to stick to, absolutely, and this is the rate that you're gonna charge. You negotiate that package however you wanna negotiate it. Now, we do need some defined routes to know what are your pickup locations, but there's also, Class B is also a limousine, so that's how you provide those, I need to pick up kids at the kayak place. But, I'm sorry. But everything in class B, that's your limousines, that's your shuttles, that's your tours, all of that fits under that endorsement. Sorry, I'm gonna go back to my frequently asked questions sheet that I put together. I have 14 pages of notes ready to go. We hear that the structure works just fine, why are we touching it? Nobody's touched this in 27 years because every time we try to touch it, this is what happens, and most people have said this is not worth my time and energy. It's a painful process. And we hear, you know, just change the rate card and everything's gonna be solved there. So what I did with the rate card, and I didn't push this out here, is I took the old rate card And I applied the inflationary figures to the base rate that existed, I think it's like early 2000 was the last time that thing was touched. So I inflated that based on CPI to the base rate. I adjusted those fuel surcharge rates to, because when's the last time you've seen gas under $4 a gallon here, but adjusted those fuel surcharges, the 20, 25, 30, and 35, and applied that to that base rate with the tax of 5 and 6% in there, and then I bounced those numbers off of our zone chart. They're not far off. They're really not far off. Now, I will concede that the rides in town from Zone 1 to Zone 2 and Zone 3, the closer stuff, yes, those rates will increase those. But again, that's open for discussion through the regulations through that annual hearing process. We hear that... We can't make money unless we run a taxi and a tour under the exact same license. Nobody is preventing you from being in both lines of business at all. What changes is they're not sold under a single license. So there's three paths you can choose if you want to do both. One is pick one that works best for you and do that one. You create another LLC and you get an operator's license for each one of them. Some of your fleet is taxi, some of your fleet is shuttles and tours. I don't care if you get a magnet sign that says which one you're doing, as long as the passenger will know what they're getting when they get in there. And we also put in a charter provision. So it's not necessarily a tour, but if a taxi wants to pick someone up and say, I'm getting you for an hour and you're gonna take me to multiple locations and show me around, we've built a charter rate in there to address that. We hear that taxi service is, this is actually gonna make taxi service less available. Availability has already been the problem. I'm sure over the years, the Assembly's received emails about it. I know Mr. Moser, you've sent some of them to me years ago about this. And even in that town hall, shortage of taxis was the top concern in that 23 town hall. So when the license covers both taxis and tours, taxis always come secondary to the tours. But the taxi demand is steady year round. Locals still need taxis in summer almost just as much as they need them in the winter time. So this was trying to just get a permitting process in place that gave people the opportunity to choose which one you wanna do, and if you wanna do both, here's how you do it. I can go on and on forever, but if there are very specific questions, I'm very happy to answer them.

Kevin, you still have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I guess two questions. The discounts, if someone wanted to do discounts, is that something they can do currently under this, like school kids or something like that?

I think it's reasonable to say student discount, senior discount. Again, people just need to know what they're getting when they're getting in there. It's not a stand on the side of the road and negotiate a rate. If there is a placard that's set and it says you are a student or a senior, have it posted so they know what they're getting when they get in there.

That's my last question for now. Thank you. I'm good now.

Scotty? John, is it, well it used to be from Edgecombe High School to the 1,000 block HPR, 1,000 block Sawmill Cove was the minimum fare, and that now with this proposal, to get dropped off at Salvation Army costs more than to get dropped off at Super 8, is that correct?

Possibly, I don't have that off the top of my head, and the best I can compare it to is this one from the late 90s, early 2000s. I mean, this thing's so old, it still has rookies on here as a location. The BOQ is on here. We're still posting these, so it is possible that's true. But trying to get zones figured out, sure, let's get more public input on that too. Again, that's in the regulations. That's not in the code. Josh is back here and I'll speak for him. He was the one that called the state of Alaska this morning about taxi meters and how those work. And to sum it up, basically they said there's no way to really get those things calibrated and it can be expensive sending them back and forth, plus they're going to GPS-type systems, and they said essentially the easiest way to do it is just set up a zone structure because then you don't have to worry about these meters. You just pick zones and charge rates based on moving between zones or within an existing zone. So we're just trying to... simplify it, and make it fair.

This is my last one, Your Honor, but do people have to have that sheet posted right on the dash so when people get in, they sit down, hey, am I in a tour, am I in a cab? I mean, and then with two LLCs in one vehicle, how does that, you put on a tour hat for this guy because you just got rid of a cab, how would that work? You can't have two LLCs on one vehicle.

You can't operate them both at the same time, but you can... For example, let's say you have a fleet of vehicles and you go and get an operator's license, you get two LLCs, say your John Leach Taxi and John Leach Tours. I would take that fleet of vehicles, I would go get an operator's license for both of the LLCs. One I would get a Class A endorsement, the other one I would get a Class B endorsement. Because you have the endorsement, doesn't mean you have to be doing it right. You could say, I'm putting my tour sign up, I'm driving tours for today. And after the tourists leave, if you wanna flip the switch over to taxi mode, put your taxi sign on and go do it.

What I'm trying to get in my mind is so all of a sudden in the morning you got an email and somebody's on the love boat and they want to take your tour. Now you're going to go out there and pick that one up and then you did your 90 or whatever, how long it is. And then now you're a cab again in the same car. That's what I'm trying to, you know, like you've, you've advertised your email business with the love boats and now you're back in cabs. You know, that's what I'm trying to get to about earning, uh,

like having a gillnet permit and having a troll permit you know all in the same boat i i think the best way i can answer it is is if if taxis can switch back and forth tours and if they've advertised i i think i understand your question i don't think it's actually fair for us to tell tour and shuttle companies you can't do that know what i mean like right now if you if you get a tour or a shuttle they are they are not allowed to pick somebody up on the side of the road and flag them down and because they would be operating as a taxi the tours and the shuttles are staying within their bubble and aren't aren't able to switch but taxis can put different hats on and provide different services this is trying to make it consistent for everybody katie

Yeah, you signed yourself up for a big job before November.

I don't think it's that tough. I'm just, I need help of figuring out, you know, cause I think like what Sigurd said, this is gonna be the only place in the globe with this differentiation, you know, so, and, but,

I don't think it will be the only place in the globe, but I think that there are a lot of great points brought up by the public. I really appreciate everyone's suggestions and also just want to thank John. I mean, you can tell a ton of work went into this for all the staff that worked on it. there are absolutely some things that need to be clarified, right? And this, what you're bringing up about the line in the zones, right? It goes through Sawmill Creek Road. And so if you've got things on different side of the road, how do you make that the same price? Because look, they're right across the street from each other. I think like those are the kinds of details I would like to see sorted out in a town hall. um bringing up those specific points of like okay here's an inconsistency right another thing that came up was like the the 300 foot uh sign visible sign and like the adjustments that businesses are going to have to make so you know this is why i'm saying like i would love a little bit of thought to go into this process because it has been talked about for 27 years and uh there keeps being impediments, so there needs to be some dedication to getting a comprehensive look at what all the comments are on this proposal, where all the little rub points are, and then what can we do about that. I really appreciate the point that was brought up about the nonprofits and and then pointing out what the limousine services I think when I think of limousine I think of the black limos that kids take to prom but under this definition it is also like kind of what you would refer to as chauffeur service which could be offered for kids from 4-H or the Boy Scouts, right? You're employing a driving service for a particular rate to a particular group of people. The word limousine doesn't conjure that understanding for me, right? So there's a couple adjustments there. The other just point, you know, the main one that I am hearing as well from folks is this, this tough thing between like, taxis aren't, just running a taxi is not enough to really make a living. So you gotta run tours. And then if you're running tours, you're not able to do taxis at the same time and people can't get taxi rides, which they need. And so how can we both address the cost of living of the residents, and also um of the providers and like i think offering differential charter rates between winter and summer is one of the things that we could do there so if seventy dollars uh isn't enough for a you know charter which is essentially a taxi that's like providing a tour you you hop in the cab you say i want you to drive me around for an hour and a half and show me all the cool things sika has to offer um okay if 70 bucks isn't enough like let's make that rate much higher during the summer. But if someone in the winter is getting in a cab and they're like, okay, I need to go to the grocery store and then I need to go to the hospital and then I need to go back home, I don't want that person having to pay $150, right? So there has to be some acknowledgement of both of those things the needs of the residents and the affordability for them and also the needs of the providers to make a living and that's going to be a tough line to walk but i trust that you know with with all the good participation that we've got um and the extra bodies you know that we have now the tourism commission as well as police and fire like they both still need to be a part of it this is not just a tourism issue it's one that uh is really affecting our local residents as well so those are just a couple considerations that i'd love to go into the town hall Don't wanna put my name on it, but I'm happy to help you think through things and write some things out. I can definitely offer some support in that regard.

Tor? Yeah, not talking about the, so I was trying to avoid getting too deep into the weeds, but some of the things that I'm hoping we can talk about and I can get some more information on is I don't quite understand why a business can't, charge a discount i mean as far as competition i mean if you have two tour operators that say and it says my tour is 150 bucks and mine's 120 you know i'll take the 120 because i'm cheap um and so why they can't do that why we have to say what it's going to be um trying to make sure we know by the time we get it to the town hall um I do very much appreciate the Class C operator talking about some of the issues there that on the surface it makes sense at night, but then they said okay. And one of the things I'm hoping to look into before we have the meeting is we're talking about we can't use meters, and I'm like, I could take the plotter out of my boat and calculate how many miles I have to the foot. Why we can't just do that? I mean, that is, and put a rate per mile. That's like every other, most places where you have a meter, it's like you have your base, a few dollars, and then it's a certain amount per mile or whatever. And with GPS, I don't see why we couldn't do that. Maybe I'll have an answer. by then, but those are just some of the thoughts I had, but these are the kind of things that I'm hoping that we can talk about at a town hall.

JJ and then John.

John, I've got questions for you. I see in the regulations here where we're setting fares for the taxi side of things, that's the class A. Help me see where or if we're setting fees and charges for the B class. That's tours, shutters, shuttles, or limos.

You got the first one I just wrote down. That's what I was going to say. With the negotiation and the competition, we don't touch tours and shuttles. That is between them and the customer. It's just like if you go into any store and try to negotiate a price. Taxis are the ones that it is a, so people know clearly what it costs just to get from point A to point B without having sightseeing services and tours and that sort of thing. You're just paying strictly for transportation.

Just for the transportation. So this, it's not even the ordinance, it's that other document that is going to change every year that's setting those rates, those numbers. Okay, so there's already a review process. that's going to be happening and is that intended to happen at the police and fire commission level or separate big room like this with the fire or sorry with the fire with the police chief fire on standby depending on what the comments are it would make sense i think to do it outside of a police and fire commission meeting i mean the two times that i brought this to police and fire already they're like i don't want to do go do that somewhere else but um

But I would say, you know, advertise saying we have public hearing and we're gonna address taxi rates and changes they'd like to see in the regulations.

So it's the only place where that kind of gets involved is when the taxi company is doing that charter service. Then it's kind of that private time there is when we're setting a rate for it. Okay. Okay. And is it... Is it too simplified to say that the taxi, that class A, is the public passenger, and then B is more of like a private passenger?

I think that's a good classification, yeah.

A good way to summarize that? And so we're only here as the governing public body, the city and borough of Zika, looking at the money side of things for that public facing. It's that general consumer who travels around the world and knows that word taxi, maybe doesn't even speak English, but knows the word taxi and has an expectation of what they're getting for that service. And that's a fixed rate for, and knowing what they're getting before they get in the vehicle. Okay, thank you for that clarification. My general questions or comments to the group, what I'd like to see before we, you know, think about November is tourism commission maybe not police and fire now that we've heard that they've already seen this twice. Kind of think it's outside of their purview unless we want to make them see it again. Perhaps too, because we've heard that it's a lot of locals, it's a lot of lower income locals that use these services in the wintertime. And so maybe that's a Health Needs and Human Services Commission if they have an input on this. We do have that public bus, but sometimes it's our elderly or it's our people that need to go to the hospital But even though there's a courtesy van there that would need need a taxi in that offseason my comments around the structure of this. I appreciate that there's that code language which is gonna get set and that's kind of really what we're looking at tonight. And then there's that regulations piece with the different appendixes that can change or that are structured to change every year. I think that's a very good way to go about this. And it separates out, it may look confusing at the beginning because we're looking at it at once, but it really sets out what's just gonna go on the record for the next 25 years so we don't ever have to touch it again. and pulls out what used to be called a misdemeanor and now is a fine that we can update annually. And it's that persistent question of that satellite business I think has really been answered in this code and the regulations. So thank you, John, for addressing that at a level that will continue forward and gives people the opportunity to have multiple businesses to do what they're currently considering as necessary for a year-round income. But we, as the public group, for the health and welfare, you do have to have drivers that interact with everyone, anyone, have that physical. And unfortunately, that is regulated in the United States by your local governments. So that's something that we have to do here, even if we think it's silly or unnecessary. Whereas tours, shuttles, limos, and perhaps utilizing that word livery could be good to expand upon the limousine to the town car SUV, because those exist in town currently. more it's more of that private business not that public passenger business which doesn't need our input here at the assembly so thank you for that distinction and I think the structure is really good here perhaps some more informational meetings and that town hall would be very beneficial because I think this answers quite a bit of what has been reiterated and communicated over the last three, four years that I've witnessed this process. And just that communication could be very valuable in bringing people to the understanding of why this has some great bones here. We just maybe need to flesh out some details.

John, I know I said I would call on you. Myself and Chris haven't had the floor yet, so I'm gonna give us the opportunity and then we'll come back. So Chris.

there we go there we go um i guess i'll start with a question to john um one of my concerns is is the way the rates i guess i fully understand why we had to go to a zone map um because we can't calibrate um the meters In your research and everything that you were doing, did you ever look into like what Uber and Lyft are doing for how they do their rates? Is that the satellite GPS stuff that you're talking about? Is that how they conduct their rates?

This is great, now you got the second note that I had written down, so less things I have to say, Mayor, when we come back. On the meters issue, yes, that came up in the town hall, and we outlined some apps that are available that people can have on their phones, similar to what Uber and Lyft and some of the rideshare services use, but that one was pretty firmly shot down as a solution on,

potential issues with accuracy and cell phone connection those sort of things okay well i may have been shot down but it seems like the map is troubling as well so i don't know i mean i've always found that uh uber and lyft that the way that rate paying seems to work well and it's pretty straightforward so um maybe that'll be reconsidered by everyone involved here in the future or maybe the map thing is just what we have to do but that was my question for you um so the things i'm concerned with is yeah the map thing is a little concerning because i do see some of the holes in it um but without having meters being able to be calibrated here in town and i don't see any other way um so it's it's kind of one of those double-edged swords i guess um A lot of another thing I don't like is I'm concerned about, you know, that hearing some of the public testimony is, you know, yeah, having the rates go up. It's great for the taxi driver at face value. But then again, you know, are they going to lose customers or can customers afford it? So that is a concern of mine. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I just wanna make sure that we aren't gonna price people out of being able to take a taxi. So hopefully that can get addressed in these work sessions or at least examined and see what's gonna be beneficial to everyone involved. But one of the big things I've really taken with this is I really like what John's brought forward here. kind of in his explanation of it. I know there's a lot of change and people are kind of knee-jerk reaction to some of this change, but he's left avenues for... still being able to operate similar to the way they're operating now. You know, chartering is an option for a taxi, but also John was explaining the two LLCs and then just clearly saying or, you know, displaying on your vehicle what you are. You're a taxi or you're a tourer or whatever it is. You know, I think that's the biggest thing that this whole ordinance change is about, is just trying to be transparent to the user the customer of what you are um you know this this ordinance changed didn't come out of nowhere um you know i'd heard the complaints um bait and switch um charging whatever they want to charge you know i mean it's it the chief and their administrator are not trying to pick on our taxi drivers you know there's been a few complaints and that's that's why this is being looked at and addressed and just trying to create accountability and some basis that all the customers can go off of and i i i like it i really like where the bones are at yeah i think we got some little things that we can look at and then maybe tweak and adjust to make everyone happy um i i think it's totally workable um i know there's change i hate change i get it um i hate red tape and this is adding some red tape um but i mean being a fisherman there's lots of red tape then there's always change so um sometimes you just got to roll with it and if this is what's gonna be good for the customers the client our locals our tourists coming in people who are wanting to use taxis tours whatever if this is what's going to help them know that they are getting what they've asked for and what they've paid for i'm all for it so um yeah i think we like jj said i think we got some really good bones here um you know maybe we can make a few tweaks over the next few months but i think in general we have a really good product and um i know it's changed i i get it i fully understand that it's something that not a lot of us including myself want to do um but i think under the circumstances we've we've had to do um so yeah thanks john thanks john for putting all this together i know you put them in a lot of hard time with it and um Yeah, I think in general it is very good. I think we just get a few things ironed out and have something to go this fall.

So for myself, I actually used a method I've never used when reviewing the packet for for this particular item. And that is I did not read the ordinance at all. I didn't read a single thing about it. And the reason I wanted to do that is because I knew that there was gonna be a lot of impassioned voices that live in this world that are gonna have concerns coming forward. And I wanted my first perspective on this to be their side of what we hear, not what we are presenting forward. And it's kind of a role reversal there because we typically read the ordinances and that is our foundation and our baseline, right? And I wanted this to be the concerns of the operators. So when I was listening, I wrote notes about everything that I wanted to review on second reading. What is it that I actually need to dig into in this ordinance that are the sticking points? Because it is lengthy as well. And if there are points that are good, then we don't, necessarily need to take those up. If there are sticking points, then let's go forward with those. This is also gonna be a first for me in a very long time, but depending on this postponement, I don't know that I'm gonna have a second reading on this, right? So my next steps are going to be based off of whether we postpone or not. I do, however, see the need to standardize service across providers. and protect consumers. I think our taxi, shuttle, charter, apparently now I can say I'm going to ride in a limo at some point. That's cool for me. I've never rode in a limo. So if somebody picks me up, just call in a limo please. I think all of our providers in town want those same things, right? There's a few points that can be ironed out. I think the hardest one that this assembly's gonna have to deal with is the comments that revenue doesn't cover costs of operation and then others that say these costs are too high. i don't know legally how this would work but if we go to a maximum allowable rate which is posted in the cab you know that your rate will not be higher than that and if you have a repeat customer who uses you every thursday to to run to a grocery store that customer can get the negotiated rate. Now I understand that that goes back to the point of you need to know what you're paying when you get in the cab. However, you will know that you're not going to be paying more than this. For class C, sunrise to sunset, I heard that when we were talking about zones only CBD, I wrote down actually after that comment speed. And there was a, the presentation involved speed. Maybe this is something where We're similar to the state where you can drive ATVs on the roads if they're under 45 miles an hour. Or you can take your Class C vehicle on the roads if they're under 20 miles an hour. I don't know what that number is, but there's a potential there as well. I think there is a little bit more work to do on this. I would agree with Chris that the bones are there in order to standardize service across providers and protect consumers while allowing our operators to continue to provide a high level of service to the consumer. Because at the end of the day, that's what everybody wants. So I'll continue to write notes on this and see how we can move this discussion forward. And then John.

Yeah, there's a few things I'd like to point out, though, because we've talked about all the reasons why it's bad and the things that need to get fixed. But what we haven't talked about are the things that were fixed from the last town hall and things that we did to reduce barriers to entry. We heard one person comment about FBI fingerprinting and criminal background checks. That was pretty onerous. It had to be done once a year. We have changed that to twice a year now. FBI fingerprinting is gone. It's a simple criminal background check. for medical, for instance. We heard through the town hall, if you've got a CDL, you've probably already gotten your medical exam, so why do it again under the city? So we got rid of that. If you're a pilot, you probably get your aeromedical certification. Do you really need to go through another one for driving a cab or driving a shuttle? So we took those things out. So extending it from one year to two years, overall reduces fees. We reduced some of those barriers to entry. We made the application process simpler. We heard also about the mechanics inspection. It used to say an ASC certified mechanic. We don't have any on the island. So we adjusted some language there to say if you get some sort of manufacturer certification that says this is good or somebody that works in an automotive, something that gives you clearance that that vehicle is safe. And it comes by the police department doesn't have cracked windshield turn signals work the you know, tires look fine. We're not going to make you fly in somebody from Juneau or Anchorage to be an ASC certified mechanic to look at it. So there are a lot of good things we did in here to remove those barriers to entry and allow more people to get in and provide the service.

Please, you do it. I'll second that. All right, I move that we postpone this till the second meeting in November. I don't think we. Second. Yeah.

Sarah, for clarification, that was November 24th, correct? Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to postpone this ordinance until November 24th. Is there any public comment? On the postponement?

My name is Nalani James and I'm the owner of Bayside Taxi Tours and Airport Shuttle in Sitka. And I'd like to say that I would like these tourism meetings personally for my business to be in the off season. I think it's more helpful if they run October through April because With us being out trying to manage safety and operational details with our vehicles and our customer base and emails, this is really a lot. And I can only speak for this particular meeting. I read through this packet and it's somewhat disheartening and I probably shouldn't say this, that the mayor didn't read this packet and it was gonna be vote upon. That's shocking to me. So for the customer base, for you to speak to the customer, for you to speak to, to have a town hall, you're skipping over the conversations to speak to the owners, to the business owners. to make decisions on our business. That's very important. So I do appreciate that postponement for November the 24th, and hopefully in that timeline, this packet can be read. Thank you.

Any other comment on postponing until November 24th, Ordinance 26-20?

Assembly deliberation, John, I want to throw it out there before the conversation gets too far. Um, I'm going to be gone almost all of the month of October. We have an election happening in October. Um, you're going to have a new assembly seated after that first meeting in October. Um, and there's some pretty big projects with the Lincoln street deal and the, um, the childcare work that's underway right now along with some other active legislation that make that November timeline very, very aggressive and probably not gonna be fun for the clerk's office right now with that timeline. I think in hearing the comments about the off season for the providers, I would suggest a much later date.

I don't have strong feelings about what date we use.

John, question for you. With the conversation, how it's gone so far tonight and this postponement, do you still wish to remove your recommendation and have other sponsors bring this back?

I would prefer other sponsors because it takes time. the personal connection out of this because it has been made personal. And I think it was great to have the conversation here. And also keeping in mind, I just talked about that timeline. I'm a short timer as well. And it might not get to the assembly table while John Leach, the administrator is here. So it might be better to have sponsors that will still be on the assembly and can carry it out if it goes past that date.

Okay, so that's a consideration for me in this postponement. If there's anyone willing to say they'd be a sponsor, then I'm more likely to vote to postpone. Yes, that'd be two.

Any further deliberation on postponement?

Just one, whenever, if we, I was thinking we would have a meeting sometime in October. If November's too ambitious, again, I don't, I don't think, I don't have a problem moving it off until probably January, but that's up to you, Scotty.

No, I don't wanna do that, because Thanksgiving to Christmas is toilet material anyway for people trying to get something done, so just, I'll be motivated, I'll.

Okay, so yeah, to be determined when we'll have it, and hopefully if we can't, then we can bring it forward, that meeting, and say we have to postpone it again, if for whatever reason.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, listening to this conversation, by the way, I really appreciate the comments that everyone made. It was very helpful, and I'm very grateful for that. I really appreciate the comments that the assembly made and the robust discussion. I mean, it's very helpful. Listening to John explain the timeline, makes me think, you know, I think later, a later postponement would be better. Perhaps we could, you could turn it into a discussion item before that and then you can just decide the way you wanna go, like basically touch base and at around that time, November, and then decide if you wanna bring something forth right away or extend. My point is I want to also be cognizant of staff time. I know we got two assembly sponsors, You know, this isn't being done in a vacuum. There is an election going on. We did just kind of direct John to help to work on the Lincoln Street project. That's no small feat. And I'm sure there's several other projects, so I would feel more comfortable either changing this to a discussion direction sometime in November, and then deciding from that point when we wanna do it, or just deciding to do the postponement until sometime in 27. JJ.

So I'm thinking that this is an ordinance that we're passing. that we're talking about postponing attached to the ordinance is the piece that we're really looking at working through the details on in that there's a annual review by the police chief, can we just advise the police that annual review to be whenever we're January looking at so then we don't have to postpone the vote for the ordinance tonight, but we do get that review cycle and comments that we're interested in. Is that an option, John?

I need Sarah's help on this one, but my spidey sense says that since this code references that regulations will be adopted, I think it would make sense that you see that first version and agree with the first version of the regulations.

Thank you. Yep, just trying to kill 17 birds with one stone, but understandable, Sarah. your time and your office's time is very valuable. So just trying to come up with some ideas of how to get our goals across, all of our goals across the finish line.

But also I think we just dealt with Parks and Rec, I believe it was, in a very similar manner where... I don't remember the document, but it came forward to us, and okay, we'll adopt this, and then you'll adopt the next part, which was very uncomfortable to me, but has precedent. So I think what JJ's going down is perhaps valid as well. Katie?

I was thinking about that as well, JJ, but I think that the supplemental appropriations that we did is pretty different from this. This is a whole scale rewriting of the code, and so it contains definitions and all sorts of things that would not make sense, I think, without applying that. uh we could do that but it would it would change the system in a way that people have you know voiced discomfort with i would love to postpone it until november i think that that is really dependent on who is willing and able to do the work and if this work is going to fall on the clerks to write up and summarize the notes of The town hall and the assembly discussion and all that, that is an unrealistic timeline. If the assembly sponsors are willing to take that on, then it's different. So kind of need like a realistic idea from the folks who put their names forward about whether or not y'all can put in that work, because I don't think that staff is going to have the time in the frame that we've talked about.

Yeah, I think we, well, I'm going to say we could have something perfect, but we, I mean, right now we, I don't think we have something that we can say we can change later, but I think we could probably get something to that point. Um, and then, uh, you know, uh, I think if we need to scare up somebody to help take notes, we probably can. But it's really gonna be legal more than anything else that's gonna need to be looking over our shoulder. And like I said, I will freely say that if we are not gonna be ready in October, we'll bring it back to the Assembly and say, okay, we need to push this back. I mean, excuse me, November, I misspoke. But I think keeping this front and center, and like I said, I don't think we're that far off. Honestly, I think we have the framework here. There's some basic, I mean, there's not that many issues that if we can't, say, if not get consensus, less unhappy with to get to the point where yes, then we can address it with the annual revisions. But I just, I think John's done a good enough job here to where I really don't think we're that far off to getting something that people can live with.

Scotty.

we haven't had any customers here, you know, and the people that got to get to the channel club and are used to paying 11 bucks and then they get charged 18 or a guy at a and B needs a ride. The hospital should be 11 bucks. It's 18 bucks. I still don't know. I'm waiting for an answer on, are these fairs posted on the dashboard? You know? Uh, so, I'm getting more and more motivated all the time to make this come together because these guys out here have seen the plan and they're going to be working on it now waiting for that November deal to come back at it. And then when we get customers here, because the people working on a fixed income that need a ride, that's where John was going on the charter deal. And these guys feel the same thing in the winter time when they got their same customer that's used to paying six bucks and you know, you're making your cab fare on tips. Yeah, we'll make it happen Thor.

Kevin and then JJ. So having expressed my concerns about the timeline, I think I, probably will vote yes, because if we vote this down, then we're gonna have to come back and vote either yes or no on something that we're clearly not ready for, and I don't wanna just end this. I suppose I could vote yes on the extension with the understanding that the sponsors know that, you know, I appreciate you saying that, Tor, because if you don't have it ready, we don't wanna just put pressure just to get something, just to get something on the table. I'd rather have something done at some right.

The effective date of this ordinance was written as January 1st, 2027. So there was always the expectation of time of more availability for the education component here. With that, would the people that are sponsoring this postponement seem to be volunteering to be sponsoring the next round of discussion on November 24th? I would like to know if they anticipate keeping that effective date or that being part of what gets fleshed out in the next couple months.

I suspect that it will be fleshed out. I mean, we're going to have to make some changes, and that's a pretty easy change. I mean, it'll have to be reintroduced because the sponsor might not be here. But, I mean, to me, it's obviously going to have to be a few months after we come up with it.

Sarah? Just to follow up on that, JJ. So in the past, when we've had an ordinance like this that's needed more, or it's gone back for more work, we've brought it back as the same ordinance number, but it's been a substitute ordinance. So it allows the opportunity for the sponsors to make those additional changes.

And it can have that same ordinance number with different sponsors from administrator to assembly members.

Anything else on the postponement till November 24th? Sarah?

All right, so the motion before you is to postpone ordinance 2026-20 to the second meeting in November, which is November 24th. Mr. Mosier? Yes. Mr. Yesdad?

Yes.

Ms. Riley? Yes. Mr. Christensen? Yes. Mr. Selene? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis?

Yes.

And Ms. Carlson? Yes. Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you, Assembly and members of the public who showed up on that one. Before we go to our new business, additional new business item, we will take a recess. Assembly, please be seated when you're ready. I have a feeling he might have been closer than he admitted the whole time.

All right.

We are standing by for one more assembly member. Welcome. All right, the assembly is seated. We will continue on tonight with item F. So item F is approving the first amendment to the memorandum of agreement between the city and borough of Sitka and the Sitka Recreation Foundation for the creation of a parks and rec master plan. So assembly, this is coming back to you in a slightly different version than perhaps what you had anticipated. The initial guidance received that evening was that It is a substantial change to the ordinance and would come back and need a third reading, right? When the great minds of Sarah and Sarah and Sarah sat down together, they realized that there was no massive change to the ordinance. It still was the $20,000 being appropriated. What it was is inserting an amendment to the memorandum of agreement. So that is what we have in front of us tonight, because we did approve that $20,000. Now we see the amendment to the Memorandum of Agreement, the MOA, so we can now approve that going in, and then the ordinance will be completed. Still is three readings, just as before, technically, but we've already dealt with the $20,000, that's now off the table, so now what we're looking at is this first amendment to the MOA. Everybody tracking where we're at right now? Okay, great. Thank you, Sarah, Sarah, and Sarah. And Holly, too, I'm sure worked on that.

So item F, please. I move to approve the First Amendment to the Memorandum of Agreement between the City and Borough of Sitka and the Sitka Recreation Foundation for the creation of a Parks and Rec Master Plan.

Second. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the first amendment to the MOA on the Parks and Rec master plan. Is there any public comment? Back to the assembly for deliberation. Katie.

Yeah, I just wanna thank staff for putting this together and reflecting the discussion that we had and reiterate that there is still that provision in there that CBS funding beyond the stated amount comes from grants or support sources accessible exclusively to government entities. So I would strongly encourage additional funding on the public part to come from those sources, which I do not consider to include appropriations of public money. But thanks for all the work on this. I think this is a good workable alternative.

JJ?

So it looks like we're still gonna be seeing the outcome of this in January. So I hope there to be a robust public engagement process now that we have that communication plan with the city. I'm just wondering if that's gonna be applied to this or is this strictly happening through the Recreation Foundation? But either way, I'm looking forward to this happening and this master plan being a really great resource for the future of our facilities and services in the borough of Sitka.

Anything else from the assembly? Sarah?

All right, on the motion to approve the First Amendment to the MOA between CBS and SRF for the creation of a parks and rec master plan. Mr. Estad?

Yes.

Ms. Carlson? Yes. Mr. Salin? Yes. Mr. Moser? Yes. Ms. Riley? Yes. Mr. Christensen? Yes. And Mayor Eisenbeiss?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0 on item F. Thank you.

That would bring us to persons to be heard. This is public participation for any item on or off tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual.

My name is Henry Moore. Everybody know me as Hank. I just wanted to say I appreciate the effort all of you guys are putting in making this work. A lot of the time, change is hard. It's even hard for me. You know, it's like when I'm raising my kids, I was hoping they'd be eight all their life, but they turned into adults. And the road was hard, but I find that when I don't have, I don't know much what to say. I just wait and watch, and I learn as I go. But the thing is, sometimes I feel like all this stuff I could have helped some kind of way, because this town means a lot to me. Even people that don't agree with me. And this is how I grow. I just want to say how much I appreciate the effort you guys put in making this stuff work. A lot of people, I'm guilty also telling somebody how to run a music program when I first come to Sitka because I taught guitar lessons. This might be off topic, but I like to share it. And one day, the music teacher had to leave for a week and they need a substitute. And I went in that band room and I found out how much I didn't know about what I thought I knew about. But the thing is, I appreciate all the professionals that's been kind enough to spend time with me to allow me to grow. And I think, when I think about Sitka, I think we have a lot to offer, and I think we can do more when we're working together than if we're trying to tell other people how to do their jobs. Same thing, I'm talking about myself. I'm not talking about other people telling me what to do. I do the same thing. So I'm just human, just like everybody else. But while we were talking today, I was just thinking about how much I appreciate being here and the effort everybody else is putting in making this whole town work. Thank you.

It's me again, Nalani James from Bayside Taxi Tours and Shuttle. And if anyone's watching this in any other borough, we can hold up to 32 guests in our vehicles. I'd like to share that a thank you and apology to the mayor. This packet that the mayor, excuse me, the city administrator presented, the entire packet impacts me as a whole. Generally, Particular line items can impact me a couple pages, but we are a taxi, tour, and shuttle. And oftentimes in that advertisement, a tour, a taxi, excuse me, can turn into a tour, and therefore a tour can run into a shuttle based on your capacity. I wish, I don't know what's going on with this microphone. Should I just kind of, okay. Okay, so I'd like to extend an offer to someone that can handle a fast-paced environment on a day like today to ride with me completely quiet and see the operation that I execute on a day to day basis via phone, text, in person and driving all simultaneously. Not texting and driving though. But when you have, and I actually have that where people try and text and I let them know, do not text me, I am driving, I will not respond to you. And it's working to train a customer base to know that not only do we have safe driving, the agility that you need to have and concentration to look for drunk drivers, people not paying attention, elderly, I'm sacrificing my health with a pinched nerve, with sitting for a prolonged amount of time, watching for bicyclists, motorcyclists, pedal bikes, walkers, small children, pets and beyond, and do my job safely and be entertaining, as well as answer the phone, and bounce phone calls. This is the first time I've ever worked with someone in my business operation of four years. Sit with me for one day and you will see that I am worth more than one dollar per person in that realm. In that packet, a lot of those things are very insulting. Those permit costs, the price per person, and you'll see why it's not worth what you have in those line items. Thank you.

Please submit written comments. The assembly email is assembly at city and borough of sitka.org. Thank you. That's what I thought I said. My apologies, get with the clerk's office and they can square you away on a correct email address. Agreed.

Hi everyone, Rachel Roy. I had just some closing thoughts and questions. Is the only venue that we can work with business owners a town hall? Is it that we have to have a town hall to have multiple business owners come together to talk about an issue? Is there another way we could approach this? I'll never forget the time when this room was full and I was nervous early in my time and we were trying to get, assembly was trying to get a dollar per fish on, I talk about it over and over again and I said, I got up here and I said, wouldn't you rather work with these great people? It was when we had those lifelong leaders in our commercial fishing industry and they showed up for things. I'll never forget just saying, they would have loved to talk to you about this before you proposed that processors charge a dollar and it was a tax and it was going to go to this and it was this great idea, but it hadn't been brought in front of the business community. I think about that. I'm also thinking about, I wish I had understood that the one line in this whole ordinance that was causing the challenge that Meilani was talking about of having to decide, the challenge when at Visit Sika we had 12, 15 businesses come in and have to change their listings because this interpretation of this one frickin' line, sorry, of this ordinance, had I known that, I would have been down here advocating to remove that line and let us go back to business. I get it, businesses operate with different names. They call it a DBA. maybe a permit owner could have DBAs under their permits. I mean, there's ways of this, but you think about your pharmacy, soda shop, and gift shop. Those are businesses that operate with multiple things underneath their umbrella. The idea that we couldn't work together on it. It just feels wrong for what Sitka is, especially coming off of our beautiful, collaborative process about looking at childcare solutions. Could we kind of reset? I also just want to share that I think there's times and places for, and maybe I check myself too, because I'm kind of on a roll with this whole thing, but the way we treat the staff at the city, the way that we treat contractors, the way we treat nonprofits working to partner, I think it really matters, and hurtful things can be said at this table, so can we work forward together? Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else this evening for persons to be heard? Any item on or off tonight's agenda? Moving on to reports. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend a meeting that I'm sure John will talk about. That was my only report. I thought you had a meeting with Nick Begich's office. Is it time for my report?

It is now time for your report. Yes. I thought you were going to talk about the child care meeting. I was able to pop in and out of the summit, but had some other things scheduled that day, so I worked around it. But yes, Congressman Begich did stop by the office, as many of the other candidates have, and we were able to just provide a snapshot, like we do with all of them, of what the challenges are. And Sitka provided them with a copy of our legislative priorities and just talked through our strategic plan. It was almost like going to D.C. except D.C. came here. That was it, that's all my report.

Liaison representatives, Katie.

THE PLANNING COMMISSION IS GOING TO BE DISCUSSING ADU CODE CHANGES AT THEIR MEETING NEXT WEEK IF ANYONE'S INTERESTED, BUT THAT WILL MAKE ITS WAY TO THIS TABLE SHORTLY. AND THEN NOT AS A LIAISON REPRESENTATIVE, BUT AS AN ASSEMBLY MEMBER, I ATTENDED THE CHILD CARE SUMMIT. IT WAS FANTASTIC. THANKS SO MUCH TO THE CHAMBER FOR PUTTING THAT ON. A GREAT GROUP OF PEOPLE. that came in to contribute their thoughts, and really appreciated talking with the folks from the Bipartisan Policy Center, and had a really fruitful discussion, and I'm excited to work with Kevin and Tor to flesh that out more.

Any other liaison reports? Clerk's report?

No report.

Great. Any other reports this evening? JJ.

crosswalk painting tomorrow morning at the Barrack Street. That's from, not crossing Lincoln Street, but the side street there from the corner of the P Home over to the bookstore. It will be closed for the morning and a couple hours afternoon if it's not dry. There'll be a new a new fish themed crosswalk there. So just continuing our pedestrian safety advocacy and walkability around Sitka. So thank you for put me on that group. We're spending down that grant and gonna be handing out as many pedestrian safety vests as possible too to make walking more safe and therefore reduce chronic disease in Sitka.

Thank you. That would bring us to our executive session this evening.

I move to go into executive session to review the application submitted for the municipal administrator position under the statutory category of discussing subjects that may tend to prejudice the reputation and character of an individual and invite in Assistant Municipal Administrator Joshua Ranthover. In addition, I move to exclude the municipal administrator and municipal attorney.

Second.

That's been moved and seconded to inter-executive session. Is there any public comment? Seeing none. Sarah?

All right. On the motion to go into executive session, Ms. Riley? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeiss?

Yes.

Ms. Carlson? Yes. Mr. Mosher?

Yes.

Mr. Yesdad? Yes. Mr. Christensen? Yes. And Mr. Saleen? Yes. The motion passes 7-0 and we'll be meeting in room 4.

Thank you. A motion to reconvene?

So moved.

Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. We are reconvened as the assembly in regular session. The assembly met in executive session to review some new applications that came in. Throughout that process, we have determined that we are going to attempt to Zoom interview two of those candidates. because we didn't discuss the processes, but Josh will, our HR director will release the names for public consumption as soon as we work through that process. So we'll have that out and available. We have a couple dates that may work for assembly members and hopefully work for our candidates as well. And so as we move forward to interviewing these processes, we will get as much information out as quickly as possible for everyone to start doing their own homework and research on our potential new city administrator. Motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye.