City Council - Regular Meeting

K. We'll go ahead and call to order. If, everybody could stand up and join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with the Virginia justice for all. K. Sherry, could you please give us a roll call?

Mayor, all, members of the council are present this evening except for council member, Love, who is absent and excused.

K. Approval of minutes. Approval of minutes of regular council meeting on February 3 and March 3. Are there any corrections in the minutes as presented? Hearing none, the minutes will stand as approved. And then we have public business from the floor. This is for anybody on non agenda item to come up and talk for five minutes if they so wish, to the front of the podium. So if there's anybody wanting to come up and talk. K. Seeing none, we will go to consent agenda.

And we, have three proclamations tonight, and then, an approval for a late, file this ability veterans property tax exemption and

Like executive session.

Approval to go into executive session discussing the implications of city revenues litigation strategy regarding TransAlaska pipeline system at the Lorum tax issues. Do I have the motion?

Motion to consent to all items. Second.

Been moved by council member Devens, second by council member Valli to approve all items on the consent agenda.

It was Jimmy.

Oh, was it Jimmy?

Yeah.

Oh, it okay. I'm sorry. All those

in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? We

have six yeas, one absent. Council member Love. Motion carried.

K. Now I'm gonna go ahead and read those proclamations. We're gonna start out with the first one, which is the proclamation of the earthquake remembrance day. Whereas in the early evening hours of Friday, 03/27/1964, the original Valdez town site, home to about 800 persons, was jolted along with most of South Central Alaska by one of the most forceful earthquakes of the century. And whereas the earthquake, which lasted five point five minutes and measured 9.2 on the Richter scale triggered submarine landslides causing substantial water disturbance in Fort Valdez, inundating the community and destroying the city dock in Valdez at which the Alaska Steamship Company vessel, China, was moored unloading cargoes and whereas the lives of 31 Valdezians in the boat harbor are standing on the dock were taken when that structure collapsed and disappeared under the waters

of Fort Valdez. And whereas thereafter, either as

a direct or indirect result of this natural disaster, a total of 38 persons lost their lives in Valdez, including the four member crew of an Alaska Air National Guard airplane. And whereas the original Valdez time, town site was subsequently condemned as unsuitable for continued use and the remaining residents of Valdez came together with assistance from local, state, and federal public officials to create a new town site. And whereas the people of Chitney, Upper Center, Glen Allen, Fairbanks, and other Alaska communities responded immediately to the needs of Valdez in the highest tradition of compassion. And whereas in the intervening sixty two years, the families and friends of those who perished have borne their sorrow quietly and with diminishing public awareness of their personal tragedies. Now, therefore, I, Dennis Fleming, mayor of the city of Valdez, you hear proclaimed Friday, 03/27/2026 as earthquake memorial remembrance day and urge citizens to pause and remember those Valdesians who lost their lives during the nineteen sixty four earthquake.

Do we have somebody that's gonna

accept that? Yes.

You wanna get us a picture? Go ahead. Go ahead. Alright. And then we'll go into the proclamation for the animal care and control officer appreciation week, April 12 through the eighteenth twenty twenty six.

Whereas the National Animal Control Association has designated the April each year as animal care and control officer appreciation week, And whereas the various federal, state, and local government officials throughout the country take the time to recognize, thank, and commend all animal control officers and animal control staff for their dedicated service they provide to the citizens, various public safety, public, service agency, and departments across country. And whereas everyday animal control officers put themselves in potential dangerous situations to protect the health and welfare of all kinds of animals and the public. And whereas the city of Valdes would like to express its sincere thanks and appreciation for the outstanding service of Valdes animal control officers and staff provide daily to the citizens of the city and surrounding communities. And whereas the city of Valdes recognizes and commends animal control officers and animal shelter staff for the many dedicated and long hours of in serving this community and for providing the highest and most efficient level of customer service. And whereas the City Of Valdez recognizes the animal control officers who answer calls for assistance capturing roaming and potentially dangerous animals, rescue animals in distress, investigative reports, or animal cruelty and neglect, provide education for pet guardians about responsible pet care, and mediate disputes between neighbors regarding conflicts involving animals.

Now, Now therefore, I, Dennis Fleming, mayor of the city of Valdez, do hereby proclaim the week of April 12 through 04/18/2026 as animal animal care and control officer appreciation week in the city of Valdez and encourage all citizens to join me in expressing their sincere appreciation for the service and dedication of our animal control officers and staff. Is there somebody in the city?

I'm kidding.

And the final proclamation is recognizing National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, April 12, 04/18/2026. Whereas agencies that require police, fire, and emergency medical services can occur at any time. And whereas when an emergency occurs, the proper response of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics is critical to the protection of life and the preservation of property. And whereas the safety of our police officers, firefighters, and paramedic is dependent upon the quality and accuracy of information obtained from citizens who contact the Valdes emergency communication center. And whereas public safety telecommunicators are the first and most critical contact our citizens have with emergency services, and whereas public safety telecommunicators are the single vital link to our police officers, firefighters, and paramedics by monitoring their activities by radio, providing them information, ensuring their safety.

And whereas the public safety telecommunicators of the Valdes Police Department have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fires, and treatment of patients. And whereas each dispatcher has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their job in the past year. Now, therefore, I, Dennis Fleming, mayor of the city of Valdez, do hereby proclaim the week of April 12 through April 18 as public safety telecommunicators week in Valdez in honor of the men and women whose diligence and professionalism keep our city and citizens safe. Telecommunicators. Yep.

Telecommunicators. K. Now we're going into

New business.

New business. Approval of number one on the new business is approval of contract with Wolverine Summit JV for new water well, Number 5, pumping station in the amount of $3,447,000.

Move to approve.

Second.

Been moved by council member Volleys, second by council member Foster to approve a contract with Wolverine Summit JV for new Water Well Number 5 pumping station in the amount of $3,447,000.

Is there any comment from council?

Go ahead.

Just for some history because it was for my time. This water well was completed in 2022. Is there a reason that it's being completed now?

Yeah. So we'd same answer to all. The project started with drilling the well, so that was what was completed. Then we had to get DEC approval, to actually build the infrastructure and develop it out. Portion of it was phased, if you will, because we're doing the Wayland project. So we ran the piping with the Wayland project. So that's why it's kind of a piecemeal of drill the well, Wayland piping, and now we're gonna build the well house and the pump station is essentially the last piece of it. It will be paid for with, remaining bond proceeds from the Suruforce main bond.

Great. And what exactly is this well gonna do for Valdez?

So what happens is so the water sis I mean, I'm gonna go way in-depth here, but so the water system is tied together. It's looped. So we have the south tank on Meals Hill, and we have the north tank up by the

It gives us redundancy. The north it

gives us redundancy. The the well number four in periods of high fish years, like, the fish process can draw a million gallons a day in water. We have cavitated that well in the past. So what it does is even though the system's looped, it's still a long ways for the south tank to make up on the south side of town when they're drawing. So what this does is give us a lot more redundancy. There have been some issues. At some point, we need to redevelop well number four, but this gives us an assurance that we'll we'll always have north and south loops tied together.

Thank you.

K. Any, public comment? Okay. Let's go ahead and call for the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Those opposed?

Yes. We

have six yeas, one absent. Council member Love. Motion carries.

K. Number two, approval of contract with Wolverine Supply Inc. For pavement management phase 4 Meals Avenue in the amount of $6,330,803.

Move to approve.

Second.

Been moved by council member Green, second by council member Witty to approve a contract with Wolverine Supply Inc. For pavement management phase four, Meals Avenue in the amount of $6,330,803.

Any council discussion? Go ahead, Jimmy.

I did just wanna commend our city manager and our, capital facilities for, bringing this. It is in line with the allocated budget and with the strategic goals that we set earlier. So thanks for the hard work.

Go ahead.

Just a quick question. I read through, but I just must have missed it. When does work begin officially?

Essentially, when there's no snow. We're anticipating at this point in time, we're still afterward a contract, we'll get their official schedule. That would be our indication of when they're gonna begin. I anticipate it's likely gonna be sometime around the June. That's when they'll be in demolition.

They did the contractor has presented some some phasing plans or options to us. Right now, the intent is to build a kind of a bypass, a diversion for the cul de sac so that people can can take that. So we'll see how their phasing coordinates with that bypass and how that this could be awful disruptive for that side of town. We're well aware of it. So once we get a schedule from them and phasing plan, we'll start putting the push on the public, information campaign so everybody knows what's going on and what to expect and who to contact their issues.

That was my second question. Thank you.

And I guess I'll go on the record as a little leery about the project itself and the fact that, I'm glad we are doing it. It's part of our plan, but, this contractor kinda almost left a million dollars on the table compared to the other two contractors who were in the bid. And, you know, I just hope that, the things that I saw in the bid, when I went through in line by line item, there were some that were very off, and I just hope that, it all works out. But I know we're in good hands with our engineering staff and everybody in the projects team. So, I hope this all works out very successfully. Olivia, did you have anything?

No, mayor Fleming. Thank you.

Okay. Any public comment? Okay. Let's call for the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

We have six yeas, one absent. Council member Love. Motion carries.

Okay. Number, three is approval of professional service agreement with Dow LLC to provide construction administrative service for pavement management phase for Mills Avenue in the amount of $591,938.

Move to approve.

Second.

Think I Lester beat her up.

Moved by Councilmember Wally, second by Councilmember Green to approve a professional services agreement with Dow LLC to provide construction administration services for pavement management phase 4 Meals Avenue in the amount of $591,938.

Any council discussion? Any public discussion? K. Seeing none, call for the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. All those opposed? It's six yeas, one absent. Council member Love. Motion carries.

K. Moving on to resolutions. We have resolution number 26 dash 14. With declaring the official intent of the city of Valdes, Alaska to reimburse capital expenditures in connection with payment management phase four and five from pre proceeds of a future borrowing.

Do I have a motion?

Move to approve.

Second. Moved by council member Devin, second by council member Wade to approve resolution twenty six fourteen.

And I will open it up for Nate, to go ahead and kinda give us a little run through of what he was thinking on this one.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. So within IRS code and statute, there's a provision that allows us to I like to call it bond after the fact. As you know, with our current, property tax situation, we have the tax cap, but the tax cap is not applicable toward paying down bonded indebtedness. Being that the valuation is beyond what we had budgeted, this past year, there's a there's a chance that we may need to capture some of those funds through bond indebtedness to ensure that we receive all the all the property taxes for the community, which is is worth noting that all of those taxes will be paid at 20 mills either to us or the state.

It will be paid to someone. So the council's philosophy has been historically that it should go to the citizens of LEs. So what this resolution does is it authorizes us, should we need to, to issue a bond for the project after the project is essentially complete. You may ask why would you why would you take a loan out for something that you already paid cash for? You know, it's it's kind of the contemporary example.

But the the reality is it it's strictly a revenue capturing mechanism that we have at our disposal. So that's the that's the gist of it. Director Nelson can certainly answer any financial specifics or IRS type questions that you may have. There are some timelines associated with this. We have to pass a resolution within sixty days of first expenditure, and we have to pass the bond within some time frame after the final expenditure and and or substantial completion. And so that's there's some timelines on it that are are necessary. We believe it's gonna jive with kind of the SARB decision process, and we'll know at that point what our what our revenue picture is specifically looking like.

Any questions for

finance? No?

Olivia, you you got any questions for finance?

No. I just am grateful that we have this at our disposal and that we are utilizing it. So thank you very much for working on this resolution. Appreciate it. Unless Jordan has any or I'm sorry. Director Nelson, if you have any glimmers, you know, if you wanna color for us, let us know. We'll listen.

Well, you give me a hot mic and a captive audience. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks, council member Foster. No.

I think the I think the main thing on this one, we developed this resolution in conversation with our municipal adviser and bond council as well. They as the city manager pointed out, there is a specific time period after the bond. And really, the language is just simply a reasonable time frame. Bond counsel seem to indicate that six months is is about appropriate, but they were even a little soft on that timeline. Just doing a little bit of math and kind of looking at at our revenue picture, I don't, I don't anticipate we will have to use this in this fiscal year, but I wanna have the option.

I wanna have the option to present to you later if it becomes necessary. If it becomes necessary, that's very good news, but it's a different set of problems and opportunity sets, we can discuss that at a different point. Just know that there will be no exercise of this option without the city council's go ahead.

Mayor. Go ahead.

And of course, that would mean that we would have to run a special election, obviously, in order to take this to the voters if we did vote upon. So we would a special election would also be something that would have to happen as well. We need a a of a run up to that in order to put that together. So

k. With that being discussed, is there any, city or public, comment? Come up and please state your name. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure it's on. There you go.

My name is Derek. I just wanna make a public comment that it's very I'm very nervous. I've never done this before. It's very convenient that the city wants to do everything in their terms to get everything in their their benefit, their reimbursement, their payback. But when citizens come and try to talk to members of the public, like the city manager, the city manager likes to make statements like, I have fifteen fifteen hundred other people I gotta deal with when individuals are not important.

So when we have issues that we want to initiate codes and laws and stuff like that, the city wants to do everything they can to be reimbursed. But when it's difficult in conversation, it's hard to explain, when does it come to the people. And on top of it, the city is really good at looking after itself and its business capacity, I've learned, but we're losing people in the city, the city itself by the taxes. The 20 mills that is overtaxing Alyeska to get everything possible you can from them, the people of the town is losing by by just association. You have to tax the people once you tax them.

So in order to get everything maximum there, now you're losing educators. You got an educator that's leaving this town.

This is this is specifically about No.

This is the No. This is the comment. And this is because of the 20 mills. We got educators and people leaving this town because the town is overtaxed. The people, I think, that the town should really look at a factor and not just a $595 energy efficient thing. So if you guys are going to look at the 20 mills and follow everything protocol, when is it gonna look at the people? When are the people we're gonna get dividends? Something other than I mean, I was on state assistance, and I got more in heating assistance than the city provides its people because of the mandatory overtaxation of the 20 mills across the way. So is very Valdez is very good. I've noticed as a corporation to fund and make sure that you guys have all the funds, over funds.

You guys have 2,500 trucks in the harbor. That should be 15 overspending. You got a city manager here that's price range salary is $1.70 to $1.90. He's making $1.99 5. I mean, there's obviously overspending. So the city gets its, and does the town get theirs? When do the people start those? So to replace the city manager with a high pay is easy, but to replace an educator that doesn't get that much is the hard thing. And the city taxes is the reason specifically that 20 of this subject is losing educators. And that's one of the biggest things on this town's agendas normally too.

I just wanna make that known that you're not gonna be able to replace an educator with the salaries and especially with housing. Everybody would rather Airbnb their house than, live in it and be down here to pay the taxes. So definitely that 20 mils to get from them is I definitely I'm new here, a new resident, but I can already see and talk to the people. It's it's hurting people. So I will end it with that.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

K. Moving on then for a call to the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed? We have six yeas, one absent. Council member Love. Motion carries.

And moving on to amending the number twenty six fifteen, amending the f y twenty six city budget by accepting a fire department grant, of equipment for the state of Alaska Department of Transportation Extraction Tools project in the amount of $42,229.

Motion to approve. Second.

Moved by council member Green. Second by no. Was it Devin's. Not recognizing voices tonight. Council member, Devins, second by council member, Lally, to approve resolution twenty six fifteen.

Any council discussion on it? Just for me, just a great job, chief, for looking for other ways to fund.

Really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. With that, public comment? K. All for the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye. All

those opposed? Six yeas. One absent council member love. Motion carries.

Number 2616, accepting DNR, Department of Forestry volunteer fire assistant grant in the amount of 9,900.

Motion to approve. Second.

Moved by council member Devon, second by council member Maui to approve resolution twenty six sixteen.

Sorry.

Councilmember Green. Sorry.

Any council comments? Just another ditto. Thanks again, chief. And any public comment? I see none. All for the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed? You have six yeas, one absent. Council member love, motion carries.

K. Moving on to number twenty six seventeen, approval of annual renewal of city school health insurance benefit plan for period beginning 04/01/2026.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Took my glasses off this time. Oh, by council member, Devin's second by council member, I like to approve resolution twenty six seventy.

Any council discussion on this?

It looks like we've got some fine representatives here online with us. If they'd like to run us through the amazing benefits that our school district receives every year, I'd love to hear about it.

Absolutely. Good. Can you guys hear me alright?

Yes. We can.

Perfect. Well, good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is Shannon Mahan. I am the city's health benefit consultant with IMA Financial Group, and I'm also joined tonight by Amanda Hesser. We're gonna give a short overview of the city's health plan, how it works, what we've seen this past year, and what factors are influencing costs moving forward.

I'll try to keep this, fairly high level, but I'm happy to answer any questions as we go through this. So first, how the city's health plan is structured. The city operates what is called a self funded health plan. What that means in simple terms is that the city does not buy traditional insurance where you pay a fixed premium to an insurance company each month. Instead, the city pays the actual health care costs for employees and dependents as they occur.

This structure gives the city some advantages. It provides more flexibility in how the plan is designed in it, and it avoids certain insurance premium taxes, which can help reduce costs overall. However, because the city is paying actual claims, the plan's cost can fluctuate from year to year depending on how healthy or how sick the population is. To protect the city from extremely large claims, the city and the school district purchased something called stop loss insurance, which is essentially catastrophic insurance for the health plan. You can kind of think of that as a financial safety net.

So if claims, if an extremely large claim comes in, the stop loss carrier will reimburse the plan above a certain threshold. The city and the school district purchased this coverage together because combining the two groups improves purchasing power and pricing in the market. Additionally, the plan is considered a grandfather plan grandfathered plan, which means that the health insurance policy was in existence on 03/23/2010 when the Affordable Care Act was enacted, and it has also not undergone any significant changes that reduce benefits or increase the cost to consumers since that date. The plans are allowed to continue to operate without without having to fully comply with certain ACA requirements, although there are some rules that, you will have to abide by. With respect to the administrative cost, the plan is administered by a third party administrator called Meritaine, which uses the Aetna provider network.

The administrative costs are actually a pretty small portion of the total cost of the health plan. For the 2026 plan year, we are recommending moving the case management, which is currently under an outside vendor, over to Meritain. This change will result in a modest modest increase of about 1.4% in administrative premiums versus a 4% increase to renew the plan as it currently is. This move will help to simplify the case management program, and Maritime is also offering the city a onetime 5,000 credit, which will go back towards the, wellness program that you currently have in place. The dental and vision administrative fees are going to remain unchanged.

The life and disability insurance, which is currently through the Hartford, is in a rate guarantee until 2027, which means that those rates cannot increase before then. So a few factors that are driving the cost of the health plan. One thing it is important to remember that the that about self funded plans is that claims drive the cost. Health care costs are not evenly distributed. In most employer health plans, a small number of individuals account for a large portion of the total spending.

For the city and the school combined population, which averages around 725 covered individuals, we saw about 30% thirty seven percent of claims exceeding our reporting threshold, which is $62,500. Those higher cost claims are the main reason that cost can fluctuate from year to year. Last year, our team discussed that there were some individuals that reached several $100,000 and some approached nearly $900,000. Through, January for the the plan that we are currently in, we have seen two individuals that are above the individual stop loss level, which has already resulted in a reimbursement, in just over $305,000 for the plan. So this is exactly why you want to have stop loss insurance in place.

It is to protect the plan when those large claims happen. Another important nuance is that small groups feel impacts of large claims more dramatically than larger employers. Even a few high cost claims can significantly influence the plan's overall cost. With respect to the stop loss renewal for this upcoming year, the stop loss insurance is renewing at a 27% increase. So to ensure that the city was receiving a competitive price, we did send out a request for proposal before we even got this number, and requested other stop loss carriers to put in bids.

Most of the carriers declined to quote the plan this year, which typically happens when the data shows higher risk or or several large claims. We did get one alternative quote, but switching to that carrier would result in a 43% increase, which is significantly higher than the renewing than renewing with the current carrier. And because of that, the recommendation is to remain with the current stop loss carrier. Finally, I want to briefly mention the larger forces affecting health care costs across the country. These 10 trends are not unique to Valdes.

They are impacting employer health plans everywhere. Some of the biggest drivers include gene therapies, which can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per treatment, increased prescription drug spending, particularly medications like GLP-one drugs, which are used for diabetes and weight management, financial pressures on hospital systems, which lead to higher reimbursement rates being negotiated with health plans. And because of these factors, we do, expect overall health plan trends to remain elevated in the coming years. So just to kind of summarize what we've presented, the city will be continuing to operate a self funded grandfathered plan, which provides flexibility and tax savings. Large medical claims are the primary drivers of cost fluctuations.

Administrative costs remain stable and are a small portion of the plan. Stop loss insurance continues to protect the city from catastrophic claims, and we confirmed through the marketing analysis that the current arrangement remains competitive. Now we will continue to monitor the plan's experience throughout the year and provide updates if any changes in cost trends suggest adjustments should be considered. So we are recommending to remain with the current stop loss carrier, and we are recommending to move the case management over to Meritaine. You for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Go ahead, Joe.

Thanks, Sharon, for the presentation. And, I just wanted to ask about the the grandfathering from ADA, some of the requirements. Is there anything, I guess, or any requirements that, you know, we might the city, if they didn't accomplish or or do, that where they would lose the grandfathering, you know, protection? And if that grandfathering protection is lost, what are the implications of that?

Well, the cost to the overall plan would be minor to lose the grandfathering status. And things that could cause you to lose a grandfather's grandfathering status is going to be any big changes, whether it's in deductible amounts, coinsurance amounts, or the, and sometimes the premiums that employees pay.

Thanks, Shannon.

Any other questions for Shannon? Olivia, you have any questions?

No. Thank you very much for the presentation. I appreciate the information, and I appreciate you, getting a couple RFPs out for the stop loss and getting us the best deal. And I think this insurance is really amazing for our city schools and for our city workers. So thank you.

My pleasure. Any public comment? Seeing none, go ahead and call for the vote.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye. All those opposed? Yes. Six yays. One absent. Council member Love. Motion carries.

K. Moving on to the last item is number twenty six eighteen, authorizing the sale of surplus '20 2009 Nissan Crosswind Street sweeper. Move to approve. Second.

Move by council member, by council member, we need to approve resolution twenty six eighteen.

Any council comments? Go ahead, Jeff.

I just wanted to say I'm in full support of the sale, as old equipment can cost more to maintain than makes sense. And I really appreciate that we are, always focused on our municipal code to sell items and recoup those taxpayer funds.

K. Anybody else? K. Public comment? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and call for the vote. All

those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed?

We have six yeas, one absent. Council member Love. Motion carries.

K. Moving on to reports. We have two reports in the temporary land use permit twenty six zero two and the procurement report. Does anybody wanna pull those and discuss those items? Okay. Seeing none. We'll go ahead and go on to, city manager, city clerk, city attorney, and mayor's report. Start with the, city manager report.

Thank you, mayor. As you know, we had our client to DC and meet with the delegation out there. Sent you all a brief update on what that went, or how that went. I think the meetings were productive, especially the coast guard meeting, I think, was probably one of the most fruitful meetings we've had with them to date. So, obviously, cautiously optimistic about the the outcome of that.

We are we do have a meeting with, Copper Valley Electric to talk to them about power needs and some added infrastructure as it relates to electrical usage, if we were to do any development down the on the CR parcel. A couple of items just kind of outside of the written reports. There was a comment about the rural health transformation grant. So Providence did put in their application for that. They they put in for, well, I need to confirm, but they had three that they were looking to put in for.

One was a kind of a rural health care hub, kind of a training opportunity. Another one's for the MRI replacement. And they the third one was for I don't recall. Nonetheless, we've been working with Providence on those, on their grants. Admittedly, I've left it in their court just them being subject matter experts.

We did reach out to both Sound Mental Health and, Chu Getchemute, separately and informed them of the the process and the ability to do so, to apply for those monies. Another thing that in the conversation with the hospital recently is sounds like primary care at the clinic is going well. Additionally, public health is seeing fair amount of patients, and so it sounds like both entities are about growing their space. So future conversations will be happening with those guys to see what, see what the needs of the future are gonna look like. Two action items from the last meeting I wanna follow-up on is, there was a question regarding house bill 78 and what that looks like from employee's pension perspective.

You all, if you haven't had a chance to receive it, Elise was so kind just to email you all some some summary data and some information. We're tracking that to see where it's see where it's at. If we want to well, I guess the the short answer is if if you want us to have a resolution of support or discussion item or something after you've, consumed that information, please let us know. Reach out to myself or Sherry, and we can make whatever you want happen. Another question was regarding the SARB board.

Those are governor appointed positions. And so I'm in communication with Kim Hutchinson, our our state lobbyist, to see what see what that process looks like and and where that's at. It appears as though I mean, a little bit difficult to tell based on the state's website, but it appears as though there are five to seven positions, and it looks like two of them are filled. But there appears to be a number of vacancies. So as we receive more information, we'll pass it along to you all as as it becomes available.

And then certainly, last but not least, you know, I want to give a formal thank you and a shout out to our dispatchers and animal control. They do a great job. They do literally behind the scenes work that, many people don't have the opportunity to interact with them on a professional basis, and, you know, we certainly hope that most people don't have to. But when you do, it's good to know that we have confident professional people who are who are there to to take the

call. So,

again, I'll let let the rest of my report stand. But if you have any questions, I'll stand for any

of those. Any questions for the city manager? Alright. Moving on to city clerk report.

Thank you, mayor. First up, we have the certification of candidates for the 05/05/2026 Valdez Regula Municipal election, and I've, handed that out to all of you. I'm gonna go ahead and read the that into the record. For a city council member for the three year term, we had two vacancies, and we have received two petitions, completed pet petitions for that, and they will appear on the ballot. That is Lester Green and James Devins.

For city council member two year term, we have one vacancy, and we received three, completed, petitions that were accepted, and they will appear on the ballot. And that is Shannon Steitz, Cecilia Sanchez, and Clay Strickland. And for school board members, a three year term, two vacancies. We received, accepted petitions from Brian Vincent and Carrie Wade. So this is the ballot for the May.

So is there anything else yet? Any questions for Sherry? Okay.

Okay. So that is the election report. And I want to just I I handed passed out to you this evening, our stickers, our two winners with our the actual stickers for our I voted competition that we did. And I just wanna yes. I do wanna give a shout out to Katie Carr because Katie actually started the ball rolling on this.

She saw what some other municipalities had done, and she came to me and said, you know, she'd like to get this going and set this up. She did. She did a fabulous, wonderful job. She saw this through to completion, and we, of course, have two wonderful stickers for the upcoming election. And then as I mentioned before, Katie's gonna go ahead and make buttons for all of the students that submitted designs for the iVoted.

So they will get their their own iVoted buttons with their design. So, we're gonna continue this. We'll continue it, you know, again next year. So it's just it's it's been a lot of fun to do that. And then, of course, as I mentioned before, we are city manager and I are working on the, citizens academy and getting that, off the ground, this summer. So we're actively doing that. It is gonna happen, and, we'll have more to come on that. That's all I have.

Any questions Alright. For Thank you, Sherry. City attorney report.

Thank you, mayor Fleming. Good evening, council. I should have all received a written update. I just have one update for public session, and we'll talk about apps ad valorem issues in executive session. But I wanna give you an update on the c plan issues.

We filed one request for adjudicatory hearing, but the issues have been split up. And there's those that are on track for adjudicatory hearing on written briefs, which include, the inclusion of a PRAC certificate and the c plan, the adequacy of the description of scenario six, and then whether credit is deserved for the online leak detection system. That case is moving forward. We moved to supplement the record a couple months ago. Alieska and the agency opposed, and we just got an order yesterday saying that our motion to supplement is denied, but it's a bit of a mixed bag because in that same order, ALJ stated that it would be free to consider evidence outside of the record that we present in our briefing.

It also gave us a deadline for our opening brief of April 14. So we've already been working on that, and we'll get it filed by that date on those issues. Also, since we last spoke about the c plan, ADC issued a conditional approval for the secondary containment testing plan on February 28, I believe it was. There's changes that make the testing plan more robust in our view. There are some issues for we require clarification on and RCAC is seeking some of the same clarification.

But the biggest and most heartening thing to me is that the test will be conducted without a predetermined pass fail criteria. So they're not gonna say necessarily if less than x thousand gallons leak sufficiently permeable. They're gonna take the information, analyze it after the tests are completed. There's an increased sensitivity or lower margin of error that will be permitted, although we're not exactly sure what the language means. The current language is 10 times smaller than the quantity being measured.

That can mean a few things. So we're working with the agency to clarify that. But in any case, they've signaled that they need lower margin of error. There's an increased test duration, three hours of equalization, nine hours of testing, and both the standpipes that will be installed or can be monitored for that duration as well as the phosometers. There's an increase in the number of standpipes for each containment cell.

They started off at four, we're now at eight. So we think that will produce a more reliable result for the hydro test. And there's also reporting requirements. To provide weekly reports for the testing season, which is July 1 through October 15, and then monthly reports beginning, well, pretty much now, I think, I think middle of this month. And then final reports after the testing season will be due November 30 for the agency.

So we hope that we'll be kept apprised of testing as it's ongoing as they're tweaking the plan and conducting the testing and then it will give us some data on how those secondary containment systems, water at least. While this is ongoing, we're in communication with the agency to make sure that we're doing everything we need to preserve our administrative rights, our rights to appeal the administrative agency and then subsequent to court as necessary. One thing that the initial approval does not do is it doesn't do anything with regard to the currently granted credit for secondary. That issue is just deemed to be on remand as we understand it. No decision on that until they get the data from these tests.

So that's c plan issues. I know that was a mouthful. I'd be happy to stand for any questions on that. Okay. Seeing none on that. And that's really the only topic I have for update in public session here. We'll discuss ad valorem issues in executive session.

Thank you, Jake.

My pleasure.

A city mayor report. Had a great meeting in Washington DC with the Coast Guard, along with other agencies. I thought we finally got somewhere. It was really nice to, be able to sit down with people that we can actually talk to about base construction and what they are actually looking for. So that was probably the most productive meeting, that I've had with the postcard so far. Went really well. Everything, went really well on that DC trip. And, again, a good shout out to the, animal, shelter group, there. They they do an outstanding job. I've gone in there several times.

The place is always clean. It's always nice. The animals are well taken care of, And it's not just Valdez City community animals. Majority of the animals, come from other places that were in there this year. You know, several, different, owners of dogs who brought their litters in, and, Valdez is probably the only area on the road system that can handle that.

And so big shout out to those guys that do that work. Also, with the mayor's report, we got a snow machine race, the mayor's cup, my cup coming up. So that's on Saturday. So you guys aren't doing too much and wanna stay in some of the wind. It's supposed to be predicted not to be so windy, but, yeah, please come out and support the the snow machiners and or local snow machiners at the same time. So definitely do that. And other than that, that's all I got. Let's go to council business from the floor. Lester.

Thank you, mayor. And Sherry and Katie and other team members, thank you very much for the I voted stickers. I love these. And my granddaughter will very much enjoy putting these on my notebook. So I like it. Also, I'd like, say thank you for the work session, kind of educating or educating me on this strategic planning process. I look forward to to that activity and also welcome input from other members of the community to make sure that we truly understand and are listening to the priorities and do our best to address those concerns in our community.

Thank you.

Elizabeth?

I attended the Valdez Tourism Task Force meeting on the fourth. Everyone is working together very diligently to ensure that how things move forward is the absolute best option. I believe they will will be bringing some recommendations before council soon, and just wanted to update council on that.

I have nothing new for today. Thank you.

I just wanted to also thank Katie and Elise and Sherry for their work on the I voted stickers. I my vote counted for sure, I think. And I also wanted to to thank the, telecommunicators, the public safety telecommunicators, and the animal care and control officers that were recognized tonight. Thanks for all that you do.

And I I have one more too. I forgot to add in as, Katie and the staff, there was a letter that was sent out to mayors, two different cities that, didn't respond at all. And all it was was they wanted a picture of the mayor, a signed copy, and it was a school in Iowa, was it? Yeah. Iowa. Mhmm. And it's just a bunch of little kids that wanted a picture of mayor from different communities. So I made sure I went in there and signed it and also sent the teacher a coin that went along with the class. But, I was kinda surprised that the other two communities didn't even respond. So well, these did. So really appreciate Katie for making that all go through. So yeah. Olivia, you got anything?

No. I just wanna echo what everyone else said. Thank you very much.

Awesome. Okay. I am going to, infuse myself from the, executive session and leave it to mayor pro temp, Joe there to continue on, and we'll take a quick recess while we, vacate.

Basically, you just provided us an update on ad valorem tax issues.

That works? Yep. Okay.

Alright. Now to reiterate, we're coming out of executive session where legal counsel for the city, Jake Staser, provided the counsel an update on ad valorem tax issues. And that's, that concludes the executive session. We're adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.