City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm call to order the December 16th, 2025 regular meeting of the Weer City Council at 7:02 p.m. Um, please rise for the Pledge of

Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we begin tonight's meeting, please note that the digital copies of the packet are available on our website. A QR code is provided just outside the door or at the top left corner of the YouTube video. You can open your phone's camera to scan the code and access the packet. Madame clerk, will you please call the role?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mrs. Borg here. Mr. Wagner here. Mr. Mccalto here. Mr. Pinkush here. Mr. Denmark,

Mr. Denmark. I see Mr. Denmark with us, but I'm not sure if um if the uh microphone's not working for him. I can't turn it off for you, though. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, I've got an audio problem here and Mr. Mayor. There he is. Oh. Uh, this is Mr. P and pieces here. And Mr. Mayor here. You have a quorum.

Any citizen comments on any agenda items except those scheduled for public hearing are welcome at this time. Those who have signed in will be given the first opportunity to speak. Please note this is not a time for dialogue is a time for citizens to speak and the council to listen and madame clerk. Clerk is there anyone signed in for citizen comments at this time?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Lonnie Young, if you'd like to come to the podium. Oh, oopsies. Good evening, Mayor Shen and city council members. My name is Lonnie Young. I live in Anchorage and I'd like to speak to resolution 2025-047, the feasibility evaluation of Mountain Gut Court. I own property that'll be directly affected if Mountain Goat Court is feasible and deemed to be a future capital improvement project. As a lifelong Alaskan, a registered professional engineer in the state of Alaska, I understand the importance of doing things intentionally that will last for generations to come. not only considering the challenging terrain, drainages, water crossings, changes to elevation, but also pioneering development in the city of Woody Wood Whittier that fosters growth in a responsible way. It's been a pleasure to work with city manager Jackie and um city clerk Shelby, and I look forward to continued efforts with this project. In closing, I strongly support resolution 2025-047 and wholeheartedly believe it will set a precedent for standards and future development in this amazing community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Young. Next is Mr. Mike Bender. I don't have an agenda item to speak to, but just an announcement. Um, this fall is the U Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisor City Advisory Council uh meeting. They go around all the oil spill affected communities. And this falls in on September 17th and 18th. I think that's a Thursday and Friday. uh they hope to meet uh here in in Whittier. I hope they've been talking to the administration about space or uh I'll mention that to someone down there. Uh the big challenge of course coming to Whittier, we have about 80 people that need to find housing. So that's going to be the challenge for this uh this endeavor. But uh I'll talk to the folks there and see if we can't get something going. I think they would be interested in this this space. So that's uh if if there's any other questions I can answer that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bender. Mr. Kai Holland. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. I'm going to double dip on you tonight. Um, I was asked to come up for a moment to speak to item number 13 that's on your agenda and I'll do a legislative update later in the meeting at the appropriate time. Um, I just wanted to touch bases with you. It was suggested by staff that I just take a moment. This uh is a bill, House Bill 229 that I brought to you about two months ago for your awareness that I was working on this that um would if passed by the legislature um put Alaska on regular standard time year round. We currently observe daylight savings time which means that in March we spring forward we advance our clocks and then in November we had rolled it back again. So we're currently on standard time if this law were to be enacted. We would stay on this time that we're on now. We wouldn't have the springtime change where we flip back and forth. about over 95% of Alaskans in survey when we've surveyed them want to stop this time change twice a year. From there it gets a little more split. There's about three quarters of Alaskans that say they would like to stay on standard time which gives us a little more light in the morning in order to ensure that we're going to bed with it getting a little darker and we have a little more light in the early part of the day. About a quarter of Alaskans though are fairly strenuous in their desire to have daylight savings time in the summertime because they get that extra hour in the evening. They

give it up in the uh morning because we unfortunately can't legislate more light in the day. Um, I've uh provided you an additional sheet. Um, and there's also some copies out on the front table for anyone that would like to pick one up that has some information about this bill. Fundamentally, you'll see um that if we stayed on permanent standard time, we would have about 130 days where the sun here in South Central Alaska would come up after 8:00 a.m. If we went to permanent daylight savings time, that is wintertime stayed on daylight savings time, we would spend an entire additional month with the sun not rising till after 8. said differently, right now our latest sunrise right now is about 10:15 in the morning. If we stayed on permanent daylight savings time, our latest sunrise would not be until 11:15 in the morning. So, um I will be here through the meeting if there are questions later. I just uh appreciate that you're giving this consideration. It's an important question um in terms of how we live our lives in Alaska. This is brought forward to me by people who are interested in us being a little healthier. Um, this has been shown to reduce mental health problems. Uh, physical health is improved. Essentially, we improve people's sleep and we improve their day. And I appreciate your time looking at this today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Holland. Miss Kelly Bender. Good evening. Um, I am here to talk very quickly about the ground transportation tax. And you're probably asking why now? Well, I just came back from ATIA where we meet with all of the tour operators and you talk about how your season was, how the next year looks. And then you try to gain business. You try to encourage people to fill your empty spaces. And here's the things that I heard many, many times at ATIa. First of all, I know that you've all received a letter from the Alaska Railroad saying they're not going to pay it. It's illegal. It's a tax, no matter what you call it. I also know that you received a letter from Premier Alaska Tours today, telling you about all the repercussions of what's happening with their company due to this tax, which I'll go into here in a minute, because those directly affect us. And it's not rumor and it's not threats, it's actually happening to us. And I also know that Clea when they were here and we were talking about this tax, they said, um, hey, we'll work with you. Let's let's get together and work with this. But if you pass this this punitive policy, we're going to strangle that. I mean, that money is going to be uh held very tightly and we're going to be paying really close attention, which we were told at ATIA that's exactly what they plan to do. a tour operator who booked 14 tours with us last year in March. Our offseason, the only people paying the passenger, the uh water transportation born tax and the tax on fuel and all those other taxes that you receive in March were the only operators doing that. They booked 14 tours last year and almost every single one of them was full. This year they booked 16 and actually they booked

these out a year ahead. They are down to seven. They've canceled seven. We have seven trips left on the books because Alaska is too expensive. They told us they're booking Iceland and Finland, but Alaska in general is too expensive. And you think it's only $5. It's not just $5 and it's a pylon. The bus company that offers the transportation to that tour operator in March has just sent you a letter and saying we're not coming here in March and April. which means the tour company that's going to serve, you know, maybe those seven trips, it's not coming here. As soon as they get that letter, I am quite certain that they will cancel the rest of those tours. This is not a rumor. This is happening. This is a fact. That bus company also told you in that letter that you're charging them $5. But this is such a heavy administrative policy with everybody in their company has to sign basically who's who's your president, who's your controller, whole front page of who has to sign off to agree to this policy and then basically three pages of what happens to you if you don't pay the tax. So, they're charging not $5 per person, but $10 because you have to give manifests for every day that comes in and you have to report monthly. That's very administratively prohibitive in the summer. So, they're charging these companies $10 per person. They've gone and this is the company that if you are a cruise ship coming to Alaska, you're meeting with Premier Alaska Tours because they are providing 80% of cruise ship passengers transportation and they meet with every single one of these cruise ships that wants to come to Alaska and they say they're pretty and in general they're pretty yeah Seward Whittier. Here's what you get this here's what you get here.

But now the cost of coming to Whittier outweighs the distance like you would gain some distance time and then so people were pushing Whittier. The cost and the administrative outweighs that they are no longer favoring Whittier. They're telling people flat out it's too difficult to come to Whittier. We sat down with all these tour operators and said, "Hey, we've got these seats open. We've got this boat available. We'd love to have your business." We were told we are not promoting Whittier businesses. We are not promoting any new tours to Whittier. That directly affects Lazy Otter Charters. The takeaway from here is that it is a very difficult burdensome policy. Whittier is on the cusp of growing. We've got new cruise ship terminal. Haunt America's bringing new ships. We're on the cusp of growing. We've worked really hard to up our reputation here. The administration, the Chamber of Commerce, the city. We've cleaned up. But this policy is so negative. It is the most business damaging policy. It is making our reputation. I I hear it every day. I People talk to me about this. Our reputation is in danger. is not in danger. We've got a bad reputation right now. I've heard companies say, "We're not paying it. Let them sue us." I've heard the city say, "Sue us." I feel like that's a pretty frivolous way to talk about our hard-earned tax money of just being outspended. Sue us. That makes me nervous. I hear the administration talk a lot or everybody we compare Whittier to Seward all the time. Well, we're going to be

compared to Seward because next year they have a bright new beautiful shiny cruise ship terminal. So now where we thought we had an end, Seward doesn't have a good dock, they have a good dock now. I just want to say that this is not only a maybe legal, maybe not legal, but it's kind of immoral and it's bad policy. We're giving Whittier such a bad reputation. We have time to fix this. You still have time. You still have time to talk about this. Asking you to table it. Give us some time to work on new ways to find the money. um new ways to work with CLEA to find ways to spend the money. They've they've said we'll work with you. We need time. Maybe we go to the federal government and say, "How can we better spend?" You know, you're strangling all these yellow communities with how that tax money can be spent. This was passed on the heels of new more cruise ships coming and more money coming in from the the marine transportation tax. So, I know I've overstepped my um my time. I'm asking you guys to really understand. If you didn't understand the implications, which I sat up here many times and tried to explain it to you, but if you don't understand it, please read the read it now. Go back and read that and see how um h how intensive that filing and reporting and what happens if you don't report. It's intense. Um manifest daily uh monthly reporting is is really hard for a company in the middle of a very short, very intense season. So, I'm asking you to please pay attention to the things that you vote on. If you don't know, talk to people who can help you understand. And please maybe take a moment to reflect on this and let's take a step back and try to regain some trust

from these tour operators. This directly affects Lazy Otter Charters. We are absolutely seeing a decline. People have in fact told us we're not coming. We're not promoting and we're canceling tours which directly affects your bottom line and the tax that we pay. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Bender. Next is Miss Megan Clemens. Right. Uh, good evening, city council members. Uh, my name is Megan Clemens. I'm the external affairs director for the Alaska Railroad and I'm here tonight to express the railroad support for resolution 2025049 which represents a significant step in the collaboration between the Alaska Railroad Corporation and the city of Whittier regarding the sale of three key land parcels in the core downtown district. Since 2024, the railroad and the city have worked together on this effort with railroad management uh will continue to make this initiative a priority as we hope to continue to work through these details. It's worth noting that selling land isn't something that the railroad takes lightly. Uh, as you know, the process to sell railroad land requires legislative approval and also requires a railroad board approval with our board obligated to find that a sale serves the best interest of the railroad as we remain focused on our mandate to maintain Alaska's rail network and provide safe and reliable transportation across the state. So, it's important to highlight that this proposal from the railroad was developed with guidance from our board u as meeting the best interests of the railroad as well as we sincerely hope uh responding to the

interest of the city of Whittier. Uh your approval of this resolution and the conditional letter of intent sets the framework for developing a purchase agreement as the next step toward this successful transaction. The railroad is committed to ongoing collaboration with your administration and working through these details. And for a quick note on timing, our goal would be to bring this to our real estate committee meeting in January. Uh followed by our board meeting in early February. But acknowledging that that timeline might depend on uh you know our progress towards a purchase agreement on on both sides of our our parties. If those deadlines prove challenging, we also have meetings in March as we work to keep this initiative moving forward to a successful agreement. Um, so I'd just like to close in saying that we do value the partnership that we've established uh through this process. The reality is the Alaska Railroad and the city of Whittier will always be closely linked. Um, our barge operation here is so important not just to the railroad but to the state as a whole and we only anticipate continued growth in our passenger service to Whittier. It's our hope that this land sale is responsive to the needs of the community, helps the city realize its goals for a continued local growth and prosperity, and sets the stage for an ongoing productive relationship between the Alaska Railroad and the city of Whittier uh in the years to come. So, thank you.

Thank you. That's all that's signed in and then uh oh we'll finish finish this but then thank you for all who have signed in. Is there at this time is there anyone present in the audience who is who may have not signed in um who would wish to speak on an agenda item at this time. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to point out to Shelby that that we are losing the connections, the people that are online. I'm back. Jamie is back. Peter Peter cannot can't get his connections. Wondering if he can go telephone.

Yes, I had responded and said that when the citizens comments are finished, I would uh pause the meeting so that we could get that set up.

Okay. Do we want to wait for um this gentleman to to speak or do we want to Okay. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of this council. Just to follow up on what Kelly Benderstead from the chamber, um you know, we've had a very good first season operating and we've been on a roll to continue to bring business and ships here. Um, however, that's sort of stalled and what the Kelly asked on behalf of the chamber and behalf of the businesses to um go back and revisit this um ground transportation fee, I think is imperative. Um, and for us to continue to collaborate with the local businesses here, with the transportation providers, and all the partners it takes to bring a cruise ship to a to a port. Um, we've lost the momentum. uh we've lost some of the advantages. So I think it's imperative that we go back and revisit this. Thanks.

Okay.

Thank you. Is there anybody else in the audience? Okay. Um, let's go ahead and we do an at ease just to get our council members on the phone and Okay, so can we do an at ease to um that means stay in your seats at ease stay don't go anywhere. Yeah, let's take care of our technical stuff. Mr. Pinkish, are you also wanting to call in instead of be on the I'm good for now. I lost it. I got it back.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay, we are all set with technology. Okay, up next um approval of our agenda and consent agenda. Is there a mo is there a motion and second to approve tonight's agenda and consent agenda?

I'll make a second. Okay. Motion and second have been made. Um is there any discussion? Okay. Hearing none. Um, will the clerk please call the role? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Voting on the motion to approve tonight's agenda and consent agenda. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mr. McCalto,

yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mr. Pinkush. Yes. Mr. Denmark. Yes.

We got it. We're good. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Loan. Yes,

Mr. Shen. Yes,

the motion passes and the agenda and consent agenda are approved. On tonight's consent agenda, a resolution 2025-044 adopting an alternative allocation method for the FY26 shared fisheries business tax program and certifying that this allocation method fairly represents the distribution of significant effects of fisheries business activity in fisheries management area 15, Prince William Sound. Resolution 2025-051 supporting House Bill 229, an act exempting the state from daylight savings time and uh approval of the November 18th, 2025 regular meeting minutes. Mr. Denmark, there is an echo from you, so um if you could um mute your speaker on your computer so that um we can't hear it, that would probably solve the problem. Thank you. At this time, um, does anyone wish to declare a substantial financial interest in a matter appearing on the agenda? If there are none from the council, um I wish to declare um a conflict of potential conflict of interest on matter on items 7 and 9. These have resolutions 2025-045 and resolution 2025-47. Um they both uh

are about extending the contract with CRW and um proving continued technical assistance. Um the conflict of interest I wish to declare is I do have a family member that works for that company. How does that benefit you?

Kick that. So again, it's a it's to be more specific, it is my um brother who works for that company and I believe that it's important to um state these potential conflicts or these relationships because it is um whether or not there is a financial impact or conflict um there's optics as well. So I will leave that in your guys's hand. Mr. Mayor, if I may. Um, I just want to remind the council that the definition of a substantial financial conflict of interest means that it's an interest currently held by that person, Mr. Shen, or an immediate family member. And immediate family member means either the spouse, a life partner or person cohabitating with the person or a child including a stepchild and an adoptive child. Um, brothers are not included in the definition, but as always, I really appreciate that Mr. Shen over discloses in the interest of transparency. Um, so at this point, the council would consider the question, does Mr. have a substantial financial conflict of interest, himself, or an immediate family member, not including a brother in items seven and nine.

No. If if you're ready to vote, I can call the role. Okay. Uh voting on the question, does Mr. Shen have a substantial financial conflict of interest in items seven and nine? Mrs. Loan? No. Mr. Pinkush. No. Mr. Malto. No. Mr. Denmark.

Mr. Denmark. Did you mute yourself? I'll come back to you. Mr. Wagner? No. Mrs. Borg? No, Mr. Mayor,

no. Mr. Denmark, do we have you?

Okay, I'm going to count a no vote for Mr. Denmark on this one. Uh, so the question the council says no, Mr. Shen does not have a substantial financial conflict of interest in items seven and nine.

Thank you, Madam Cler. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Up next, we have presentations and reports. I see have we no presentations. Um, I guess for the mayor's report, I do have a report to state to share with you. I attended the Alaska Municipal League conference last week and uh attended many of their seminars. Um, and and I guess one some things I'd like to share with you. Um this is this is the um third year that they've um that I can recollect them stating a a report on the state of Alaska's budget. We are um more and more the state is dependent on the permanent fund at this point and it is comprising of 50 to 60% of the of Alaska's total general fund um budget at this time. Um there are there are seminars where more another seminar I attended was um more and more local governments are establishing LG IPs. These are called um local government investment pools. Basically they're miniature permanent funds that communities are setting up and they've set up several um several cities in the state of Alaska set up to stabilize their revenue stream. Um, also, uh, our finance director has, um, in the budget packet that we in the council meeting from last week has proposed of, um, setting one of these up. And I just want to bring awareness to that. There um, were several seminars dedicated to educating people about

community health. that is a was a hot topic that I saw at uh the municipal league conference um talking about building um improving quality life and building age friendly communities. Um our general population is aging and so communities around Alaska are working to make their communities more livable and vibrant for um our senior citizens. There is there was a seminar on um I attended also on um how was it called miss um miss wild there was one on tourism impacts around the community around the state of Alaska and uh and they yeah and they talked about that the price of popularity um many there were many um speakers on there primarily from um southeast Alaska that are heavily impacted by cruise ship um visitation and they presented multiple ways of uh working and just mitigating the impacts from that. Um and the last one I attended was on disaster preparedness in general. Um, and this is a quote from the director of Alaska's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Services. Um, as this I think this was or this is his final line says, "We need to be more prepared and more resilient for natural disasters. Communities need to um have more self-sufficiency and because there is going to be a he is forecasting a a decline in aid from at the federal level. And that is all I had to report. If you guys have any questions additionally

about the things I've talked about, just let me know. Um, Mr. Vice Mayor, is there a report?

No. No. Okay. I just, you know, just, you know, just congratulations and kudos to the harbor. and staff for finishing uh the last phase of the harbor project.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Um, Miss Wild,

mayor and council, I'm going to give a brief report and then after my report, I'm going to ask uh for our representative, Kai Holland, to come up and give his legislative report. And uh or just a general update on him and then also our state lobbyist Diane Bloomer is going to give you a legislative report. Um, I just want to, as my city manager's report states, I want to read my wild recognition for this month, and it goes to every single one of my city employees. It is a privilege to work alongside this team each day and to witness the growth and strength that have shown over the past year. They are an essential part of our community and their commitment to Whittier's best interest is evident in everything that they do. I hope that each one of them knows how important it is to have them on this team and how much their work is appreciated. I want to extend my thankfulness and and wish that m everybody a warm holiday. Uh I also want to point out that our offices will be closed tomorrow afternoon for an employee training as well as our employee holiday party. The city of Whittier Community School will be hosting their holiday program on December 18th at 6 PM. So, I encourage everyone to come out and support our students in this event and and be able to become part of the community and and have a potluck. Uh my closing as we move into the final regular meetings of 2025, I want to express my appreciation and cooperation in the engagement of not only the council, the planning and zoning commission, the port and harbor commission and the mayor. I want to recognize the city staff, their diligence, their work ethic, and their grit of showing up every day to support

the operations make a better place for Whittier, and it's very valued. Um, with that being said, I want to call my harbor master to let him give you an update on the harbor. And then after that, I would like to um ask our my police chief to give an update.

Okay. Thank you, uh, Mr. Denmark. Appreciate the kudos. Uh we're really excited about having it done. Um however, we do have some issues. Um Harrison and Gravel called me down there on Friday to take a look at the docks. Uh as and um I'm just going to read the email that we sent forth to Bellingham Marine. I think that'd probably be the easiest just to kind of clarify where we are and what's going on. So, u during a sitewalk, this is an email to Bellingham Marine, the float manufacturers and um Harrison and Gravel and they CCed myself in PND design during a sitewalk on 1212 2025 with the city of Whittier Harbor Master Harrison and Gravel observed widespread concrete surface deterioration on the A do G dock and HD dock float modules supplied by Bellingham Marine. The observed conditions included, but are not limited to, widespread surface cracking and active spalling, loss of surface paste with exposure and dislodging aggregate, areas of noticeably soft concrete at the finished surface, non-uniform deterioration patterns across the multiple modules. These conditions are present across a significant portion of the float surfaces and are not isolated or incidental. Given Whittier's severe marine and freeze thaw environment and the project's required 50-year service life, the city has expressed serious concern regarding the durability and long-term performance of the concrete floats. The harbor master has indicated in their current condition the floats are not acceptable for acceptance by the city. As you are aware, the contract documents and RFP require that the float system be fabricated in accordance with industry standards and under an established quality management program. Based on the observed conditions, we are requesting immediate clarification and documentation regarding the concrete production and quality control for these floats. And then they asked for basically the QC u for the modules during construction. Uh they also wanted to know the curing procedure or

environmental conditions during fabrication, any applicable QAQC inspection reports. Until this issue is resolved, no acceptance of the affected float modules is implied or granted, and Harris Sand and Gravel expressly reserves all contractual rights on behalf of the city of Whittier. Given the severity and extent of the observed efficiencies, we anticipate that this matter will require engineering review and independent evaluation to determine whether the floats meet the contract's durability and performance requirements or whether replacement will be required. We request your prompt written response outlining, excuse me, outlining your assessment of the observed conditions, proposed next steps, and a timeline for resolution. PND engineers in the city of Whittier are being copied on this correspondence to ensure full transparency and coordination. So that's regards web. Um he's the he's been the quality control kind of the supervisor the whole project for hair gravel. So um I I personally haven't heard anything back from uh BMI. However, uh I believe they had an individual here uh doing an inspection on the floats this afternoon taking pictures. Um they didn't stop in and chat with me, but I don't I don't expect them to. This this is really between Harris and them at this point. Um so that's where we are. I've got a saying in my business, never be the senior guy with a secret. So now you know what I know. So thank you. Uh good afternoon C or good evening council. Just want to give you an update on some stuff that's going on currently here in Whittier. Um the Whittier Police Department was able to secure at the last minute with less than one month planning uh what's called an alert training that is sponsored by is a national training uh taught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation uh and is a national training uh regards to rapid response for emergencies and active shooting. Alerts an acronym

stands for advanced law enforcement rapid response training. Uh we are currently started the training today here in Whittier. We have all of our police officers in attendance included in inviting uh state as well as other uh law enforcement entities, federal entities to participate. Uh total participation uh today was 11 officers in attendance and would like to thank the FBI that sent five uh instructors for this as well as the other community partners that we have in Whittier. One of which was Huna Totem Corporation last minute when we reached out to them because we had it was already funded but nobody for this particular dates but no other agencies put in for it. So we were able to secure a spot. Hun totem allowed us use a phenomenal new facility as well as Weberovial services that allowed all our instructors and participants to enter through Whittier through the tunnel at no charge at nonrev. The training will last into tomorrow. Uh, one thing we're extremely grateful for because if you watch the news right now, we've recently had active shooters in the United States as well as overseas. This puts all of our law enforcement agencies at the same level of training since it's a national based training. Themies are teaching it in Alaska as well as the federal agencies. So when we have a disaster such as an active shooter, any law enforcement that shows up to the scene are on the same sheet of music. they understand the same tactics, the same entry points. We do not want some of the negative stuff that's happened lower 48 where officers don't go in. Uh it just brings bad negative connotations. The advantage of this particular training is for it's geared nationally do it's um registered and presented by the University of Texas and the FBI has taken over the instruction training on it. But for small communities such as Whittier, it teaches one officer response as well as two officer response, which is generally the number of police officers you're going to have in the area. As well as when

more agencies come, it uh gives the opportunity to help with the same training to make tactical and precise entries to save lives. So, we like to thank the partners as well as the city uh and the federal government that put on this training. Again, this is no cost to the city and we're grateful for that. If you have any questions, please free feel free to ask. Thank you.

Diane, can you come up and give your legislative report? Now it's on. This will be rather short. I wasn't anticipating giving a full legislative report today and so um I also attended the Alaska Municipal League um conference and so I just want to reiterate what the mayor said. The governor rolled out his budget um his 2027 budget last week and um as the mayor mentioned the the primary source of our un undesated general funds comes from our permanent dividend corpus. Um, and that will continue to happen. Uh, let me go to my notes really quick here. Um, also last week, the state of Alaska's fall 2025 revenue for forecast came out which um showed mixed outlooks for revenues for the current budget year, fiscal year 2026, and the upcoming fiscal year 2027, which begins next July. uh petroleum revenues are down um and affect mainly lower production and deductions against the production tax of the major investments in the new oil field. So, we have good news on the horizon. Santos has um announced several fields that they will be producing. Uh they anticipate starting in 2026, which is um pretty aggressive, but I'm hopeful that happens. Uh the governor's budget primarily was uh a repeat of last year with not a whole lot of increases. So you won't see much improvement in community assistance or any of those kind of um increases that

the municipalities or the cities may be looking for. Uh I don't have much more to update you on. The legislative session begins January 20th. Pre-filed bills come out um January 9th. And as you all know, this is the second year of the legis leg the uh legislative session. And so there's carryover bills. So we'll be watching the same bills that we watched last year with you folks. Uh we have a a tracking list that we will send to you each week during the legislative session so that you're all aware of what bills are out there and what's coming forward. And then I'll try to report in to you at least once a month during the session. So you guys can let me know what your feelings and thoughts are about ongoing legislation or what we might need or what we might look at. So thank you very much,

Representative Holland.

Good evening again, members of the council, and I appreciate the prior update. It saved me a couple minutes of uh good information. I'm happy to answer any questions along the way if I can. Also, um again, Kai Holland representing House District 9, which includes this area down to Whittier. Just a couple updates. Um first off, um this will be my final meeting here, um until June. I'll be going back to Juno. I'll try and catch up via the recordings that you have and stay up on what's going on. But I would encourage people to continue to reach out to me via, you know, phone, email, 2x4, whatever will um get my attention and uh let me know how I can help with any of the issues you're working on. Um I've enjoyed being able to get here though the last six months while I've been in town and the drive down the arm. Um couple things to update you on. One is of course we do have the railroad legislation. U we're just sitting on that at the moment looking for your direction and uh preparation for being able to move that forward. So looking forward to being able to help you with that when the time is appropriate and with any changes you need on that. The uh budget uh you've already gotten a bit of an update there. I have in particular been watching for Whittier in there and the capital projects. There's currently money in there for the tunnel. Continued work on that. I'll continue to watch for that. I would encourage you to be planning on making another capsis uh submission. Um that'll be due uh towards the end of January. Last year you had a submission for a replacement ambulance. I would encourage you to be doing that again. Um and also potentially the uh extraction equipment that we've talked about as an upgrade to allow you to have the equipment that matches what is now available to the other um jurisdictions that are on the highway. In particular though, just as far as a fair update, I don't expect we're going to have any money for the capsus programs this year, but we are going to be asked by the governor to uh consider his fiscal proposal for new revenue and a new

structure for some of the funding. So, I think it's even more important this year that we know where your needs are and what they are, as big as they may be, as realistic as they might be. Because as we have this debate about what we're going to be doing in terms of future revenue and how we're going to structure what we can pay for, we need to know what needs to be paid for. And we know a lot of costs have been rolling downhill to the local cities as the mayor mentioned through the municipal league where all of the cities are under a lot more stress not getting the revenue sharing that they used to have. And so we need to see that. We need to know it even though I know that the exercise of giving us that information, you know, takes some time. So do uh let me know as well as Senator Geel. uh we'll work together to be able to work on those priorities and make sure that those needs and perhaps others that I'm not aware of tonight are covered. Um a couple other u updates. Um the safer sewer highway project which I think is pretty vital to everyone who who lives and works in this area. There's a couple key meetings coming up that I want to make sure you're watching for. There is a working group meeting on Thursday this week. is that's largely the working group. It's open to the public. But in particular, they're getting ready to open up comment period for the public between December 29th to January 28th. So about a month. And during that period of time, there's going to be some public meetings. There's going to be one on the 13th in Gerwood, one on the um 14th in Indian, and one excuse me, the 14th is in Anchorage, and the 15th is in Indian. Um, I would refer you to the website safer sewerhighway.com where you'll find information about the plans, the comment period, and more details in these meetings. But what this project involves over time is of course really vital to how we develop this highway. The character that it creates

for the people that are moving back and forth as well as safety. Um, I've got a lot of other bills and activities. I think I will just uh close with letting you know there was a newsletter mailed out to everybody. I don't know how that works its way into the building. Um but I've got a few extra copies I left out front. There is a survey in there. I am, you know, eager to get any feedback from you in terms of priorities and issues and concerns you have. And again, I just encourage you to sign up for the newsletter. Reach out to me if I can be of any help. And I'll stick around tonight, but look forward to seeing you again in June. So, thank you very much. And to close out my report, um I want to just thank uh both Kai and Diane for giving us that um update. I think that they I got that thrown on them by me. So, thank you. Um but I also need to have Scott give an update on our boilers. Good evening, council. Uh, as we all know, we're having a lovely weather event here. Uh, noticed last week that it seemed a little cold here in the building. One of our boilers u was acting up. So, I ran through the troubleshooting tree as much as we could do. And we hired a smart person to come out here and look at it. Sage Mechanical came out and looked at it. Upon further inspection, uh, one of our boilers, uh, has boil has, excuse me, has lost its internal heat exchanger, uh, which means that that boiler is nonoperational. They can't put it back into service because it's a pressure vessel and safety aspect of it. Um,

at that point, we started poking around the other one. We didn't break it apart. Um but it shows the same signs and symptoms as the uh boiler number two which was having problems. We are currently running on that boiler um and we're hoping she lasts a little while. The next thing is is Sage Mechanical is currently uh developing pricing. Uh pricing will be coming to us. Um it should be here tonight at some point. Um for rebuilding one heat exchanger as well as rebuilding the second heat exchanger, what that cost will be and complete and total replacement of one boiler and two boilers. depending on the pricing um and evaluation with the city manager uh we will make a decision on what is in the best interest of the facility to replace it and or repair the existing condition. That's the update at this time.

Yes, Mr. Wagner. Um Scott, these boilers, what was the um anticipated lifespan of the heat exchangers? Did it meet or is this a failure due to corrosion?

The answer to that is it's outside the warranty date. Of course, um they expect a 10 to 15 year life expectancy. We are sitting I believe at eight years currently. Um and when you purchase equipment and or pumps or whatever you buy, you kind of get what you pay for. And when we as a government agency, we do lowest bid. Um and sometimes you get what you pay for. So yes, we do have adequate boilers here. They're slightly under size as we've discovered that they will um under one boiler we can't get up to operating temperature in our boiler system here. Um yeah, so I won't say it's poor quality. I will say that we bought the lower end or the lower end of the boiler was provided to us.

Thank you. So, I'll end my report with happy holidays and thank you for your report your reports. Um, up next we have public hearings ordinance 2025-004, an ordinance adopting a new chapter 13-12-025 of the Whittier Municipal Code entitled Water and Sewer Utility Service Deposit. I'm going to open the public hearing for ordinance 2025-004 at 7:58. Um, Madame Clerk, has anyone signed in to speak at this time?

No one has signed in. Thank you. Is there anybody in the audience who would wish to speak on this ordinance? Okay, seeing none, no further public comment. The public hearing for ordinance 2025-004 is closed at this time. Is there a second? Is there a motion and a second to adopt this ordinance? I'll make the motion.

I'll second it. Okay. A motion and second has been made to adopt ordinance 2025-004. Um, is there a staff report? Mayor, if um you're appendable, I'd like the city uh finance director to give that report.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. Um, I think we discussed this at our last meeting when this ordinance was introduced. Um, Whittier doesn't currently have in their code a provision for um, establishing a water and sewer uh, deposit for customers that have water and sewer accounts. Um so the plan here is to implement a new water sewer deposit that would not um be retroactively applied except um in the case of customers who meet certain criteria that have a material financial impact on our water sewer utility and that's defined in the ordinance and I discussed that um in depth at our last meeting. Um, also if a c if a an account sells to somebody else and someone buys a property, they would as a new customer come in and uh pay a deposit. The recommended deposit is uh equal to two month side average and that is consistent with what is done um by regul regulated utilities. Even though we're not a regulated utility, it's consistent. Um the council may remember that over the last few years we've had a significant um user of our utility that accounted for more than a third of the revenues of the utility go out of business and uh the city had no means to um collect from them any form of a deposit. we exhausted our legal rights um to pursue uh reimbursement and at the end of the day we're not successful. So the intent here is to make sure that when we have especially large users that have a significant impact on the financial viability of our water sewer utility. We're not just

talking about somebody not paying their bills. We're talking about somebody for whom we rely on revenues to make debt service payments on our entire water sewer system and when we have no means to collect from them because our code doesn't offer those um those safety mechanisms that other communities have um it needs to be addressed. So as a result of our discussions over the last two years um this is our proposed um our our proposal. There's also a provision in here that allows a user that fits the criteria of a substantial user to um in lie of getting this performance bond or this uh deposit, they could they could obtain a performance bond instead, which is a form of insurance that they could provide that essentially would guarantee the city u payment of of those fees. And one last thing I want to just explain to council and the public how this how it works when somebody uses utilities of any kind, whether it's electric, water, sewer. Um, as an example, if you were to use utilities this month in December, you don't get build for those um December utilities until January, and you're given 30 days to pay. So by the time you become late initially, you've already used two months worth of services. And then by the time you become 30 days late and the city can actually take action, you have now utilized 90 days worth of service that you um theoretically have not paid for. So, by having a two-month deposit, it doesn't entirely protect the city from potential magnitude of losses, which would be ordinarily 90 days worth

of service before we would recover, but it allows us to recover what is considered industry standard of of two months. So, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Um, appreciate your support of the ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. I think questions or comments. Yeah, Mr. Mayor question that Chris. Yes.

Yeah, Chris, go ahead. My understanding was we were going to um not collect this on existing umers that have a good record, but in the in the intent it shows that we would do that with turn on turnoff users. Why would we do it with them if they're in good standing versus somebody that's year round?

Council member Pinush through the mayor. Um good question. So the intent was that people who are um current users of the system would not be impacted in terms of having to um have this retroactively applied. Um but for folks that establish new service, which would include people who are currently have no service but um turn their service on um next spring, for example, they would be required to pay. In those cases where it's a seasonal user, um the the ordinance does allow the city to refund uh for good payment people who've made the deposit and also that the city will um as long as somebody doesn't have late payments, the city will um pay that person interest on the amount that they pay for a deposit. So the idea is that we we're trying to just not adversely affect people for whom um active accounts exist this moment but we're also trying to over time implement this um this new requirement that again is standard in other communities. So um that was you know if you have active service today it does not apply retroactively unless you meet certain criteria and if you don't have active service today but you you activate your service in the future then it would apply to you would pay a two-month deposit and then you would have that refunded after a period of good payment history with the city with interest. I'm I'm taking that our at legal would like to chime in. Um for those that you don't know, you might want to introduce yourself, Richard.

Hi, my name is Richard Moses. I work with Holly Wells, the city attorney at Birch Horton in Anchorage. Um I want to draw your attention to subsection G1. It's on page 304 of the ordinance. It reads, "Depsits held under this section may earn interest." Um, Alaska statute 293570B allows for the municipality to charge interest on deposit. I'm sorry to allows the municipality to charge a deposit on the condition that it will earn interest. So, as your city attorney, I am suggesting that you amend the word may in subsection G1 to will to be in compliance with title 29. And we have no objection to that. Miss H, does that require a motion and a second from the council member?

Yes, it does. Mayor. Okay. If I could suggest wording for the amendment. Go ahead. Something like amend ordinance 2025-004 line to strike the word may and insert the word shall. Will will. Will. Will. Will. Okay. will. That's it. That's That's the whole amendment. All right. I I'll I'll make the motion for that amendment. I'll second it.

Can I

I guess Oh, staff report. Go ahead, Chris. Yeah. Um while I have no objection at at all to to the wording, I do think that um it's also important to to read the next part of the sentence which says um under terms established by the city. So for example, one of the terms that we establish is that if you have late payments, you don't acrue interest for a period of time. That's industry standard practice. So, um, so I I think it's important to not mislead the public and say that in every case that you have a deposit on file, you will earn interest. it you we will um you will earn interest under the under the terms established by the city and we will uh plan to come forward with a tariff change and I've mentioned that here also that we will propose a tariff change to make sure that we're crystal clear about that but it does say in the wording in there that um folks that are late payers forfeit the interest earnings for the period I I I can't remember ex exactly the period, but I just want to make sure that that's transparent to folks who might be listening online or in the future. So, what would determine the interest? Um is that something that would just whatever um like the Fed's interest rate? How would you determine?

Um Mr. Mayor, that's one of the things that we're um going to be bringing forward to council to deliberate on is those very specific um things that should really be addressed um in in our tariff. Thank you. Any further discussion on this amendment? Okay. Hearing no further as do you have a question? No. Hearing no further discussion, madame clerk, will you please call the role? Voting on the motion to amend ordinance 2025-004 line 112 to strike may and insert will. Mr. Wagner,

yes. Miss Lo, yes. Mr. Denmark,

the phone is on. Mr. Denmark, are you on mute by chance? Uh, yes is my vote. Thank you, Mr. Denmark. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mr. McCalto, yes. Mr. Pinkush, yes. Mr. Mayor, yes. The motion passes and res uh ordinance 2025-00004 is amended. Returning again to the motion to adopt ordinance 2025-00004 as amended.

I do have a quick question just to follow up to Mr. Pinishes. So, from what you said and what I'm interpreting, any user that has to seasonally turn on and turn off their water, how would they they would have to be required to um I'm hearing that they would have to be required to submit a deposit every spring. Is that correct,

Mr. Mayor? Um if they terminate service with the city, yes. Then at the time that they terminate, their deposit would be applied against their final bill. And in the event that they had um money coming back to them, we would issue them a refund. Otherwise, they'll get their final bill minus the deposit and then whatever's left is what they'll owe on their final bill. So, a followup for a lot of our um Harbor Front businesses entities, do they terminate or is it like a is there a standby mode they can put their account on? How's that? I don't so I don't understand how the billing works. I'm sorry.

So our seasonal businesses uh we we shut down their service but they still maintain an account with us. Any further questions or discussion,

Mr. Denmark? Mr. Pin Kush. Oh, good. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Well, seeing no further discussion, um, Madam Clerk, will you please call the role? Thank you. Voting on the motion to adopt ordinance 2025-00004, an ordinance adopting a new chapter 13.12.025 of the Whittier Municipal Code entitled WA Water and Sewer Utility Service Deposit as amended. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mr. McCalto, yes. Mr. Pinkush,

yes. Mrs. loan. Yes, Mr. Denmark. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Yes. The motion passes and ordinance 2025-004 is adopted.

Okay. Next we're um moving on to new businesses. We have resolutions resolution 2025-045. A resolution extending a con the contract with CRW engineering for an additional 3 years through December 31st, 2028 for the projects for which task orders or authorizations to proceed have been previously let. Is there a motion and a second to approve this resolution? I'll make that motion.

Okay. Is a do we have a staff report? Yes, the finance director will be giving that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. Um, we are um nearing the end of our current term of contract with CRW Engineering. Um the city will be going out uh for an RFP for engineering services. Um however, we do have a number of projects that are in the works with CRW um where we've already issued task orders to them um and have them working on certain projects for us. So to be clear when we go out to bid as to what projects are um going to be excluded from the RFP, we thought it was advisable to have council pass a resolution that is clearly articulates the projects that CRW is currently under contract to work on. And then when we issue the RFP, it will exclude these particular projects. Um the point there is we've already paid to have a lot of these projects engineered. were in the process of doing um work related to those projects. Some many of which may may have been going on for years and it doesn't make sense to start over and have a new engineer that hasn't worked on a project like for example Shotgun Cove Road um coming in mid mid project and taking that project over. So, it really is just our effort to be transparent about the projects that we'll continue with CRW on. And then when we issue the RFP, which we expect will go out um no later than mid January, um you know, we'll be clear with the proposers on that pro on that um citywide engineering services, the projects that are not to be included in the RFP. I hope that answers your question.

That's great. Thank you very much. Any questions or discussion from council?

Mr. Pinquish, Mr. Denmark. Any questions or discussion? Negative. Thanks. Oh, okay. All right. I'm seeing no discussion here. Um, Madame Clerk, will you please call the role?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Voting on the motion to approve resolution 2025-045 extending the contract with CRW Engineering for an additional three years through December 31st, 2028 for projects for which task orders or authorizations to proceed have been previously let. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mr. Denmark.

Mr. Denmark. Yes. Thank you. Mrs. Loan. Yes. Mr. McCalto. Yes. Mr. Pinkush. Yes. Mr. Mayor. Yes. The motion passes and resolution 2025-045 is approved.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Next resolution we have is resolution 2025-046, a resolution consenting to the assignment of the lease agreement for lot one of the Whittier Harborview business area from my Kelly Whittier Enterprises Inc. formerly known as Lazy Auto Charters Inc. to Three Helms LLC and authorizing the city manager to execute consent documents. Is there a motion and a second? I'll make the motion. I'll second.

And do we have a staff report? Mayor, while I would love to give you the staff report, I think that um per the council agenda statement, um I'm going to ask our assistant city manager to give her first staff report. Thank you, Miss Wild, through the mayor. Uh so we received a request from um Mike and Kelly Bender who previously owned Lazy Otter Charters to uh reassign the lease for lot one which is actually lots one and 1A um which is currently known as the Whittier Fudge Shop uh to Three Helms LLC which is owned by three sisters who um are already part of our community and have been um part of Lazy Otter for a couple years now. And so they are planning to move the Lazy Otter charter offices into what we currently know as the Whittier Fudge Shop. Um and then it that would be owned by Three Helms. So that's who the city would be going into a lease agreement with. Um, so we reached out to our attorneys, had them review all the documents, and are today presenting you with the um resolution which would approve the city manager to sign the consent to the assignment of the lease.

Thank you. Any questions or discussion? Yeah. Where's the fudge going? Well, that's not part of the um consent to assignment. Um I don't actually know the answer to that, but um Kelly and Mike Bender, their new business is called well, I don't know how to pronounce it, but my Kelly Mike Kelly Whittier Enterprises, Inc. And so they are retaining the Whittier Fudge Shop. Um it just won't be in the building that we know it to be in currently. You're still going to get fudge is my understanding and coffee.

Okay. Um, any discussion from online? Miss Loan, Mr. Penquish, Mr. Denmark, can you hear me? Uh, congratulations to Mike and Kelly. Okay, I see no further discussion. Um, Madame Clerk, will you please call the role?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Voting on the resolution on the motion to approve resolution 2025-046 consenting to the assignment of the lease agreement for lot one of the Whittier Harborview business area from Mlly Whittier Enterprises Inc. formerly known as Lazy Otter Charters Inc. to Three Helms LLC and authorizing the city manager to execute consent documents. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mrs. Loan, yes. Mr. Mr. Pinkush. Yes. Mr. Mccalto. Yes. Mr. Denmark. Yes.

Mrs. Borg. Yes. Mayor Shen. Yes. The motion passes and resolution 2025-046 is approved.

Okay. And next resolution is 2025-047, a resolution approving continued technical assistance review assistance for city land use permit applications in the amount of $18,000 and approving the Mountain Goat Court feasibility valuation in the amount of $23,92 for a total appropriation of $41,92 and authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents under the existing term contract with CRW Engineering Group, Inc. We have a motion and a second. I'll make that motion. Second.

And a staff report, please, if there's one.

Uh, yes, Mayor and Council. uh as you know uh previously we had a work session at 5:30 where we discussed the mountain goat feasibility study and um while you did approve the previous resolution for um task orders and and huge projects that CRW has helped us with over the years. um myself and administration uh saw it fit to bring this in a separate resolution um specifically because it's technical assistance as well as um the feasibility study. So the technical assistant portion is, you know, over the years that I've been here and past years, when a land use permit comes forward to the community or to the the administration, uh there was review, but little review and little ways for us to be able to um help people uh use their land in the best benefit. And over the years, we've determined that while we still review all the land use permits, uh, having an engineer be able to review them to the extent of, you know, the requirements for engineering of a driveway or, you know, safety requirements. We saw that this was a time especially because over the last at least three years and I'm I'm looking at Corby for this. The last three years we've seen a significant uptick in driveway permits just alone in driveway permits on Shotgun Cove. Um you know industry standard asks for certain um engineering requirements but those weren't always met. And so this gives us

the ability to sit down and have an engineer look over what our code says and be able to help implement it for people like Mr. Young who spoke earlier and um people moving forward for those driveway permits over the last year. When I reached out to CRW as our engineer, they originally had quoted us um as it stated an original allocation of $25,000 and then um we realized that and CRW realized that they could do it for $18,000 which is uh you know a huge task in itself. This year alone they've done five or six driveway permits. five of them that they've done the review and they've been completed. Um the sixth one is of course the mountain goat feasibility study um part that comes into play and when we you know as I had said in the work session when we had started to do this review as we have in the past uh I realized that wow we have a platted piece of par a parcel and platted lands that could possibly open up for future development for Whittier and future um housing for Whittier and with that came okay how do we get there and that's the feasibility side study side of this resolution uh this resolution would allow us to look at how we could accommodate the upper parcels for future housing and um if you have any questions regarding both the feasibility study or the land use permit review I'm open to answer those questions.

Thank you, Miss Wild. Questions, discussion.

Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Denmark. Yes, Mr. Denmark. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. the $18,000, how does it um interact with the previous contact extension from resolution 45? uh currently right now um in the RFP that would go forward would list that and that engineering scope we would ask for the review of land use permits. So um because this is new to not only CRW but um this request and we you know sort of tested out that um that was another reason why we chose to bring a separate resolution forward because this is something that we enter into a contract and they do it for a year but at the same time we would enter it into the RFP and whoever bid on that RFP would know and that they would have to give us the um the engineering background for any land use permits.

Okay. Thank you. And a quick question for the clerk. I've got an echo on the phone as well here. Um I if I hang up and try to get back online and it doesn't work, can I call back into Shelby's number? Um, if it doesn't work, let I think it might be smoother if we just call you again. All right. Well, I'm going to hang up the phone to avoid the echo and see if I can get it to go. Thank you. Thank you.

I have a question. So this you know the intent of this is to explore um feasibility for additional lands um primarily for housing for the city of Woodier. Um, is there can we add also recreation opportunities because this does ab butt up against uh large parcels of land that we already use for recreational

I mean you could make the amendment to add that wording. Um, at the same time, um, like Colin had said, you know, the feasibility study will recognize those recreational things, but I would say absolutely if you want to do that type of amendment and just change that wording.

Sorry, say I'm not looking to change anything. It's just just to add it to it, you know, like if we for instance, if we are looking at it and we're like, oh, this is feasible. This these lots, this area is feasible for residential. However, like this is would be not reasonably feasible. Perhaps it would have serve other purposes. And so having that language in there so that um I feel like just having it more open-ended and gives us more latitude for um opportunities if that does that even make a difference that matter having that language in there. I I honestly now that you repeated it, um I think that it wouldn't because the feasibility study is going to tell you how the land is feasible to use and if it isn't then you could you know you still have the recreation portion of it. But um down the road if the design actually you know came back and said okay we have you know 20 30 lots that are feasible for homeowners to you know for home building and then we have these seven lots that you know are just too steep and need to be recreation that would be in that design portion of it.

Thank you. Okay, seeing no further discussion, um, Madame Clerk, will you please call the role?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Voting on the motion to approve resolution 2025-047 approving continued technical review assistance for city land use permit applications in the amount of $18,000 and approving the Mountain Goat Court feasibility evaluation in the amount of $23,92 for a total appropriation of $41,92 and authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents under the existing term contract with CR. RW Engineering Group, Inc. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mrs. Loan, yes. Mr. Pinkush,

yes. Mr. McCalto, yes, Mr. Denmark. Mr. Denmark, are you there? I will come back to you. Uh, Mr. Mayor. Yes,

Mr. Denmark. Do we have you? I will record you as no vote for this one. The motion passes and resolution 2025-047 is approved. I need to call recess.

Yeah, I was just looking up and they generally for long meetings like this they call recommend recesses every 60 to 90 minutes. Usually we go about two hours but I want to cut it down to maybe 90 minutes. So I would like to call a recess for um 10 minutes. Five 20. Oh my gosh. 10 minutes. We'll readjourn at 8:40. How's that? That's six minutes. Sounds good. Okay, Shelby, I seem to be back on. If you can hear me.

Yes, I can hear you. Thank you.

Thank you. Heat. Heat. fingers. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Christmas.

President Focus. Focus.

Brother, something Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

All right. Okay. Let's move on to the next resolution here. Um, resolution 2025-047. Whoops, sorry. 2025-048. A resolution approving amendments to the city manager employment agreement between the city of Whittier and Jackie Wild. Is there a motion and a second to approve resolution 2025-048?

Move to adopt. Second, mayor, before uh you move on, I would like to make uh two amendments before you even go into discussion if that is okay.

Yes, go ahead. I would like to make um first I want to say it was it's been a pleasure. I also want to say that I appreciate the ability to go back and forth and work with council. Um I take every every recommendation that you give. I do look at it. Um, and with that being said, I would like to amend line 18 to state providing continued use of the city- owned apartment at current cost and extending my agreement extending the agreement to a three-year term with a one option of renewal of three Please repeat. So line 18 currently says providing continued use of city-owned apartment and I'm striking the words as a housing benefit and replacing those words as current city as current cost. And then I'm amending line 19 from a five-year term to a three-year term with the option to extend an additional 3 years.

Thank you. Move to adopt the contract with proposed changes.

I'll second. I'll make that motion. Um, any discussion on this amendment? on the amendment or the entire so on the amendment

I get yeah Mr. Mayor I'll just state that I appreciate Jackie that you are willing to make those amendments to the contract a second Mr. Push oh hold on Mr. Penush um Mr. Wagner was will go first and then you will go after him. So we don't have on our packet. We don't have lines but um the uh the amendment page. All right. Anyway, um the increase from 2 1/2% to 3 and a half%. Uh I would feel more comfortable with 3%.

I think that um Council Member Wagner, you should vote on my uh motion and then move into the discussion after that. Yeah, we're just discussing discussing the amendments on the um lines 18 and 19 at this point and then once um we move through that motion then we can go back to you have any uh discussion on no the current amend

motion. Okay, thank you Mr. W. Mr. Push. Yeah, I just wanted to say tell Jackie thank you for the consideration of making those changes. Then a question. So does the cost of the condo that include the windows? Oh, you're so funny.

That was all. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other discussion? Miss Loan, Mr. Denmark? Not here. Not here. Nothing for me. Thank you.

Okay. Seeing no further discussion, um, Miss Madame Clerk, will you please call the role? Voting on the motion to amend resolution 2025-048, line 18 to strike as a housing benefit and insert at current cost and line 19 to strike 5-year term and insert three-year term with one option to renew for an additional three-year term. Is that correct? Okay, Mr. Denmark. Yes, Mr. Pinkush. Yes, Mr. Wagner. Yes, Mr. Mccalto.

Yes, Mrs. Loan. Yes, Mrs. Borg. Yes, Mayor Shen. Yes. The motion passes and resolution 2025-048 is amended. Returning again to resolution 2025-048 as amended. Thank Thank you, madam clerk. Any discussion on the amended resolution Tom?

Yeah, my previous Mr. Mayor regarding Hold on a second. Mr. Push um Mr. Wagner just started speaking already. Um, you just So, it's my understanding then um the housing uh the free housing is off the table. Correct. All right. Then I'm going to withdraw my previous statement regarding the 5%. Yes, Mr. Pinush. Go ahead.

Yep. a comment kind of for council. Um, a city of 275, we are pushing the envelope on salaries and m and Tom can testify to that the conversation he had. On the other hand, I'm a believer of an hour's work for an hour's pay. And I think Jackie's productivity and work ethic make her salary of a good value for the expense. That that isn't always the case, but in hers it would be. I also think that her expertise and the and the experience she has, she's probably one of the best people that could be in place right now for the current development that one year's under. So once again, there's a time and a place to pay. And I think this is a good time to do it.

And I hope you could hear that because it was all echoes to me. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Ben Kush. Is there um any further discussion from online? Um Mr. Denmark or Miss Loan?

Good here. Um, no. I would just uh say that uh I echo what Mr. Pinkish said. I think it was very well said. Thank you,

Mr. Malto.

Um, just wanted to start by saying I fully support this. Um given the current market and the level of institutional knowledge and progress we've seen replacing city manager with this experience would be extremely difficult and likely more cost costly to the city in the long run. At the same time with rising uh cost across the board I think it is important for us to clearly understand the full budget impact of this amendment not just in the f first year but over the life of the agreement. Um, could staff walk us through the total projected cost including including salary adjustment, leave acural, housing benefit, and the performance bonus and how this fits within our operating budget over the next several years. I also like to ask whether there are any components that could be faced in or structured in any way that balance retention with long with long-term fiscal sustainability. Council member Mcculto through the mayor. Um my understanding is that the appropriation for this um this contract will come before council when you are looking at your 2026 midcycle budget adjustments and not knowing exactly what you were going to approve tonight. I didn't do the math, you know, to tell you those uh those impacts. So I apologize for that because I wasn't involved in the negotiations. But, um, I can certainly get that information pulled together for you and send that to council, you know, tomorrow if you'd like or, um, however you'd like to proceed with that.

That wouldn't be a problem.

Thank you. Okay. Um, I do support this resolution. I'm do hope that we do pass it. I am really excited that we have Miss Wild on our team here. Um, she does bring a lot of experience. She works hard for us and I've seen it personally. We've all seen it um here at the DAS and out in the community. um you know when we having her as our city manager we don't just have her you know it's it's the whole team here that we have and going back to Mr. in Krisha's comment about a town of 275. Yes, we are a town of 275, but um we there is uh so much more than just that little number that we have out there. We have a lot of things going on in our community. A lot of we are we are an important hub for Alaska. We have railroad. I have um uh my shipping all the tourism um our communications comes through um our little community. So we play important part and for a lot we play a we're a small but important part very important part of no let me back up we are small but we are a large I say important part of Alaska relative to our population. Um, that is all.

Miss Bark, this woman does not work an 8 hour workday. This woman works a 247 workday. Emails at 3:00 in the morning. Um, she's a go she's a go-getter. Um, I love her open door policy. If I have a question, she's right there to answer it. everybody on our team's there to answer it. If she can't or if Shelby can't, someone someone gets back to me. I really appreciate that and I think we should put this forward and pass this.

Seeing no further discussion, um, Madame Clerk, will you please call the role? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Voting on the motion to approve resolution 2025-048 approving amendments to the city manager employment agreement between the city of Whittier and Jackie Se Wild as amended. Mr. Denmark yes Mrs. Borg. Yes. Mr. Wagner. Yes. Mr. Pinkush. Yes, thank you. Yes, Mr. Mulso. You didn't hear me?

Yes, I did hear you, Mr. Pinkush. Thank you, Mrs. Loan. Yes, Mayor Shen. Yes.

The motion passes and resolution 2025-048 is approved as amended. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'm looking forward to are the next three years. Okay. Next resolution we have resolution 2025-049 a resolution approving a conditional letter of intent between the city of Whittier and the Alaska Railroad Corporation for the purchase and sale of three non-ontiguous parcels totaling approximately 47 acres and authorizing the city manager to execute the conditional letter of intent and all necessary supporting documents including leases. permits and related transaction documents and to negotiate a final purchase and sale agreement. Is there a motion and a second to approve resolution 2025-049?

I'll make I'll make the motion. Second. Thank you. Is there a staff report? Yes, mayor. If you can just give me one moment. I need to clarify something with the clerk before I go on with my staff report. granted.

Sorry about that. Um I want to make sure that I give you a clear background and justification and intent. Um, as you all know and as um, Miss Clemens had stated in previous uh, citizen comments, it has been a year in the making of us working together with the railroad in um, a possible land purchase. Uh it has been a long back and forth but at the same time this um is to clarify that the property ownership and the secure long-term operational certainty and the support municipal development within the reserve wittier terminal reserve. So this um letter of content or conditional letter of intent as you all know um resolution 2025 043 uh council approved the ability to move forward with the purchase of these 47 acres and that was at a vote of 5 to2. And then um with that following up, we followed up with the railroad and uh let them know that we were willing to move forward with that purchase. This comes in with our um memorandum of understanding or memorandum of agreement. The next step is this conditional letter. So basically the letter is formalizing our framework and what that purchase will look like. Um at the same time it um it comes back to us as a council. It comes to me but then it also comes to council. Every decision we will make from the very beginning to the very end of this will always come in front of council. And um this gives us the ability to be able to work with our

contractor and also with the railroad to review what the condition the final condition is in the negotiated uh leases and permits. Um you know when we first started this process it was a larger parcel and I you know as I and I know that Mr. Denmark will appreciate this. It will provide a termination of the 1998 ground lease and agreement which we all state as the master lease. With that termination of the master lease, we also have to look at the remaining two parcels and what that looks like. Uh whether it would be a lease or a permit and how we move forward with that. So, uh, this conditional letter we will, if it's approved tonight, it will move forward to the railroad and then myself and our contractor, uh, windfluence as well as legal, will move forward with what those proceedings look like on the the leases versus permits and just doing our due diligence before a final purchase. And you know this is all again contingent on the legislative portion of that. You know we as you know we have a house bill and a senate bill and if those are approved at the legislative level then it's just that final negotiation portion.

Thank you Miss Wild. Any discussion from council? Question here if I may. Go ahead, Mr. Denmark.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, I don't have line numbers, but I'm in the last paragraph of page 65 discussing the conditional letter of intent. Um, and the language indicates termination of the master release will extinguish certain municipal access and operational rights at the head of the bay. and then is qualified in the next sentence that we intend to um be preserved. And I'm looking for a little discourse on how that evolves to the city manager. So, um, as as previously discussed when we first started this process, you know, the head of the bay, um, there was a possible land swap and then, um, and then us re, you know, receiving the the two large parcels. So out of the five, you know, we're looking at purchasing and you have approved purchasing three of those lots. At the same time, working with the railroad um and just in deep discussions when we decided to just purchase the three lots, it opens up what that head of the bay could possibly look like. And we want to be able to preserve our ability to use the head of the bay, our ability to um instead of possibly entering into a permit, entering into a lease for those parcels to secure the the continued use by the city and the ability to um obtain that. And you know,

um I like to say that that could possibly be down the road phase two of what this process looks like. Um, but at the same time, the city needs to protect those interests. You know, we know that there's access that we we have for our campground. Um, we have emergency medical access. We have police access and um all of the things that are deemed under easements and rightofways, we want to make sure that we have those protected in the future. And that's why um I worded it the way that I did because we I think that the community and the city should intend to preserve those rights um regardless of whether or not we have a master lease.

Okay. Just the language indicates to me that there's something still hanging here regarding preserving those rights and wondering if it should be a cause for concern.

I I think that um you know we could discuss that in a further aspect. Um but at this time I I think that the way that even the wording states you know those lands were are part of the master lease and if we are terminating the master lease then we need to be able to protect um the rights of the city and that may be instead of a revocable permit it would be um a temporary you know lease or you know what that looks like and that's something that POS that would be brought forward to the council once we do the vetting with our um our legal counsel as well as our uh consultant.

Thank you. uh city manager, you know, my ongoing concern about this as uh a big a milestone day as it is to be terminating a portion of the master release, a portion of it still hangs over our head here and leaving ongoing concerns with me. Uh but thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Denmark. Any other discussion, Miss Lone? Mr. Pinush?

No, thank you. All good. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no further discussion, madame clerk, will you please call the role? Voting on the motion to approve resolution 2025-049 approving a conditional letter of intent between the city of Whittier and the Alaska Railroad Corporation for the purchase and sale of three non-ontiguous parcels totaling approximately 47 acres and authorizing the city manager to execute the conditional letter of intent and all necessary supporting documents including leases, permits, and related transaction documents and to negotiate a final purchase and sale agree. agreement. Mrs. Loan,

yes. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mr. Malto, yes. Mr. Denmark, no. Mr. Pinkush, yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mayor Shen,

yes. The motion passes 6 to 1 and resolution 2025-4049 is approved. Thank you, madam clerk. Resolution 2025-050, a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with the municipality of Anchorage for the Whittier Police Department to provide police services to the Girdwood Valley Service Area for January 1st, 2026 through January 31st, 2027. Is there a motion and a second to approve this resolution? I'll make the motion.

I'll second. Thank you. Is there a staff report? Mayor, I would like the police chief to give this staff report.

Uh, good evening, council. Uh currently we are at the end of our first three-year uh contract with municipality anchorage for our police services to Gerwood. Of that contract that council approved, there was option for a two-year renewable. Our contract expires end of this year on December 31st. The two-year renewable that council approved was an increase of this current contract by 8%. Uh the only issue that occurred is um April of this year we entered into a new service agreement for a dispatch center that substantially increase the cost of our current dispatch center that we had previously. So this current contract uh reflects the difference of the dis cost of dispatch that is added to it. So, the agreed upon figures that originally was at the end of the for the two-year renewal was 8% increase plus approximately 32,000 which would be Gerwood's share of our dispatch service contract. That places us at for the next two years approximately $889,000 um for police services in the Gerwood service area. We've had a very good working relationship with Gerdwood, the officers, as well as other first responders uh in the Gerwood service area as well as that come over to Whittier. So, I urge you um to ratify this contract. Uh officers that currently work for the Whittier Police Department have uh thrived on both sides in Whittier and Girdwood. And I believe it's a good mating of both communities together. Thank you. Thank you. Any discussion, questions from council online?

No, thank you. No, thank you,

Miss Lone. Sorry I couldn't unmute. No, all is well. Thank you. Okay.

Okay. Seeing no seeing no discussion on this agenda. Resolution. Miss Madame Clerk, will you please call the role? Voting on the motion to approve resolution 2025-050 authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with the municipality of Anchorage for the Whittier Police Department to provide police services to the Gerwood Valley Service Area January 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2027. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mr. McCullto, yes. Mr. Pinkush, yes. Mr. Denmark, yes. Mrs. Loan,

yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mayor Shen, yes.

The motion passes and resolution 2025-050 is approved. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um, new business. We have no new business. Next item on our agenda is council comments. Yeah, Mr. Wagner.

Go ahead, Mr. Denmark.

Oh, thank you. Um, I missed chunks of the start of the meeting with some tech problems here, but I gathered that there is quite a bit of 11 11th hour angst uh regarding the new uh passenger fee. Um, and I also know that our 2026 budget uh hangs on this a little bit. Um, and my question would be to the administration. Um, is it appropriate to take this to further conversation? I'm hearing things through the grapevine that uh you know we've we got heard resistance from the railroad uh tonight uh I missed Huna Totem's part but I don't think it was supportive um and the president of the chamber uh didn't uh his opinion was essentially negative as well and as we have started out with this idea idea uh which I have fully supported to date uh was predicated on that we did have full support of Norwegian cruise lines for this and that clea would not be a roadblock either. And uh my so leading to my question would be have things changed and does this require uh any further input or conversation from the people to whom it impacts. Thank you.

What was he asking? Peter, if you're asking me, I would say yes, but I'm not sure who you referring that question to. This is a this is a budget this is a budgetary issue and this has been my only this has been brewing for a year and I want to make sure that the information that we have uh based our decisions on um is still valid. Um is um will we encounter a problem with clea and is Norwegian still supportive of this idea? So, two specific questions then, please.

To the administration. To the administration.

I um mayor, if I can answer or my staff can answer um to the first question, yes, we have full support of Norwegian Cruise Lines. We've had that from the very beginning. Um when it comes to the fact that we have vetted this for two years and had multiple work sessions as well as um if you remember back when we first started talking about this ground transportation fee. At the time we came back, we were trying to implement it in 2025 after meeting at a cruise line agency uh conference with multiple cruise line agencies that operate in Whittier. It was suggested and requested that um we push it to 2026 so that they could implement it into their their fees. uh that has never changed. We did come back and amend the um implementation date. Myself and the finance director have tried multiple times to meet with other organizations with a no-go when it comes to you know CLEA and their input. We have met with them and spoke to them about, you know, just how Whittier um uses the CPV funds as well as how we have um you know, look into the future of using those CPV funds. Um I would like the city finance director to be able to follow up with anything that I may have missed. So, if you're okay with that,

Mr. Mr. Mayor, me of council. Um this actually uh this effort was 23. Um in June of 2023, council met uh pretty extensively on trying to solve a number of um systemic problems that we were seeing commu w within the community. Um, as we were looking at the possibility of developing a new cruise ship dock, um, one of those main efforts was, you know, how to create a sustainable community, um, a big part of that was how to create a sustainable harbor. And we were looking at a systemwide solution that would strengthen our harbor and also strengthen the financial um, strength of the community. Um at that time we had something in place a passenger transportation business tax PTBT tax. Um that tax went to the general fund and that was um in other communities without getting into the details um other communities have both a passenger fee and they also charge sales tax to all their businesses. Woodier is unique in that we allowed our businesses to pay either or. And so for the majority of our um businesses elected to pay just the the passenger transportation business tax and not pay sales tax. So, initially when we were looking at a systemic fix to our um financial um house in Whittier, we proposed um a a one solution which was to require all businesses to pay both the passenger fee and the sales tax. And that was very strongly opposed. So we looked at alternatives to that and um that was

through many months of discussions both at port and harbor commission level and the city council through work sessions. Um, at the end of those public input sessions, um, it was decided not to pursue sales tax applied to all businesses and instead to pursue a waterborne transportation fee that would go to the harbor to make the harbor sustainable and a groundbased transportation fee that would be an impact fee to go to the general fund. Um it is people say well you have new cruise ships coming and you put this new fee in place because of that and that's not just not the case. Uh we were looking at problems with the harbor and there were no revenues to sustain replacement of the harbor and so this was really a multi-tered approach trying to strengthen the the um infrastructure condition of our harbor. At the same time, um, we have we have received push back from members of the industry, but you know, a year ago at this time, we received a very similar letter to what we received tonight, asking us to please push the fee for some period of time to allow the industry to weigh in and come up with alternatives. As the city manager mentioned, we reached out to folks. We asked folks to come up with other solutions. we offered other solutions. Um, nobody was interested in them. Um, we do have CPV funds, but as it has become kind of our challenge, those CPV funds can be used for a limited um, a limited array of services, things that directly affect the cruise ships and the cruise ship passengers. And so the city has a lot of other impacts that we have to address from visitors in general, not just from cruise ships, but from all of

our visitors. Um, and so this was seen as an equitable way to share the costs of the impacts brought to Woodier by visitors with the visitors. So there has been no magic bullet, no great alternative solutions. Um, we asked for the possibility of maybe having some sort of a memorandum of agreement with um with entities that would voluntarily agree to pay to contribute to the impact somehow. That didn't gain any traction. We tried to consider the communitywide sales tax. That didn't gain any any traction to the visitor industry. So, um, at this point, we are where we are, but I do want to say that, you know, we we had proposed other versions of the ordinance that council backed away from, um, based on industry input. And, uh, and then we did originally, uh, approve this fee going into effect January 1st, 2025. And we agreed to postpone that for an entire year. and we're at the 11th hour and we're just, you know, getting this significant push at the 11th hour to again delay for a year. Um, just in terms of the magnitude of extent, unfortunately, this was going to be part of the budget discussion we were going to have at our work session on Wednesday night that was cancelled due to lack of a quorum. Um, but it's a significant impact on our budget. Um and then finally the question you know what are we going to do and what is if people don't pay um you know the ordinance has provisions in there that we will follow like we would follow for anybody else that doesn't pay um taxes that are owed to the city. So those provisions shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. They're articulated in the code. um we

would treat this industry like we treat every other business that would um would not pay a fee that we believe is is legally um attributable to that entity. So I don't know if that answers many questions, but the magnitude of the impact to the general fund is about a million three $1.3 million. So it's not insignificant of an impact to the general fund. Um, so part of what we'll be talking to council about is, you know, the uncertainty of our revenues in 2026. Um, but if council, you know, wants to go back to the drawing board and figure out how we're going to plug a $1.3 million hole, you know, this is the solution we came up with over the last three years. It hasn't been a year. It's been three years ago. Um, and we haven't, like I said, had any great ideas. Um, Norwegian has stated that they um do support the fee because because they want to see the infrastructure in Whittier improved to benefit their customers so that their customers have a good user experience. Um, early on in the in the process, Hunatum was supportive. Somewhere along the line, their uh position hasn't been as supportive. Uh there are other industry members that are not at all supportive. Um and I'll just end on one note and that is we did allow in the ordinance for um entities that work together to partner so that one ent for example uh if you are a cruise line and you have customers that are embarking or disembarking in Whittier um if you elect to charge your customers the $5 fee,

then you could in agreement with the other entities that are providing transportation on your behalf, you could collect and remit that rather than the bus companies or the train or whomever. And uh we've gotten some good feedback on having allowed that option in the code because it simplifies things for the downstream businesses. So that's also an option if folks want to pursue that. there any

and I'm just I was surprised by the and I've got a bad repeater here echo going the vitriol with which the early meeting presentations were made. Um but thank you for that explanation

Mr. Wagner. So, uh, thank you, Chris. Um, I agree with, uh, what administration has said. I don't know why this has come up in the final hours. I have read the letters. Um, I've heard on the streets some of the threats, um, some of the angst. I guess at this point in time I I don't see a way out of this, but would it be too much to ask to just have one I tried to get a meeting before this council meeting? Would it be too much to ask to have one more sitdown, one more town hall, or even if it's just a meeting with administration to try to figure out something so that we don't have to go down this road versus that road because it's already been said, um, some of the players here are just they're not going to pay and we're going to have to go after them to get the money. And yeah, I I realize we have mechanism to do it. I'd rather not do that. It's um right now it's it seems to be all about perception on who is not getting a fair deal. I don't know why um this has gotten to where it is and why it has taken so long to come out, but if this could be delayed um until the next council meeting before this goes into effect, the council meeting in uh January and give everyone time to come and talk about it. I don't know if anything's going to change, but at least everybody will get to say their their their fair share and

hopefully not walk away with hard feelings. If I may, um, if you're proposing like an additional meeting, you know, we did have to cancel one of our meetings past our budgetary workshop midcycle meeting. Maybe perhaps that could be a great venue to lay everything out because that's what we were going to talk about as Miss Ursinger stated. Um I have something else but I don't know if you want to respond to that, Miss Uringer. Um we certainly will be discussing potential impacts in the budget during the midcycle budget adjustment. Um my primary concern is that the industry did ask us a year ago to to delay implementation for a year so that they could roll the fees into the tickets that they would be selling in advance. So I, you know, I am concerned about uncertainty. Um, in other words, if we say we're delaying implementation, that has, um, certain effects. If we say we're talking about the issue, you know, we're always open to talking. We've been trying to get people to talk to us uh, to no avail. I mean, they they talk to everybody else, but they don't come to us with with proposals or solutions. So, that's been the frustration. So I'm going to add something here I guess um about one of the seminars I watched and it was on tourism and so some things here I think might just help um just moreformational and support of our our efforts here. So

one thing that was brought up in here this this this comes around Mr. Holland if you're listening. Um the speaker here spoke of the cruise ship exci cruise ship passenger excise cruise ship passenger excise tax. Um and this tax uh believe was implemented 2010 I believe you you're in the same summer with me and um it's $34.50 since then they have not made any seat adjustments. That's one thing that this tax analyst looked at. And so if they had indexed that fee to inflation today, it would be $50 approximately. Um so that's something that the the state has not done. It's been a fixed number for 15 years. As you know like we have indexed many of our rates and salaries to attempt to um CPI that's a consumer price index because inflation happens um so that that's an impact there now also we when we transfer that passenger business transport oh boy I'm fumbling the words fumbling the words here the pass passenger transportation business tax. Um, we transfer it to the harbor in efforts to make it more sustainable because the harbor was not filling it in its depreciation. Basically, we could not pay for it. Um, and so that we implement that mechanism and then we extended that deadline and then at the detriment of our general fund. our general fund was sitting at um I believe it was what's between 7 to nine months of an operating fund um revenue uh about a year ago and the latest if

you look in your pack it's down to five months now so we've we are we are slowly we're going off of a um I mean this trend continues we're kind of we're kind of going off of a fiscal cliff here um and so we put ourselves at risk we basically we let go of, for lack of a better word to say, we let go of a vine, our our rope, however, swing through there before um grabbing onto another one there for um these past couple years. And so, we've put ourselves out on a limb here. Um you these communities in southeast Alaska they uh have done many things to try to address the impacts of the addition of tourism whether it's from cruise ships or from um individual travel and stuff. For example um Skagway implemented recently within the last couple years a vessel impact fee. Um this is on top of the CP CV oh my god C CPV um CPV dollars are restricted in their nature. They can only be spent on um benefits that directly affect cruise ship passengers. However, this um but that limits us. We are you know even though the harbor front is a big component of our community, it's there there's more to our comm our community than our our waterfront. Um there is a community that exists here through the winter and as uh we know that it it's it's costly to keep things running and to keep year round, you know, services and stuff. All these services cost us money. Um we have no mechanism to pay for our boilers apparently that we're going to have to talk about how we're going to pay for those because we don't have a mechanism to pay for the things when they break down our roads. We have no mechanism to replace our roads right

now. We're hope we're basically writing on hopes and dreams to pay for our roads and all the infrastructure that goes underneath them. Right now, if you look at our budget, our water wastewater system is um if you factor in depreciation, we're heading for another fiscal cliff with that. And we're, you know, we we keep running on this um uh narrative that we are going to find grants. But back to my comment on my um my during the mayor's report, the state of the Alaska budget is not well. They are also heading for a fiscal cliff. So um you know grants from at the state level are going to be diminishing. And then the back to the um about the um the director of homeland Alaska Homeland Security, they are saying that we are going we're heading toward um thinner times for aid from at the federal level. So we are we have it's really important that we put mechanisms in place to make ourselves more self-sustaining self- sustainable because we have to be resilient to these changes here because all this business these operations ride on this city maintaining the infrastructure you know whether it's our police services our EMS our roads um a harbor a waterfront administration that um enforces our code and uh pursues the slim pickings of grants that we that will be left out there here in the coming years. That's all that was my comment on that. Thank you.

So, I want to follow up on that just so you understand and I'm perfectly clear here. I'm not asking for an entire year. I'm not asking to repeal this. I'm just asking for one more opportunity for everyone to say what they need to say. And you know, I don't know what's going to happen. Uh but at least moving forward, they can't go crying and say, "Well, we didn't give them an opportunity. You know, we tried in the very end to make a compromise and the city wasn't willing to compromise. And you know what? I don't I don't want to have to fight this with attorneys. Just All I'm asking for is 30 days. I'm I'm just going to say as administration, I understand the request from Council Member Wagner. Um but the implementation and the code um as it stands implements this fee on January 1st. um because it is in council comments, your request to schedule a work session is duly noted, but at the same time um to set up that type of work session before January 1st is to be honest. And so then um at the council level, what does that look like? you know, tonight you have people in the audience, but you don't have all of the industry, correct? And so, if you are making decisions to schedule a meeting

within the next 30 days, it it causes um the ability for them to push for another 30 days and another 30 days and another 30 days.

Yeah. Quite frankly, I don't I'm not even interested whether they meet in this chamber with council. If they meet with you, if they meet with an administr administration and you come to the council and say, "Well, here's what we discussed. We're not moving. Here's what we discussed. We've got a compromise." I'm I'm fine with that. I I don't care either way. I just want them to get their their voice.

So my response to that is my door is always open, my phone is always on, my email is always ready to go and um as administ as finance director inger had said previously, we have on multiple occasions said that to multiple of the industry. they haven't reached out to us and but I will say right now on camera I'm sure everybody is watching and people that are in the audience my number is 9074910029 you can contact me my email is city manager wittieralaska.gov gov and at any point in time you can call me. I will gladly discuss the ground transportation fee. We will schedule meetings but at the same point we have reached out. We have done that multiple times over the last 2 and 1/2 years with no avail. So I will happily say it again. My number is 90749100029. City manager at woodieralaska.gov. Please reach out if you have questions and concerns, but at the same time, um, I'm not going to reach out. I'm going to expect you to reach out,

Mr. Mayor. I think so. I want to just ask check the other council members because we've been dominating this council comments. Miss Borg, I think two and a half years is long enough. That's just I mean that I mean if they're not going to reach out in that time I mean it kind of feels like they've stalled to the last minute and now want something done right away. So that's my thought. Thank you Miss Borg. Mr. Malto council comments.

I'm in I'm in the same boat. Yeah. I mean, if they haven't reached out to our staff and right at the closing moment, you know, what what does that mean to us? Thank you. Online, Miss Sloan, Mr. Pinos, Miss Denmark.

Um, yeah. I mean, nobody I mean, I don't think anybody wants contention or upset. You know, we all want to work together, but uh kind of piggybacking off what you said, Mr. Mayor, um a town of, you know, 270 or so people don't have the same impact as, you know, a million visitors. So even down to our basic infrastructure, trash, water, boilers, roads, all these things, you know, uh our, you know, our small group of residents, you know, we might not even need some of these upgrades if we weren't seeing so many visitors, which of course visitors are awesome, but uh we have to be able to keep up in order to provide better experiences for them. and to keep residents happy, too. I uh I don't know. I see a lot of a lot of other places where like I mean I'm I can't think of specifics right now like you name some in Skagway and stuff, but I see a lot of other communities implementing things like this to, you know, to keep their infrastructure up and their residents happy. So, uh, I think like Miss Borg said, 2 and a half years is a very long time. It's just kind of strange to me that this, you know, all came up, uh, less than a month before it was going to be implemented, but that's just my my thought.

Thank you, Miss um, Mr. Ben Kush, Mr. Denmark.

Yes. I'll start off by saying that uh conversations can can continue without um suspending this. So it can be changed at a later time if a better solutions is is brought up. But I will say that this fee has been in in it wasn't called exactly the same thing has been in place for years and it was zeroed out years years a years years ago because because the way the code was written it was unfair. it would only affected the little guy, the the small van. But the basically the way it was done is cruise ship passengers were exempt. So if you got on a the wrong bus, you had to pay or so. And this fee as it is is a lot more fair than it was. So it's it's a better better option than it was. And then a little bit of history beyond too. You know, before the cruise ship dock was at the was at the head of the bay, we ramped up our fire and EMS to accommodate that. There was an expense to that. We just approved a greater a few months ago. And one of the things for the the reason for needing that greater was the head of the bay, you know, so ex expectation of this fee to help with the I assume with the potholes up at the head of the bay. Um, and then we also by postponing this, you know, we we basically, Mr. Mayor, you mentioned that we've gone from 7 to nine months of of reserves to five. It's because of this. We we ate at least $300,000 out of our budget to accommodate to accommodate giving another year. So, there's an expense to that. And and then the the part that gets me the most is the very people that are were are in here not wanting this fee are the ones that were asking us 6 months or a year ago, we need places to park our buses in

our vans when while we're waiting for clients. Well, we need we need I we I agree 100%, but we need money to make that parking lot. And this so this is a direct um fee that will assist these people do a better job and make it easier for them. So it's not like it's not like we're just taking the money and putting our pocket. It it's going to benefit the indust very industry that is going to be burdened by collecting it. Not the one paying it, but the one that will burden. So I I um happy to have discussions, but I but I don't agree with delaying it any further than it has gone. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pinush. Is there any further council comments on anything? It doesn't just have to be on this.

I just wanted to thank Chris and Shelby for uh taking the time to prepare and prepare and travel um for the scheduled budget work session last week. I know you both had things arranged um exist existing commitments to AML and um to be there and it was unfortunate meeting was canceled lack of quorum. I hope we can be more mindful of time and effort um staff puts in to support this council going going forward. Thank you. Any online comments, additional comments on anything? I got one more comment. I thought I said this earlier and maybe I wasn't clear. This is not an all or nothing type situation. Um, Mr. Pinker said, you know, it doesn't really matter if this goes into effect now. Um, uh, I can't remember the exact wording, but it it actually does matter because right now, um, everyone that's talking is trying to plan for the season. So, it is important. Um, they are trying to make decisions. I honest to God, I don't even want to talk about this, but I'm telling you, I'm going to make a motion to put this off for 30 days. You guys can vote however you want, but if not, this needs to be on the agenda at the next meeting.

Mr. Mayor, may I um because you are speaking about an ordinance that's already in like already part of code to amend an ordinance takes an ordinance. So, um, and to pass an ordinance, it takes two meetings to pass. So, we would need to bring forward an ordinance at the January meeting in order to like the timing is not great because we don't really have the time unless you want to schedule two special meetings between now and January 1st. I I don't believe it's possible.

Look, I'm just trying to keep the peace here. Um, everybody seems to be going down two different roads here. And you know what, I guess at this point in time then fine. We'll just as long as it gets on the agenda for next meeting. I tried to get it on the agenda for this meeting, but because of AML and other things, it couldn't happen. So, and here we are. Sorry, I'm annoyed because I hate to say this, but it's not like I even agree with this. I'm just trying to do my due diligence as a council member. You know, it's hard to represent the citizens of Whittier and sometimes it conflicts with trying to represent the businesses of Whittier. I don't know. I just wanted everybody to be able to talk about this and get it off my plate.

Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mr. Wagner. We all share these same challenges and stuff. We appreciate you speaking about this. Yes, Miss Madam Clerk. Mr. Wagner, through the mayor, could you clarify what exactly you would want to see on the next agenda? I actually can't. Oh, so that makes it very difficult.

Yeah. Well, you know what? Just never mind. We can do this a different way. I don't need to make a motion to do this. So, we'll do it later. Okay, if there's no further council comments, I would like to open up citizens discussion. Um, time is limited for 5 minutes per speaker on any subject over which the commission has control. Again, this is not a time for dialogue. Rather, it's a time to allow citizens to speak and the council to listen. Madame clerk, is anyone signed in for citizens discussion?

No one is signed in.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak? Yes, sir. I didn't think I'd be coming back up here again, but the the guy who could really speak to this whole uh transportation tax left and then my phone I can hardly touch now cuz it's just redot. But um I think Kelly was pretty pretty uh clear on what the state of that situation is. There are a lot of people that are unhappy with it and unfortunately probably the person that uh contributes the most to passengers coming to this town. Uh I'm speaking of Philip Cruis & Tours isn't here. So um I'm not sure if his stance on that, but there's a company that uh all of their clients come in on a a statemaintained road. uh they park in a private parking lot and they get on the vessel on a private dock that they all pay for. So um we reap some of the benefits here in the city through those people coming in early. They uh might buy some coffee or whatever it is, go around town, buy some some uh trinkets to remember their their visit to Whittier. But if we start to discourage that business, I think it's it's very very bad for our future. The optics are terrible of that whole deal. Um here I think there is about 18 to 20 more ships that are scheduled to visit our town here in this upcoming season. So we have to think about the long-term ramifications. I think it' be prudent to do that of what happens not in 2026, but what happens in 27 or 28 and 29. Kelly alluded to that there's a brand new uh

dock in Seward. Um so we're we're competing with those folks, but uh I guess I'll end it there. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Pender. Is there anyone else in the audience who'd wish to speak? You've talked about trying to meet with folks from the industry. Um, tonight more would have been here. However, this was not on the agenda for tonight. So, I'd like to see this on your January agenda and have that dialogue continue and the rest of the folks from the industry will be here and they will lay out the impact for you. So, I'd like to see this on your January agenda. Thank you. Any other citizen discussion? Okay, let's move to council and administration response to citizen disc um comments.

Mayor, I don't have a response to citizen comments, but I do want to respond to council. Um, I just want to say that um, the continued support of council is very important as the city moves forward into new industry and new and new um, adventures. I want to say that I appreciate each and every one of you for the decisions that you have to make on a daily basis. Um, I appreciate the fact that you recognize that you are, you know, the people that lead a community of 273 people into a future that looks, you know, bright at some points and dismal at other points. I know that it is extremely hard as council members to to have to be a no man sometimes or woman and a yes man and woman. But I I appreciate the fact that you as council members recognize that and also recognize that your constituents need to be heard and at the same time know that the impacts that sometimes feel really bad come out at the end as a really good thing for the community as a whole. So I just want to say that I appreciate that. I appreciate the businesses that we work with. I appreciate the future of those businesses and um I just want to say thank you for it.

Any comments from council? Miss Borga? I guess to going to Mr. Bender's um thing about Phillips Cruise Line. I mean, sure, they have their own private dock and everything, but they walk around and use the restrooms. They use our EMS if they have to. I mean, they are using our services. I mean, they're not just getting off on a private dock and not using anything in the city. So, I mean, sales tax on everything they buy. Anyone online?

Mr. Penush, Miss Loan, Mr. Denmark. Nothing more here. Nothing. Nothing here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next item. Do we have items for executive session?

Yes, we do have items for executive session, mayor. And um at this time I would like to uh request that during our executive session um item 20 I would like my uh finance director, the harbor master, the public works director, our consultant and our lobbyist as well as our representative if he wants to attend the executive session. Um it will be discussing the railroad um land purchase on and the finances. So, if the if the uh representative wants to excuse himself, I totally understand. Uh if my our lobbyist wants to recuse herself from attending the executive session, I totally understand. But I do need the um contractor as well as the assistant city manager in this meeting.

Okay. Thank you, M. I need to go outside. Yeah, thank you. Miss Wild also. Okay.

Let's see. Okay. Do we we need a motion in a second to enter executive session? Same people in item 21. I'll make that motion. Okay. I'll second that motion. Thank you. Any discussion? Miss Madame Cler, will you please call the role?

Voting on the motion to enter into executive session to discuss the Alaska Railroad Corporation land purchase matters of which, if immediately disclosed, would tend to adversely affect the finances of the city, would your municipal code 2.08.041, and leases matters that would tend to injure the reputation of a person, provided, however, that the person may request a public discussion. Read your municipal code 2.08.04. 04 OB2. Mr. McCalto, yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mrs. Loan, yes. Mr. Pinkush, yes,

Mr. Denmark.

Mr. Denmark. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Yes, Mayor Shen. Yes. The motion passes and council enters into executive session at 9:59 p.m.

We're taking a small break, Peter.

Okay, Mr. Wagner has made a motion to exit executive session. Seconded by Mr. McCalto. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. Voting on the motion to exit executive session. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mr. Mccalto, yes. Mrs. Loan, yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mr. Denmark, yes. Mr. Pinkush, yes. Mayor Shen,

yes. The motion passes and council exits executive session at 11:22 p.m. Is there a motion and a second to direct administration to request a construction and business plan or a lease amendment in time for the February council meeting from the leaseholder of lot 13A triangle business area. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Miss Borg. Second.

Yes. Okay. Any discussion? Sorry, Mr. Mayor. I'm totally taking over. Okay. Uh, voting on the motion to direct administration to request a construction and business plan or a lease amendment in time for the February council meeting from the leaseholder of lot 13A, Triangle Business Area. Mr. Wagner, yes. Mrs. Borg, yes. Mrs. Loan, yes. Mr. Pinkush, yes. Mr. Malto, yes, Mr. Denmark. And yes, Mr. Shen, Mr. Mayor. Yes.

The motion passes and administration is so directed. Is there any further business? Seeing none, Miss Mar, this this meeting is adjourned at 11:23. Thank you. Good night, Peter. Thank you.