City Council - Regular Meeting

You can take the role, city clerk.

All members are present except for mayor Fleming, who is away on city business and is absent and exclude excused. Council member Foster is joining online.

Great. Thanks. And, Olivia, can you hear us?

Yes. Mayor Pro Tem, thank you.

Thanks. Alright. Next, we have approval of the minutes. We got two minutes up for approval. We have the minutes from the 01/06/2026 regular meeting, we have the minutes from the 02/17/2026, meeting. Do we have any corrections to the minutes? Alright. No corrections. So those stand as approved. Alright. Next, we have public business from the floor. Does anybody have public business from the floor? If you do, please state your name, and you have five minutes. Okay. Alright.

Seeing none, moving on to consent agenda. We have four items on the consent agenda. The first item is appointments to the PBMC community advisory council, applicants Kate Dugan and Pam Shurell. The second item is approval of liquor license renewal, Mike's Palace. The third item is approval of memorandum of agreement between US Coast Guard, sector field office Valdez, and Valdez Fire and EMS department. And the fourth item is approval to go into executive session regarding discussion of implications for city revenues and litigation strategy regarding Trans Alaska Pipeline System ad valorem tax issues. Move to approve the consent agenda

second moved by council member lally seconded by council member witty to approve the consent agenda

Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

With a vote of six yeas, one absent, mayor Fleming. Motion carries.

Alright. Moving on to new business. We have one item of new business. It's appointment to the Valdes Museum Historical Archive board of directors. We have two applicants, Richelle Barris and Karen Mitchell. I think everybody has, little voting papers to hand down to the city clerk once you have that.

I don't see any applicants. Okay.

And did you have something worked out with Olivia?

Olivia texted me.

Okay. Great. And do we have any public comments on, the appointment to the VMHA board of directors, the applicants? Alright. I'm not seeing any public comment on that one.

Come up to the mic if you have public comment on the agenda item for this agenda item.

I move to approve Karen Mitchell to a three year term on the BMHA board of directors.

Second.

Moved by council member Lawley, seconded by council member Green to appoint Erin Mitchell for a three year term on the VMHA board of directors.

Do we have discussion on after now that there's that motion? Okay. Alright. So call for the vote.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed? With a vote of six yeas, one absent, mayor Fleming. Motion carries.

Alright. So that wraps up new business. Next, we have our reports section of the evening. First up is city manager report, and I know our assistant city manager is here. So director Nelson, take it away.

Can you just stand by for questions? I am familiar with some of the items, maybe not all, but submitted by mister Duval. So hit me with what you got.

Any questions for director Nelson? Olivia?

No. I have none. Thank you very much.

Alright. Drop the hook. Now we get the city clerk on the hook.

Okay. So just two quick things. One is elections. There's two things going on with elections. Of course, we're accepting nominating petitions for people to run for school board and city council. So we are doing a little more public outreach on that. We're trying to get some candidates interested in filing. Right now, only one person has filed for the three year term on council. One person has picked up a petition for the two year term on council, and two people have filed for the two three year terms on school board. And, again, there's two three year terms on council, one two year term on council, and two three year terms on school board that are gonna be on the ballot in May.

The other elections related thing is every the flash vote is live for the I voted sticker challenge. So if you haven't voted on which of the kids designs you like best, please do. That'll be live through 11AM tomorrow. And then, on another topic, I passed out an email correspondence from representative Chuck. He is the sponsor of the current version of the defined benefits bill at the state level, and he's asking counsel to consider, doing a resolution of support for that bill. It is aligned it is, you know, the state retirement system is part of your legislative priorities, but it's up to you all. We just kind of wanted to gauge if that was something council was interested in and how to proceed.

Councilmember Evans? I'm interested in entertaining the possibility of support. Obviously, they we don't want that today. Right? So I I mean, I'm I'm definitely interested in seeing this on a future agenda. It'll give me more time to review the exact implications of the bill.

I would agree with council member Devins. I would like to have more time to fully understand, the impacts to

the folks here. Thank you. Council member Valli? You you support Same I support as well,

But also to be discussed later and and Yes. Learn about the implications.

I would definitely like some time to be able to review, but we do have a lot of state employees that really help all these make the world go around here. So I think that, if can we dive into this and then get back, I think that it could be beneficial.

Councilman Foster, do you have anything to add?

Nothing to add. Thank you.

Yeah. No. I certainly support drafting a resolution or at least discussing it more so that we can get to that point. So

Well, so I will go ahead and work on drafting a resolution and and send, you guys have some background materials from the bill sponsor, but we can send along some additional information on it as well for you guys to review.

Yeah. Thanks for getting that in front of us, Elise. Appreciate that.

That's all for me. Thank you.

Alright. Next report, we have the city attorney report. Mister Stacer.

Thank you, mayor pro tem love. The only update we have for you this evening is related to PAPs, and I'll just give a brief overview. We've received the preliminary assessment from state petroleum property assessor Jim Greeley. The amount of a s $43.56 property in Valdesa's jurisdiction is 2,970,000,000.00. That equates to 20 mills to 49 59,400,000.0, and 20.

Taps, VMT and pipe within the city's jurisdiction was valued at 10,300,000,000.0, And the remainder of the increase is associated with escape property with large increases, associated with the vessels that were deemed taxable by judge Seaman. And, we'll further talk through the implications of this in executive session. Regarding the other items, we didn't provide you a written update, because we're just proceeding, as we discussed at the last meeting with regard to the other ongoing cases. And if that'll be happy to stand for any questions, perhaps, or other matters.

Anything for our city attorney? Councilman Foster?

No. Thank you.

Alright. You're off there now, Jake. Thank you. Alright. We'll do city mayor report. I don't have anything, so I'll just turn it over to the council business from the floor, and we'll start with council member Green and work our way down. Alright. I'd like to say thanks to

the folks that organized that plan.

Mike Mike there, council member Green.

Thank you. I'd like to say thanks for the folks that organized the, vote stickers and the flash vote there. You know, it's good to see that at all levels, youth levels, adult levels, support there. So

hats off to you there. Thank you. Nothing

to report here, but thank you.

Yeah. The the flash vote for the new I voted stickers is the first election I'll ever vote in where I'm happy with whoever wins.

Just encourage people to to run for, you know, whether it's city council or school board. And I will be voting tomorrow with Katie's help.

Councilmember Foster?

I wanted to give a a thank you to the Parks and Rec Group for grooming our wonderful ski trails in town. It's been kind of an interesting winter, so any activity that gets us outside, I really appreciate, and they do a great job grooming our trails. So thank you very much, Parks and Rec crew, and everyone else in the city who has something to do with that and keeping us busy. Thank you.

Alright. Well, that's it for our regular meeting. We'll, join for now and go into executive sessions. So thank you very much.