City and Borough Assembly - Regular Meeting

Thank to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The Assembly of the City and Borough of Sitka would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional first people of Sitka. With gratitude, we proceed on Tlingit Ani. Sarah, roll call, please.

Mayor Eisenbeis? Present. Mister Pike?

Here.

Miss Carlson? Here. Miss Riley? Here. Mister Christianson? Here. Mr. Mosier?

Here.

And Mr. Saline?

Here.

Thank you. Any correspondence or agenda changes this evening? Seeing none, it will go to persons to be heard. This is public participation for any item off of tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual. Alright. Our first order of business this evening, item a please.

I move to approve an extension of a lease agreements between the city and rural of Sitka and Northern and Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association Incorporated regarding Block 4, Lots 2 And 3, Gary Paxson Industrial Park, and authorize the administrator execute the document.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Just a little background information on this one. This is coming before us tonight to give a little bit more time to renegotiate some of the terms that the assembly was interested in looking at. So it would just extend it to 10/31/2026 so that they are still in compliance but would give that time for staff. So is there any public comment on the extension of the lease agreement?

Good afternoon. For the record, Scott Wagner, general manager in SRA. And I just want to thank the assembly for taking this up in a quick order. I know you got a lot going on. I'm not going take up a lot of your time, but I would encourage you to support the motion that's before you and appreciate the extra time to work through the issues.

Anyone else on the extension of the lease agreement for Ensura? Company.

To

Celine? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. And mister you're Pike?

Yes.

The motion passes seven zero on item a.

Great. Thank you, assembly. That'll bring us to the main part of tonight's meeting, the budget. So we have a couple items in front of us that will deal with the budget. We will start tonight with the enterprise funds, internal service funds, special revenue funds, and then go from there. So John, I understand you have an introduction, please.

I do. Thanks, Mayor. Not much of an introduction. All of the funds tonight, I think and hopefully, this is the last budget meeting before we put the omnibus ordinance together in front of everyone. But we'll start, as you said, with the enterprise fund, internal service funds, and the special revenue funds. Then we'll move into the general fund after that. A lot of hard work over the past few weeks in getting that balanced. And it looks like we have a very, very small surplus now in the general fund budget budget for the assemblies consideration. But Brooke will first walk us through all the other funds before we get into the general fund. So with that, Brooke, if you want to start the presentation.

Good evening. So before I get into my presentation, I'm going to talk about my process a little bit. There were over 200 pages of documents in the packet, and it's not very realistic to go line by line through every single fund, especially with the special revenue funds. I have a few two to three slides on each of the enterprise funds to talk about working capital. But I will pause at the end of each of those slides to talk about that specific fund.

And that's kind of how I have structured this. So it looks like a lot of slides, but it's really not too many. So before we get into talking about the individual funds, I want to talk a little bit about reading enterprise and internal service fund budgets. So probably some of this information would have been helpful to have while you were looking at the packet. But budget and actuals on these reports are they're not directly comparable.

Your budget is really focused on cash outlays and your actuals for the closed years include noncash items and accounting adjustments in them. We also do budget for depreciation, which is not a cash outlay. But that's a best practice piece so that your financials and your budget reflect asset use and long term replacement needs. So the working capital for these funds, it serves as a financial buffer and the baseline simple calculation for working capital is just current assets minus current liabilities. The purpose of having working capital is to provide some liquidity for day to day operations.

And we also commonly use it to support capital and other large nonrecurring costs. One other piece of this is that the appropriations are the legal authority to spend. The revenues that you see included in the budget, they're projections, but they're not spending limits. So the appropriations aren't automatically reduced if revenues end up coming in lower than what we projected. So kind of some general conditions affecting a few or all of the enterprise fund.

So utility fund finances are driven largely by long term infrastructure needs, capital replacement cycles and debt obligation shape planning for these funds. We have some cost pressures that are affecting all the funds, increased costs of construction and materials and then borrowing costs have impacted majority of the funds. And then we also have impacts from the compensation study and the new collective bargaining agreements on the personnel side. There is a staffing decision that was made to reflect some fund level financial conditions. So the port director position through this budget is frozen through FY 2027 because of the financial condition of a couple of the funds that carry the cost of that position.

What does frozen

mean? It means that the FTE is not gone, but we can't fill it. So we don't have the appropriation to pay it, but we're not reducing the FTEs. And then when we look at working capital, it is not the same thing as available funds. And it's not the same thing as cash.

It does include cash, receivables, and other current assets. But it doesn't even include all the cash because some cash with restricted balances, so things like the bond covenant accounts are not part of this calculation. And not all working capital is immediately available to use. Some amounts are tied to capital projects and upcoming debt payments. And really, when you see me mention undesignated working capital, that kind of reflects what remains after these commitments.

And that distinction is important when you're looking at financial flexibility. And kind of as a general measure, working capital is useful, but it doesn't tell the full story. It requires a lot of context. When you look at the working capital balances that you'll see in some of these charts, the prior years reflect actual results, but the numbers for FY 2026 and 2027 are projected. So the final amounts there would depend on revenue spending and when activities occur in those two years.

Year to year balances between working capital are influenced a lot by timing. Your capital spending, your debt payments and your external funding don't don't all occur evenly. And it's kind of I've mentioned this a few times, but it is important. Not all the reported balances are actually available to spend. Some resources are committed or not immediately accessible.

Accessible. So really to kind of finish that off, evaluating working capital does involve a lot of judgment. So your appropriate levels are going to be dependent on your operations, on your risk and comfort with risk, and on the financial structure of the individual fund. So starting with the electric fund, we did cover quite a lot of information about the enterprise funds during the rate meeting that we had, at least all the enterprise funds that have rates. So this is just kind of a high level some of the most important pieces.

So with what's included in the budget right now, there is a customer fee increase for electric, but there's no energy rate increase. So for a typical residential customer, it'll be it's less than $1 a month that, that should impact their utility bill. The current rates do limit the ability to advance some planned capital projects. So about 700,000 of planned 27 projects had to be moved into deferred, and they're not included under the current rates. Ongoing infrastructure needs do continue to to put pressure on this fund, and it is important for us to have some sustained generation of working capital to support capital investment.

One kind of unique thing about inventory or I mean, electric, it's not the only fund that has an inventory balance, but it is the only one that has a material inventory balance. And so $1,000,000 of what you see in the budgeted expenditures for FY 2027 is actually inventory purchases. The actual expense related to those purchases, it's are recognized later through repairs and maintenance or through jobbing. So it's a cash outlay, but that's not an actual expense. And there was about $2,000,000 worth in the FY 'twenty six budget.

So this

thing, this graph that I have is depicting the working capital for the electric fund over the last several years. So like I mentioned before, those first three that you see for FY 'twenty three through FY 'twenty five, those are actuals. And the two on the far right for 'twenty six and 'twenty seven are based on projections and on the budget. So kind of what this tells us is that ultimately, if revenues and expenditures in the electric fund came across exactly as we've budgeted them, this is the impact it would have on electric fund working capital. So you would end up with working capital of about $25,300,000 Of that amount in 2017, about $16,000,000 is estimated to be committed for capital projects.

There's another piece in there for the upcoming debt payment. And then that leaves the fund with about $5,700,000 in what we consider to be undesignated working capital. So for this fund, the working capital in general remains pretty strong, but it is increasingly tied up in capital projects. So when I talked about the FY 'twenty seven, the 15,900,000 in capital, that's an estimation based on spending and new appropriations. But right now there's actually $15,000,000 committed to open capital projects.

So this is the these are

the only two slides I have for the electric fund. I'm not sure if you want to talk about the fund by fund or if anyone had any questions.

That's question, when you have your 2026 projected, how I was thinking about the effect of the very cold winter we had. Is that already figured into this? Or is that going to be down the line a little bit?

That would be down the line. It's a little too soon. That's too recent for it to have impacted the projections that went into this budget.

Brooke, is the debt commitment, is that just going to the interest of Blue Lake?

No. So that little orangish salmon colored square is just the principal, the debt principal that's due the subsequent year. So what you see in FY twenty twenty seven budgeted, that's actually the principal on all the electric funds debt for FY 2028.

Where does the interest go?

The interest is is expensed out. This is just kind of a there's lots of different ways that people, the finance professionals get to undesignated working capital. It's kind of a nebulous term. What we do is preserve an amount that's equivalent to the next year's principal in that fund. So we say we're not going to say this is undesignated, which means we don't put it out there to be used because we're making sure that it's there.

Just to there's like a line in the electric fund expenses that says interest payments, right? And that's that. Okay.

That's correct.

Okay. Next up is the Water Fund. So some of the key highlights there. And included in this draft budget is a 6% rate increase, which will be about $4 a month for your typical residential customer. So we talked about this, or I talked about this quite a bit at the rate meeting.

But the critical secondary water project is adding about $1,000,000 in annual debt service to this fund. It's been anticipated in prior budgets. We have to kind of project when we think it's actually going to go into repayment. But it is expected to begin in FY twenty twenty seven. And that first payment that we make will be a larger payment because it includes your accrued interest.

For this fund, ongoing infrastructure needs combined with rising construction costs continue to put pressure on it on this fund. If you look line by line, there was what appeared to be a considerable personnel cost increase. That's actually because of an allocation of two positions that are split between water, wastewater and solid waste fund, and that was just a reallocation. So it's not new or more staff, it's just splitting how they're paid for.

Question for you Brooke here, that 1,000,000 in annual debt service, is that anticipated to be the ongoing or is that the higher rate for the first year?

That's anticipated to be the ongoing. The first year will be considerably larger than that.

Like double?

I think I guessed it at maybe 1.6. Okay.

Thank you.

So for working capital in the water fund, This budget along with the projections for FY 2026 looks to put the fund at about $7,000,000 in working capital at the end of FY 2027. Dollars 2,700,000 of that would be in capital projects, dollars 1,000,000 in the debt commitment, which leaves about 3,300,000 in undesignated working capital. So this is one of the instances where working capital has been built up in prior years intentionally. It begins to decline in FY 2027, which is driven by the critical secondary water debt service investment. So it's not always a bad thing when you see dips like this, especially if you look at what levels of working capital is appropriate for a fund to have.

When you enter when you get a new loan that's the size of critical secondary water and you prepare for making those payments, it does mean that you increase rates in advance to make sure that the fund can afford it and that it maintains the current ratios that are required

as as plan for these funds. Is that correct?

The the only three year thing that I'm familiar with is that customer fee increase that was electric fund. I believe when the original 6% increase had been recommended, it was communicated that, that would be a regular increase for a while for the fund to

afford the debt service.

To rebalance itself with our larger projects. Okay, thank you. Anything

else on water? Okay. Wastewater. So the draft budget does include a rate adjustment of 2%, which is about $2 a month for your typical residential customer. We we talked about this quite a bit at the the rate meeting as well, but the effluent disinfection project that we are required to do and have in place by 2030, we were able to get a CDS for that amount.

It does have a required match, so it still is going to cost the fund something. But there is some significant spending or capital additional capital appropriations in FY 2027 for this fund, sorry, for effluent disinfection and then the Lakehurst Monastery Kincade project, and those are funded primarily through working capital. There is some work being done on a DEC loan that has a portion that could be forgiven that we're working on to see how that can be secured. The challenge there is that you aren't allowed to use federal funds to match other federal funds. And we've had in the past a little bit of a challenge with these DEC loans where they've said, no, this isn't federal funding.

And then we've gone through our audit. And midway through the audit, we get notification that it is, in fact, federal funding. So we couldn't do that with a project like this if we were going to use that as our match or component as our match. So we're trying to figure out how to get some certainty with that piece as well. So this one has a personnel cost decrease due to the allocation of those same positions.

So those two positions that are split between water, wastewater and solid waste. And even though a couple of these projects are they're pretty expensive, it's quite a large capital appropriation. The ongoing capital needs do continue beyond effluent disinfection. So just like a lot of our other funds, replacement of aging infrastructure and in coordination with road projects means there's plenty of other stuff on the list as well.

Sorry. Can you repeat that again about the you can't use the effluent disinfection CDS as a match? Match?

So the effluent the CDS requires a local match.

It requires a local

match. And you can't use federal funds

Yeah.

For that local match.

And you can't have the CDS go through the Denali Commission to use as a match against itself, I imagine. That still is federal funding even if it's passed through. The Denali Commission removes the federal funding designation, I thought. And you can use as a match for other federal funds but you can use as a match for other federal funds so I don't think you can use it as

a match for its own project. There's probably some nuance depending on on what type of funding you're talking about that has not been my experience with what I've seen from them.

And it says compliance by 2030 is there an estimated time and when we need to understand those local match requirements so is this a fiscal year 'twenty eight rate adjustment we're thinking or beyond?

Might have to get Mark to help me. I'm not sure. It depends if I can answer the question. So is your question whether like about the timing of spending on it or how much time we'll have to figure out the matching component?

Yeah, that second part.

Evening. Mark Civi, Public Works Director. Our goal is to try and have that ironed out in the next six months or so. Next week, we have an agenda item on for this loan through Alaska DEC with their state revolving fund. They have told us over the phone that they can do this without the CFDA that catalog of federal domestic assistance number on it and make it state funds.

However, experience has been that we can't count on that. So we're appropriating funding from working capital this year. So we have the match available to execute the CDS, which we expect to get the finalized grant paperwork in the next six months just so that if we don't have the loan executed, that money is there. And we may not have to count the loan as match. Our final design is coming in at around $1,100,000 We've been told previously just over the phone talking with DEC that they're offering up to $1,000,000 in loan forgiveness, but that's because most communities have not seen a design cost more than that So we'll be looking at trying to get our design finalized for. A forgivable on through D. C. With a small administrative fee.

Lovely because there's several other Southeast communities going through this. So, hopefully, there's some scale there

that you And can they are offering a specific to the effluent disinfection projects, the three zero one waiver that most communities had been operating under that is no longer available, and they're given this five year timeline. So, this kind of a forgivable loan is not available on any of our other projects right now. They're prioritizing it for this unfunded mandate.

And we'll get all of that money at once or will it be over the course of years?

The money for the loan, I think, should come at once because we have a contractor underway doing a 35% design right now. And as we have the quote to get to final designs for construction already.

Okay. Thank you.

So for the working capital for the wastewater fund, kind of in somewhat similar situation with water, working capital has been intentionally built up over the last few years and is being used for capital projects in FY 2027. We have known about the requirement to the effluent disinfection for a while and have been trying to figure out how to pay for it. So there was some preparing done for that. So based on the FY twenty twenty six projections and the FY twenty twenty seven draft budget, it would put the wastewater fund at a working capital balance about $7,800,000 about $4,800,000 of that would be committed for capital projects and then another $1,000,000 for debt, which would leave just about $2,000,000 of undesignated working capital in that fund. Okay.

Next is a solid waste fund. The draft budget includes a 2% rate adjustment, which should be about $2 a month for a typical residential customer. The fund position has improved substantially following some prior rate adjustments. Recent activity, local activity has supported the fund performance. So we've got some larger construction projects in town that have increased some volumes and brought in some kind of unexpected revenue.

And then for this fund, operating costs really are the primary driver of this fund. There's not the same level of infrastructure needs as most of our other utility funds. So really, it's driven largely by transportation and disposal costs. And then this is the last time you'll see that little note about the personnel cost increase due to the split of those two positions. So this one looks less friendly in FY 2023.

But so working capital in this fund improved from prior negative levels driven by rate adjustments and some improved operating performance. It is kind of important to explain what it means when you see a negative undesignated working capital balance. So this happens when your commitments exceed your working capital. So that reflects capital project balances and debt commitments relative to available resources. So what that really means is if you had to spend every single dollar in your capital project appropriations in one year, you might be in trouble.

You might not have enough cash to be able to do that. It doesn't necessarily mean that at the time you have a negative cash balance or no cash because these measures are impacted so much by timing. So those the FY twenty twenty six projections and then the impact of the FY twenty twenty seven budget would likely put the fund at around a $2,100,000 working capital balance with about $1,500,000 of that tied up in capital projects, leaving about $400,000 in undesignated working capital.

I have a question for you. So is there any way to collect information on what the impact on solid waste from the cruise industry is? Mean, cruise ships drop off stuff. I know it's paid for probably by the terminal maybe, I don't know. But there's quite a bit of an impact. Is there access to other funding sources from that?

Is a small amount from the McKinley Research cost allocation study. But I was actually surprised by that one that the solid waste fund was actually not impacted very much by cruise ships. The larger ships at the dock, from my understanding, do not drop off solid waste here. It's usually just the smaller ones that are down at GPIP. And the volume from there is not very high.

And they pay for it? Yes.

We do see impacts on some of garbage services that the city pays for. Like we have to increase our cans quite a bit downtown and the pickup. We do do some coding to CPV to make sure that those costs are covered.

Thank you.

Does the same go for wastewater?

It does. That was solid waste and wastewater were the ones I really expected to see big increases. And it was not an appreciable increase. In fact, well, don't quote me on it. I think the wastewater usage actually went down. But it's

been a

while since I've looked at the report. But I do remember specifically that solid waste and wastewater, we did not see an appreciable increase.

So what I'm hearing is we don't need toilets taken up Max Sudhoff Street if there's, like, less usage of them. Anything

else about the solid waste fund? Moving on to the Harbor Fund. So the draft budget right now does include a 4% rate adjustment. I know that the Ports and Harbors Commission maybe last week or this week recommended a 3% rate increase. But this budget does still have the 4%.

So this 4% means about $7 a month extra for a 32 foot vessel, about $9 a month for a 42 foot vessel. And that 4% is consistent with a 2024 harbor rate study that was guidance had it the recommended rate increases to be inflation plus 1.5%. So especially when you look at the graph with this one, the fund does appear stable. But the problem is that the infrastructure costs are so high that it's not enough. The replacement and repair needs in this fund are really substantial.

And the costs far exceed what can be supported through current rates alone. And that, combined with the fact that external funding for harbor infrastructure is declining at least with the source that we're used to using. So historically, our harbor infrastructure has been supported by the State of Alaska fifty-fifty grant program, and funding has been decreasing over the last few years, and they're not expected to fund any of those projects in the next year. So for the Harbor Fund, a significant portion of the working capital is tied up in capital projects. It's committed capital projects.

There's about $8,000,000 in open capital appropriations. It's also kind of important to note with this one that the seawall project funding, service center fund sent to the harbor fund for this project that are still sitting that's still sitting in this project. If that doesn't proceed, that money will be returned to the marine service Fund. So the harbor is holding on to about a million dollars of Marine Service Center funding right now. And based on the '26 projections and this budget, it would put the Harbor Fund at about a $14,400,000 working capital balance with a little over 8,000,000 that in capital projects and about $5,700,000 in undesignated working capital.

I don't know what the right time would be to mention it. But if we are going to change that rate, would this be the time? Because it would have to be done through motion, right?

That was going to be my question to the assembly. If you wanted to entertain what ports and harbors recommended, we can wait till the end of the presentation. Or if there's a pause here I'm not trying to put you on the spot.

You mean because there was a zero rate increase for that?

Yeah. As liaison, liaison, there was a couple of meetings that took them to get to deciding what their recommendation would be. In their last meeting, they did pass a 3% rate increase with the caveat that they would spend the next year looking at additional revenue sources to compensate or make up for that 1% to total 4%. So there are some creativity going to be coming. But the other side of that is, that any additional fees, services areas of revenue would come in the fiscal year 2028 cycle and then there would be a gap for 2027.

What kind of creative revenue solutions did they throw out? Any ideas? Just curious.

Of the few mentioned distribution of fish box tax, It's currently 40% general fund, 30 harbors, and 30 fisheries enhancement. So that 40 from general fund seemed to be seen as an opportunity. Do you rescope that over? And then another one that was floated was considering more of Eastern Western Channel as part of the harbor system to then be able to have a bigger area to collect fees on and to investigate other anchoring fee structures

k. Thank you.

For

small So that's like people that get power? They put a power to the islands and then charge them?

Oh, that wasn't mentioned. Large boats with anchors were were mentioned in parking locations.

Do you wanna add anything to that? If you wish, or am I doing a decent enough job summarizing what was discussed? I'm inviting the harbor master up to speak.

They were mentioning expanding jurisdiction to be able to provide designated mooring areas and mooring spots that we would service.

Charge gill netters? For dropping the pick?

I don't know what their full thought was on it. It's a great question. Very good.

Can I ask you a question? We're going to have I assume given the state of the harbors like the depreciation and everything, we're going to have to increase rates again next year, right? This is just like what we have to do. So hypothetically, we could give them a year to come up with these ideas and then have this conversation again next year and be able to cut a percentage off if it is again 4% if we have some alternative structures in place.

Right. So the way I look at it is our mortgage rates are providing for the service that we're able to provide and the maintenance for the infrastructure and then also build up our capital to apply for grants that we have the opportunity to. So if they came up with something then yes, maybe it could decrease whatever that future rate increase would be.

Brandon, can you say your name for the record?

Sorry, Brandon, Harbormaster, Calhoun.

I used to give a Stan a hard time. I think I have a new target.

I don't know if I just throw it out there. It seems to me it might be easier just to do the 4% here. And because some of those ideas seem like they would take a lot of work to try to discover, scope out and implement within a year's time. That's just my thought. My point is in saying that is I'm okay with the recommended 4%, but I would consider if somebody wanted to make a motion.

Yes, Kevin, I would back you on the maintaining 4% right now. If creative methods of revenue come in for next budget year, I'm happy to cut that down to a 2%, 1%, 0% rate increase depending on how many different revenue streams they're able to find. But I think we're going a little backwards cutting revenue first and then seeking to make it up as opposed to finding a new way and then cutting the rate.

Mayor, if I may. I'll speak kind of frankly here. A lot of comments at that ports and harbor commission meeting were, it doesn't matter what we recommend. They're going to do what they want anyway. And I just want to put this out in the public realm right now that I think timing was the major factor here.

Staff had to put numbers together without having a recommendation, we made our best estimates given the needs of the department. But I think had we had earlier, we tend to follow that recommendation and try to build a budget out with that. So I don't want anybody to think that what was discussed has not been considered. I think just timing was a factor here.

Yeah, I would agree with that statement. This assembly has followed the rate recommendations even when they were higher than the body had initially thought of. And it was a delay issue. So we had to push forward and this is what we came to. So if we get a more timely recommendation next year, we can build that into the budget more appropriately.

That was past April 8, and we need to have a budget by the end of April. I believe it's in code that their recommendation should come forward in January at the beginning, and so it was a timing issue here.

I wish we could talk about the Marine Service Center Fund first. I don't I'm just gonna save the airport for last. Maybe just get

over this one if that's Yeah.

So the airport fund has a few extra slides. There's some things to talk about here. So none of it, or at least not much of it, should come as a surprise. So there are some significant operational changes from the ongoing airport, the terminal project and some ongoing cost increases from an expanded facility from a larger footprint. So we're seeing much higher utility costs.

Those are still kind of fluctuating while the projects are ongoing. So it's hard to tell exactly where they're going to land. But some of the other costs, the janitorial maintenance and insurance are a little bit more certain at this point. And they are significantly higher than what they were before. There's also it is worth noting that there's some temporary cost pressures that are related to this project.

So there's a very, very heavy administrative burden from the grants and the funding for this project. So their allocation that really finances time, administration's time, all of those pieces, it's much higher than it normally would be because of how much time it takes from staff. There's also that operating revenue is lower than what was initially expected, and that's partially due to the departure of Delta Airlines. So for FY 2027 for the budget, there's a projected GAAP deficit of about $390,000 So the operating budget does reflect minimal expenditures. There is not much in there except the things that we have to pay for.

But we are working on some long term solutions within existing constraints. So it's kind of important. Working capital by little graph is going to look a little bit different. It's really not that useful for this fund because a significant portion of the fund's cash is restricted. So the PFC revenues and the bond proceeds are limited to specific uses.

They're not available for general operations or discretionary spending. And which means working capital doesn't end up being a meaningful measure while the project is ongoing. The bond proceeds and other restricted funds are recorded as non current assets, which means they're not part of the working capital calculation. So that's what can make working capital another one of the things that can make working capital pure negative even when there is actually cash. It is really important to note that we have bond requirements that have to be maintained.

Net revenues have to meet required debt service coverage ratios. And the timing of revenues, expenses and debt service does affect compliance, and it limits some of the flexibility within this fund and within working capital. So the operational gap is going to require some future solutions. We've talked about paid parking and also some additional lease revenues once the project is complete. And some additional adjustments are probably going to end up being needed after project completion. General fund support could end up being required if the conditions persist.

Now I'm going to jump in, it's Okay.

There's a lot of work being done on this fund. And I'll use one of Mr. Christensen's comments, budget is a guess. And this is about the biggest guess we're making right here. Our hope is that a new building is going to require less maintenance. But we have to plan based on the square footage and what the building looks like. Leases are a a major issue right now. We still don't have the finalized leases because we don't have final spaces for everybody to be in. And we also have to worry about the aeronautical, non aeronautical. And you probably remember the presentation I gave to the assembly about three years ago.

This is kind of the expected situation, right? We knew we had that discussion about paid parking and how that's really what is going to keep the airport alive. One of the things we negotiated with the state in the master lease agreement was you probably remember the discussion around concessions. I think it's a 48%, and 12% concession charge on it's like non food items. There's concessions on food and then concessions on alcohol.

The state was going to we had to collect those concessions and give it to them. We negotiated in that we get to keep those concessions. But we can't start collecting those concessions until the leases are in place. So that will hopefully be another source of revenue. Parking is something that we're still looking for.

I know that there will be some community angst overpaid parking. But I did happen to see recently on social media when somebody was asking can you park for two weeks and someone said, just park in the main lot. The barnacle only costs $35 and you can park there as long as you want. So that tells me there's an appetite for some paid parking. But that think as we expected three or four years ago, this is the position the fund is in, and we're making those moves that I put out in that loose business case earlier to get us to that breakeven point.

Thank you. Was the health of this fund part of the consideration for freezing the port director? Yes. Does this poor situation impact our ability to secure funding for the float plane dock? Because that is coming out of this fund. Is that correct?

What it does is complicates the financial outlook of the fund to make it really hard to figure out how much the undesignating working capital you might need in there for additional match for grant funding right now is very difficult. Might even be willing to say impossible to figure out how much that actually is. And that's hardest part is figuring out what's there after this project is done.

Yes. And if it's difficult for you or us to see any, you know, potential people at reporting to may also have a more challenging time with that. Okay. I don't have any answers for you, but I I see it too.

So I did put this graph in here because I didn't want it to seem like I'm hiding something, but it doesn't tell you really anything. What it tells you is that we just basically assume any working capital that is in there is all committed to capital projects right now. We know that working capital has declined during the project period. That makes sense. It reflects the use of available resources and the timing of project spending.

And like I said before, working capital is just not a reliable indicator for this fund right now because the undesignated amount can't be meaningfully determined. And it's not very common for us to have funding that's structured quite like this, not just the fact that it's multiple sources. But even within our awards, there are multiple awards that make up the grant funding that we're receiving from the FAA. And each of those makes it just a little bit more complicated because they get tracked differently. They end up with different ICAP rates. It's not really like anything else we've done before.

On this

airport, is there any or what's the anticipated kind of time line for having those leases figured out and having some sort of start of money coming in?

I think we'll have the aeronautical we'll have the aeronautical lease for Alaska Airlines probably buttoned up here. I would say in the next sixty days we're down to some minor language changes and then a phased implementation of the new rates. But we're very close on that one. And that or I shouldn't say the master lease. The aeronautical lease will determine what the rates are for the non aeronautical leases.

Okay. So hopefully there'll be some really nice updates from this when it becomes a projected and when it becomes actuals. Thank you.

Why does it work like that, that the aeronautical lease determines the other lease rates?

It's an FAA requirement, and this was built with FAA AIP money. And their stance is airports are for aviation services, not for restaurants and stores. And if there are, let's say, another competing airline or more of a desire for more aeronautical space, you have to push the non aeronautical services out for the aviation assets.

Okay. Now we can actually talk about my favorite fund. We're sure all like this because it's just very simple. And that's nice to have a little treat of a budget to do every once in a while. So for the Marine Service Center, the fund's in a stable financial position.

Working capital keeps growing at a slow but of And And the pandemic, we're a significant capital needs associated with that bulkhead wall. The funding for that for the improvements on the wall remain unresolved right now. Like I said before, there's about $1,000,000 of Marine Service Center funding in the Harbor Fund right now still with the idea that we're looking at some alternative funding sources to try and make that happen.

What kinds of alternative funding sources?

We

were in DC last week looking for some alternative funding As you remember, it was a build grant that we qualified for a handful of years ago, and the project was estimated to be about $9,000,000 I think $9,300,000 We had the match money. We got the grant of about $7,900,000 That was in the times of extreme inflation. Material costs went up very, very high. We tried to rescope the project. But under the rules of the grant at that time, now it's a little more flexible.

There was not a lot of ability to rescope. You had to build what you said you were going to build. So we made our last ditch effort and put out the bid package with our top end on there. Didn't get any bids on it, not surprising. But now our estimates are that the project is up to about $15,000,000 to get completed. So we put in a CDS request for that. We got the question back, could you scale that in any way? $15,000,000 is a lot. Our snarky answer was if we could have scaled it, we would have the first time. But that's a long way of saying we're asking our delegation for help.

The other bonus note there is that Marad indicated if we gave the grant money back without starting project that it was no hit on us later. So when we reapply, that won't be seen as a negative.

So the working capital for this fund is stable, and it's growing. There's relatively limited capital commitments. Even though there are a lot of positives, it is pretty important to note that the fund balance of about $2,600,000 is where I would project that it ends up in 'twenty seven. It doesn't actually go all that far for capital needs and infrastructure, but it still is telling a very good story of this fund. So of that $2,600,000 that I project to be in working capital at that point, 2,400,000 of it is actually undesignated. So projected, there would only be about $150,000 for capital project commitments.

Well, if anybody really wanted to read the the best documented capital project corruption, the building of the freezer building itself is pretty good when you file the Freedom Information Act and go through all the handwritten notes on the side, from the panels to the electric defrost to everything on the mechanical end. And the city got $4,500,000 to build that building and spent 3 and a half million dollars and then used a million dollars on various staffs, getting their streets paved and stuff. And but just on a mechanical end, everything that's happened there from the inception. And then when you compare what how Petersburg used their money, and then what they have today, and what we have, and what was taken away is part of the thing that corrupted just a good idea for town. And then it turned into what it was or what it is and just makes for a good read.

Question for you on this one. Harbor's commission passed a recommendation in November, I believe, to look at that gravel parking lot next to Marine Services Center and something with the bulkhead and then the crane in that area. I believe those are all harbor assets or shared in some way. Is did gravel enter this budget at all?

Maybe No. No? Brandon, can

you help me remember what that was about or if that's in your budget or if I need to make a motion to entertain a discussion here?

Brandon Calhan, Harbor Master. It's the right order that time.

Two last names? Yeah.

Yeah. So they gave kind of a vague motion of just upland improvement without a specific task that they really wanted. It was basically just upland improvement. Hoist is part of that, but the hoist is also part of the entire wall project. So we budgeted to do some upland drainage maintenance against the port wall and in that hoist parking area in the harbor budget.

Would you like some marine services budget to support that?

It wouldn't

hurt. What's your current budget for those few items you just mentioned?

I put 25,000 in the harbor budget for upland maintenance to do that drainage and gravel work.

Okay. Thank you. And

on that topic with the crane and some of the other port wall maintenance, Still waiting on a few answers because if it's a CDS or another build grant application, we need to still have some match money in our pocket. But I'll be working with the rest of the staff to find out what level we're comfortable with and what funds we can release.

With the Assembly Entertain move in some money from marine services funds to harbors for some upland maintenance.

I have my two thoughts on it. Number one, for what? As the harbor master said, it wasn't exactly clear what they were scoping, what they were doing. And then number two, my preference would be to take that out of infrastructure sinking fund if we do need to plus that up a little bit.

So for the final enterprise fund, we're going to talk about GPIP. So the fund is facing ongoing financial constraints. They're not new. Well, some of it's new, but it's mostly not new. There's limited financial flexibility for capital or new investment in this fund. The revenue sources aren't keeping pace with infrastructure needs. So the haul out revenues aren't generating sufficient funding for long term replacement. That was known. That is not new news, that the existing fee structure doesn't support depreciation. And long term sustainability will require some policy decisions.

Future revenue sources and a fee structure will be key considerations of that. Absent changes, additional general fund support may be needed over time, not in an immediate need, but it can get there.

I actually had a question vaguely related to this, but also our NSRA discussion. Was wondering if you could tell me what the Southeast Alaska Economic Development Fund has been used for in the past?

Most recently, it was for the compactor, I believe. And it was a 0% interest loan to the solid waste fund get the compactor.

Has that always been loans? It says loans and other activities.

I believe our code requires it to be a loan now.

I don't have Originally with that fund, there were a lot of grants that went out, like Science Center was a recipient of one early. The assembly, I believe in the Mark Gorman era, decided to change that to basically limit it to interdepartmental loans. It was very difficult to go out to public needs. There was a matching component in it at one point for a small business to get a matching loan, but the new wording essentially eliminates that. So there are other loans out to other departments currently as well that are slowly being paid back.

There's also some loans to businesses that are, I believe, still being paid back. And the Science Center, because it was a little bit of a fight, is technically a loan. If they stop being the science center, have to pay it back. It's not a grant. So but yeah. I mean, when we when it first started, you know, they were doing I think the boat company, I believe, got a pretty decent sized one. Not sure about that one.

If I recall, that also helps haul out, but it was a gift, not a grant or not a loan.

I'm looking at that. Okay. K.

Just wanted to put that forward as a potential source for not creating a larger headache for you but looking at the NCROS subsidization kind of funding source and if additional general fund support is needed for GPIP. It seems like there's some alignment there, but obviously have not kept up to date on all of the changes over time. So

So for the GPIP fund, working capital was significantly reduced to support the haul out project. Undesignated working capital is fully utilized. And those prior kind of larger balances that you see do reflect contributions from multiple funding sources for that project. So kind of where we sit with that is the entirety of the projected working capital amount in that fund is tied up in capital projects. There really is no undesignated fund balance at this point or it's small enough that it's immaterial.

So a bit of a summary, Brooke, correct me. The last three funds we've looked at, so GPIP, Marine Services Center, and the primarily lease driven funds. Is that a good way to kind of categorize those as compared to the rates of the first chunk?

I think that's a fair assessment. GPIP is a little bit different now with the haul out piece that's in there, but I still think that's Okay. Everything.

K. Thank you.

Okay. If there's nothing else on GPIP, I just have a slide each on the internal service special revenue funds. And happy to answer any questions that people have, but I think it would take more time than anybody would want to spend for us to go through each of those special revenue fund budgets. So kind of a reminder for internal service funds, that would be central garage, building maintenance and IT. They provide shared services for city departments.

So instead of getting their funding from outside of the city, they get it from inside. If you see an annual surplus or a deficit in their budget, it does not necessarily indicate a profit or loss. There's some timing differences between costs incurred and cost recovery. And then we set the charges in advance, but the actual usage can vary from what we project. So there are some adjustments that are also included to kind of correct some of those.

The central garage fund does include the vehicle sinking funds. And with this budget, we would put it at being about $11,300,000 in the vehicle sinking fund. There's actually $9,400,000 in it right now. That's probably not a correct statement. We've done some transfers for FY 'twenty six. That's the FY 'twenty five balance, which I've done the entry for. The balance does reflect ongoing contributions and use. And the point of it, it's meant to fund planned replacement of existing vehicles and equipment.

Correct me if this isn't the right place to ask purchasing any vehicles this year?

I know that we cut the police department vehicles. Are there any purchases moving forward from any department?

One would think that I should remember. I don't think so. There was one that was up, but we did it through the midyear because it had a fully funded sinking fund. Mark or Conor, do you remember is there one? There's definitely equipment. The electric department had something I thought.

Yeah. Okay. But just equipment, not any actual vehicles. And we're still working on rightsizing our fleet. Is that correct? Correct.

Anything else on the internal service funds? Okay. So for the special revenue and other governmental, there's fiduciary funds in there also. But I did not think anybody cared about that distinction for the budget. I did include a list list with the packet of a little explanation for each one of those funds.

But kind of generally, they're used for specific defined purposes, funded by dedicated revenues and structured for specific uses. They're not available for general operations or discretionary use. The detailed fund balance information is actually a lot easier to see in the ACFR in our financial statements than some of the others are because it doesn't require you to perform a calculation. You can see them because those funds operate pretty simply. The balances aren't directly comparable to other funds.

They might appear really large due to the nature of the fund, but they really can't be used outside of their intended purpose. So some kind of larger examples, more visible examples of these funds are the Public Infrastructure Sinking Fund, School Building Infrastructure Fund, and then the CPV Fund. But there are lots of them. And this is my last slide in this area of the presentation. So the next section is on the general fund budget.

Great. Thank you. Assembly, let's take a break. We'll revisit this item before we move on if anyone has any comments. And if not, we'll move on to the next item this evening.

All right Assembly, so we're still on item B this evening. Just need to take a break there, but didn't know if there was any further discussion around any of our enterprise funds, internal service funds, and special revenue funds that needed to be had tonight.

No one has any questions about CPV?

Yeah. I would really like to know how that is possible that we have an influx of visitors and the wastewater went down or was not I mean, we as at the beginning of this, like, we're paying local businesses to allow people to go use their facilities. So how how is that like, we know that there are people, and they're using the places. Make it make sense.

I can try to make it make sense. The best we can do is measure the flows that are going through the outflows. I mean, we're not counting who's using it. We're not sitting there with clickers outside the restrooms or anything or counting But flows through the wastewater treatment plant did not show any real appreciable increase from a regular summer. But the temporary restrooms and the grant programs were funded through CPV.

The restrooms were completely purchased with CPV funding. And I'm not sure the grant program was as successful as we hoped it would be in the first year of doing it.

I mean, my recollection was that the mayor said, my building is so old. We have to get some other facilities because, like, a lot of our downtown buildings are not built to handle this increase. So I I just was under the impression that there was an increase. And, yeah, I'm I'm really surprised that it's non measurable because on some days we are, you know, doubling our population. I'll assume no one's holding it for eight hours or that seems hard.

I'm confused. I'm real confused.

Brooke, please.

I think I can clarify some things. So that that study, mostly what we use it for is to substantiate the indirect cost allocation that we use, right? There are also direct expenses that we charge, and we calculate how much of a cost is direct and attributable to CPV. My understanding, when that study was done, it

was a

snapshot of a specific period of time. Things have probably changed since the years that that study was based on. I don't remember the details of it. But there was something going on with water and wastewater at the time that that study was done. That may have hindered some of the results, but I can't recall what it was. And I really wish I could remember who told me that.

I think I might know. Because I think we upgraded our storm with a lot of the storm drains were going into the regular waste, and they fixed them. So that probably is where that I don't know for sure, but as Henry, I remember talking about that, that there was some work done on that because stuff was going into the regular waste stream that wasn't supposed to. And that may well probably did go up, but it was offset by that. I don't know for sure, but I think that might be it.

And then can you just remind me when that McKinley study was conducted? What year?

Amy, can you help? Was it 'twenty one or 'twenty two? '2.

Passenger count that year at the top of your head?

Three. Yeah, three eighty five.

Wow. Seems like we might need to update that study ASAP.

Some other plausible factors here. For comparing things between winter and summer, think of households just dripping to prevent frozen pipes in the winter, people just utilizing more water in the winter for whatever whatever they're up to because they can because it's not metered. If we had a metered system, I think those numbers would be a lot more accurate. But just water through liquids through treatment between winter and summer, there's a lot of factors there that don't consider use.

Mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but we are using information from a study based off of 385,000 people to do CPV allocations for what is currently around 600,000 people. And are they percentages, like, that we're just extrapolating? Or are those numbers are wrong? I mean, you know, we have more tourists now that are having more of an impact that we need to be accounting for properly.

It's somewhat extrapolated like Brooke talked about. It's a it's a indirect cost allocation method where it basically dials it down to per passenger. This is how they hit each area. So it can be scaled based on the number of folks that come in.

So

that calculation now is based on the amount of passengers we're actually getting.

I'd be interested in hearing how often communities update those studies.

Somebody did that recently and it came back less.

How much I'm just curious, how much was that study? Do you remember off the top of your head?

I want to say it was around the $50,000 mark. But again, I'm just trying to speak from a loose memory here.

I don't know. Maybe it's something we consider for next budget season, not this season.

Can you pay for the study with CPV funds?

Mean, I'll pretty confidently say you take it from the CPV funds.

Did you say you wanna try that from the CPV funds? Is that what you just said?

I don't know. Just yeah. Not not necessarily for this budget discussion, but something I would be interested in learning more about additionally with those observations that you mentioned for potential future use of our CPV funds.

And I understand where Katie is getting at. I too have just aside from this discussion, I would be interested in the future to know how much more we can use out of the CPV funds without getting ourselves in trouble. I know we're conservative and that's very good. It would just be nice to know a little bit more about it and what we can more we can extrapolate from that fund for Sitka. But I don't have anything else regarding this section of the budget discussion tonight.

I don't expect us to fix this situation tonight. And we tasked John with bringing us back a balanced budget. It's what he did. It was at the expense of the port director. I'm not excited about that.

I don't have a solution on where else that money would come from. I'm glad to see the position frozen as opposed to eliminated from our staffing chart. So whoever comes in beside behind John will see that that was the 2020. Be the full year consider it, I think. Just hurts. We're

How going much of Marine Services Center was contributing to that port director role?

Zero. It was a split between GPIP, airport and the harbor fund. So I believe that watch me get this wrong. I think GPIP had the smallest percentage. I want to say it was 20% GPIP, and then the remaining amounts were split between Harbors and the airport fund.

I recall in our discussion maybe it was just a contribution I made in my head for that port director role was that Marine Services Center was going to be a part of that. Because when the leases were redone last, there was no one in that chain of can to do it. It went straight to John. And that seems like a not great use of the highest person in the company if some if it doesn't get caught before then. So I think that should get explored, especially because it has the word marine in it.

It is a waterfront. It is part of our port, seemingly. And perhaps an advance can be made from that fund to the others, you know, to cover this cost so we don't lose this role. Because I'm not sure how we can see GPIP or airport get healthy if there's not someone to do the work.

I am not going to say it's at all an estimate. But what I am going to say is that there's a number of, I think, variables out there that may come to fruition. And I hope that if we receive funds that make it look like we're going to have a bit more money in the budget, a surplus that we look at trying to get that higher sooner rather than later. I know of a couple of things out there that may happen that may put some money back the would become a surplus. So I would ask that as we go through the year, if it looks like we're going to have the money for that position, then maybe bring it back midyear or something like that if the money is there.

Because some things change. And next thing I know that there are some things that could definitely improve that.

I guess I'll say I agree with Stephen that it hurts. And I understand what you're saying. There could be some additional revenue, which would be nice. Personally, would prefer to just keep the plan on as is, keep that position frozen for now. I think the way they explained question. Next

the

better baseline of what our And revenue is gonna be and will give us a little more time to investigate parking. So putting on a hold for a year, I'm okay with it. I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm okay with it. I don't see this as a permanent thing, hopefully. But there's a lot of changes. You know, I see in the next page, under the general fund, the health insurance revised from 15 to 8%, but but it could just as well go up next year again. So just something to keep in mind. So it's a long winded way of saying I'm okay with keeping the port director on hold for now, but I I have, like Steven and we've made lot

of of And past. Past. The And

first

we expect the in '19. Of the year. Then And then we'll

Okay. There are only there are only a couple of slides on this one. I did include a report in the packet that did a direct comparison between the budget that was presented at the first general fund draft budget meeting and changes that have been made since then, some of them minor and some of them a little bit more significant. So as far as like the key changes from the prior draft, the health insurance reduction getting those final numbers made a significant difference. We were told that 8% was too low.

But I would like to make it clear that our broker made sure to emphasize that it was going to be 11.6%, and they negotiated down to 8%. So yes. So that did make a big difference for the deficit along with freezing a police sergeant position for FY 2027. So after the first draft, there were some assembly directed revisions that were made. Then we had these deficit reductions and a couple of other changes I wanted to talk about, too.

So my net impact slide looks a little bit funny without context because both revenue and expenses in the general fund revised draft actually went up. But the deficit was eliminated. So for capital and for the general funds capital projects, we did remove the heat pump projects for FY 2027. Those were presented as resource proposals. And we added some additional funding in there for the general fund component of the Lakehurst Monastery Kincade project.

That, along with the water and wastewater components, should allow us to actually complete that project. And the general fund portion is funded by the public infrastructure sinking fund. That's why both revenue and expense side of the budget went up in this revision because that difference came from public infrastructure sinking fund. So that did increase the transfer to $3,950,000 a little bit over 3,900,000 And that supports the capital projects and street repairs.

I have a question on the police sergeant position. Is that a reduction of an officer as a whole? Or is that a reduction of a promotion promotion ability? Ability?

Mike, chief of police hall. It would just be a hold on a existing position. We are restructuring a little bit at the police department, but our primary focus is to get our patrol officers to staff. We do plan on hiring one or filling one sergeant position, so we'll have two for '27, but that would come with inside the ranks and then refill patrol position. Projectedly, by the way, we're looking at staffing and our recruiting efforts.

We should have that ability to have an extra sergeant come on by the '28 budget. So releasing that, I don't think we'll fill it or we could work without it for at least another year to release some of that in the budget.

Okay, great. Thank you. And we all understand over expensive but results in burnout. Dropping this position, do you feel that you will maintain a healthy department all around? Absolutely. Was a great answer. That's right. Can you drop another one? Negative. That was a great answer. Thank you, chief. Thank you.

So the result is of that is a revenue increase of $2,250,000 for the general fund compared to year. And with we've we've of in surplus. I And did we've have a little note in here the about that the result is from the specific change and is not necessarily these aren't necessarily sustainable cuts. But I do want to also emphasize that a couple of the sales tax quarters, my projections were maybe even a little bit more conservative than normal because I saw some unusual behavior in the last two quarters. That's making me a little bit less sure.

It looks like there could be some impacts on some of the economic struggles that people are dealing with. So believe it or not, that the well, I'm going have to check. Yeah, those were the only two slides that I did on this. But happy to answer any questions. I did a little breakdown on that comparative report that shows exactly what was pulled out and added.

It's not so much a question, but when we got our packet dumped for this week, and I spent a couple hours reading through that. That's why I don't have very many questions because it was really well done. I I I went through and said, wait. What's oh, there it is. You know? What's the steps? Oh, that's appreciation. It was really easy to read and well done and don't want have a lot of questions. So thank you. To make a short story long, it was well done.

And then he'll be the one to make a motion on the second reading of the budget to change something.

I have a question.

I was just looking at the comparables over year from 2023 to 2024 to 2026 projections and 2027. And some departments didn't seem to change by that much over the years. Looking at fire protection went from 2,000,000 and kind of just like steadily increased a little bit to 3,000,000 where it's at for next year, which makes sense with like costs and things like that. Police did go up like almost $3,000,000 And then planning also went up a significant amount, which I understand to be the addition of the parks and rec program. But can you explain a little bit where that significant increase for the police department came from?

Sure. You're looking at actuals in 'twenty three and 'twenty four, and we were very, very low on our staffing levels during that time, and a lot of those positions have been filled. And we made some pretty significant wage adjustments, I think, last year to assist with our recruiting efforts. So you're seeing numbers for a more fully staffed department.

Are there some of the questions on our general fund? Sounds like we did good on that one. John, thank you for bringing back a balanced budget. I do appreciate the legwork there. Some of the decisions you made were not easy and I think they would have been even harder to make at the table.

But it sounds like by consent that the assembly is supportive of the direction you went. And I know you did your research, you dug deep, and you found where they could come out with the least amount of angst amongst the community because we do our community demands a very high level of service. So I appreciate you digging back into that and reducing it another, what, $300,000 on top of the, I think, 400 that we cut from the previous meeting. With nothing else on item c then, moving on to d.

Do we need to take public comment on item c?

No motions have been made. Can

I make a motion to take public comment on item c?

It would be redo it would be relaxing the rules or suspending the rules to allow for public comment.

May I make so

moved? Sorry.

It's been moved. Sarah, that's not undebatable, is it? No. Sarah? On the motion. Right.

And it does require a super majority vote. Miss Riley? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis?

Yes.

Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Mosier? Yes. Mister Pike? Yes. Mister Christensen?

Yes.

And mister Saline? Yes. Motion passes to suspend the rules.

So we'll open it up to public comment on the general fund at this point. So any item within the general fund that the public would like to comment on now is your opportunity. Three minutes per individual. On the very bottom, it's perfect.

Okay.

There you are. Thanks.

Is this where the field and maintenance falls under, the general fund?

Okay.

Correct. If you and if you could state your name for the record

Yes.

And you have

Tatiana Perkins. Good evening. My name is Tatiana Perkins. I'm a board member and coach for Sika Little League, Sika Softball Association, Sika Baseball Club, and Sika Fastball Club. Right now, our fields are not just heavily used. They're deteriorating. We're dealing with poor drainage, standing water that turns into swampy puddles, and sometimes full lakes, uneven playing surfaces unsanitary conditions like dog waste in areas where kids are actively sliding and playing, also adults. Even when pet owners clean up after their pet, residual waste always remains. This isn't just inconvenient and it's unsafe. We're not asking for luxury upgrades.

We are asking for safe, functional fields that meet the basic standards our community deserves. I understand that budget decisions are difficult. It's your responsibility that is tied directly to public safety and the well-being of our kids and our community. This goes far beyond sports. These fields support youth development and active adults.

They give sickens a safe place to be active, build confidence, and stay connected. When fields aren't maintained, practices get canceled, games are disrupted, injury risks increase, and volunteers are overworked. Our programs rely heavily on volunteers in a community like Sitka. Those volunteers are already limited. When maintenance responsibilities shift onto volunteers, the burden grows quickly. Over time, it becomes unsustainable. And when volunteers burn out and step away, we don't just lose help. We lose the very people who make these programs possible. So this isn't just about maintaining fields, it's about maintaining the people and systems that make these programs exist. And here's the reality.

Cutting maintenance doesn't eliminate cost, it delays it. The longer we wait, the worse conditions become and more expensive they are to fix later. I wanna offer a solution focused perspective. While reviewing the budget, I noticed that grant revenue appears minimal or zero. That presents an opportunity. There are grants specifically designed for parks, recreation, youth development, and community infrastructure. I would encourage assembly explore whether the city has dedicated your grant writer for those opportunities. Because if we can supplement funding through grants, we're not just maintaining what we have. We're expanding what's possible. These fields matter.

They matter to kids. They matter to the community. They matter to over 500 families that live here and that you represent. They deserve to be treated as priority and not an afterthought. I'm asking for you to reconsider the cuts and recognize that maintaining these fields is not a burden. It's an investment in the safety, health, and future of Sitka. I encourage the assembly support Parks and Rec with partnering with all user groups to come up with a plan. I also work for K and E Alaska, which is an excavating firm, and we have some solutions on the table if Parks and Rec division is open to discussing that too. Thank you.

Hi. I'm Steven Bunnell. I'm president of the Sitka Softball Association and just want to start off by thanking the Parks and Recs department for the work they continue to do maintaining our fields. We recognize that the challenges that come with limited resources and difficult weather conditions that we experience here in Sitka. That said, we've identified an ongoing issue with the materials currently being used on our fields.

Based on feedback from local experts, including Tatiana Perkins, Josiah Hill and the team at K and E Alaska, the materials being applied are not ideal for field performance. In many cases, are actually contributing to worsening field conditions rather than improving them. Our request tonight is twofold. First, we ask that the assembly supports parks and recreation in reconsidering the use of these local materials for field maintenance. We believe that continuing with the current approach will lead to an increased long term cost and ongoing playability issues.

Second, we ask for support in encouraging Parks and Recreation to collaborate more closely with the user groups like our softball community as well as local professionals. By working together, we can identify better solutions including sourcing more appropriate materials and pursuing grant funding opportunities to offset costs. We're not just raising concerns, we're also bringing forward solutions. We have identified alternative materials that are better suited for field conditions in Southeast Alaska and are prepared to help explore funding options and partnerships to make these improvements feasible. At the end of the day, we all share the same goal, safe, playable and sustainable fields for our community.

We're trying to make these fields safe for the kids and adults that are playing and trying to go to work the next day. We don't get many sunny days and we like to make the most of them if we're not going out fishing or hunting. Thank you for your guys' time.

Hi. I'm Carrie Iwamoto. I'm here also with, Sika Softball Association and really just speaking on the whole, the same subject. I wanted to bring up that we do realize that there are plans, these really grand plans, and they're going to be great. I think the facility, I believe it's that they're working on, the score, is really nice, but it's five or ten years out in the future.

So the kids that are in Little League right now are not going to be able to see this new facility. Half of the people that are in the league right now, the adult league, are going to be retired by then. So although that is great in the future, we really just need something that is going to get the kids through their little league career and the adults hopefully not injuring themselves and having to retire from the sport. And so I just wanted to say, I do realize that there is a lot going to that. But kicking it down, kind of kicking the can down two more years, three more years is it's really going to be it's not really an option if we want to keep safety front of mind. Thanks.

Hi. My name is Katie Bunnell, and I am a quasi representative of the Sitka Softball Association as well, but I'm also invested in Little League, and I wanna thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'd also like to thank the existing efforts that the Parks and Recreation Organization Department has contributed to the fields and the maintenance, not just up at Kimsham but also at Moeller. But today, wanna speak specifically on my concerns about the Kimsham Sports Complex as well as the detrimental impact of deferred maintenance or budget cuts would have to the facility. To describe the conditions broadly, the fields could be re categorized as a recreational musk egg.

The fields have little to no drainage which creates swamp like conditions that are dangerous for players as their feet can get stuck in the mud as and result in injury. Beyond that, the puddles and ponds that accumulate in both the infield and the outfield are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other biological health hazards, particularly when the fields are used by dog owners as an off leash play area, but that's a discussion for another day. Most notably, the batter's box on the lower fields developed a hole from the field use, and it was patched using a piece of artificial turf very aptly like a band aid. This is just a short list of the reasons why the Kimsham Complex is becoming increasingly undesirable for citizens to use for its intended purposes. It also helps explain the increased demand for the use of the Molar Sports Complex as it is the only safe and sanitary place for sports like softball, baseball, soccer, and more.

I look at the Kinsham Fields and worry that without timely intervention we will see them deteriorate to a point where they become unusable. I don't want them to fall into the same deplorable state as the abandoned lot on Japonsky. The only way to avoid this is to preserve the funds for field maintenance and beyond that improve it by leveraging partnerships with community stakeholders and grant funds. Thank you.

Anyone else this evening on the general fund budget? I see none. We'll bring it back to the assembly. Any further discussion on no. Back to the general fund. Do we have any further assembly comments after opening it up for public I

question. Think think

a

that's

retaining young families and giving folks things to do. Recreation is a super important part of our community and economy, I think, well. I know that the softball season brings in a significant number of folks. So I don't necessarily want to mess with this budget. I know that the team labored over it for a long time, but I would be interested in potentially entertaining a motion to support Parks and Rec and working closer with the user groups to explore some of these alternative solutions and considering something later on if there's an opportunity in the mid year supplemental or something like that.

Are you talking about basically us asking the staff to pursue grants? That's suggested.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, lending lending some support to that idea that staff can work with user groups and the commission you know and all of the advocates that work very hard for recreation in our community. If they think that they can find some opportunities there I would love to see that you know It's the help of all of the volunteers that keep so many of these projects going in town and so where staff can be supportive of that I know that they probably already are but if assembly support is requested for staff to do that I would be willing to give that. And then just a flag that I would be willing to reconsider this later on depending on how our financials look halfway through the year.

I know that's probably not ideal sand season, but I think that there was some good information presented about working with local businesses and staff to find a solution. So I just wanted to express my support for that.

Is there a thing for up at Kimsham because it's built it. We it. We better plan? Can

You mean Mark CV, public works director, and Connor's up here as our main superintendent. He probably knows more what we actually use. So we did in the last budget cycle have a $50,000 appropriation to pursue a specific blend of athletic field sand for use in our area. We didn't get any bids back or proposals back for that. And they basically told us that we didn't have enough funding for essentially to cover their shipping. So that's why we saw that proposal basically increase five times to $250,000

Conor Dunlap, maintenance superintendent. Just yet to expound on the history of the facility, construction was completed, I believe, 2005. It was built over the old landfill. A lot of thought was put into the design of the drainage for the entire site. From what we can determine, the main issue was that rather than seeding the fields, a pre grown sod material was brought in.

So it was, I believe, came from Eastern Washington, quite a bit drier climate than we have here. It was grown in a silty loam. And so essentially, what we did is we built a super engineered drainage field and then we put a silt cap over the top of it when we put the sod down on the outfields. So those outfields do not drain. Like I was said, they're kind of a musk egg, probably grow cranberries out there.

We've had instances where we have taken equipment out onto the field to do some like exploratory investigation into why the drainage is so bad. And when we used a backhoe to just scrape that top layer of the sod away, the field flushed like a toilet. It was you could see the water spiraling down into the drainage field. So long term solution for that is a difficult one. It would essentially be removing the entire sod out of the outfields and reapplying soil and reseeding would be the way to do it if we wanted to do grass.

We've also entertained the prospect of removing the entire sod and then converting them to sand fields. But as was mentioned, there's also these kind of developing concepts for how to establish a more lasting complex for athletics up in that area of town. So we kind of get stuck in this like how much do we invest into developing these solutions for a problem if we may bulldoze the whole thing out and put a different infrastructure in there in five to ten years. As for the infields, the drainage problem is not as bad as the outfield. The issue is more of our crown has been deteriorated over the last twenty years of having the field.

So we have areas of where it's low, where we get ponding and pooling. That's common for an infield. It's a clay sand mix. And that's if we had a crown, the water would shed. Reestablishing that crown has been pretty unsuccessful with our drag attachment for our tractor.

And then in addition to that, we have twenty years of a couple half cup leaving with people every time they come and play, leaves with their shoes and on their clothes. And after twenty years, we've just lost a lot of material. And so it's starting to get down to where there's very little sand on the infields. And if you drag or regrade that material very much, you're down into the bones and you're pulling up rocks. And so last year's attempt, as was mentioned by Mark, was to secure some sand with a pretty specific mix that we could add to those fields.

It didn't the concept was to try to address Kimsham Complex, but also all of our other athletic facilities. We have the lower track at Moeller, where we have the same issues occurring, the key ball fields and then to some extent the Landry that has some material loss as well. But that RFP to get sand was unsuccessful. We were essentially told we'd have a hard time getting a barge here for that cost. So we increased that in this year's budget, and now we're where we are today.

So the reduction in the sand that the assembly went forward with, that is not going to affect the amount of maintenance that you can try to do, correct? So you'll still go out there and attempt your normal amount of maintenance?

Yes. Our general maintenance through the summer is we attempt to do a weekly drag of the field with our equipment to redistribute that sand back onto the baselines. We attempt to drop material back in the low areas. What was referenced earlier with some of the faulty material was, I believe, in 2022, kind of as a last ditch effort, we attempted to buy sand product in town and apply it to the fields. And that was very unsuccessful. It was bad material to use on a field. We attempted to fill some of those low spots, and it just did not.

So that's everywhere? Or that's at Blatchley or

that's Kimsham?

That's just Kimsham. Yeah.

What could you do with $30,000?

Not much.

This is really a deep one. If you guys ever wanna see, I have all the eight by 10 color glossy photographs of the reform tort against the mill, and even the piling of all the fly ash that those baseball fields are built on, and then even the history of monitoring what comes from the drainage and why they made it so it wouldn't drain, I'm assuming, because they didn't want that anything busting through any of those bags of fly ash, which is a contaminated thing because we used to be a mill town. And so, there's gonna be a lot to that. And I walk over the Blatchley Field every day, and I know that that was built on a musk egg just kids could have a place to play back in the logging days. So that's gonna be complex thing doing that.

We're here to support you guys. We want baseball, but this is the first time that I've really been aware that there's been an issue because I never go up there, really.

Do you guys have the 50,000 from last year or did that go back into the general fund?

We still have that capital.

We could add 30,000. So you'd have less than 100,000, but that's not anywhere near the 300,000 that you would have had.

I mean, it's between nothing or 30, we would take the extra 30 and see what we could do. I mean, there may be partnerships or work we could do with some of the local contractors to try or to alleviate some of the pain?

So there'd be 80,000 total if I'm adding that up right with $15.80. Okay. K. Yeah. Move to add $30,000 to the sand fund.

Is is that the way that you were saying? Is that okay?

I second the spirit of it,

but

I

don't know if

that's way like.

I second the the motion.

Could we put a pin in that for just a second? I have a quick question before you is it okay? Please. So I was working the last meeting we where that happened. This strikes me as an infrastructure stinking fund project.

I mean, no? I looked

at it. And if you look at exactly what the allowed use of that fund, it doesn't seem to me to fit.

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I'd rather do the sand than pave molar, but I think we're too deep into that one right now. Would

you like me to craft a more eloquent motion? Okay.

Second. Second. It's been moved and seconded to increase the sand budget in public works by $30,000. Is there any public comment? Public works, if we could allow for some public comment.

Those

without two last names, please exit.

Thank you. Tatiana Perkins again. Work for K and E Alaska. And I just wanna get really specific on the material because I would hate to buy material that doesn't work for these fields. And I'm not exactly sure on what has been used in the past, but there's also material on Valandia that that was placed last summer that I think it's the local sand.

All I know is that the material we have in Sitka locally will not work for the fields. I think in theory, seems like an easy fix because it's here, you can buy it, and you can place it. Right? But then it makes it worse because then it just holds the water, and it becomes like a mud pie. And when you put that on the field where you're trying to play baseball and it's a wet, rainy rainforest, it just it doesn't work. So I just wanna be specific on the assembly support and not buying what we have in town right now because the material would only make the fields worse, not better.

Am Josiah Hill. I did some research on the sand. And baseball fields are clay, sand, and fine rock mixture. Clay is not ideal here because of the water that we have. So we need a sand and fine rock mixture and not round beach sand they sell at Ready Mix.

It is a triangular cut sand. So it is a specialty item for baseball fields. I am not sure that this is a permanent fix, but I think it is a temporary fix to prevent injury. At some point, these fields are gonna start injuring kids and players. And would just not like to see that. So that's all I have.

I also think that Parks and Rec should heavily rely on our communities. Being a Sikka tribe member, I know that they alone qualify for community grants in the millions that could help. And also working at K and E, I've worked with Adam McCloud, our superintendent, and Joe Williams, our general manager, and the owner of our company, Carrie Kinsey. And they're all open to having discussions on donating equipment, donating operators to help. I know I think Parks and Recs kinda scraped some of key or something, but we even are open to putting in, like, a French drain.

It's just very temporary. It will help move the water off so it doesn't hold. I just think that the assembly should support parks and rec having a bigger open discussion with the broader community and that use the fields to come up with solutions. Because I think with 500 plus families being involved that use the fields, we can all come together. I'm in the nonprofit world. I do grant writing and then working in the earthwork business. I think there's a lot of resources out there that won't cost the city money. Thank you.

Anyone else on adding $30,000 to the sand budget for the fields? Assembly discussion?

Yeah. First of all, I'm sure Kevin is hearing this and the other people at Parks and Rec. And I'm not sure that doing this does anything. I mean, we don't have a proposal yet. And I'm hoping, I don't think we don't need to have a motion to ask this parks and rec to work with the groups.

Mean, I think that that's, I'm sure they would be doing that and be willing to look for other things. And if they have a proposal where this 30 ks would make a difference, encourage them to come back for a supplemental. But just doing it blind like this, at least from what I'm hearing, doesn't really necessarily help. It may be but if we can get an actual Okay, here's an idea that a group was put together and working with Parks and Rec. Yeah, then let's have something to vote on.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for public comments. Appreciate it. I kind of think it would be okay to approve this 30,000.

I don't see us as just saying, okay, here's 30 more grand and then take the 50 from last year and just go buy a bunch sand from a random place. I see this as taking these funds, asking obviously, we're not as the assembly. We're asking John as our employee to work with Parks and Rec and Public Works to kind of do some creative thinking within and without the community partners to kind of come up with some creative solutions that have been discussed. Obviously, that's not something where we would get into the details of. But I think there's volunteers willing to help.

Of course, some things to keep in mind too is when you have volunteers or insurance requirements and things like that that need to be considered and talked about and thought through. So it's not always quite as easy as we think, but I definitely think that we should have our eyes and ears open to any possibility of collaborating with community partners. And I want to reiterate, we're not just giving this direction to go do it. We're asking John. I think John's hearing our discussion here and understanding that as he is nodding his head. So I'm fully in support of this 30,000. I think that's good. A good idea of just taking what's left over and JJ, good point in in identifying that 50,000 from last year. So it's really 80,000. So I'm in support. Thank you.

Yeah. I just want to thank everyone for coming with the solutions mindset. I think that's really hard and often we don't get to hear that. And so I'm appreciative of that. And I think that, you know, 30,000 might not be so much, but 80,000 is a significant amount to look to partner with.

So I definitely want to, you know, flag this at the government to government meeting. I would love to work with the tribe on looking for some you know joint ways to fund these important activities and altogether I think you know it's it's not the ideal but we're here to make compromises and this is a relatively small amount of money that we can add to hopefully create a much larger amount of money and support these activities until we can get a better solution in place. So just want to thank everyone for the collaborative spirit tonight.

And I'm I'm supporting it also because what I'm hearing is this crushed sand, like you'd have to cut the crushed sand with the inferior product that there's now because $30 ain't gonna go that far. And if mixing that all in would add more stability, and then people would learn from that even if that was a waste, I'm I'm good for having 500 families at least see us doing something for the traction and sliding into base. I don't really know of the round beach sand and then putting in so much of the crushed, you know, sharp angled sand if that would make it more stable. I don't know how it goes, but I could see it being a thought anyway.

I've been educated more on sand tonight than I ever thought would be possible. It sounds like our public works team has that under under control, so I appreciate that. Yeah. I see this as a little bit of seed money for potential partnerships here. It's also reassuring to me that we did not have that $50,000 spent last year, so our public works teams understands that they will not be buying an inferior product.

So I'm comfortable adding this money knowing that the money as a whole will be gone to a correct and good purpose, not as temporary patch that has been tried previously and does not work. I also know that if a solution cannot be found at this money, in the future budgets, they will come back, they will ask for more and we'll be able to get it done. It won't be just spent randomly. Brooke, can you please put that in as 502101 slash sand fund?

I'm happy to add the word triangle cut

to the sand fund if that needs to be a part of the motion.

Sarah, please.

On the motion to add $30,000 to the general fund budget for Ballfield Sand. Mister Christensen?

Yes.

Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Mister Pike?

Yes.

Ms. Riley? Yes. Mr. Mosier? Yes. And Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Motion passes seven zero.

Thank you. Anything else on item C, assembly, or are we ready for a break? That's a quick way to get us to the next item, isn't it? I know a new trick. In an effort to get home before 10:30 this evening, I'd like to jump back into our agenda tonight.

Thank you everybody. I just wanted to make sure there's anything left capital improvement plan this evening. Katie?

I move to revert to FY twenty six funding levels for travel for assembly members to the

then the quarter first twenty quarter of Is there any public comment? Katie, you want to talk about your motion?

Yeah. I just think that we have a budget shortfall and well now we have a perfectly balanced budget. I'd love to leave us with a little bit of a surplus. But I think, you know, we're all we're all being asked to make sacrifices right now. And while I believe that AML is a a great experience, it was beneficial as a newly elected, and I want to make sure that that is still there for other newly electeds and our mayor.

I don't think that it's necessarily appropriate for us to send all of the assembly members to AML at this point in time when we're having to consider these cuts in other spots. So I want to ensure that that opportunity is still available for the newly electeds in the Mayor, but I think that in this time of kind of constrained revenues, I'd like that it just remain those three.

Can Katie, can you tell me what savings that will give us?

No. We don't have a number. The current amount budgeted is $20,000. The amount per person that is about budgeted is essentially 2,500 per person. So I think it would be a savings of around $15,000, but we don't have the exact amounts. However, the FY '26 level was what was budgeted for three people. So that's why I suggested to revert to that. I don't think it's in there. I don't think that level of detail is in there.

It's not broken out. It's just under travel and training as a whole. And we would just take whatever per person. It was times seven, we'd take it whatever the per person cost is and change it to the three.

And can someone tell me then And

that. Do And was an advocate able for when I returned from the the last annual AML, which is the only one we're talking about here. This assembly gets very little professional development as we go through our time here. And I see AML as a direct way to increase the assembly's efficiency and productivity. So I advocated for sending five of the assembly members.

I didn't think it needed to be all of them. Nothing against the two that are coming off. But with just a year left, I thought we could have got a good compromise there if we sent first year and second year assembly members who still have a bit of time left on the body. So that was something I advocated for. It did come into the budget.

John, I thought had John had cut it previously to make the budget eek whole, but he said it was a little bit of a hot issue, and he didn't wanna touch it and left it up to us. So I would continue to advocate to send five assembly members just due to the professional development that happens there. This assembly receives you know, we we get a small stipend, but we don't get very many perks of the job. If that helps people, you know, make it through weeks where we have four meetings in the week just to to stay on and stay strong, I'm all about that. But that's only the

then

And we'll to more a $4,000,000 for 850 heat pumps that was gonna go to the the Northwest Arctic Borough. And just stuff from the presentation when I was there from Valdez's city planner, Seward's city planner, doing stuff. And I want you don't get a chance to get back and talk with these people because you're not but, you know, you can network there. When you see them from the various seminars and even with the, you know, the the kelp farm down at Prince Of Wales that, you know, absorbs uranium in the in the running downhill, and they harvest the kelp, and they get selenium and different stuff out of the water in the kelp, you know, avant garde stuff that's happening, and it's it's worth going. And just even just the housing thing alone of what Valdez did.

So it's been two years. You don't get to talk to those people except at that, and then everybody comes together and brings their own little there's just so many educational things there about happening in the state. And it's not really a political thing. It's just what's happening. From trades, energy, it's a good thing.

Yeah, a few thoughts here. And I said I wasn't going to say this, but I'll wait. First of all, I hadn't been for a few years until last year. Professional development, it's a good way of saying it, but it also reenergizes you as an assembly person. I mean, I think Scottie's definitely right.

The networking, you learn a lot of stuff, but it gets you excited again about doing things and ways to do things. And there is a political aspect. Sometimes we get to bend some legislators ears and some folks from the federal government that are there to speak to us. And I know that there's been money coming to Sitka that started at AML. And we also will at times work up the groundswell to speak as a group to Juneau, to the legislature, and to a lesser extent the feds.

I think five people is appropriate because you wouldn't get all seven to go even if you wanted to. Then, like I said earlier, wasn't going say this. But the budget is I mean, we're right on the line now. But I'll guarantee you we're not going to be later. And the 15,000 isn't gonna make any difference either way.

And it's like I said, it is an estimate. And to me, we're there. And I think we should keep it. Like I said, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get five people, but we're not gonna make any difference in it. It would be I understand why we the motion was made. It's not the first time that's been done. It was when I first got on the assembly twenty something years ago, everybody went. And then for the same exactly the same reason, we stopped doing that. And I think it hurt us. It hurt.

And so I would advocate keeping it in. I totally understand why we wanna do it. But I don't see it as I think the benefits outweigh the moral victory of taking a little bit away from ourselves.

JJ? The policy ideas and strategies you can gain from thinking out loud with others in similar conditions is was really beneficial for me for the one time I went to AML when I was newly elected. You know, we have a lot of unique challenges in Sitka, but there's a lot of other Alaska community communities that really understand and and can help help us through. I talked a lot about housing when I was there with people. Childcare was another big topic, and hearing what other communities did helped me understand some ideas to bring that right solution to Sitka, not just copy and paste, but to see why they did what they did and bring their their inputs into Sitka to have us have our unique outputs.

I mean, you can just mix with people, like, for instance, an assembly member from Whittier. I was like, oh, hey. We now, you know, do your dispatch. How is that going for you? And you can have kind of really frank conversations with people and get good feedback, and I found it to be a very valuable experience. And I knew it was tax dollars that was funding that trip, so I made sure to get the most out of that experience. And I think others other people would do the same. So for my $2,500 that came to me for that, I think we we got that much in advice for policy outcomes in the work that I've done in three years.

Kevin? Sure. I would tend to agree with most of the comments here. I think sending 500 is a good compromise. And like Tore said, even if we had all authorized, I don't think logistically every single person would be able to go just because schedules and things like that. We're

that.

Members, you're working with the public. Sometimes it is nice to talk to other elected representatives in other communities to kind of get some other ideas. So it helps you feel like you're not operating in a vacuum and trying to come up with solutions on your own all the time. I think that can be very beneficial to get to know other people and see what they're doing and share ideas. So do that.

That.

That.

The to next if we authorized all seven to go during the year just because of schedules I don't think that all seven would be able to go.

Kevin procedurally so there is the funding for seven in the budget right now If we need to change that, it would be by motion. And I'm fearful of passing the responsibility of picking who doesn't get to go to an administrator.

Alright. I see what you're saying.

Y'all gonna make me amend my motion?

You could do it.

No. I just I appreciate hearing the value that it's it's brought to others. And, you know, if this body wants to vote to to send five, I would be supportive of that. My my point was just that, it it is extremely beneficial, and I'm glad that we see that as a professional development opportunity for our assembly members. And I hope that everyone that has gone and continues to go really does make a meaningful experience of that because that is our citizens' dollars at work that are paying for that.

I would also it's not the only chance that we have for to to meet with others that are working at other municipalities and always the opportunity to, you know, pick up the phone and continue those conversations. Like, that's also part of the the job and the professional development. So it's you know, for me, I'm like, okay. I'll also be looking for more opportunities to invite those other perspectives into the room. I definitely you know, the ADU conversations that we're having were had up at AML and were shared over from Juno. So, yeah, I see those benefits. I wanna maintain that. If someone wants to make an amendment, I would would vote in affirmative for that.

I'll make an amendment or amendment motion. I move to amend the motion to change it from or to send five assembly members to AML during this budget session.

Sarah, with the motion on the floor that doesn't really flow with it, does it? Because we reverted

The it to a motion

20 on the floor was to revert to the FY twenty six budget level for the Alaska Municipal League

Correct.

So we're talking about

So and that was three, which what was budgeted for the assembly.

So then okay. Okay.

So you're you're comfortable going from a dollar amount to a person amount?

Well, I inserted that for clarity for myself.

If if you're comfortable with it, I am.

I Yes. I am. Okay. Yes. So if you wanted to make an amendment, you could change three to whatever you wanna change it to.

Help me with that Yes.

That, please?

So you would make an amendment to increase the number of assembly members for attendance at Alaska Municipal League from three to five.

So moved. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to increase the attendance at AML annual conference from three assembly members to five. Is there any public comment? Further assembly deliberation? Sarah?

Okay. So, you're voting on the primary amendment right now, and that's changing the number from three to five members. Mister Pike?

Yes.

Mister Moser?

Yes.

Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Christensen?

Yes.

And miss Riley? Yes. Okay. The amendment passes.

The main motion as amended to send five members to AML. Correct. Which it's currently budgeted for seven, so we'd be reducing that number by two. Discussion? Sarah?

Alright. On the motion to send five members, to the Lasko Municipal League, conference. Miss Carlson? Yes. Miss Riley? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Mister Mosier?

Yes.

Mayor Eisenbeis?

Yes.

Mister Pike? Yes. And mister Christianson? Yes. The motion passes seven zero as amended.

Thank you. Anything else on the general fund this evening item C? No? No? That'll

bring

us to item D tonight. So this is gonna be a discussion direction decision of the fiscal year twenty seven capital improvement plan. That says plan. I go off this. John, you have a introduction here and then Brooke, I'm sure, will take it away.

We'll just have Brooke take it away with another very short presentation. And then I'm probably going to be calling Mark and Ron up here to help out as well. And Connor.

I just have a couple of slides on this one too. The main reason there's so few is because I did quite a robust presentation when we had the earlier meeting on the capital program. So there's a lot of helpful information on there. I did not think anyone would like me to repeat all those same slides. So I kind of just did a summarized version.

So included with your draft budget packet was an updated capital documents that make up the updated capital improvement program. So projects are shown in two categories in our packets. So the one category is approved capital appropriations. And those are presented with each fund's operating budget. So it's that final page or a couple of pages right after their operating budgets.

Then the other category is the mid to long range for planned and unfunded projects. So that's separate document provided with the budget, that big table that's four or five pages, five pages, I think. It is still a work in progress, especially for some of the funds. But it's going to and it's going to be continued to be refined over time. So our CIP supports planning, not immediate construction.

It does include projects and design, phased or awaiting funding. It is important to note that appropriations do not always result in immediate activity. Projects might move through design, funding and construction phases. And in some cases, we intentionally accumulate funding over time or set it aside for grant match in some cases. And then project timing depends a lot on capacity and other external factors.

So staffing workload, procurement, grant opportunities and requirements. And I talked a little bit about this, I believe, at the first general fund budget meeting about we are emphasizing trying to complete as many of our existing projects as possible and closing out some of those old ones. They're probably at least on the general fund side, less capital appropriations than normal, ignored school ones. There's lots of projects on there, but that's different. But we intentionally did that to kind of focus on what we could do we're so we're able that.

To

And

documentation. So the thing that's a little bit different is I provided a packet I don't remember what I called it supporting documents that have the project cover sheets and the resource proposals all in one place that list the scope and the funding sources and all of that. So that was not included the first time that we talked about the capital improvement plan program. I realize that I interchangeably use those words also. I'm probably not supposed to. But otherwise, there were a few changes made to the actual mid to long range plan, this one since that first meeting, but nothing too significant.

Thank you, Brooke. Discussion on our capital improvement plan. JJ?

Is GPIP incorporated into this at some point?

I mean

it doesn't have to be this year, but at some point to be shown as a fund with capital?

You always have a hard question. I think there's still a lot of decisions like we talked about earlier, lot of policy decisions on what GPIP looks like. And I'm way oversimplifying this, but the intent with GPIP was to get the land out leased out sold and then the infrastructure is absorbed into the city. So it all depends on what the future of GPIP looks like.

Thank you. I see a recall from Charter that it's with the fiscal year that's being planned plus the future five. I see that here with four years and then the long range. I think that all kind of matches into what we're trying to do to do that incremental improvements to get to our charter requirements. What do you think are the categories, the funds that have the most need for building out in the next year?

What are your next couple years? For which areas do you want to get kind of more robust understanding of what the capital needs for?

I'm not sure I have an answer for that. It's all going to depend on what the risk matrix looks like as we score them out. It's never as simple, we're going to take the top 10. Sometimes you have to be strategic in how you fund them. If you know you can hit the top three and then maybe you have some other dollars and hit something further down the list. I couldn't give you a clean answer without seeing where the risk assessment lies every year.

Thank you.

Yes. I can tell you that the Harbor Fund needs a lot of work. Those numbers are quite old. And we have to look at more phased approaches to kind of navigate the new funding climate that we're in with that fund. So we know I've talked to Brandon. We know that needs a lot of attention. So I know at least on my end that that's higher up on the priority list to at least figure out what it is that they need and how much those things cost in today's dollars.

Great. Thank you. I see a lot of coordination between Water Fund and wastewater and electric, which really gets at some of our goals here when that was added about overlapping with existing infrastructure to align efforts for improvement. So that's that's really lovely to see. Thank you for everyone who's contributed to to this.

It's helpful. Even though it's a spreadsheet, I kind of consider it a map to see where we're going. And it, with numbers, kind of solidifies where where we're going to articulate aspects of the strategic plan. And it helps to also see how much we're funding at a time for things that we know are coming. So Cat Leanne Street, Lincoln Street improvements.

I was kind of thinking that project was happening a little sooner with the not resource proposal, but the other sheet that's in there. That helps to kind of give that supplemental to understand why we're in the conditions that we are for the kind of longer term funding needs here. So you can gain a multitude of information just by your pass and then your second and your third and then connecting things and seeing why, you know, 11 Road has been in in deferred status for for ten years because the those efforts, those infrastructure needs are are being placed in another one. So it's a great document. I'm not really a numbers person.

I'm more of a visual person, and so seeing it as a map and understanding why things are being allocated the way they are. Being planned to be allocated the way they are is helpful to understand why isn't that project happening right now. So I appreciate all of this effort. It is monumental task, but a great template to continue to move forward with as we take on and understand that we are more alone in funding larger projects than we have been in the past with this with being a a town in Alaska. So with that comes more need for for planning in this long range way to be able to communicate with new assembly members and the community for why why things are the way that they are.

I think that's a very valuable tool. Thank you.

Anything further on our capital improvement plan? Okay. With nothing else, this

would

bring us to persons to be heard. This is public participation for any item on or off tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual. Okay. Seeing none, we move to adjournment.

Second. All

those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you staff who came out tonight. I know it's a late night, but we appreciate you being here.