On October 25, 2025, the Anchorage Municipal Assembly convened for a comprehensive budget work session focusing on the 2026 proposed operating and capital budgets. The meeting covered all utilities and enterprise funds, including hydropower, water, wastewater, the Port of Alaska, airports, waste services, and ACDA, followed by an in-depth briefing on the alcohol tax strategy and the capital improvement program. The Assembly aimed to finalize budget amendments by November 5th, with discussions centered on staffing levels, infrastructure maintenance backlogs, homeless crisis interventions, and debt obligations.
Utilities and Enterprise Budgets
Alcohol Tax Strategy and Budget
Capital Budget and Bonds
Okay, everyone, um, we are gonna get started again. It's a little after two. Um, so just a quick update on timing. Um because we have about two hours left. Um, my intent is not to hold this past four, because I know it's gonna be a long day for everybody. Um so we are going to switch the order briefly and and we're gonna take up the uh utilities and enterprise items in the order that's listed. Um we'll get through those. Then we will move into alcohol tax, get a briefing on that. Um, and then I am gonna have a hard stop if we if we need it to 315 for the alcohol tax discussion um because we need to save time for other things. And I imagine it's gonna get into things that could be dealt with um in other venues. And so um then we'll move into the capital budget, and then you'll see there's a number of departments that we have not gotten to, many of them the directors were not going to come anyway. And so if we have extra time, Miss Browse will run through those budgets, but uh the understanding is there's not a lot of changes there. And lastly, I'll say we will take up the assembly budget at our normal work sessions on amendments. We will also do a briefing on the branch budget um because it's important for members to understand that it includes the clerk's office, elections, ombudsman, many other functions. So we wanna make sure that we have time for that. Um and so with that, I'm gonna turn back to Ms. Brouse. And it looks like we are starting with anchoring hydro powder. Yeah. And if you can mention what slide we're on. Yes, uh, thank you, Chair Brawley. Um, so back in the slide deck, we are on slide 61 with anchorage hydropower. Um, the operating budget changes from 25 to 26. Um, if we run through the revised budget appropriation level at 6.4 million, um, you get down into the one-time moves and the removal of a $700,000 dividend to general government from 2025, a couple other um changes within um uh IgCs and uh transfers to other funds, and um a small adjustment for office and travel and we and at an appropriation total of 5.8 million dollars um with two uh full-time employees, including um the position for the uh general manager and uh an executive assistant. Um, but I think we are uh at least mostly familiar with the idea that the general manner posit manager position is being split between uh uh director Stafford and um uh one of our engineers and he can go into more explanation around that. But this is the um operating reconciliation and then the um uh ongoing fish and wildlife capital commitment of 325,000 for Anchorage Hydropowers 2026 budget. And any questions, uh Mark Spafford is here and can answer them related to hydro. Okay, any questions from the I mean just just can I chime in? Sorry, through the chair, uh deputy meeting manager Mark Spafford slash uh Anchorage Hydro Utility General Manager slash director. Um yeah, so I mean, primarily getting transitioned over from uh you know from Corsetino, I started like kind of officially when you guys crewed me in June of this year. And so a lot of it has been uh you know, trying to juggle the relationships and get caught up to speed on some of the the politics as well as like the technical pieces of it. Um and so I've been you know working pretty closely with not only the assembly but also the utilities to you know to foster better communications and more openness throughout you know the fish and wildlife process, which is basically the pump storage hydro and you know the portal valve, the occludeness stuff when we say fish and wildlife, that's pretty much what that means. But you know, me uh rolling stone. I'm also looking at ways for next year that we can also kind of like do more with the hydropower utility. Look at you know, there are other energy efforts, stuff around the utility or around the municipality that we could look at that we could you know incorporate into AHU. And so that's kind of like one of the master planning, higher level things that we're gonna be working on next year as well as you know, like what is what is this utility gonna do? Is it just gonna be on the the hydro and occlutin, or is it gonna be you know a bunch of different energy endeavors? So we're we're we're currently looking at um looking at doing that for next year as well. So, or that's some of the things that are rolling around in my head anyway. Okay. Yeah, just um just generally giving high level of like how are you in terms of staffing? Um and um and generally, you know, you mentioned a few things, but but what are some things that we're sort of need to kind of keep our eye open for the next year? I think the main is the the pump storage hydro and the the the AWO um water agreements are like another big one. Um as far as staffing is concerned, it's like you know, obviously I've got a couple hats, and so um, you know, I do this part-time. Um I have an engineer, uh engineering director who's like probably about halftime on this project that helps out. And then we also hired a uh executive assistant um earlier this year as well. So yeah. So it was myself, an engineering director half time and an executive assistant. Yeah, thanks. And I'm looking at my budget book here.