City and Borough Assembly - Regular Meeting

Allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The I assembly of the city and borough of Sitka would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional first people of Chitka. With gratitude, we proceed on Tlingitani. Sarah, roll call, please.

Mayor Eisenbeis?

Present.

Mister Pike?

Here.

Miss Carlson? Here. Miss Riley? Here. Mister Christensen? Here. Mister Moser?

Here.

And mister Saline?

Here.

Thank you. Any correspondence or agenda changes this evening? I see none. That'll bring us to ceremonial matters. Tonight, we have a service award for Jeff Budd. This service award is on behalf of the city and borough of Sitka, is hereby awarded to Jeff Budd. This expression of grateful acknowledgment for almost six years of valued service rendered in the public interest while serving on the library commission. Thank you. My understanding is the library his fellow library commissioners would not let him not accept this one in person. So he must have had a quite a six year service.

Jeff, as Sarah would always say, you know, there are other boards, commissions, and committees open. So if you find yourself with additional time on your hands, you most definitely can volunteer for some other ones. But please come on up. Moving on our in our agenda. We have several scheduled special reports this evening.

Do we have someone from Sitka tribe of Alaska? Not seeing anyone initially. We'll come back to that. School board, Phil. Are you here? There you are.

Good evening. Bill Burdick, president of the Sitka School Board. I wanna start off by saying thank you so much. As you know, we passed our FY '27 budget last week, and we certainly could not have done it without your support. You know, in a time when school districts around the states around the state are laying off dozens of teachers, shuttering schools, gutting programming, is once again leading the state by demonstrating how a healthy, cooperative community can support education.

With your steadfast support, we were able to hire back three teachers we thought we were losing to attrition. This will help keep class sizes manageable and allow for the direct supports and interventions that show results. And I'd like to just share one example of this, the proficiency reading levels at Hoots Elementary School. So at the beginning of the school year, fifty nine percent of students who came into the kindergarten and first grade classes were below or far below proficient in the benchmark in reading. But by the end of the year, that dropped to 26.

So now a full seventy four percent of K and first grade students are reading at or above benchmark. And this kind of achievement is possible only because we can keep class sizes low and offer targeted strategic interventions. So thank you. There are still opportunities to advocate for educational funding at the legislative level. They're not done yet, so we're not done yet.

Because of the high price of oil per barrel, there's talk of one time funding for transportation to offset high heating fuel costs, reading grants, CTE funding, and deferred maintenance. While these may not directly impact SIC, I think it's important to remind the legislature that there's still plenty of unfunded mandates and ways to keep education on the front burner. Any monies we do end up receiving could support a much needed tech refresh, increase our fund balance, and offset other inflationary costs. So a rising tide floats all boats, I suppose. And then finally, next Wednesday at 5PM, we will be recognizing retiring and resigning staff.

It's shocking to think that we have nine staff who are leaving, and they represent one hundred and ninety eight years of service to the Sitka School District. This institutional knowledge cannot be replaced, and it will be sorely missed. Again, this kind of retention is possible because staff know that they're recognized and supported by this community. So again, thank you so much. This is another problem that is around the state, but we don't find it in our backyard. And it's thanks to you and thanks to the community. So I just want to acknowledge that. I appreciate you.

Phil, where is that celebration going?

It will be at our regularly scheduled meeting, which will be at Sikh High School Library, Library, 5PM. Your very own will get some cake in his face.

I will move on to our 2025 CBS annual electric reports. Ron and Brie? And then Ron, you get to stay up there right afterwards.

Yeah. I'm going to try to merge these just for the sake of time, make things go a little bit quicker. I'm going start out with the so so as the mayor said, we have two reports tonight. One of them is going to be our quarterly report for the first quarter of twenty twenty six. And then our second report is an annual report for 2025.

It's something new that we're trying to to get information out to the public. Starting off with this first quarterly report, one of the big focus areas that I want to point out in the report the outages. For 2026, the first quarter, so the first three months of the year, we experienced a total of 16 outages, which is very comparable to what you would expect for an entire year. Comparing that to 2025, we had about 17 outages. So you can see 17 outages over the course of the year is a lot more spread out and that's something a lot more normal to our numbers.

Breaking those outages down, about one third of them were due to natural some sort of natural interference. So that could be a tree falling, it could also be a number of different small animals that get on the lines and and disrupt things. About two thirds of the outages that we experienced were due to infrastructure failures. And those could be anything from we had one, it was a line splice that just failed. It was probably due for failure the way that it had been put together.

And then a number of different insulation failures and then some transformer failures. And in large part, a lot of them are looking like just due to the freeze thaw cycle. So something that we can expect if we do dip down into colder temperatures. And as we look back through our data, it looks like that actually aligns with a few years ago when we had some colder spells like that. And then we did have one incident which was a procedural breakdown.

And that is something that in layman's term would just be one of our operators failed to follow the procedure that was outlined for them to follow. So mitigation for these outages. So our goal is to make sure that these don't happen again. We want to make sure that we're learning lessons from anything that's happening out there. We want to make sure that we're making good data driven decisions and making informed decisions.

We were able to pick up specifically in February and March and accelerate some tree clearing that we had lined up for Green Lake Road. We like to spread that out over the course of the year but we were able to target that and and really clear cut some areas to make sure that those risks are are mitigated a bit. We also began mobilizing our crews to get out and do more assessments on our assets and put the full force of our budget to work to make replacements on some of those assets that we would like to be able to run to failure, but it's just not practical to keep the reliability numbers that we want to keep for the town. And then lastly, we worked on developing some improved operational procedures and training. That's kind of an ongoing effort, continual improvement, making sure that we're looking at our procedures for our operators and continually improving those, giving those guys training that they need and making sure that again we're not making the same mistake twice.

Moving on to some of the challenges beyond outages. We are down five positions right now. Two of those positions are kind of on the cusp of being filled. And so we're hoping that we have good news in our next report. Then the I'm sorry. Three of those positions are on the cusp of being filled. Two of them also going to be filled potentially by contracted support in May. That's a common thing. Both of those positions are in line with our linemen crews that we typically augment. Lastly, some of the projects we have moving.

We have some good stuff ramping up. In that first quarter, we were pushing through getting things lined up for spring and our spring projects. We have an excitation replacement in GreenLake, which essentially is the system that helps our units start up and get up to speed and and synchronize. It's a critical system that's been on and off failing for about the last twelve years is what I hear. So it's really big news getting that thing replaced. It's going to help our reliability going into the future. Couple other things. We have some PLC replacements and some SCADA server replacements. These are things that have just kind of timed out as far as technology. So again, helping the system become reliable and making sure that we're getting ahead of some of those failures.

And then another couple that we have going on, we're kicking off a metering upgrade project that'll help us hopefully reduce the amount of time that we're spending out in the field reading meters and then also making sure that our our meters are more precise. And then lastly, we have a Green Lake Dam failure detection project. So we've been setting up some cameras up at the Green Lake Dam to make sure that we get proper notification if there is something funny going on up there. So it helps with security. And then, sorry, I did say last thing but I do have one more thing that I want to add in here.

It appears as though our efforts by our administrator and our mayor in Washington had paid off the $2.47 money, which is an incentive program. It's about $2,500,000 through the DOE is it looks like it's coming through now. So positive news there. That's going to help us get our GreenLake power plant refurbished, which produces about 20 megawatts out of 26 megawatts in the winter that we're using. So it's a significant plant and it it really means a lot.

Lastly, I want to just touch on budget. So our budget is currently 63% expended and we're about 79% expended for time. So we're a little bit behind largely probably because of the the staffing. It's it's kind of holding us back from pushing through some of these projects that we really really wanna get moving on. Yeah. That's what I got for quarterly report. I'd like to quickly move into the annual report. It's something new and it it might require a little bit more time. Does are there any questions at this point?

One quick question. On those vacancies, are any of those categorized as hard to fill?

They're all.

They're all.

Okay. They're all very hard to fill. Mhmm. A couple of them are management positions which of course are are costly right now. The big news that we're hearing from the national labs is almost all the projects that they're starting to engage in are data center or AI driven projects. And as we all know, those companies have a lot of money that they can throw at recruiting people like this. And it's just something that's very difficult to compete with. But they're pretty difficult.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you so much.

I just had a question about overtime. I know that you guys were working really hard during all those outages and the snow. Are you going to expect to bring any additional supplemental funding request to us? Or are you on track because of the vacancies and whatnot?

The vacancies are balancing it out at this point. Yeah. The it it is something that we've looked at over the last couple of months. The number of outages that have happened, each one of them puts our guys into into double time when they're after hours like that. And it yeah. It adds up really quick. So one of the things that will help us and it's kind of a give and take is when we do use contracted support, they max out. So it's a little bit easier to use them and not push into the high numbers. And it comes out of a different budget sometimes. So depending on how we're using it, we're able to use them on capital projects and hit our capital budgets.

So kind of strategically using those dollars is getting us through. And I don't yes, think we'll be fine getting through the end of the year. Anything else?

Thank you. Alright.

Okay. Is it okay if I jump into the next?

If it's the last one.

Maybe. Thank you. Okay. So this year, in alignment with a theme that we've been trying to push, we're we're trying to be more transparent. Right? We hear a lot of things in the community. People are there's some some theories out there that don't often align with reality and no one's really to blame. We want to get better at getting information out there so that the public knows what's going on. Right? That's one of the goals of the quarterly report.

And and as Brie and I have been talking over the last handful of months, that's one of the big pushes for this annual report. It's to get data out there so that the community knows how we're baselining against other communities, other other folks in Alaska, and then nationwide. And so there's some really good stuff in this report. I I have to definitely give credit to Brie. She's done an amazing job pulling all the stuff together.

Oftentimes, it's very difficult pulling data from the past because of the way that it's been organized. And so, I'm going go ahead and kick off a couple of these things and then I'm going pass it off to Brie. So, a few things in here that I would like to point out specifically are is our outage data. So, I don't remember. I think it's page 10. If if you're able to skip to that, it has some pretty good outage data. Outage data is usually broken up into interruptions. So those are the actual events and then duration. So that's the time that folks are out. On one of those, we actually look pretty good.

So our outage data for outage durations, we come in at about 95% less than most of The United States. And that's something that I've noticed since I've been here. Our outages were usually about thirty minutes. Like we can we can recover really quickly. The bad part is we're having to recover really quickly.

And that's where we don't perform so well. So that's where we put ourselves at about 46% behind the rest of The United States as far as the number of outages that we have. And again, that's something that we're kind of we're trying to develop some strategy to get our folks out in the field to replace things preferably before they fail. It's not always an option. It's not always cost effective because you're not allowed to you're not allowing your assets to run a failure but you're trading that off for better reliability in the system.

So it's it's a give and take. A couple of things I want to focus your reading on is some of our projects. So how are we how are we improving? How are we responding to this data and and hopefully making sure that doesn't happen again? We have a number of projects going on at the national labs where we are developing a risk register.

That risk register is going to help us identify and prioritize our risks so that we can mitigate them much like the way that we do our capital planning each year in our different departments. And so that's a big thing that we're focused on in on right now. We also have a number of different models that are getting set up. So a lot of good data collection and a lot of good modeling set up by the by the national labs. Where that helps us is hopefully again to get ahead of things, model different scenarios, and and hopefully make more data driven decisions and informed decisions to to cut these things off before they're happening.

And hopefully learn to manipulate our system a little bit better to respond to some of these outages in in a better way. Way. And then lastly, this is the last thing I promise. There's a lot of good stuff in here. The last thing that I want to touch on are rates.

So this is the topic that everybody likes to talk about. And Breeze has been able to pull together some really good data. This is baselined against national data that's collected by the Department of Energy and some sub agencies that fall out of that. But that data sets us just below if you use a weighted average, it's setting us just below the national average, which is pretty amazing for the amount of infrastructure and the small team that we have going. And the fact that we're on an islanded grid where we can't rely on the bulk electric system.

We're not able to just switch over to another electric grid as needed. And so whereas we're not giving up on the goal to keep cost as low as possible, just it's it's good to kinda take a look at that and know that we're not as bad as many of the communities in in Alaska and we are striving to become better all the time. So with that, pass it off.

Yeah. Thank you. Ron just wanted me to talk a little bit more about affordability. As he mentioned, I spent a lot of time pulling the information here and presenting it in a way that is hopefully understandable for folks since I know a lot of these things are very complicated and very complex. But affordability is a topic I think a lot about, particularly how it's related to sustainability and reliability. Together, those are called the energy economic trilemma. If you imagine a three pointed scale that I am constantly trying to balance every day in my day to day work, but then also try and move forward in time as well. So walking with a three pointed scale, making decisions every moment, it can be kind of tough. So that is how I conceptually think about a lot of these things. And so when I talk about energy, I typically speak about it pretty inclusively, which includes electricity as one form of energy.

And fortunately, energy is just kind of expensive. It is a fundamental law of nature, be it food, oil, or in this case, electricity is what we're talking about. So when I'm asked about affordability, it's really important that I try to include the entire picture when we're talking about energy to give as much of a holistic approach to all of that, which hopefully this report makes an attempt at. As Ron mentioned, our weighted average for residential rates is just below the national average, and that's largely because things have just gotten more expensive over the last eight years especially. And it's also very hard to compare different electric rates with different utilities because every utility calculates those rates slightly differently.

There's things like time of use or bulk agreements. There's, again, there's a lot of complexity that is hard to capture in what's supposed to be a succinct document. So please keep that in mind when you're reading that. And it's just yeah. It's a very difficult concept to report on and

to

quantify, and I wanna just make sure that I recognize that it is very circumstantial of what affordability is for every single person. Over the past few years working with Ron and with the labs, we've made some progress on being able to to better report on what affordability might look like. But I wanna just highlight that, yeah, there's a lot more to consider when we're talking about than just the pure pure kilowatt hour price. And there's a lot more work to be done as well. So by hopefully giving you a initial report that's alerting all of these things.

It's setting a trend for the future as we continue thinking about these things. Because as we've mentioned before, this community is very special in that we have a lot more control over electricity and how that part of our energy is structured and governed. And so moving forward, as we continue to see loads grow in the future, which we are seeing a little bit of still, a little bit slower than anticipated, but it is still happening, I look forward to collaborating with the letter department and the national labs to keep improving things like communications and keeping affordability at the forefront of our minds when we're thinking about what sicker looks like in five, ten, twenty or so years. Because everything I'm seeing just shows that the grid is gonna continue to be important, and so it's important people understand what is going on. And I appreciate Ron working on with me to do this.

So thank you.

Thank you both. A lot of really good information here. Again, the the presentation and the graphics, always top notch, and you both speak with a lot of authority to what you bring. So I get the feeling that you vastly understand what you're talking about. So I appreciate both the annual report and the quarterly report. Anything from this, JJ?

Can you tell me about December 2025? I think we had an all time highest load. Can you go more into that?

Sure. Yeah. We did. I think we peaked just over 26 megawatts, 26.2, something like that. And and that's a high, of course. What we were at last year was somewhere around mid twenty five, something like that. Our overall capacity, if we had all of our units spinning up that could run at once would be something like 36. So we do have some bandwidth there. We do like to keep those extra units there in case one of them experiences an outage an outage or or if there's an issue to be able to take them on offline and and do proper maintenance. So that's but I I do want to add, keep in mind this last year search started to come online and I'd want to say what was it like?

Point seven megawatts, something like that. That's that's coming in off of that line.

And that was related to cold temperatures, sustained cold temperatures most likely was where that drop Yeah.

It's really interesting. It's it's kinda funny. I I came across the same data analysis that I think Bree did is once you get to about the third day of a cold snap, when we start getting closer to closer to single digits or, you know, right around 10 degrees, when you get a sustained third day, that's when it seems like the heat capacity of a house just kind of loses it. It seems like heat pumps kind of keep up with that. Heat pumps are great. But when you get into that third or fourth day, they can start to struggle is what it seems like. Yeah.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I'm just wondering on the modeling and the affordability. You plug that into, like, if we could get the feet per second that the dam was designed for instead of the five twenty and, the 10,000,000 that was forecasted to line the penstock so that you could spin that extra 300 feet per second. Do you have that megged out in affordability as far as having to go back and get the capacity of the dam that we originally bought? And how's that going to offset with rising costs? And then every year that we wait to line the penstock, the cost goes up. And is that in your modeling?

It's not. It's not right now. One of the things we're looking forward to in the spring of twenty seven, this is the one of the things that was in in this year's budget is the Pennstock outage. The Pennstock outage, one of the things that we really wanna do is get a point cloud survey of the entire the the Pennstock because it's not just one uniform you know, it's it's blasted through rock. It's not one uniform line tunnel, which which is something you could run better calculations against.

But I guess to to answer your question, once we have that data, we can start making better decisions with it. There's some other concerns with running the CFS up. Only two other units can operate at a time the way that the plant's been configured. And so there have to be some minor reconfiguration to make sure that you're actually able to run three. Currently, I think we can get about 15 megawatts out

of Out two?

Out of two. Yeah. It's about seven and a half, 7.25, something like that before they start vibrating.

And you said earlier that you're getting 20 out of GreenLake?

Yeah. Each of those units, I think, is rated at like 9.9 or 10, something like that. Yeah. And and with that GreenLake project, one of those units is actually they installed some air baffles to make it more efficient when they were doing installation. And one of the goals from the phase two, phase three project that this incentive has started to fund, the $2.47 incentive, will allow us to remove those baffles, do some upgrading, and we'll actually be able to get a full 10 out of that unit. So you mean

baffles that eliminate cavitation from?

No. The air baffles in the rotor that prevent it induces resistance on the unit so that it meets better efficiency.

Thank you. Katie?

I just want to give you guys a shout out for the electrical internship program. I heard some really good feedback that one of the students that took that is gonna be studying engineering. And so just thank you guys for taking the time. I know that managing interns is not always the easiest task, so I appreciate that workforce development effort. And I believe that is also open right now for applications. That is. Fantastic.

A really good pitch.

For all of you high school students out there. Yeah. Yeah. Just as, you know, as you as we face these staffing concerns, that's something that we've we've been hearing a lot about, and it's a great opportunity to learn what kind of jobs we have here and what kind of skills we need locally. So thanks for doing that.

Thank you.

Lastly, thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And then somehow just days before retirement, we get fire chief Craig Warren to come up and do a department quarterly report. As if he as if he didn't see enough of us, he needs to come see us again. Thank you, Chief.

Thanks, Scotty. Craig Warren, I guess I'm the lame duck fire chief. I want to start off with an apology. Last time I gave a quarterly report, said it was my last one. I actually went back to figure out what happened. And the lovely ladies in the clerk office was managing your schedules and pushed pushed me back a meeting. So otherwise, I would not be here. Behind me is Brian McLaughlin. Brian and I have been working over the last couple of weeks to get him up to speed on all things fire department related. He's gonna be great great for the department.

I've gotten nothing but confidence in him. Recently, we graduated nine EMT students. And once again, testament to Rob Janik and his teaching style, high score was 98, low score was 89. The average, the median, and the mode all came out at 93. Statistically, I'm sure there's you can figure out how that happened, but I've never we've never seen it at the fire department.

That was kinda weird. 16 students went through the wilderness EMT class that we just ended up with. Come Thursday, I guess we will have two vacancies. Myself and the assistant chief, David Johnson, are both retiring. So I guess Brian gets both of our hats.

We have two temps that are already on and getting well, one temp on, one temp will be coming on next week to help us out with the cruise ship season. I guess we're, what, 84% of the way through the budget year, and we're currently 74% of the budget used. And we were able to save money on overtime, which is really nice with Brian coming on because David and I both staff the hall. We can roll out and fire engines and ambulances. And Brian's going to need a little bit of time to get up to speed on that kind of stuff.

So he may end up needing to use some of that extra overtime that we have saved. Unless there's questions, I know I kind of ran through it really quick. But as always, the fire department doesn't have these big grandiose projects like the electric department. But we're we're getting along. We're doing well.

What time is the party on Thursday?

There is a get together from noon to two. I it it it sounds like it's gotten quite a bit bigger than I had asked for. I just wanted to have a peaceful lunch and leave quietly. And it doesn't sound like that's gonna happen.

Of course, had to schedule on a cruise ship day.

I didn't schedule anything. I'm just gonna come out on

your entire peaceful party then. Thank you, chief, for your, what is it, thirty years of service to our community? Thirty, give or

take, plus minus? Thirty three on staff, another two as a volunteer ahead of that.

There we go. That's that's incredible. It's about as long as I've been around. So You think I just called you old in a in a roundabout way, didn't I? But, no, you know you know I'm gratefully appreciative of your service to the community. You always stepped up and did whatever was needed whenever it was asked of you. The community will be missing that, but I'm sure you will stay around, and there'll be other opportunities for you. And we'll still see you at Safeway after tonight, I guess. Yeah.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Mister Maynard,

you forgot to remind him about the availability in the boards and commissions.

I'm actually gonna do our boards and commissions a favor and not remind him.

As long as you keep my daughter employed, I guess I'm going to stay local. Thank you.

And then moving on, we have a library report from Jess.

Good evening. This is Jess Yrumia, the Sicka Public Library Director. We currently have two unfilled part time library assistant positions at the library, and we've used approximately 80% of our FY twenty six budget so far this year. So over the last quarter, we've had a lot of programs going on with youth, adult, and community programs. But tonight, I would like to just highlight just a few things that we've been working on.

And one of the things which was pretty monumental for our library is that we did host the twenty twenty six Alaska Library Association Conference here in March, and it really went off super swell. We everyone had a great time, and the sunny, sunny weather really helped that out too. The other thing is I would like to update you on our Books Unbanned grant. The Books Unbanned, it's a national initiative founded by the Brooklyn Public Library and our library was a recipient of this grant last fall. We received $8,000, and we partnered up with Pacific High School and Mount Edgecombe High School.

And with Pacific High School, they ended up developing a school based course about banned books and the access to information. And they met at the library for this course twice a week throughout their entire semester. And their students chose to use art as a tool for advocacy. With the creation, they made a Franken zine. It's just a whole bunch of zines that they have put together.

It was a self publication, and it explores the ideas about freedom of speech and having access to books and information. And their zines are currently on display at the library right now through May 8. And the Sitka Public Library was also able to use $3,500 of the grant money to purchase new books for the Pacific High School in the help of creating their library. And so we're really proud

that we

were able to do that with the school. The Mount Echikung High School students, they joined our Freedom to Read teen ambassadors program, and they had to apply for this program and commit to coming to the library once a week for one and a half hours, and they discussed ideas, plans, and how to implement programs that worked towards advocacy, fighting against censorship. They ended up creating a very popular banned books escape room, and they wrote a fantastic letter to the editor that I included in my report to you guys. It really is a great encapsulation of everything that they were coming together and meeting and talking about and learning. And so we really we greatly enjoyed having all these students come to the library and learn how to advocate for public libraries.

It was it was a real joy for us. Also, the library is preparing for our summer reading program. This is a very intensive time for the library. And as every year, we are currently looking for adult reading buddies. All it is is once a week, come into the library, and you read for one hour with a child.

These are with kids that are entering second and third grade. This program goes from June 6 to August 8. The registration that you need to apply by May 16. So if somebody's out there listening and they're interested and they have any questions, they can contact the library, you know, come in, stop in, and Mai Teh, our youth services librarian, will be able to answer any questions that you might have about the program. Also, I wanted to just mention that our adult services librarian, Margo O'Connell, was a recipient of the Sitka Rose Award this year, and she was nominated for her civic service.

She does blessings in a backpack, and she was also nominated for her library programs that she does for our community. So we're super proud of that, and just and everybody does such a great job, but it's really always nice to get recognized for the hard work that you do. So and then we're just really sad to see Jeff go too. He he was a great commissioner, so if anyone gets someone a border commission, I'll be great. And that's it. Any questions?

Yeah. Would agree. Your library conference went off great. I had the pleasure of speaking to the group. I thought that was awesome. And then my fourth or fifth grade librarian came and sat down next to me, and we were able to reconnect briefly. Yeah. I'm glad she remembered me more than I remembered her. But, yeah, that was that was a cool experience. So thank you for hosting that. It got a lot of people into town kind of in the off season when we do need a shot of revenue in the arm. So we appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

How are the leaks treating you?

Right now, they're doing great because the tarps are they're covering everything up. So they were able to hone in on those spots, those areas. So right now, we're doing good.

I don't see anyone initially, but someone from Sika tribe make it in this evening. Okay. I didn't think so. Moving on in special reports tonight. Anyone else from our boards, commissions, committees, municipal departments, school district already spoke?

Thank you. That'll bring us two persons to be heard. This is public participation for any item off of tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual. Please. There's a button on the very bottom. If you could hit that to turn on the mic. And then just state your name for the record.

Yes. I'm Thad Polson, 57 resident of Sitka. I think this is an appropriate time to talk to you because this is the first day of the city's recent practice of closing Max Rudolph Street to vehicle traffic for installation of portable portable toilets to accommodate the needs of summer tourists. My point is I find this is not advisable or acceptable if if Sitka is to consider the need of its own residents as well as our visitors. This issue is one that for the planning commission, the best tourism practices committee, the police and fire commission, and certainly the historic preservation commission.

They're all involved. My my point is this. The present practice causes significant inconvenience to sitcoms. Use the city of Black Eye as the second most widely used visitor point of entry to downtown Sitka. I won't talk here about the loss of at least eight on street parking places every day for five months of the year, but it is disturbing that Detroit are so near to Sitka's most famous historic site, Saint Michael's Cathedral. Sitka can do better. And this is an issue that can be solved in a way that is respectful and practical to all concerned. And I'll be talking more about this as the year goes on. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Dear board members, my name is Alexian Estiquan, and I am a resident of the Kodiak community and have attended Mount Edgecombe High School for two years. I would like to take time to thank our great Sitka Public Library for providing a wide range of materials to our diverse community. Tax money spent to represent the community whole is money well spent. Having books like genderqueer along with many other kinds of books in high school matters because it can help students feel a sense of home and belonging. People are all very different in their own ways, and just like everyone has different tastes in books, everyone also has different identities and experiences.

Because of that, limiting different types of books can limit understanding. Access to books about identity, real life experiences, and different perspectives can help students better understand themselves and others. These books can be developmentally appropriate, and they can support students' mental and emotional well-being. Everybody has feelings, and everyone is trying to understand themselves in their own way. Books can be a safe place for that.

They can help people feel less alone. I've also noticed and appreciated the book displays and reading lists put together by the library. Those displays can help students feel seen and included, especially when they might not feel that way anywhere else. With banned books becoming more common, I think it's important to stand up for students since we are going to be the next generation to grow and develop. It's also important to stand up for the rights of students and communities to access materials they choose.

Access to information should not be taken away from everyone because of differing opinions. Not every student feels seen or understood in their everyday life, especially in smaller or more remote communities. Books can sometimes be the only place where someone recognizes themselves or learns that what they're feeling is okay. Taking that away doesn't protect students. It can make them feel more isolated.

When books are banned, it can feel like someone else is deciding what is right or wrong for everyone. But what might not seem important to one person can mean everything to someone else. That's why having a wide range of materials is so important. Access to books doesn't mean forcing anyone to read them. Students and families still have their own choices, but removing books entirely removes that choice for everyone, and that isn't fair, especially in communities where access to resources is already limited. Reading different perspectives can also help people understand each other better. Instead of creating division, it can build empathy and respect. That's something schools should encourage. Libraries aren't just about books. They're about learning, curiosity, and giving people the chance to think for themselves.

That's something I really value. The librarians and staff here are knowledgeable and dedicated, and they deserve recognition for the work they do to provide information and support students. Thank you for your time and the work you do.

Thank you. Anyone else this evening on persons to be heard? Any item off of tonight's agenda? I see none. We'll move on to consent agenda.

I move to approve the consent agenda consisting of item A, approve the minutes of the April ninth and fourteenth assembly meetings. Item B, approving liquor license and endorsement renewal applications for the Sitka Golf Association, the Umbra Sensehead, the the LLC is doing business at the Gallery Restaurant, and the the Dub Island Lodge and supporting for Charter doing business as Dub Island Lodge. And finally, BEAT doing business as BEAT restaurant. Excuse me. Second.

One more. And item C, approve a new restaurant and eating place liquor license for Wildflower LLC doing business as Wildflower Cafe and Bakery. Now I'm

done. Second.

Tore, think board.

I

comment? Question. Sarah?

Alright. On the motion to approve the consent agenda consisting of items a and b. Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Mister Christianson? Yes. Miss Riley? Yes. Mister Mosier? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. And mister Pike? Yes. The motion passes seven zero.

Thank you. Item c, please.

I move to approve a new restaurant and eating places liquor license application for Wildflower LLC, DVA Wildflower Cafe and Bakery at 327 Seward Street, Suite 2 and forward to the Alcohol Beverage Control Board without objection.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve item c.

Is there

any public comment? Assembly deliberation. J. J.

This was one. This is the second of the three that have been opened up recently, and it was something that, you know, I promised then that we would, you know, be make aware to the public because it was of of such concern when we opened it up or we requested the state to have additional ones. So I am just doing as I said I would do, and we are giving an opportunity to talk about it.

Thank you. Sure.

Yeah, I support this. And I think it is telling how few people are here, considering how many people were here when we were first talking about this. No problem with this. And honestly, I don't think most people will either. So it's become routine. Main reason nobody's here is

the people that had already paid the equity said that's fine to have competition. We don't have enough of them. Should be selling beers at every little mobile thing while the tourists are here. So yep, I think we should.

Anything further from the assembly? Sarah?

Alright. On the motion to approve a new restaurant or eating place liquor license application for Wildflower LLC, doing business as Wildflower Cafe and Bakery at 327 Seward Street, Suite 2. Miss Riley? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Mosier?

Yes.

Mister Pike? Yes. Mister Christensen? Yes. And mister Saline? Yes. The motion passes seven zero on item c.

Mr. Mayor, can we take a break?

Sure. Yes, we're a little bit ahead of schedule. But before we jump into the crux of our business this evening, we'll take a recess. Okay. So we will jump back into our agenda this evening. We'll start with unfinished business, which is item d, please.

I move to approve ordinance twenty twenty six zero eight on second and final reading, amending title to administration and personnel chapter 2.05 city and borough assembly of the Sitka general code by adding section two point zero five point one six five to postpone to a certain

approve ordinance 26 dash zero eight. Is there any public comment? Assembly deliberation. Sarah?

Alright. On the motion to approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero eight on second and final reading. Mister Christensen? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Mister Pike? Riley? Yes. Mister Mosier? Yes. And mayor Eisenbeis?

Yes.

The motion passes seven zero.

I'm moving on to new business. First reading, item e, please.

Move to approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero nine on the Board

Directors

seconded to approve ordinance 26 dash zero nine. John, I understand you have an introduction on this item.

Thank you, mayor. Yes. I do have a a brief introduction, but it's a fairly long memo. And the memo covers the next the next item as well. Because honestly, the acceptance of donations and then a naming of public places kind of merge together because sometimes there are donations that have conditions attached to them.

So I wanted to have some procedures in place for that. As you probably remember, we've been working on this for, I would say, at least three years to get across the finish line. So what you're seeing in front of you is a formalized way for us to review and accept donations. So we have monetary donations, nonmonetary donations, a threshold of $10,000 for each of those. And if it's below $10,000 those donations can be accepted by staff.

If they're above that 10,000, we would have to come to the assembly. The ordinance also discusses how sometimes we accept donations. They could be park benches or gazebos, memorials that have lifetime maintenance costs associated with them. So there's a process in here by which we evaluate the lifetime costs. And those are added into the donation so we can make a more informed decision on how to accept those.

And if we have to bring the in order to bring the value down, we can put maintenance agreements in place. So yes, we will accept this donation. But the party donating may agree to take on maintenance responsibilities forward. So we've always kind of operated this way, but it's never been codified at all. Something else you'll see in here is and this is internal staff document, but I I wanted you just to see it.

We've had this administrative procedure for applying for and accepting grants and donations. We've been using this since, I believe, May of 'twenty three. And I made an update to this on this approval matrix that's in there. So if you look at the notes below the approval matrix, it references these both this ordinance, the 1.36 acceptance of donations. It basically referenced the new code section. So these are the administrative policies that would be issued if this ordinance were to pass.

Thank you, John. Is there any public comment on ordinance 26 dash zero nine? Assembly deliberation.

Scotty?

I got little get ir

of more bit question. More

I

I

question. And good good

question.

We a I also accurately and clearly delineates costs and stuff associated with it. Thank you. JJ?

Yeah. And inconsistency between departments, which is helpful. Because if there's a piece of artwork and you're like, oh, I can give it to the fire hall or the library or, you know, the treatment plant, then there's even equal equal access to it for everyone. So I I appreciate that consistency. And, you know, three years seems like a long time, but when you really think about all the places you have to consider and all of the the code language to to do and and how to go about it strategically. It's and all the, you know, other things that have priority. So I appreciate you working working for it and working through it and and getting it here even when it does take a bit of effort.

Tor? Yeah. I just have a quick question. First of all, do wanna echo that thank you for finally getting this out. I know that it can't be top of your priority list sometimes, and I appreciate it. You know, there's any of that grid of important but not super time sensitive. Sometimes we have to get down to those. Real quick question, though. So this applies to private grants. And as I read through it, wasn't 100% sure. But it wouldn't apply to something come from the state of the feds. Right?

It does not apply to federal grants. That's in the administrative procedure. Katie?

Thanks. So I'm going to ask this about the languages from the next one, but it refers back to this. And it's the this the naming policy shall not the honorary naming criteria shall be considered as one of the elements in determining whether the city should accept the dedicated donation under acceptance of donations to the city. Can you explain the relation between the donations that are made with, like, conditions of naming? Or is that better addressed in the second discussion? They seem to refer back to

each other.

Yes, they do refer to each other. I guess I need some clarity on your question. I mean, can give an example. For example, some of us probably remember during the COVID times when Norwegian Cruise Line wanted to make a $1,000,000 donation to the city, and it had to come to the assembly. Now granted, there was no conditions attached to that.

But if a donation like that came forward and said, we'll give you this $1,000,000 if you rename Lincoln Street, insert business here, Name Street, it would be less subjective because now you could refer to the naming policy to see if it meets the criteria in that naming policy before you decide to accept that donation. Or it could send us back to the donor to say, hey, the naming part's not going to go. You can

Okay. So it's not a simple yes or no. It's a consider the criteria before accepting the donation and how

they meet up.

Okay. Thank you.

Anything further from the assembly? Sarah?

Alright. On the motion to approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero nine on frustrating miss Carlson? Yes. Miss Riley? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Mister Mosher?

Yes.

Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Mister Pike?

Yes.

Mister Christensen?

Yes.

Motion passes seven

zero. Item f, please.

I move to approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash one zero on first reading, amending title 14, streets, sidewalks, and public places of the Sikka general code by adding chapter 14.35 naming of public places.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve ordinance 26 dash one zero. John, did you have further on this one or did the previous kind of cover?

Just really quickly, it's mostly covered previously. This outlines the process for for the naming. And I don't know if this is the appropriate time or not. On line 142, it says for public places under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department. Hoping, with Sarah's advice or maybe Rachel's advice, Jurisdiction is probably not the right word if we change it to purview or something similar, if that can be considered a clerical change. But I did want to point that out. And I know Ms. Carlson has brought that up already.

Thank you. I'm sure we'll have a discussion about it. Is there any public comment on ordinance 26 dash one zero? Assembly deliberation? JJ?

Yeah. I have like to ask who the drafter is, probably Rachel. This is for all even though it's under streets, sidewalks, we're primarily talking about those public spaces parts here. Is is that correct?

Yeah. So the the header is street sidewalks and public places. And and there is in the streets part of the code more specific criteria for streets. So this would be the the general document for how naming happens. But if there is a code section that has more specific criteria, they would both need to be taken into consideration.

Okay. And that's probably why there's also more specifics for if it's a park or something in the parks and rec. Right. Yeah. Because streets

streets does have guidance in the streets part of the code.

Okay. So this is all municipal facilities, like water towers and park benches and treatment plants and harbors,

It's all of meant to have all of the things the municipality owns have the same considerations in naming, get some get some uniformity for how that happens across the municipality. Okay.

Part of this talks about creating a committee to or a naming panel. And it says they could the assembly can choose two people. The department or administrator can choose two people or assembly and relevant commissions. So would that be, like, parks and Rec Commission for something park related, Harbor Commission for something harbor related, library if there's a room in the library, or a roof project that wants to get funded. Then you can have the honorary, the Scotty Honorary Roof if he wants to give sizable funds

to. The library to

Haims Library or something. The whole one. Just just the roof project. Okay. So that sort of thing.

Yes, it's meant to get the relevant governing bodies and stakeholders to the table.

Okay. Thank you for that. Yeah.

I just was thinking back to when a lot of like in the big stadiums where they hold auctions for naming rights. We might be able to get some stuff done that way. But no, this is it looks makes sense. It looks like a workable way to get through this. Katie?

Yeah. Thank you guys for putting this together. I did not know that it had taken three years. So I was like, wow. They moved really quick after the historic preservation plan to draft this up. But I just did want to given that we we had some discussion about that plan and the naming policy within it. I recognize here under the naming criteria. I'm wondering if that is how you chose to address the goals, like, within that historic preservation plan or, you know, if there was collaboration or discussion there with either the department head or the commission for integrating their goals into this naming policy. Did that happen?

Yeah. So so I had read the historic preservation plan and noticed that goal throughout the drafting process of this. And I this isn't meant to kinda limit what their policies might become, but but to provide general guidance to the city and certainly with some of their goals in mind, particularly for '14 35030 naming generally. I was looking at other kind of codes around the state and adapting adapting that to our big picture. And then I suspect we'll get good work out of the historic preservation commission for the specifics of what that might look like for historic properties within the broader context of this code.

So I hope that they'll work together nicely and was aware of their goals at the time of drafting.

Thank you. And so I'm assuming that had this policy existed at the time that No Name Mountain received the name No Name Mountain, it would have received the traditional Flinkett name. Like, is that kind of what this policy would call for given that that was the existing name at the time?

That is would fall under that naming. And generally, the traditional Tlingit or other Alaskan native name is presumed to be the best name for that public place. But that would be open to this process for discussing in a particular instance. It's a presumption. It's not a mandate. Thank you.

Rachel, I know it was brought to our attention on line 142, the word jurisdiction. Could that word be replaced by under the supervision of the Parks and Rec Department and the I was

thinking for maybe it could say for places administered by the Parks

and Sarah, Rec is that substantial enough to need another reading?

Recreation departments. I'm pretty sure they're a division of planning and community development department. So if that could be another clerical error to call them a division. Is that substantial, Rachel? Or John? Yeah. How you, John, determine or classify this?

I think I'm going to need your help on this one. I think we have to go back to the intent and the language as well. So I don't think it's any risk associated with passing it as department. We're going through a recodification right now and picking up a lot of these errors. And I can say with almost certainty that there are other areas in the code that say Parks and Recreation Department. Even though ours is a division, we've called it program and other places. But I think the intent is that it is the Parks and Rec division program department. And we know where the commission lies.

Think that's right. We're going to need to pick one name for them and make it consistent throughout the code. And that will be part of the recodification process. So changing it one way or another now doesn't have substantive value. I would consider it clerical, but I'm not actually sure which way we're going to go on what their official name is, throughout the code. Yes. Consistency. Yes. Yes. Working on it.

Well, as we're passing something new, the new one is right. So it will be the department from here on. Anything else from the assembly?

One more question about Yes. The process Is there after the panel kinda comes with a a suggestion? Or if the panel decides, then it is. Does it go through the assembly or anyone else for approvals?

According to the process, the panel will meet. And after they make a determination, they will send a letter attached to a resolution for the assembly to consider, and acceptance by the assembly would be passed of that resolution.

Thank you. And also for anyone out there listening, this does not include things related to the school district.

Anything further?

Sarah?

Alright. On the motion to approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash 10 on first reading. Miss Riley? Yes. Mister Christensen?

Yes.

Miss miss Carlson? Sorry. Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Mister Mosier?

Yes. And mister Pike?

Yes.

The motion passes seven zero. First reading item f.

I move to approve resolution twenty twenty six dash o four on first and final reading authorizing the state of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation State Revolving Fund loan for project nine one zero one zero, WWTP affluent disinfection system.

Second.

That's moved and seconded to approve resolution twenty six dash zero four. John Mark has an introduction on this one.

I'm gonna say yes.

Your name's on the sheet.

I have to call it out.

Good evening, mayor and assembly. Mark Seavey, public works director. So in front of you is a resolution authorizing the administrator to apply for a loan through the state revolving fund loan program through DEC. This loan is specifically for the design of the facility. So in the FY24 capital projects plan, the assembly allocated $750,000 to start this project as we knew it was coming.

Then in 2025, our new permit went into effect, which is requiring us to implement additional effluent disinfection within five years by 2030. That original funding has gotten us through a feasibility study to determine the type of effluent disinfection that we're going to pursue. And we are now under contract to get to 30% design for the changes to our facility and the add ons to our facility. The state is currently offering a loan forgiveness program as these come as an unfunded mandate. The National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits are regulated by the EPA.

They're aware that this is something that's binding for a lot of small communities in Southeast. So, as we submit questionnaires for DEC funding every year, these have risen to the top of their priority list. Currently, they have not seen anyone with a design requiring more than a million dollars. Ours is currently 1,160,000 is our estimate to get to final design for construction. Our intent is to apply for a loan for that 1.16 to see if we can get it fully funded through this and then there'll be a small administrative fee and hopefully the rest can be forgiven. The rest of the project totaling at about $14,000,000 We have a tentative $10,000,000 congressionally delegated spending line item. So for the $14,000,000 total project, we're looking at about 3,000,000 coming from the rate payers.

Appreciate it. If we have questions, we'll call you back up. Is there any public comment on Resolution 20 six-four? None. Scott, you had something?

I just want to know, does it work on corona discharge? Or how is it supposed to disinfect?

So the system is regulated by the EPA as primarily looking at reducing the amount of bacteria and the effluent coming out of our wastewater treatment plant. So currently we have on-site hypochlorite generation. So we're creating chlorine out of salt in electrolysis. The new requirements are more stringent and they require basically two parts. One is a pretreatment program and the other is a second disinfection.

So we looked at calcium hypochlorite, high strength chlorine generation, chlorine gas, UV. And none of those were really feasible due to the chemicals that we need to have on-site in a remote community. And additionally, the contact time for UV wasn't working to create UV generation. So because we have on-site hypochlorite generation at our water treatment facility for the chlorine treatment there, we're essentially marrying that process so that we'll have four of these sodium hypochlorite generation systems at the city facilities. And then additionally, our pool is also a sodium hypochlorite chlorine generation.

So we'll have ability to streamline some parts purchasing for those five systems. And then the salt that we provide again can be part of it. But it's essentially They're looking at fecal coliform counts in the effluent disinfection. The second piece that hadn't previously been required is a pretreatment program. So they're looking for communities to identify industrial user groups that are actually putting wastewater into your system. So, we need to identify and profile what those main users would be. And those first two steps as far as the pretreatment and determining our design and how we plan to get into compliance are due within a year of the permit being active, which went into effect November 25.

Best answer I've gotten sitting up here. Good on you.

Anything else from Mark while we have him? Gigi?

Yes. I too hope this loan gets forgiven. What's the plan if it doesn't?

So if it's not forgiven, then we have it budgeted in. So this is just the resolution allowing us to apply, and then the appropriation has been taken into account for in the budget.

So what are the terms and rates of the loan?

We'll get those once we have the actual loan agreement. So we won't be able to execute the loan agreement because the appropriation doesn't go in until July 1. Normally, these are around the 1% loans from DEC. The other part that we talked about last week at the budget is the CFDA, the catalog of federal domestic assistance that is sometimes attached to these loans. So, we have appropriated funds from the wastewater revenue fund in order to act as the match for the CDS. In the event that we are able to make this loan happen through the state without without that CFDA attachment, then we could potentially use this loan as part of our match for that CDS.

So the line is, so we're authorizing to apply for and execute a loan. So it kinda sounds there like we're giving authority. Assembly is giving authority, but we're really not

We're applying for the loan, but the actual appropriation is coming through the budget. It's included in the project.

Thank you. So $3,000,000 from rate payers, that is the $750,000 we've already spent less?

And approximately 2,300,000 that's in the budget for the FY 'twenty seven.

Okay. Thank you.

Do you know, like, how much of a reduction from what we pump out now with the new federal guidelines? It used to be like a cruise ship was 20,000 times cleaner in what they pump overboard than what we pump out twice a day here. What would all this gonna reduce our bacteria content? Because where I'm really going with this is the new oyster lab that's going in the channel. I keep bugging them to do a fecal count along with their oysters and stuff, and they're since that's what destroyed the first oyster farm out in Whiting Harbor was pumping from that plant, you got any idea how much is going to be cleaner?

Off the top of my head, I don't have the numbers. It's essentially the same system that we have as the effluent is coming in. So it's about a point 8% solution of the sodium hypochlorite. And we're adding an additional point 8% at the back end after it's gone through the wastewater treatment plant before it gets pumped out. We are required monitor for residual chlorine before it goes into the ocean. But I'd have to get back to you on the exact numbers of how much further we're reducing the fecal coliform.

Anything

else from Mark? Thank you for your time, Mark. Appreciate it. Assembly discussion.

No, just thank you for everyone's hard work. This is another example of federal unfunded mandates that is affecting at least Southeast Alaska and other areas. But I'm grateful that we have, through the hard work of the team, that funds from the congressionally delegated funds to help pay for a majority of it. That's not always the case. I don't think that this is necessarily something that is necessary, but it's of course something that the Feds feel it is and it's costing taxpayers a lot of money. Thank you.

Sarah?

All right.

On the motion to approve resolution twenty twenty six Dash04 on first and final reading, mister Mosier?

Yes.

Mister Pike?

Yes.

Miss Riley? Yes. Mister Christensen? Yes. Mister Celine? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. And miss Carlson? Yes. Motion passes seven zero on item g.

And I'll bring us to item h, please.

I move to approve the Sustainability Commission twenty twenty six dash twenty seven goals and work plan.

Second. I've been moving seconded to approve the sustainability commission's goals and work plan. We do have an introduction from the Sustainability Commission members, Aurora and Elizabeth. Please join us. We already have some info in front of us. IT's working today.

We're overachievers, so we also have a presentation in addition to our work plan, which I'm sure you've all read in thorough. So good evening, Mayor Eisenbeitz, esteemed assembly members. My name is Aurora Taylor. I am the chair of the Sustainability Commission. With me is Elizabeth Bagley, the vice chair.

So what we're going to do tonight is kind of run through the goals that we had from the previous year and progress that we've made and then present our new goals just in a little bit more succinct form than what's presented in the work plan. So this is just a brief slide. Maybe for those of you listening who don't have the visual about the scope of what we are approved to do in the general code. It's supposed to be broad. And really, the through line here that ties it all together is Sitka's livability and how we steward our energy and our waste, food systems, and our environment.

And it's really our job as an advisory body to bring that lens to assembly decisions. And so this is the fourth year that we have been a permanent commission, commission, previously the climate action task force. So just as a brief refresher looking back at what our goals were for the past year, these are the four goals that were approved, supporting sustainable municipal operations, operations, exploring regional approaches to sustainability, collaborating with city staff on strategic management of municipal solid waste, and supporting and finalizing the Sitka community renewable energy strategy, which we'll refer to as SCRAS. So we're going to go through our new goals line by line and review what was accomplished and what was not. But we just wanted to highlight maybe three high level accomplishments that stood out, which was the greenhouse gas emissions inventory was released this January.

So that took a lot of work from our staff liaison, Bree Gable, the technical team, and the grant that ran behind that. At the municipal administrator's request, we did do comments to the Alaska Marine Highway System about the transport of electric vehicles. That was a highlight from last year. And then also, we helped to scope forty hours of technical assistance from the waste to energy technical assistance kind of grant program from the National Lab of the Rockies, which kind of gives us like a head start on strategic planning for municipal solid waste. So just getting into the goals that we've proposed for this year, these are going to look really similar to what we've proposed in the previous years because a lot of these goals and projects are going to be multi year very complex problems.

So looking back in the last year of what we've done for sustainable municipal operations, this was kind of founded last year in the fact that we were doing a lot of one off projects and grant funded projects, and we wanted to be a little bit more integrated with how the city operates and runs and and kind of improving operations instead of doing these one off grant dependent projects. So that's where this one was kind of born from. Those comments that I mentioned on the Alaska Marine Highway System kind of fall under this as something that we had achieved in the last year. We talked about we had seven specific recommendations that went forward in those comments that were approved, including adding reservations for EVs, guaranteeing that they'll be on sailings, and different things like that. And then in the commission, we kind of have some different initiatives and subworking groups.

DRIVE is one of those that stands for the decarbonization and rightsizing to approve vehicle efficiency. So we've appointed some commissioners to that group, and we have started to apply it to some procurement. And we want to keep this as a goal for next year because we think that the greenhouse gas emissions inventory is going to allow for us to really make more specific recommendations to how the city and borough operates. We would like to continue to collaborate with the sustainability coordinator, our staff liaison, Brie Gable, to reduce emissions and meet the decarbonization goals that the assembly has presented and then kind of reinvigorate that drive advisory group. And then the second goal, the last thing I'm gonna speak on before passing it to vice chair Elizabeth Bagley is exploring a regional approach to sustainability.

This is something that I think as commissioners who work in this field, a lot of our day jobs kind of tie into. This is something that kind of happens naturally and organically for us on the commission without big big burden or ask of the city of just attending conferences and seeing what projects are happening and how the city of Sitka can benefit from, like, some ideas or momentum that are happening throughout Southeast. So in the last year, we've gotten involved with the Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority. A lot of that kudos goes to our staff liaison, Bree Gable, and engagement with communities about solid waste specifically and solutions, which also ties into one of our goals that we'll get to in a moment. Southeast Conference is another one, also has clear direct ties into solid waste.

And so we had commissioners attend that conference and kind of meet with other regional boroughs and cities and tribes to see what we would like that to look like. And we would like to keep this as a goal for next year because I I think there's a lot of easy crossover here in how we can integrate sustainability with municipal bodies. We can look at long and short term goals that now we kind of have the data from a couple different initiatives to back up, looking at things like waste transportation, energy, electric vehicle shipment, and all the kind of things that just as a Southeast Island community we kind

of deal with. So I'll pass it off to Elizabeth Bagley. Thank you. Yes. Thanks so much, Chair Taylor. Two more goals. The third goal is strategic management of municipal solid waste. As a reminder, we have a ten year contract for our municipal solid waste that renews in 2032. So that's a six year runway. And we know that that runway will shorten very, very quickly, and there's lots lots of research and negotiation that has to happen before that.

So in the past past year, we received a roughly forty hours of technical assistance from the National Lab of the Rockies, and they were able to use some of their their expertise to look across Southeast Alaska to do a generalized waste assessment of what type of waste Sitka actually produces. That's gonna help us figure out what kind of services we actually need going into this new contract. So from our perspective, it was really helpful baseline data. We have some preliminary results on the screen right now where the assessment looked at about 23%, almost a quarter of the waste that we ship off the island is organics. You know that's food waste or that's from the fish processing plants and things like that.

19% paper and cardboard. And we've got lots of different solutions and and ways that we can look at that differently. So that's one of the things that we are bringing into this next year, next year is really gonna be focused on how we can collaborate with city staff. We know that this is a big priority for the Public Works Department and the work that they're working on. And how might the sustainability commission support some of that work.

You know, what kind of research needs to be done, what kinds of relationships need to be built so that we can make sure that our islanded community has the has the resources and the systems in place to manage our waste in the most sustainable way possible. We also will be completing that waste to energy technical assistance. And when that's completed, we'll be able to share the recommendations with the assembly as well as a public works department. So stay tuned on that. And the final goal is focused on finalizing what chair Taylor mentioned, the Sitka community renewable energy strategy, lovingly called the SCRAS.

So in January 2026, more than 40 pages of public comments were woven into the greenhouse gas emissions the emissions inventory for calendar year 2023. So we as far as we know, we're one of the only communities in Alaska who's done something like that, and a lot of that was due to Brie Gable, our sustainability commissioner's incredible efforts to get lots of federal funding for us able to make some of this happen. So at the request of the community, we included what are called scope three emissions. Those are the transient or the indirect emissions that are not directly produced by Sitka, but those are things like cruise ship emissions, air travel emissions. And so those are notable categories in the greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

We also, with the loads of help from from Brie Gable, ran the EnergyQuest community engagement, which was a board game that put real Sitka data on the electric grid into community members' hands. So it wasn't just this hypothetical. It was real data asking Sitka's to identify what they wanted the future to look like and how we might build our energy portfolio. We held 12 workshops. Half of those were in high school classrooms.

So a lot of gratitude to the high schools for having classes and to the high schoolers themselves for really engaging with this and getting civically active. There were 84 people who played. There were 59 different portfolios created and over a hundred and twenty hours of community input. So really grateful to the community for being concerned and interested in this. And for the energy quest or for the SCRESS, seven of those eight energy education modules are complete, and they are on the SCRESS website.

So we really encourage to check out that website. Looking forward, as we think about the SCRAS, you're not gonna hear that much more about the SCRAS from us because we're we're planning on finalizing it. So stay tuned to Brie. She'll be presenting next, and you'll hear from us a little later this year with a final draft. And that final draft, we want your help to determine what done means. Right? We we got a bunch of help from different federal agencies. What does done mean? How do we communicate this to the community? And how will the data that were gathered influence future commission work?

So stay tuned. We're gonna be asking for your help later this year. And with that, looking forward, I just really wanna thank a number of you around the table. Assembly member Mosier was part of starting the Sustainability Commission. Assembly member Christensen has been a liaison for us. Assembly member Pike is our current liaison. And Assembly member Riley helped us. She's been on the she was on the commission before she became an Assembly member. So really grateful for all of your collaboration and your great insights. We also want to note that we unanimously approved this work plan at our April 6 regular meeting.

So this is coming to you. Aurora and I are here on behalf of the whole commission, but this is what we're excited to work on, and we hope it's aligned with your goals. Another reminder that we do meet the first Monday at 6PM right here in this room. So if you are looking for a way to get engaged, we'd love to have you. May 4, we will review the the SCRUSS project, and then we have facilitated event on May 11. So with that, just really want to thank you for your continued support and we are happy to take any questions.

Thank you for that. We do have to go to public comment before we take your if we do have any questions for you. But just appreciative of the extremely high level that this commission operates at. Is there any public comment on the sustainability commissions 2026, 2027 goals? Seeing none, Tore?

Yeah, I very much like their goals, but I think it reflects emphasis I noticed this when I was their liaison is that this is work. I mean, it's kind of a slog. I mean, you've got to keep chipping away at it and coming in from different angles. It's one of the hard you're not gonna sit and solve the world's problems in a in a year. And I really wanted to shout out to the group that they're doing that work.

And it's it's not always the most you know, you can't come in and vote and say, Okay, we're done with that problem. That's not the way this works. And I really applaud them and the members to being willing to come in and do that work. And I appreciate it. So thank you.

Kevin? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just say ditto what Tor said. Thank you very much for your hard work. I know you guys all of you guys present and as well commissioners work really hard. Also, public, just so they know, yes, there is a high level of expertise except most of these people work in the field. We're very, very lucky to have them and thank very grateful for your service. It very much. And as far as this item, I am very much in support of these goals as listed.

I too am in support of this. I'm just wondering if, like, the most avant garde sustainability thing in the state is searches vertical heat pump loops, and, like, they got three more years before they get totally free heat from bringing in all the drill rigs and drilling bore holes down. On this energy quest stress game, did you guys enter in anything as far as Sitka for looking for BTUs? And and, like, to me, the main thing would be getting rid of the core of engineers requirement to bury ground source heat pumps going across the beach substrate, like, to pump heat across. Has there been any looking at that with your modules or your game?

This is Elizabeth Begley. Thanks so much for that question. The energy game was at a bit of a higher level than any particular policy or any particular change that would have to be made. The idea with the game was to get more general direction that folks wanted to move in. And then we'll be able to drill down actually pardon that pun that's probably not the best pun to use, but we'll be able to go into more of the specifics and think about what are some policy recommendations, what are some of the barriers in place for us to make the energy future possible in Sitka. So the short answer is no. The longer answer is that could be possible in this next phase of work.

JJ for Elizabeth.

Yes, question for Elizabeth. Thank you so much. This is just every year, it's just more and more impressive how you guys continue to chug along. About the greenhouse gas inventory, it was surprising to me that our biggest contributor is air cargo and mail, and the second one was cruise ships. So can you talk a bit more about those two?

I sure can. So Sitka is a really unique community on many many regards, as we all know. One is especially in our energy makeup. Right? Because of the two hydroelectric dams that we're we are fortunate to have, we, as as you all know, are mostly running on a 100% renewable energy.

So whereas most communities or many communities across this country, electricity production is their highest you know, their biggest footprint, that's virtually zero for us. Other communities, transportation is really high. We don't have a whole lot of road, right? We don't have a whole lot of transportation road transportation rather. We do, however, have a lot of air transportation.

And that's how, as we all know, get a lot of our things. And jet fuel has a much higher greenhouse gas emissions profile than normal carbon dioxide that comes out of your tailpipe of a vehicle. So when we look at ways that we all in our daily lives as well as in our municipal lives can cut down on those emissions, those heat trapping gases that are creating that thick blanket around our planet that change the climate, air travel is really huge. We also see the same in the highly refined fuel used in cruise ships and the burning of those fuels. So those those fuels, jet fuel and the fuel with cruise ships and because of the the amount that the cruise ships are using and the distances they're going, those contribute significantly to the greenhouse gas emission profile in Sitka.

Yeah, great question.

Yeah. I just wanted to add that part of the energy game that we conducted was something like it was what do you want to see and what's that going to do to our load and our demand. So for example, the electrification of a cruise ship dock. And then how are you going to make up for that? Do you want to see efficiency upgrades? Hydro? Do you want to see more wind? And so that was kind of part of the game. And then, yeah, I just did want to add for air travel. Think there were like depending on who reads the report, different things stand out to them.

That was something that stood out to me. And I think just by keeping this as a goal for the next year, we'll be able to explore what that means and what we wanna do for the city because some air travel, right, is gonna be inevitable. Like, people wanna get off the rock. But if you're talking about air shipment deliveries and, like, Amazon purchases, those have a higher carbon output than if something is barged here and sold locally. So this would just allow us to explore what that means and what we would want to maybe do about it to promote local business and things that are going to have a lower carbon footprint in the long term by using a barge instead of air cargo.

Fascinating. Thank you. And the look at the cruise ships included the scrubbers. I thought most of their emissions was being put into the water and not going into the air.

I would have to review it. I do not think it included the scrubbers is I think my best informed guess, but I don't have it in front of me right now. Do not think it included.

Yeah. And actually, I could

get

back to you on this, Assembly Member Carlson. But just because so the calculations and now we're going to get real nerdy for a second. But the calculations were likely done per gallon of fuel used regardless of whether it went into the ocean or into the atmosphere. Okay? So regardless of however however much fuel was burned to get from point a to point b, that's the number of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. And yes, the scrubbers put it into the ocean instead of into the air, but it doesn't matter. A dioxide emission equivalent is the same in the ocean or in the atmosphere.

Sorry. I got a couple more questions. Now if they need 13 megs out to the cruise dock to, you know, to power up two cruise ships, do do you plug that into the game? Like, so these emissions are not gonna be, you know, steaming all day when the people are here just emitting at the dock when they plug in. But does it go further out your game and then show a reduction, you know, in those bunker fuel emissions.

And then the other one was thinking that we don't get we only get southbound cargo here. The rest, it's just FedEx planes that are coming in, right, with turboprop or something less efficient than a seven thirty seven? I guess I'm just thinking out loud. I'll I'm gonna come visit you guys because I kinda I I wanna bird dog in on that. Thank you very much.

Great question. I'll address the first one, which was about the cruise ship dock. So the game that we played with 80 something folks was really to have folks understand the complexity of the system. So if we really care about electrifying the cruise ship terminal or the cruise ship dock so that we can can have electric cruise ships. What does that mean for what we need to do to improve our electric grid?

What does that mean for, you know, how much more we would need to produce or efficiency upgrades we'd need to make across buildings and homes. So it was really about a bunch of trade offs and finding people's priorities and people ranked, like, what would be most important to you for the future of Sitka. So, again, we didn't go into, you know, any of the policies or, you know, the process for doing those things. It was more to get people's priorities for, like, in future Sitka, what what do you wanna see? What are the things that are most important for you? So we'll be able to share more with with the recommendations that came out of it. But that's kind of a high level summary of what we did.

Just more appreciation because you can get really nerdy for a minute there. And that is group. And it's so valuable to have just people we can ask questions like this to. So thank you for your service and volunteering on that board.

Katie and then John.

I have a question for me. In terms of the greenhouse gas emission inventory, we talked about air travel or airplanes, mail and cruise ships. Are we talking about the greenhouse gas inventory just locally here in Sitka? Or in other words, if a Citation 10 comes in and takes on 5,000 pounds of Jet A, does your math take that full 5,000 pounds and convert it into a greenhouse gas emission? Or how do you separate that this was the activity of that 5,000 pounds of fuel that happened within our local inventory?

I can try to answer that not knowing what a citation a is.

A jet.

So the greenhouse gas emissions inventory is broken down. And the our grant or the technical team, and it was NREL, now it's NROC, the National Renewable Energy Lab, now the National Lab of the Rockies. They did a lot of this math, and a lot of it is estimates. I would say they break down the methodology pretty well into scope, and Elizabeth touched on this, but scopes one, two, and three. Scope one is what we make and what we use here in Sitka.

Scope two is something we just don't have because it is about it's a down south thing where there's other grids. Right? And here, we're on an isolated microgrid, so we just don't have any scope to. So a lot of the things that the the public asked us to include, and so we did, but the the math becomes more estimates. Right? About, like, on average, you know, if if someone is flying from here to Juneau or here to Philadelphia, it's very different. If everyone has to stop in Juneau or Seattle, we don't really know all that data. So it does get into estimations, but that falls under the scope three, and the method section is laid out pretty extensively in the in the inventory which is now online.

Anything else for commissioners while they're in front of us? Thank you. We may have more. We may call you back up. And then Katie?

Yeah. I just wanted to thank the commissioners for their time and hard work and also the entire team that makes this happen. It's the staff liaison. It's also the administration and big props to John as well. I know that you know in the sometimes resolutions have been passed. The previous climate action plan was passed, and it was kind of put on the shelf. And I've seen multiple instances of things coming up, calling out that decarbonization resolution as one of the supporting factors for why we've taken certain actions that we have. So I just do appreciate that continuity and definitely started at the commission level from the citizens and then carried on up. So big thanks to that. Also very much looking forward to working on this solid waste goal with you all.

That's definitely a priority of mine. We've had a lot of conversations about bears and food waste and with growing gardening efforts here in town. Just excited to see how we can look for opportunities to build up composting and other waste diversion methods. So thanks for the great work you've done here. Oh, and then just a shout out for the great energy modules that are online. I think that we often hear a lot discussion over why are things the way they are, and thanks to to Ron for that update earlier from the electric department. But there is a fantastic amount of information online about our utilities and our electrical grid, and so just really thanks a lot for the transparency there and increasing opportunities for people to learn about our systems.

JJ? I had an opportunity to go to the March meeting where they were discussing this and just listening to not participating, but listening to how the commissioners discussed this plan, this work plan was just, I guess, inspiring to see these volunteers, like, really, really caring and really concerned and really seeing how they can best help this town. And with the outcomes of what this mission has been able to do and and Brie's work through the electric department, I'm excited to see what can be brought to our our waste stream changed as well.

I think it's a a good spot for me to to talk to this because I I've often talked about solid waste and how the commission could help the the town and the assembly. Totally agree with goal three and continuing to do that. I think that's very important. Can I add a side order of bear garbage to that one? So when you're when you're thinking about that, looking at that considerations of bear trash and effects and causes and all that I think would be very important in the community.

We have a government to government meeting coming up tomorrow and for the as long as I can remember bears and bear garbage are on the agenda again. So it is definitely a community need concern. So not a 100% focus on that one. But as you're working through, if you find thoughts and ideas and solutions, there are multiple people in the community that would love to hear it. And, again, I said it earlier, but thank you for operating as a very high functioning commission.

I really do appreciate all the work that goes into it. I see it from this side, so I can only imagine how much homework and daily work is involved along with your day jobs in often similar fields. So thank you. Jim? Thank you.

Sitting on this side watching your reports in the years past was fascinating and interesting. But then sitting on the other side with you guys has been an eye opener. So this is an amazing group of people that are very motivated, Bree's incredible in terms of helping them and getting things done. And this is a group that gets things done. And I think and they're doing a lot of work for us and their public outreach is the standard that we would like to see on all our commissions, I think, in terms of making sure that the public has the information they need.

And then information is how the best decisions are made and the information that you guys have put out helps in all sorts of different ways. So I'm very impressed and very happy to be your liaison at this point in time. I like this plan. Thanks.

Kevin?

Sorry, just one final thing. Just something that I heard. I just want to reiterate for people who are listening. And like it's been said several times, just want to reemphasize. There is a tremendous amount of information from this commission as well as on the electrical website. Just tons of information and we live in a time when people are seeking more clarity and it's there. And so we just have to look for it. It's not hard to find. So I encourage people to look it up and it's a lot to learn. It's good stuff.

Anything further?

Sarah? All right. On the motion to approve the sustainability commission twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven goals and work plan. Mister Moser?

Yes.

Miss Riley? Yes. Mister Pike? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Christensen? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. And mister Celine? Yes. Motion passes seven zero on item h.

Thank you. With that, before we hit item j, we will take a recess. I was gonna start till I realized Tim's not here. Alright. For some odd reason, was trying to skip over item I tonight, which is not okay.

So instead of item j, let's go to item I, please.

Appoint up I move to appoint up to three assembly members to the Sika community renewable energy strategy team.

Second.

That's been moved and seconded to appoint up to three assembly members to serve on the team. Brie, have an introduction for this.

Good evening, assembly members. Again, my name is Brie Gable. I am the sustainability coordinator. And I won't go into it too much since Elizabeth did a great job at summarizing what the is at this point. You'll notice that it is once again on the commission's goals to finalize that.

This project has gone on for quite some time now. We've been through multiple utility directors, multiple federal administrations, which have caused different challenges along the way. But the project is now at a point, at a really unique spot where the technical team, the scientists at the national labs who have been working on this for so long and in the electric utility department, amongst a bunch of other things, have all of this really great information and data. And we're at a point where it's ready to kind of be contextualized brought to given that special Sitka touch so we can actually create this strategy full of goals and actions of what we want to do with our energy and open that up to the public comment. So we are looking for a little bit more support from the assembly, knowing that this is a plan that ideally will be guiding the electric department for some time to help essentially synthesize a lot of that data, add some of that contextualization, who has a little bit more time and want to perhaps talk to the scientists a little bit more, answer some questions, and participate in different things like this facilitated event we have coming up on May 11.

And over the next two to three ish months, hopefully, just give us a little bit more time to get this thing really ready to go so we can start getting that public comment and getting it refined with hopes that the assembly can review it for approval sometime in the fall slash maybe winter. I'll be realistic. Let's say the winter. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Is let's Can

I just interject? So a motion is not really needed on this item. Think folks can just volunteer to if you want to do a motion, that's fine. But it's not needed for an appointment or for nominating three folks to serve.

Perfect. Up to three assembly members should raise their hand right now.

Mister mayor, I'd be I would be honored to serve One.

As long as you

know, can't make the eleventh. Two. We don't need three if if it's just two assembly members that have the ability at this point.

What's the time commitment? I read something about, you know, four months. But how many hours per week can you guess? And do I have to write a report, or are you just participating in meetings?

So the scientists have been just looking for some feedback. So there might be some questions that can be answered via email. We're trying to get some workshops where they're on-site here, where we might have a little bit more one on one conversations with them. I'm hoping that it's not a huge time commitment at this point, knowing that everyone is very busy and that we don't want to belabor anything. But it kind of depends on what they need at any given point.

It's been a bit of an ebb and a flow. So right now, they need a lot of support, which is why I'm here. But it's probably going to let up a little bit. But I can't imagine it would be more than an hour or two a week at most when it is kind of picked up with opportunities to tap out as needed if there's multiple semi members involved.

And that redundancy makes sense for why three was a good a good number. Well, my term's up in October, so we can't commit to practicing or participating past that time, but I'm willing to help between now and then.

K. Thank you. I also realize we have a motion on the floor. Would the motion maker like to pull their motion?

Yeah. I would come withdraw the motion.

Thank you. Yeah. Now we can talk a little bit more freely about it and just appoint members. So it looks like Kevin, JJ, and Tor will be our three that can meet without it being a meeting. So I appreciate you guys. If things come up, please bring it back to the body for potential considerations of alternates.

Yeah. I mean, got a glimpse into this last week in a different meeting. And if you really geeking out over the numbers is gonna be fine. I mean, it I guess, got a little glimpse into it and said, okay, he could get lost in this really quickly.

Okay. Anything else on item I? Bree, do you have what you need from that one?

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. And that would bring us to item j tonight. Let me find the correct spot on here. So tonight, we are going to hear an appeal to the assembly of the municipal administrator's denial of a public records request that was filed by Austin Cranford.

We do while this is a quasi judicial hearing, we will not be convening as any specific body. So we are still the assembly this evening. That is an important distinction. However, if anyone has has had any ex parte contact with either the appellant or clerk's office on this one, now would be the time to throw that out. Great.

Thank you. So tonight, a couple steps in this hearing. First, we'll hear procedural advice from our municipal attorney. It is important to note that the municipal attorney will be representing the clerk's office in this. So after procedural advice, and she will stick strictly to procedural advice in that step, we will be on our own.

So if you have any questions, make sure that you ask them then. Step two would be hearing. There is a outline in front of you on that, and then we can deliberate if there is a motion at the end to to either grant or deny, and I'll go a little bit more over that once we get to that step. So questions at this point on the process? JJ?

One question on the step three. I see in the possible motions, we have to have reasons to grant the appeal, but we don't need reasons to deny. Is that correct?

If you're going to grant the appeal and then issue directions to staff, you need factual findings for those changes of direction.

So findings apply, but they we don't have to list findings for the denial?

That's correct.

Thank you. Great question. Rachel, turning it over to you for procedural advice in tonight's hearing.

Just reiterating that you're sitting as a quasi judicial body. So you're going to take evidence from the appellant. Appellant gets to go first. That's not a time for questions. That's the time for the appellant to present any evidence and argument that he has. It then switches to the municipality to do so. The appellant is able to respond or issue a clarifying statement. The municipality's turn to do that. And then deliberation by the assembly is the time when it would be appropriate to ask questions, should you have any.

Appreciate it. Understood. Thank you.

Kevin Pearson, question.

Kevin.

Yeah. Rachel, so you said the deliberation is the place where we ask questions. So if we have questions of either you or Mr. Cranford, we can ask questions then of you or Mr. Cranford?

That's correct. And if any witnesses are presented.

Okay. So got it. Thank you.

Anything further from the assembly procedurally? JJ?

Are we allowed to ask questions of the clerks, or is everything directed through the attorney?

That would depend on whether the clerks are presented as witnesses. Although I would say that because there are affidavits in here, would be appropriate to ask questions about things that are within the scope of the affidavits.

Thank you, Rachel, for that. I appreciate that. With that, I would open up the hearing section of this. So we will give the appellant, ten minutes, for his presentation of evidence and argument. Mister Cranford.

Good evening, mayor and assembly members. For the record, my name is Austin Cranford. I am here tonight because I submitted a records request to understand how the city is handling sign on bonuses and high turnover at the police department. I must now appeal decision by the municipal administrator that fundamentally violates the Alaska Public Records Act. After reading the legal department's defense memo submitted to you this week, this appeal is no longer just about blacked out public contracts.

It is about a city administration that is providing you, the assembly, with factually false information to justify hiding public records. If you read their memo closely and compare it to the affidavits of their own staff, their defense collapses. I want to walk you through the specific undeniable contradictions in the city's packet tonight. First, let's look at the basic facts of what was produced. In her official memorandum, the municipal attorney claims on page four that the municipality produced 82 pages of records to me.

She doubles down on this by listing specific legal exemptions to justify the redactions on pages 61, 73, and 76. However, if you turn to the sworn notarized affidavit from deputy clerk Holly Bain, she states under oath, the documents consisting of 41 pages were then emailed to mister Cranford. I am holding exactly 41 pages. The legal department is literally citing statutory exemptions to defend redactions on ghost pages that were never actually provided to me. If they are this disconnected from the basic facts of their own production, why should we trust their legal conclusions?

The second contradiction proves the city is unlawfully withholding records. I asked for the employment contracts officers hired with a bonus, but the city failed to provide the offer letter for an applicant named Ashley Trefunov. In the city attorney's memo, she claims the legal department confirmed no offer letter exists because the municipality did not move forward with that individual's hiring process. But look at the city's own emails provided to me. An email from HR generalist Denise Salter dated 08/11/2025 explicitly states, I just onboarded Ashley Trofunov for our public safety dispatcher trainee position.

Will she be eligible for the sign on bonus, and will the paperwork be forthcoming? Assembly members, you do not onboard an employee you did you did not move forward with. The city's own HR department directly contradicts the city attorney's statement. The record exists, and the city is concealing it. Third, the administrator gave me formal written notice that no records exist regarding officers who declined offers or resigned over these bonuses.

I challenged the adequacy of the search based on objective omissions found within the city's own production. For example, page three of the packet contains an email from Chief Godin to the candidate named Kajena discussing a $20,000 sign on bonus, yet the city failed to produce her resulting offer letter or any record of her declining the position. If she was hired, her contract was responsive to item one. If she declined, the record was responsive to item four. In either case, the record is missing.

Furthermore, it is well known in this community that multiple officers resigned within six months, citing failure to receive their promised bonuses. The city claims that no emails, memos, or exit interviews exist regarding these high profile separations is administratively implausible and indicates a failure to conduct a reasonable search. Fourth, to excuse these missing records, the city attorney claims my request for records of officers who resigned over bonus disputes was was an impermissible research project that exceeded the clerk's duties. She attempts to hide behind the claim that it would require creating a new record or analysis. Yet the affidavit from IT director Grant Turner confirms he simply built two queries to search our Microsoft based mail system for emails matching the specific details requested.

Finding an email about an officer quitting over a $20,000 bonus does not require a research project. It requires running a basic keyword search. The legal department proudly admits that its keyword search successfully pulled up irrelevant emails about bonus points at a pumpkin carving potluck. The idea that the IT department can easily pull up pumpkin carving emails and cannot locate a single email regarding three three high profile resignations totaling over $20,000 stretches the bounds of believability. The fifth contradiction brings me to the massive black boxes of the employment contracts provided on pages 18 through 21.

Initially, the administrator claimed these taxpayer funded compensation details were redacted simply because they were non responsive. He claims standard record management practices does not require a statutory citation. But under two a a c ninety six three three five subparagraph c, any denial or withholding of a public record requires a written explanation citing the specific legal exemption. The city left the exemption box on its own form completely blank. And now the legal department's memo changes the story attempting a legal blake bait and switch.

The attorney claims these redactions are supported by statutory exemptions, specifically the deliberate process under SECA general code one dot two zero dot zero four two. That defense falls apart upon basic scrutiny. Deliberate privilege protects internal brainstorming, not a final legally binding employment contract handed to a police officer. And if you actually read Sikka general code one dot two zero dot zero four two, which the attorney relies on in her own memo, it states that personnel records are confidential except for seven specific items that must remain open for public inspection. Item number six on that public list explicitly mandates the disclosure of, quote, the compensation authorized for or received by a municipal employee.

Pay, leave, and benefits are indisputably part of an employee's compensation. The legal department is trying to use a local ordinance to hide these black boxes though that same ordinance explicitly prohibits concealing compensation. Lastly, the administrator argues that federal bond index doctrines and the Alaska Administrative Code do not apply to municipalities. This is legally false under the doctrine of state preemption. Under a s 40 dot two five dot one one zero, the Alaska legislature mandated that public records must be open to inspection unless specifically exempted by law.

The state has wholly occupied the field of public records law leaving no room for the city of Sitka to invent an extra legal non responsive reduction category. Furthermore, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in the Gwenshin steering committee v state case that the government must provide fundamental information about withheld material to allow citizens a meaningful opportunity to challenge the government government's claims. By arbitrarily redacting documents without citing any legal authority on their form, the city has denied me that fundamental right, the state demands transparency, and the city cannot invent local loopholes to avoid it. What is happening here tonight isn't a grand legal mystery. It is simply a failure to do the job correctly followed by a failure to be honest about it.

The city claims that the absence of responsive records reflects a good faith search, not concealment. Based on their own emails and contradictory affidavits, I argue it is the exact opposite. I'm asking the assembly to exercise its oversight authority and take three specific actions tonight. Direct the municipal administrator to immediately release the unredacted versions of the provided materials as the redaction of compensation details under the guise of nonresponsiveness violates the Alaska Public Records Act. Direct the municipal administrator to immediately release the 41 missing ghost pages as the arbitrary removal of pages violates the Alaska Public Records Act.

Direct the municipal administrator and HR director to conduct a thorough secondary search of email accounts for the missing offer letters, including Kagena and Kagena and Ashley Trofunov, and the communications regarding the three officers who resigned citing bonus disputes. People listening tonight might wonder why I keep fighting the city on these issues, filing appeals, and pushing back. I do it because demanding that our government follow its own laws is how we protect our home. And as the Turkish poet, Nazem Hikmet wrote about the painful love of one's country, you are my enslavement and my freedom. You are my sorrow that isn't felt the more I feel it.

You are my country. In a moment, the municipal attorney will speak for ten minutes. I ask the assembly, the media, and every citizen listening tonight to to pay very close attention to what she says, see if she can explain where those 41 missing ghost pages went, and see if she can explain why she uses a public transparency law to blackout taxpayer funded police contracts. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. We will open it up for the municipal attorney presentation, ten minutes as well.

Thank you, mayor and assembly members. As an initial matter, to talk about the discrepancy in page count, I had single sided pages and miss Bain was counting double sided

to going to We're

compliant response to Mr. That. We're Cranford's four requests for perhaps public records, but also research. In going through those four requests, I'd like you to keep a couple of things in mind, if you would be so kind. The first is that the clerks are only required to produce records that exist. They're also only required to produce records that were asked for. And that's what the vocabulary responsive or nonresponsive gets to. Non responsive documents are those that were not asked for in the first place. For example, in this case, linemen bonuses came up in that very broad search. They are non responsive.

That's what non responsiveness means. The clerks are not permitted to conduct research, analyze documents, or create new compilations, lists, or records. They it's best to think about them as a records librarian. If you analogize that to a book librarian, somebody coming in saying, hey. Can I have the lord of the rings and the hobbit? That's a request for a document. That's a request for a book that exists. Can I have the works by Tolkien? Alright. We're getting a little research y, but we organize libraries by author.

We can go find that. If somebody comes in and says, I want every record in your library that contains the word Hobbit, now we're looking at the complete works of Tolkien, every academic paper about Tolkien, newspapers, magazines, fan fiction, maybe anthropology reports saying Neanderthals looks like hobbits, maybe political satire saying this guy looks like a hobbit. That becomes research where the librarian needs to know all of the content of the documents to assess whether this category applies to them or not. Just because computers can do that searching easily doesn't make it not research. And as you can see in this request, it produces a hugely overly expansive number of records that are outside of the search in a way that old technology, you had to ask a department, had to go through their filing cabinet, and it would not bring back nonresponsive records.

With that said, I'd like to have mister Brant Hoover come up to provide some testimony, please. Mister Brandhuber, can you state your name and your role, please?

Josh Brandhuber. I'm the assistant administrator, and I oversee HR.

Thank you. We're just gonna go through mister Cranford's request one at a time here. For number one, copies of all employment contracts for all police officers hired with a sign on bonus, does the city have contracts with police officers?

No. We have a a CBA, but not individual contracts with employees.

So so there are no individual contracts for police officers? No. Thank you. And would an offer letter be the item that directs that hire to know to look at the collective bargaining agreement for the terms? Thank you. In terms of offer letters, as Mr. Cranford points out, our personnel records are confidential except for the items listed in code. Is that how you handle personnel records?

Yes.

Thank you. Moving on to item two. That's records of all sign on bonuses paid to police department employees in 2025 and 2026. Do you keep a record that is all of the sign on bonuses paid out? No. How would you go about obtaining such a record?

I would have to look back and look at a bunch of different stuff to find it.

And for bonuses that were actually paid, would that include research through payroll records? Yes. And so would that be just pulling a document off the shelf and handing it to the clerk or is that a research project?

It would have to be researched.

Thank you. But pulling a document off the shelf, the memos authorizing those sign on bonuses did did make it from you to the clerk? Yes. Thank you. For item number three oh, sorry. I actually did wanna scoot back to item number one for a second. Those contracts were all police officers hired. Were Trefunov and Khojana Pfeiffer police officers? No. What was their role?

Ash Trefunov was a dispatcher trainee, and Kadena Pfeiffer is the dispatch supervisor.

So when you searched for police officer contracts or those offer letters directing them to the collective bargaining agreement, did you search for dispatcher contracts? No. Those were not asked for? No. Thank you. In terms of item number three, that's where Mr. Cranford did get a very comprehensive email search. The question I have for you there is when offer letters are sent out through NeoGov, do they necessarily appear in email? No. They just go

Yes. So it's a system where it automatically goes from the NeoGov system to the person. It's not sent on our email server.

Thank you. So an email search by IT would not necessarily pull offer letters?

Correct.

Thank you. And in terms of item number four regarding staff who declined offers or resigned due to disputes, what would it take for you well, first of all, do you keep a file or a folder or a record that is staff who declined offers? I would assume that means applicants who declined offers. Or individuals who resigned due to disputes. Do keep a list of that?

No, I do not.

How would you go about finding that information?

I would have to research and look for it.

And would you need to make a judgment call about the contents of documents in order?

Absolutely. I would have to analyze and try to figure out what they were intending.

And the records that would inform that analysis, are those publicly available or confidential?

Confidential.

Are they housed with you or the clerk's office?

With me.

Would it be appropriate for the clerk's office to conduct that search?

I don't think so.

Okay. Thank you. So assembly members, just reviewing the testimony there in terms of what you need to decide. You need to decide if the clerk's office produced responsive records to employment contracts for all police officers hired with a sign on bonus. You've heard testimony that the individuals that mister Cranford flags as missing from that request were indeed not police officers, that we don't have police officer contracts.

We have a collective bargaining agreement that is available online, and the clerks are not required to produce publicly available documents. But did anyway, despite this being a research request sorting people by sign on bonus or not, provide the offer letters that were available that would show that individual and Mr. Cranford to refer to the collective bargaining agreement. You heard from Mr. Brandhoover that sign on bonuses pay to police department employees. That's not a document that exists. That is a research project that his office and perhaps finance would have to conduct. The clerks can't conduct that research. That's not a document that you just pull off the shelf. The memos authorizing the bonuses are, and those were provided.

In terms of emails or written transcripts, as has been discussed, a broad search brought back a lot of information on that. Segregating nonresponsive information from responsive information in the Internet era is standard practice. We we can't give out documents that were not asked for. In terms of the redactions of those documents, mister Cranford conflated a few things. Some of them were redacted accordance with the SICAG general code one twenty.

That's where we've got the compensation being releasable. However, our code does not allow release of the benefits. Those documents separate out cash compensation, both the wage and any bonus that's applied. The benefits are handled separately. You can see that reflected in the bargaining agreement where compensation and benefits are discussed separately.

And we would need that item to either say total compensation or compensation and benefits for us to be able to release that information. So ordering the clerks to release unredacted versions of those documents would violate our code, but that information is nevertheless available, not personalized to specific people, but in the collective bargaining agreement that Mr. Cranford could analyze how that applies to each person he's interested in. And then in terms of item number four, it's just absolutely a research question. It requires analysis and judgment about which resignations, if any, were due to disputes.

That's not a document the clerk's office can go grab. You heard mister Brant Hoover say he does not keep personnel records in a list or a compilation or a folder that is organized in that fashion, and that it would be his office and not the clerks conducting that investigation were it to happen. In terms of Mr. Cranford's statements about preemption, they're just not true. The Alaska Public Records Act specifically procedures do not apply to municipalities. We have the state of general code 120 for what our procedures are. And I'll stop there and bring my other points up on response.

Thank you. Austin, you have a five minute clarifying response or statement.

Of course. Thank you, mayor. It the fact that there are allegedly no contracts and that the city does not keep records of sign on bonuses. Sign on bonuses are taxable pay. Correct? So does that mean the city does not keep IRS records? That's essentially what I'm being told. So maybe I need to contact the IRS and have them come take a look. The attorney continues to hide behind research projects. In her own memo, she states 500 pages came up with my keywords.

That means to some extent, those 500 pages have something to do with my request. They are the ones that decided that they were non responsive. They don't get to make that decision. They can send me a Vaughan index and tell me why they think they're non responsive, and then a court gets to look over them and decide if they're non responsive. There was a comment about Ashley Trefunov not being police officer, then why do I have an email that says, can I get a conditional offer letter for Ashley R Trifunov?

Starting rate will be $26.23 an hour, forty hours per week, scheduled training during training followed by a nice big redaction, conditional on satisfactory background investigation, drug screening, hearing test, and completion of training from lieutenant Ashe. There's a bunch of people cc'd on that as well. But so now she's not a part of my records request, yet I have records about her. Continuing on, I have the offer letter position. The state says all compensation. Leave a curl is blacked out. Other benefits is blacked out. Offer conditions is blacked out. Probation probationary period is blacked out. It's all compensation.

No judge in the state is going to look at that and go, yeah, that's not compensation. It's even in this alleged public CBA. So you're admitting that the information is public and then still redacted it out. It doesn't make any sense. The HR director has the HR records. That's fine. Makes sense for the HR director to have the HR records. The clerk is required to search all records across all departments. Doesn't matter that the records are in the HR office. They still have to contact the HR office and the HR office has to find the records.

This is a simply semantics game of, well, he said he said compensation instead of total compensation. Really? Take that to a judge. We think that's gonna stand. It's not. We're we're playing a semantics game of how difficult can we make it to get public records. That's that's all it comes down to. Thank you. Thank

you. We will give the municipal attorney a five minute response or clarifying

And case. Case. Got an there are emails regarding that offer that's letter, it's because it was a dispatch offer letter, which was not asked for. The scope of the requested search for emails included all staff. The request for a contract was for police officers only.

If mister Cranford wants the dispatch offer letters, he can submit a new request asking for those. In terms of our code versus the collective bargaining agreement being publicly available, our code in that section is addressing personnel records. Personnel records are highly protected by the state of Alaska and then that is incorporated into our code. Because we are a municipality who is exempt from that administrative code, we get to decide which of our personnel records are releasable or not. And our code says compensation, it does not say compensation and benefits.

That's different than the collective bargaining agreement, which is a public document and has those general provisions stated, we have to protect individuals' personnel records much, much more closely by our code than that collective bargaining agreement, which is a public facing document, has. In terms of what's going on here in the big picture, Mr. Cranford is attempting to get a research and investigation project off the ground by using the public records process inappropriately. The clerk exists as a records librarian whose job it is to grab documents that can be identified. You've heard from Mr.

Brant Hoover about which documents do and do not exist, which would take a research project by his office to complete. And the clerk's office is very well established under the case law provided to you in the memo is not obligated obligated to conduct research analysis or create records that do not exist. And that is all from me. Thank you.

Thank you. So I would close the evident hearing of our portion of this hearing. I would bring it back to the assembly for deliberation on the facts presented in front of us.

Tor? I will say that I did not hear anything that makes me dispute what the attorney said. And I don't feel I don't want to discuss it much more than that, just that I didn't hear anything that would make me grant this appeal.

Kevin? Same. I am not inclined to approve this appeal. The logic that the attorney laid out is very clear. And that's all I have to say.

JJ?

Question for the attorney. Is there a research process from the public that they can request an investigation?

They can request an investigation through John's office. They could reach out to HR and request that. It would be up to those individuals to determine if there's any there there to move forward. Or they could bring the matter to the assembly.

Thank you. As liberation Oh, sorry.

Yeah. And John just reminded me, individuals are allowed to conduct a private investigation also. And I don't recall our code section off the top of my head, but our obligation is to not interfere with that investigation.

Thank you. Kind of comparing it to a records librarian was helpful. It's not a it's not a reference librarian that's different, and it's not a research assistant. And to ask for four areas of research request under the section that says, please provide any additional information that will assist in us locating these records for you as quickly as possible. That's where the content of this request lives.

The first in this three part section says title of records and was written unknown. So it's not a records request that this has been submitted as. And I don't see any need to overturn this when we're we're not following the stated use of of this form. And it made a lot of sense when the witness came forward and talked about how NeoGov handles the offer letters and how the collective bargaining agreement has the contracts and how perhaps something that was listed as a record for the third request from the appellant was being considered as a, you know, identifying why there was need for in the first request. So there's just a lot of confusion and overlapping things here.

And I'm pulling it apart and seeing that, you know, in the documents provided about those bonuses, that they're four year bonuses. So anything that would have been paid to an employee in '25, '26 would have been from a hire four years previous to that. So there's all sorts of pieces here that when you look at it your second time through third time, you can see why it's a little murky, but it's it's very evident that the the clerks did their duty to produce things that existed and are asked for.

Katie?

Yeah. I have a question regarding the NeoGov. Like, Can public records request be made for information that is exchanged through neo gov?

There's case now that says that municipalities can only be required to produce documents that are in their possession. How that was transmitted is on their server somewhere, that request needs to be made to NeoGov. Mr.

Brant

did say that those end up in the personnel records, which is how the ones for police were discovered by Mr. Brant Hoover looking through the personnel records, and then they were subject to the redaction that I laid out.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, just a note here on semantics, semantics and you know I don't think that our clerks want to make any kind of public records request difficult for citizens. I understand that's why we're investing in new software to make it even easier to track these requests and do them accurately.

So I think where the, you know, issue comes is like potentially a citizen's interpretation that they expect the clerk to understand generally what they meant and the clerks have to go exactly by what was said. Right? And that is I think one of the distinctions between police department staff and police officers that was mentioned in the first question. So just seems like the exact words that are used are very important for the clerks to be able to identify exactly what information is being requested and that is why guidance is given to the public to be as specific as possible to reduce that number of documents that can come up. Just something there that I noted, think when people are submitting it they're like oh this makes perfect sense but if it's not the exact thing that the staff is looking for then it will not be included so I appreciate you you know stating that additional records can be requested using their exact name And I don't see any reason to grant this appeal.

Tim?

Yes. I think we're fortunate the law is all about accuracy and language. And in my mind, this particular situation comes down to accuracy of language and accuracy of request and specificity. And I think that's the issue that I see in front of us. And as a consequence, I think based upon the language that was submitted, the clerks have supplied that particular information.

I would also find that the request is responsive. When you ask the information that I'm using to further that, when you ask for police officers, I understand the difference between a police officer and a dispatcher. I understand on number two how records of all sign on bonuses are not kept in a singular document, that that is a research project. I also understand how emails approving a sign on bonus for police department staff are different than police officers, thus resulting in the documents that we see in front of us. I also understand how written records number four, written records, emails, exit interviews is a research research project.

Project. I think as as was stated earlier, that this is an an issue of a records request that is responsive to the actual request, however, may or may not have been the intent of the requester. The in our municipal attorney's response and clarifying statement, there was issued a path forward. So there is some clarity there on how those records can be found if the if a requester would look for it. So I do find the the request in front of us responsive and would not grant an appeal.

And at that point, I would move to deny the appeal. Second. Although or Sarah on denying the appeal.

Miss Riley? Yes. Mayor Eisenbeis? Yes. Miss Carlson? Yes. Mister Mosier? Yes. Mister Pike? Yes. Mister Christensen? Yes. And mister Saline? Yes. Motion passes seven zero on the denial.

Thank you. We will move on this evening with 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.

Good evening, assembly members, administrator. One, I came up here mostly for the next agenda item. I do wanna point out that while the agenda item does say my father's name, my father was dismissed from that case. So I find it misleading that his name is there when the only defendant that remains within the case is the city itself. So I just wanted to put that out there. But while I'm up here, I don't agree with the dismissal, obviously, or not the decision to not grant an appeal. The idea that the city can hide behind well, it's not our databases. It's a company that the city hires database that the record is in. Okay. That's an interesting argument.

Then we have the argument where this word was used over that word. And I was looking at my paperwork before I zipped it up. And the attorney said that she had 81 pages, but she printed them off single single pages. That's why she had 81 pages. Well, I'm glad to know that records requests have page numbers, and the page numbers say 41. So even if I were to print them off in single pages, the page numbers would still say 41. So I just wanted to put that out there. No other comments at this time.

Anyone else this evening for persons to be heard? Any item on or off tonight's agenda? Thank you. That'll bring us to a report this evening. Starting with my report, quite a busy week. I had the privilege of being invited to the search ribbon cutting ceremony, probably one of the largest probably the largest ribbon cutting I've ever been at. I had a brief tour of a couple areas within the hospital as they're they're getting it going. Definitely made it down to the chow hall. That's gonna be pretty good down there. They they gave us a cookie.

That's probably the the highlight of of going. Right? And then myself, John, and Melissa did go back to D. C. Word has already gotten back to me on how successful that trip was because when we did meet with the program administrator for the the grant programs two four two, two four seven, and others, that staff had started out as a staff of 12.

By the time we got to them, it was a staff of one. And, fortunately, the individual we spoke with still had very high spirits even though he had the entire programs resting on his shoulders. It was indicated that funds were frozen, but they were starting to thaw. So glad that we we sat with him and indicated, you know, some of our needs, concerns, and requests because it sounds like those funds are starting to thaw. When we did meet with congressman congressman Begich, reiterated the need for hard infrastructure in our GPIP in the marine haul out.

His office is all about hard infrastructure that's going to create jobs. So we we made sure that we completely understood that. Had an opportunity to meet with Coast Guard. They had everybody in the room that we needed to talk to. They had their childcare person, their housing person, their cutter deployment person.

Sounds like our doc for our cutter is gonna be done in '28 with a deployment here to Sitka later that year. Their child care person reiterated they did their own child care study here, and they reiterated a lot of the findings that we had already had as well. And it does sound like housing is going to slowly move forward for the Coast Guard. There is initial funding to plan 20 new units along with a rehab of the 60 or so units that are there. So we we'll continue to work on our side to try and unlock some of that funding through our senators.

Met with who did we met with everybody while we were there. We met with FERC. I had a wonderful meeting with FERC. I'm not saying this, so Ron's not in the room anymore. But when we sat down with FERC, they indicated that the process to relicense your hydro facility is complicated.

It's burdensome, and it's horrible, but our staff was doing absolutely amazing. So I wanted to bring that back to the assembly that our staff is doing everything that they possibly can to make that process smooth, and the FERC people did notice complimented us on that. When we sat down with senator Murkowski, talked about the the CDS request for the 10,000,000 for the affluent disinfection, massive win win for our community. We were extremely thankful for that. Reiterated, phase two of GPIP that we were working on.

She is very intimately familiar and had actually just been in Sitka out at GPIP commissioning an electric vessel. So it's very open to the needs there. Meeting with senator Sullivan talked about MARAD programs where we can potentially not only work on the haul out, but our our seawall as well. And senator Sullivan is a huge defense guy, so talked about not only the our cutter, the housing, but then mentioned to us icebreakers. There is the opportunity for a couple icebreakers to come up to be home ported in Alaska.

And so that may be an opportunity going forward for the municipality to put out some sort of package to see if if wanna house an icebreaker here. We got to meet with CLIA back in DC. It was really good to be face to face with with some of their representatives there on furthering the the cruise lines relationship in Sitka. We were able to talk about some of our concerns, and they they seemed responsive at that time.

Man, we met with

Department of Energy, quite a few other and, actually, this one's actually very important. We met with the Alaska governor's office in DC. His name is Jerry Moses. And he as I've tried to do for quite some time, we've always talked about land in the River Valley. I think we finally found some keys to unlock that through some meetings that jury and our lobbyists were able to set up with us.

So we now know the process going forward. It sounds as if they they there would be some openness to this, especially with the work that we've previously done with Forest Service on unlocking an easement through their land. So maybe not within my tenure, but there is some movement forward on some of that land back in Indian River Valley, and there is a path forward at this point. So that's the majority of what we did in DC. Once again, we missed the rose or the we're see to And And

that.

Productive trip, really productive trip. We we're got a lot done in those in those couple days, and really glad to hear that 247 is is starting to get freed up. John?

Thank you, Mayor. That's why I handed the report down there so we both didn't have to do the exact same thing because I still haven't reported on the Northwest Managers' Conference, successful conference here in Sitka, where we had city managers from Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. The first night on March 30 was just a registration and a welcome reception. And the Kajahin dancers came in and performed, and it was amazing. There were were some kids there. I think one of them was just 10 years old. So it took a lot of confidence for them to get up there and do that. And the crowd really enjoyed it. The next day, just a lot of opening sessions. Thank you to Ms.

Carlson for coming and giving the welcome statement for the city. After that, we moved into, which was kind of the theme of the conference, which is leadership in a full service area. That was something we really wanted to showcase in Alaska that we're everything here. So a lot of other municipalities, they've got utilities that are privately run. They've got municipal solid waste that's privately run. They might have a fire department, but when you get a two, three, four alarm fire, that means other departments are coming to help you out. We run everything here with the exception of Internet. But some places around Alaska do have their own Internet service as well. So that was a great discussion. We invited the delegation.

We got a video presentation from Senator Sullivan and Representative Begich. Then we had our strategic planner. She came here as a sponsor but also moderated a panel called Strategic Planning That Works: Aligning Community Vision with Municipal Action. We put copies of our strategic plan out on everybody's table, one pager, just to make them all a little jealous. But some of the questions that came up were, how do you get your assembly members to really reference this thing?

They really liked that we have discussions about that a lot and we use it. A lot of the sponsors that were there, one we learned about was public sector financing strategies. I can get into it more at a different time if anybody's interested in it, where if you have capital needs, you can do it's like a lease leaseback type thing where you don't have to go out to bond. But it's debt still. But it's instant access to capital.

And you lease the property or the capital that you need and then lease it back from them. Great panel on managing municipal and tribal partnerships. I want to thank Rob Allen and Woody Woodmark coming out and sitting on that. And Ms. Carlson also sat on that panel as well. And someone from the city administrator for the city of Seadrill Woolley had a lot of experience with tribal partnerships there. So another great conversation. We went through a session on emergency management because a lot of us have had some major emergencies here recently. So we talked about the landslide in Ketchikan. We talked about the flooding in Juneau and some other things in Washington and Oregon.

And of course, since we're a subcomponent of ICMA, we had leadership from ICMA out here. A past president of ICMA was on the board some of our regional VPs. The reception on the water that first night, which was great because one, it was paid for with the registration fees, but the whales really put on a show for everybody. So maybe you'll get a lot of city managers that want to come to Sitka now because of that. I'm sorry, I'm getting through this as quick as I governance was a great presentation.

They talked about strong policies around AI usage. And one that was really cool, the person that had been working with the municipality of Anchorage, he's the chief innovation officer. That guy knew everything about AI. And he showed us one of these tools he created where he could take a picture of a pothole and it found out where it was based on what is around it, how big it was. And then it would report that to their 311 system and put the municipality of Anchorage in touch with those folks and basically dispatch them to go fix it.

Another great session on tourism. It was great to hear from of course, I was up there for Sitka. But we had the city of Seaside, Oregon and Leavenworth, Washington, other big touristy areas. So we learned about some of their challenges, and they're very similar to ours. Talked about the zoning code. The title of it was blowing up your zoning code to encourage more housing. I think I may have saw did you step in on that one? I know that Ms. Carlson was there. Amy was there as well to hear that.

And then our own Josh Brandhoover gave a kind of a closing session on enhancing employee performance and well-being through mindfulness exercises. We get to shut off the lights and play the bells. It was great. And then a great capstone kind of got surprised. Senator Murkowski came in person and spoke to the crowd. And that was very well received by everybody. And I think they got the idea how close we are with our delegation and how when our delegation works together, they're very powerful. So having that one on one contact with her was much appreciated. And that wrapped up our conference.

Thank you. Rachel, attorney's report.

Thank you, Mayor. The project is kicked off about five months sooner than we expected. The codifier got their report back to us pointing out lots of areas for us to review. Things like, hey, this state statute number has changed. Let's get that updated to the right state statute number.

They have a really cool kind of online platform where our code is pieced out and they have questions. Do you want to accept this change? Or you've got two conflicting definitions, which one is more accurate, things like that. So I've started clicking through those. It's tedious work, it's valuable, picking away at the ones that I kind of single handedly know the answer to like yes let's comply with what the state law is numbered now and then working with John and Sarah and department heads if there's questions that are more appropriate to their expertise.

I had a really good meeting with them where we found out that in addition to producing the entire repeal and replace legislation, they'll also produce a chart for you all and for any members of public that see it in the assembly packet that shows side by side what the changes were so that you're not hunting for them within the new legislation. So yeah, that project is really excited, eager to get that one moving forward.

Thank you. Liaison representatives. Katie?

Sorry. Planning Commission meeting on the April 15 discussed a couple things. There's gonna be a joint work session on the cruise ship ordinance between planning and tourism. I'm not sure exactly when that's scheduled for, but that'll be coming up. And then past a couple of variances for a very exciting project that the tribe is doing to build a carving shed off of the Nocuhete house and a lot larger.

But the the bulk of my interest was the discussion on and review of zoning code changes for accessory dwelling units so as John mentioned Amy went to the blowing up your zoning code this has been something that was also discussed at AML and something that the Planning Commission has been working on for I believe over four years at this point talking about how to revise the ADU code and so the Planning Department put together a great presentation going over all of the 14 conditions and so reminder, ADUs are allowed by right in just a couple zones, limited number if they meet all 14 of these conditions that relate you know, how they look and kinda how they're laid out and, you know, where the exterior entrance is located, like stuff like that. It get it gets pretty detailed. They're pretty burdensome. And so we went through the commission went through each of them by by number and had a detailed discussion, and I think they're gonna put put together a package that suggests removing most of those decreasing the list down to what is necessary for, you know, preservation of property rights and health and safety and all of that.

So and then had some great input from community members as well about things that they wanted to see that would make it easier for young people to build. So I am just really excited by this discussion. This is something I participated in as a planning commissioner and have been working with current planning commissioners on moving forward. So excited to see that was like the first conversation I think of a few at least that will be happening to get some more. There were some specific things that were identified, desires for community feedback.

I think one of the things was using tiny homes on chassis as ADUs. So certainly going to be more opportunity for public input and excited to see that move forward. There's been a lot of movement from other municipalities, including Anchorage. So we will be joining the crowd soon and hopefully have our own sick, a special twist to that.

No other liaisons. Sarah, clerk's report.

Yes. So tomorrow night, there's the government to government dinner meeting at 05:30 at Travel Headquarters. May May twelfth is the next regular meeting. Board commission vacancies, health needs, investment committee, library commission, parks and rec, police and fire, tree and landscape. Just for those listening, on our new website, there, you can find the vacancies on the boards and commissions if you scroll about a third of the way down. If you click on boards and commissions, it'll take you that page. You can find the vacancies, locate an application, get that to our office. And you can always stop at our

office

too. Rachel mentioned the code project. I did want to mention in our previous code at the end of each section or paragraph of the code, there was hyperlinks to the ordinances that changed those sections. We're working on getting that into this new code platform. So that will be coming. I know it's missing, but we're working on it. Then, let's see, boards and commissions. I guess that's all I have. Thank you.

You. Any other reports this evening? All right. That would bring us to our executive session this evening.

I move to go into executive session to discuss to receive and discuss attorney client communications with the municipal attorney regarding legal and financial matters affecting the municipality related to the litigation. Susan Majdi et al versus Gary Cranford et al, case number 1JUDash25Dash00648CI. Second.

It's moved in Segard to enter executive session to discuss a legal matter. Is there any public comment on entering executive session?

Sarah? Alright.

On the motion to go into executive session, mister Christensen? Yes. Miss Carlson. Yes. Mr. Saline. Yes. Mr. Pike.

Yes.

Riley. Yes. And Mr. Moser.

Yes.

And Mayor Eisenbeis. Yes. Motion passes seven zero and will be meeting in Room 2.

Motion to reconvene.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. We are reconvened as the assembly in regular session. We met in executive session to receive a legal update from our attorney, and we did as such. Motion to adjourn.

So So moved.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you,

everyone.

We are adjourned.